Who won the Battle of Austerlitz?
Napoleon won his masterpiece at Austerlitz on 2 December 1805, luring the combined Austrian and Russian armies into attacking an apparently weak French position, then splitting them in two. Fought on the first anniversary of his coronation, it is counted among his greatest victories.1
Some generals win by strength. At Austerlitz, Napoleon won by making his enemy believe he was weak. Here is how the trap was laid, how it was sprung and what it cost the two emperors who walked into it.
The battle from both sides
Two perspectivesAusterlitz was Napoleon's masterpiece. Outnumbered by the combined Austro-Russian army, he deliberately weakened his right and abandoned the commanding Pratzen Heights, baiting the allies into pouring south to turn his flank. As they emptied the center, Soult's corps stormed the heights and split the allied army in two. The southern wing was driven onto frozen ponds and broken. The victory smashed the Third Coalition, forced Austria to terms and led within months to the end of the thousand-year Holy Roman Empire. It stands as the model of a battle won by luring the enemy into a trap of his own making.
The allied army, with the Austrian and Russian emperors present, believed it had caught Napoleon overextended and weak on his right. It launched its main weight southward to cut him off from Vienna, exactly as he intended, stripping troops from the central Pratzen Heights. When the French stormed that high ground and cut the army in two, the plan collapsed. The southern wing was pinned and shattered, some men dying on breaking ice. The defeat ended the Third Coalition, humiliated two empires and confirmed Napoleon as the master of Europe; it was a lesson in the danger of doing exactly what a great opponent wants.
The Battle of the Three Emperors
By late 1805 Napoleon faced a Third Coalition. In Moravia, the armies of Tsar Alexander I of Russia and Emperor Francis II of Austria gathered against him, outnumbering the French. The allied army was nominally led by General Mikhail Kutuzov, but its plan of attack was drawn up by the Austrian chief of staff, Franz von Weyrother, and approved by the tsar. Napoleon wanted them to attack before more allies arrived, so he set about tempting them into it.2
The name comes from the three crowned heads present. Napoleon had been crowned Emperor of the French in December 1804, so the battle fell on the first anniversary of his coronation. Against him stood Tsar Alexander I and Francis II, the last Holy Roman emperor, who in 1804 had also proclaimed himself Emperor of Austria under the name Francis I; that is why French accounts often call him Francis I.3
How many soldiers fought at Austerlitz?
Roughly 68,000 to 73,000 French soldiers fought close to 90,000 Russians and Austrians. Britannica and Smithsonian Magazine both give about 68,000 French against almost 90,000 allies; Britannica adds that Napoleon concentrated as many as 73,000 men behind the Goldbach stream before the battle. Every count leaves the French outnumbered.4
The losses were lopsided. Britannica gives about 9,000 French casualties against 15,000 Russians and Austrians killed or wounded and 11,000 captured: about 26,000 in all, nearly a third of the allied army. Napoleon's proclamation of 3 December claimed far more: an enemy army of 100,000 men, more than 30,000 prisoners, 40 standards and 120 guns.5
| Source | French | Allies | French losses | Allied losses |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Napoleon's proclamation, 3 December 1805 | not given | 100,000 | not given | more than 30,000 prisoners |
Figures as each source gives them; the proclamation is a wartime claim, not a count.6
The bait
He pulled back behind the Goldbach stream, left the commanding Pratzen Heights in the center to the enemy and deliberately left his right flank looking thin and vulnerable. To the watching Allied generals it looked like a French army in trouble, ripe to be cut off from Vienna. They took the bait.7
What was Napoleon's strategy at Austerlitz?
Napoleon's strategy was to look weak, tempt the allies into attacking his deliberately thin right wing and its road to Vienna, and then strike the center they had stripped to do it. Soult's corps would storm the abandoned Pratzen Heights and cut the allied army in two while Davout's corps arrived to hold the right.8
The illusion held to the last night. Britannica describes how thousands of French soldiers made torches of their bivouac straw on the evening of 1 December; allied scouts took the glare for fires lit to cover a retreat, and the officers who wanted an immediate battle won the argument in the councils of Tsar Alexander I and Emperor Francis.9
The allied plan, drawn up by Weyrother, sent the first three of the army's five columns, under General Buxhoeveden, against the French right, while Bagration's corps stood astride the Brünn to Olmütz road facing the French left. Napoleon was counting on Marshal Davout's III Corps, marching up from Vienna, to reach his right in time; it arrived late on 1 December after covering nearly 112 km (70 mi) in 48 hours.10
The trap springs
At dawn on 2 December the Allies poured down off the Pratzen Heights to crush the French right. As their army slid south and the center emptied, Napoleon launched Marshal Soult straight up the slopes they had abandoned, as the rising “sun of Austerlitz” burned through the morning fog. The French seized the heights and drove a wedge through the middle of the Allied army, splitting it in two.11
How long did the Battle of Austerlitz last?
Most of a short winter day. Fighting began around 7 a.m. at Telnitz on the French right, Soult took the Pratzen Heights soon after 8:30, and by early afternoon the allied left was fleeing over the frozen marshes east of Telnitz, though Britannica notes that fighting there went on almost to the close of the battle. Napoleon's proclamation the next day claimed the allied army had been destroyed in less than four hours.12
- About 7 a.m.Kienmayer's Austrian advance guard strikes Telnitz on the French right; Telnitz and Sokolnitz change hands several times as Davout's men come into the line.13
- About 8:30 a.m.As the mist lifts, Napoleon sends Soult up the slopes of the Pratzen Heights with the divisions of Saint-Hilaire and Vandamme.14
- Until about 11 a.m.Kutuzov throws in everything he has, the Russian Imperial Guard included, to retake the plateau. In the north, Lannes and Murat push Bagration back in heavy infantry and cavalry fighting.15
- Late morningThe last allied attempt on the heights: the Russian Imperial Guard presses the divisions of Saint-Hilaire and Vandamme until the French Guard comes up and Bessières's Guard cavalry routs the Russian Chevalier Guards.16
- Early afternoonThe allied left, caught between Soult and Davout, flees over the frozen ground east of Telnitz.17
The rout
With their center gone, the Allied wings were surrounded and shattered. Thousands of retreating soldiers streamed across frozen ponds to the south as French guns fired on the ice behind them, an image that became legend even if the drownings were fewer than the stories claimed. Napoleon spoke of thousands drowned, yet when the ponds were later drained only a few bodies were found, along with abandoned guns and dead horses. By afternoon the coalition army had come apart.18
Did thousands of soldiers drown in the frozen ponds at Austerlitz?
Almost certainly not. Napoleon's account, which Alexander I reportedly later corroborated, spoke of thousands of Russians drowned. But when the ponds were later drained, Smithsonian Magazine reports, only two or three human bodies were found, along with about 30 guns and some 150 horses.19
The retreat across the ice was real: Britannica and Smithsonian Magazine both describe French artillery breaking the ice under fleeing allied troops. What grew in the retelling was the death toll. The ponds near Žatčany (Satschan) have since been drained.20
The peace
Austerlitz was total. Austria agreed to an armistice within days and on 26 December signed the Treaty of Pressburg; the Third Coalition collapsed, and within a year the thousand-year-old Holy Roman Empire was formally dissolved. Napoleon stood, for the moment, as master of continental Europe.21
What did the Treaty of Pressburg do?
Signed on 26 December 1805 at Pressburg, today Bratislava, the treaty took Austria out of the war. Austria gave up its Venetian lands to Napoleon's Kingdom of Italy, ceded the Tyrol and Vorarlberg to Bavaria, and agreed to pay 40 million francs. It made peace between France and Austria.22
An armistice had already been signed on 6 December, and the Russians withdrew into Hungary. Austerlitz came six weeks after the British naval victory at Trafalgar on 21 October 1805: within two months Britain had won at sea and Napoleon on land. In 1806 Francis II gave up the title of Holy Roman emperor at Napoleon's insistence, ending an empire that had lasted about a thousand years, while he remained Emperor of Austria. Prussia, which had stayed out in 1805, joined the next coalition and was crushed at Jena in October 1806.23
The masterpiece
What makes Austerlitz endure is not the scale but the design: an enemy tempted into attacking exactly where Napoleon wanted, then destroyed by a single decisive blow at the point they had weakened themselves. It is still studied as the model of a battle won in the mind before it was won on the field.
Britannica calls it Napoleon's masterpiece, and it leads our guide to the greatest Napoleonic battles. On 3 December Napoleon told his army: “Soldiers! I am pleased with you.” The same proclamation promised that a veteran back in France would need only say “I was at the Battle of Austerlitz” to be hailed as a brave man. By the historian Andrew Roberts's count, Napoleon fought about 60 battles and lost 7; none of the others is remembered quite like this one.24
Where was the Battle of Austerlitz fought and what is there today?
Austerlitz is the town of Slavkov u Brna in the Czech Republic, in southern Moravia. The battle was fought over the hills and villages around it, centered on the Pratzen plateau by the village of Prace, where the Cairn of Peace memorial now stands. The Fondation Napoléon counts it among the largest Napoleonic battlefields, about eight miles by six.25
According to the Fondation Napoléon, the allied emperors made the baroque château of Slavkov their headquarters on the eve of the battle, and Napoleon stayed there from 3 to 6 December; it now holds a museum with an illuminated map of the battle.26
On the plateau, the Cairn of Peace (Mohyla míru), completed in 1912 to plans by the architect Josef Fanta, houses a chapel with the remains of soldiers found on the battlefield. A museum beside it tells the story of the battle, and a remembrance ceremony is held there each year. Other landmarks include the Žuráň hill, Napoleon's command post on the morning of the battle, marked by a monument of 1930, and the Santon hill, a fortified French position.27
Each year around the anniversary, the organizers of Projekt Austerlitz stage a reenactment near Tvarožná, below the Santon, and a commemoration at the Cairn of Peace.28
Follow the war of 1805 on its other fronts, in northern Italy at Caldiero and at sea at Trafalgar, or see every battle fought on 2 December. Then test yourself in the Napoleonic battles quiz or play today's Battle of the Day.
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