Battle of Austerlitz

The Battle of Austerlitz (2 December 1805/11 Frimaire An XIV FRC), also known as the Battle of the Three Emperors, was one of the most important military engagements of the Napoleonic Wars. The battle occurred near the town of Austerlitz in the Austrian Empire (now Slavkov u Brna in the Czech Republic). Around 158,000 troops were involved, of which around 24,000 were killed or wounded.

The battle is often cited by military historians as one of Napoleon's tactical masterpieces, in the same league as other historic engagements like Hannibal's Cannae (216 BC) or Alexander the Great's Gaugamela (331 BC). The military victory of Napoleon's Grande Armée at Austerlitz brought the War of the Third Coalition to an end, with the Peace of Pressburg signed by the French and Austrians later in the month. These achievements did not establish a lasting peace on the continent. Austerlitz had driven neither Russia nor Britain, whose armies protected Sicily from a French invasion, to settle. Prussian resistance to France's growing military power in Central Europe led to the War of the Fourth Coalition in 1806.

After eliminating an Austrian army during the Ulm campaign, French forces seized Vienna in November 1805. The Austrians avoided further conflict until the arrival of the Russians, who helped increase the allied numbers. Napoleon sent his army north in pursuit of the Allies, but then ordered his forces to retreat so he could feign a grave weakness to lure the Allies into thinking that they were facing a weak army, while it was in fact formidable. Napoleon gave every indication in the days preceding the engagement that the French army was in a pitiful state, even abandoning the dominant Pratzen Heights near Austerlitz. He deployed the French army below the Pratzen Heights and weakened his right flank, enticing the Allies to launch an assault there to roll up the French line. Napoleon's plan was based on the hope that Marshal Davout and his III Corps would arrive soon on their way from Vienna. A forced march by Davout plugged the gap left by Napoleon just in time. Davout's men stubbornly held their defensive positions under the onslaught of superior opponents. The Allied deployment against the French right weakened the Allied centre on the Pratzen Heights, which was attacked by the IV Corps of Marshal Soult. With the Allied center demolished, the French swept through both flanks and routed the Allies, which enabled the French to capture thousands of prisoners.

Remarkably, the pleiad of Russian military commanders nurtured by the great general Alexander Suvorov (1730–1800), – such were being Mikhail Kutuzov, Pyotr Bagration, Mikhail Miloradovich, Nikolay Kamensky and Peter Wittgenstein, – was decisively defeated at Austerlitz. The blame for the Allied disaster initially lies with the supreme commander Emperor Alexander I of Russia, who, together with his Austrian chief of staff Franz von Weyrother, fell into Napoleon's "trap" at Austerlitz, first accepting encounter on the battlefield chosen by the French Emperor, and then being encircled in the direction of the left Allied flank. The Allied disaster significantly shook the will of Emperor Francis to further resist Napoleon. France and Austria agreed to an armistice immediately, and the Treaty of Pressburg followed shortly after, on 26 December. Pressburg took Austria out of both the war and the Coalition while reinforcing the earlier treaties of Campo Formio and of Lunéville between the two powers. The treaty confirmed the Austrian loss of lands in Italy and Bavaria to France, and in Germany to Napoleon's German allies. It also imposed an indemnity of 40 million francs on the Habsburgs and allowed the fleeing Russian troops free passage through hostile territories and back to their home soil. Critically, victory at Austerlitz permitted the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine, a collection of German states intended as a buffer zone between France and the eastern powers, Austria, Prussia, and Russia. The Confederation rendered the Holy Roman Empire virtually useless, so Francis dissolved the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, but remained as emperor of Austria. These achievements failed to establish a lasting peace on the continent. Prussian worries about the growing French influence in Central Europe led to the War of the Fourth Coalition in 1806.

Europe had been in turmoil since the start of the French Revolutionary Wars in 1792. In 1797, after five years of war, the French Republic subdued the First Coalition, an alliance of Austria, Prussia, Great Britain, Spain, and various Italian states. A Second Coalition, led by Britain, Austria and Russia, and including the Ottoman Empire, Portugal and the Kingdom of Naples, was formed in 1798, but by 1801, this too had been defeated, leaving the British the only opponent of the new French Consulate. In March 1802, France and Britain agreed to end hostilities under the Treaty of Amiens.

However, many problems persisted between the two sides, and implementing the treaty became increasingly difficult. The British government resented having to return the Cape Colony and most of the Dutch West Indies to the Batavian Republic. Napoleon was angry that the British refused to abandon the island of Malta. The tense situation only worsened when Napoleon sent an expeditionary force to restore French authority and slavery in Saint-Domingue. In May 1803, Britain declared war on France.

In December 1804, an Anglo-Swedish agreement led to the creation of the Third Coalition. British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger spent 1804 and 1805 in a flurry of diplomatic activity geared towards forming a new coalition against France, and by April 1805, Britain and Russia had signed an alliance. Having been defeated twice in recent memory by France and being keen on revenge, Austria joined the Coalition a few months later.

Before the formation of the Third Coalition, Napoleon had assembled an invasion force called the Armée d'Angleterre (Army of England) around six camps at Boulogne in Northern France. He intended to use this force, amounting to 150,000 men, to strike at England and was so confident of success that he had commemorative medals struck to celebrate the conquest of the English. Although they never invaded, Napoleon's troops received careful and invaluable training for any possible military operation. Boredom among the troops occasionally set in, but Napoleon paid many visits and conducted lavish parades to boost morale.