A year after his coronation as emperor, at the culmination of the best campaign of his career, Napoleon defeated the combined armies of Russia and Austria at Austerlitz , where he, his generals, and some superbly trained troops demonstrated his worth on the battlefield. However, despite his genius, this victory did not immediately bring peace.
Austerlitz data
- Who: Emperor Napoleon (1769-1821) with 73,000 men defeated the combined armies of Imperial Russia, under the command of Tsar Alexander I (1777-825), and of Austria, under the command of Emperor Francis II (1768-1835), with a total of 85,000 soldiers.
- How: Napoleon provoked the Allies to launch an attack on terrain of his choosing, and then occupied the Prátzen Heights in the center of the battlefield, dividing the enemy and routing them.
- Where: Near the town of Austerlitz (Bohemia), 113 km north of Vienna.
- When: December 2, 1805.
- Why: The new revolutionary state of France and Napoleon's usurpation of the French throne were very threatening to the monarchies of Europe, who suspected that Napoleon was trying to impose French hegemony on the entire continent.
- Result: The allied army was destroyed. The French occupied the field, dealing a major blow to the Third Coalition.
Background
Napoleon's campaign against the powers of the Third Coalition in late 1805 must be considered his best, and the battle at Austerlitz (Bohemia) is a masterpiece of Napoleonic military leadership. The allies (Austria, Great Britain, Russia, Sweden and Naples) were certain of the defeat of Napoleon's presumptuous post-revolutionary army and upstart 'Empire'. William Pitt and Tsar Alexander I, the two main architects of this coalition, the largest ever created against France, were going to attack Napoleon with 400,000 soldiers on a wide front from Naples in the Mediterranean to Hanover and Pomerania in the Baltic . Napoleon could only hope to prevail if he could move fast, strike hard and divide his enemy before the slower Austrians were ready. Napoleon had a total of 350,000 men in his ranks, although only his Grande Armée, facing England along the Franco-Belgian coast of the English Channel, numbering 194,000, could hope to meet and defeat the Austro-Russian army in Central Europe. Q>
The campaign
On September 8, 1805 an Austrian army, under the command of General Karl Mack (1752-1828), invaded Bavaria, whose army of 22,000 men did not fight the enemy advance, allowing Mack to occupy Munich four days later . Mack moved his army west to Ulm and Ingolstadt to guard the Black Forest (Schwarzwald), where he was sure the French were going to break into Germany. Further north, the Prussian enclaves of Anspach and Bayreuth blocked an attack, or so Mack believed. Napoleon certainly would not dare anger Prussia into joining the Allies by violating its territorial integrity.
Napoleon's strategy
Napoleon had no such scruples. While sending Murat's cavalry corps, backed by Lannes's V Corps, through the Black Forest to keep Mack busy, he sent the other five corps of his "Grand Armée d'Allemagne" in a great circle through Franconia. and northern Bavaria.
Murat crossed the Rhine at Strasbourg between 25 and 27 September, while the rest of the Grande Armée crossed the Neckar River on 1 October, trying to reach the Danube and cut off Mack's line of retreat to the east . Until then Napoleon had no idea where exactly Mack's main army was. He hoped that he would retreat to Vienna before it was too late.
Four days later, Mack heard that French troops had crossed the Anspach on their way south to Donauworth, where, three days later, the Austrians lost 600 men trying to hold this vital position. This left Mack's main army cut off and surrounded at Ulm. Mack ordered his army to break through the weakly defended French lines into Bohemia, and on October 11 he met the enemy with singular success. However, the attack was not used with determination by either the officers or the soldiers, who had lost faith in the ability of Mack and the other officers to lead them.
Capitulation in Ulm
Mack's situation was now quite desperate. He considered that there was no longer any point in continuing the useless bloodshed, and on October 25 his army of 24,000 men capitulated at Ulm. Altogether, the ill-advised invasion of Bavaria cost the Austrians 60,000 of their best soldiers.
French troops, whose casualties were negligible, were amazed at their success and how a swift and relentless advance had spared them a pitched battle against an enemy who, as Wagram proved four years later, was not to be underestimated. Ulm, rather than Austerlitz, was the most brilliant exponent of Napoleonic command in this campaign, as the enemy had been outmaneuvered and forced to capitulate without significant loss of life on either side.
The ally plan
According to the ill-conceived "grand strategy" of the Allies, Mack should have made no advance before the arrival of the Russians. The vanguard of the Russian Expeditionary Army, some 24,000 strong, did not reach Branau-am-Inn until the end of November, by which time Ulm had scuppered all plans for an advance. The Russian commander-in-chief, General Mikhail Kutuzov (1745-1813), cautious, shrewd and experienced, decided to retire . Here both General Miloradovich and the Prince of Georgia, Peter Bagration, excelled at blocking, evading, and pummeling the French pursuers.
The second and main phase of the campaign had begun . Napoleon had only 53,000 men under his command when he arrived at Brünn (Bmo) on November 23, by which time the weather had suddenly turned cold. Napoleon, as was his custom, surveyed the terrain and found the ideal battlefield around the Pratzen Heights, towards the small town of Austerlitz.
Winter mist descended on the battlefield, throwing off Allied plans, and Russian General Langeron pointed out that the Allied offensive would leave the key to the entire battlefield (Prátzen Heights) completely defenseless. Napoleon was not going to please the Allies, whose plan seemed unprofessional, and the trick of encircling his left flank was too crude to go unnoticed. During the night his spy chief, Savary, had told him that the allies were on the move. At 05:00, when he held his council of war, Napoleon left Legrand and Davout with 18,600 men to defend the left wing while concentrating the bulk of his army, 65,000 men, on the right. .
Napoleon had established his field headquarters on the neighboring heights of Zarlan, and at 08:45 he observed with his telescope that the allies were marching south, abandoning the crucial heights of Prátzen, a hill that dominated the entire field of battle . Napoleon asked how long it would take Soult's men - hidden at the bottom of the hill - to ascend and take the eminence. Soult replied that it would only take 20 minutes. So Napoleon waited until the last Allied soldier had left Prátzen before ordering Soult forward.
When it began to snow, the battle came to an end, with the French too exhausted to pursue the fleeing allies . Napoleon had dealt a massive blow to the Third Coalition, leaving Austria crushed, Russia humiliated, and England without her continental allies. The French had lost 9,000 men, barely 12% of their troops, while the allies had lost almost a third of their army, about 27,000 men . Austerlitz was the zenith of French military might, though it did not lead to peace on Napoleon's terms. Only after two years of savage fighting against Prussia and Russia were these powers finally forced, in July 1807, to sue for peace with France at Tilsit.
On November 11 the last Austrian soldiers (11,000 men) left Vienna in the direction of the concentration area in Bohemia, where the allied armies, at the end of the month, had 80,000 troops. The next day, brass bands from the Grande Armée entered this imperial capital of 240,000 souls playing catchy martial airs. The Austrians, unlike the more determined and fanatical Russians in 1812, did not burn down their capital or engage in guerrilla warfare.
On his arrival in Vienna, which he was to occupy again in 1809, Napoleon had good reason to review his situation. He had lost 50,000 men during this campaign and was facing Archduke Charles with 85,000 men in Italy and the main allied army in Bohemia. . If they coordinated his attacks, he would be crushed in the middle. There was little risk of this happening, because Carlos was determined to stay on the defensive. His passivity guaranteed that there would be no allied pincer movement to attack Napoleon from behind. Layouts
This was where Napoleon decided to trick the allies into launching a premature attack, by having Soult and Latines occupy the heights of Prátzen, Wischau and Austerlitz . He later met with Count Dolgoruki, the Tsar's aide-de-camp, feigning anxiety and an unusual lack of self-confidence. All to fool the allies into thinking he was in a weak position and appearing to be willing to avoid a battle with the superior allied army. Then, on November 30, Napoleon ordered Soult to withdraw his troops somewhat hastily from Prátzen and from Austerlitz itself . The allies would then be tempted to attack.
During the following day, but without the enemy realizing it, the French generals Bemadotte and Davout (the latter having marched with his soldiers without pause from Vienna) had joined him, thus equalizing their strength. On December 2, Napoleon had 73,000 men and 139 guns against 85,400 Russians and Austrians with 278 guns . The Allies still had numerical superiority, albeit by a vastly reduced margin, and this slight advantage was more than offset by Napoleon's presence and the sheer qualitative superiority of the Grande Armée.
The allies had decided to attack the French left wing with the bulk of their army and encircle the French army, while General Bagration to the north attacked the Olmütz-Brünn road . Some 59,300 soldiers were to abandon the Prátzen heights, take the towns of Telnitz and Sokolnitz, and then assemble at Kobelnitz, leaving the French army reduced to a line from Turas to Pantowitz. Then Kollowrath's corps of 24,000 men would attack the hinge of the French line at Pantowitz and the French would be scattered.The battle begins
Alexander I and Francis II breakfasted on the eminence of Stary Vinohrady, where the Tsar admonished Kutuzov for not advancing his troops faster. Kutuzov replied that he needed all units to be in line before advancing, which he finally did by 06:00. In the town of Telnitz, the Austrian advance guard came under heavy fire from the elite Corsican legion, nicknamed the "cousins of the emperor" . For an hour a fierce battle was fought around the small town until the French withdrew .
Some 13,600 Russians, under the command of General Doctorov, could have executed the Allied plan if they had gone ahead and attacked Napoleon's open and vulnerable flank. However, Doctorov decided to wait for Langeron's corps, which was delayed by a mix-up of troop movements on the Prátzen Heights. The delay of the allied attack until 07:00 allowed the regrouping of the French troops and during the morning hours, 10,000 French troops held off the advance of 50,000 Russians and Austrians .Losaltas de pratzen
Although the French observed almost total silence as they cautiously advanced up the slope, their movements were observed and reported by a Russian officer to Kutuzov. The general ordered his arsonist second-in-command, Milorado-vich, to retake the eminence, but it was too late, though the Russians made valiant efforts to dislodge Soult's force from the village of Prátzen .
By 11:00 the eminence was in Soult's hands despite various failed attempts by the Russians to retake it. Both Kutuzov and the Tsar were nearly killed by intense French artillery fire.
In growing desperation, the Tsar sent his brother, Grand Duke Constantine, and his 8,500 Imperial Guards, who had been held in reserve, into combat . These tall, picked soldiers advanced over the Prátzen Heights and pierced the French front line, but the intense musket and artillery fire proved to be too much. The attack had some effect, for many of the French soldiers disbanded and fled before the Russian onslaught. In its stampede, this fleeing mass of humanity nearly overwhelmed Napoleon's headquarters.
By 14:00 there was nothing left of the central position of the Russian army and the Allied resistance was now disjointed and disorganized. In the streets of the town of Sokolnitz and around its ancient and venerable castle, the dead, dying and wounded lay in heaps.
Davout, with an order that tarnished his good reputation, instructed his soldiers not to spare any allied prisoners or wounded. However, large numbers of Allied soldiers escaped the French onslaught unscathed by crossing the frozen terrain and marshes.Aftermath