Austerlitz, 2 December 1805

The battle, stage by stage

1. 1 December 1805, evening

   Bait behind the Goldbach

   Napoleon has drawn the Russian and Austrian army after him to ground he scouted days earlier, between Brno and the little town of Austerlitz (Slavkov u Brna). He has given up the Pratzen plateau and pulled his army back behind the marshy Goldbach (Zlatý potok). His right, south of Kobelnitz, is held on purpose by little more than Legrand's division of Soult's corps, spread through Kobelnitz, the walled pheasantry and castle of Sokolnitz and the village of Telnitz — bait for an Allied attack he expects there. Saint-Hilaire's and Vandamme's divisions wait in the valley bottom behind Puntowitz and Girzikowitz, out of sight; Bernadotte, Oudinot's grenadiers and the Guard stand behind them near Žuráň hill, his command post; Lannes and Murat hold the Brno–Olomouc road, with the Santon hill entrenched for 18 guns. Davout's III Corps is still marching up from Vienna — Friant's division covered about 113 km in some 40 hours — and spends the night at Raigern abbey. On the plateau, Weyrother's plan sends four columns under Buxhöwden down against the French right; Bagration and Liechtenstein are to hold the north, the Russian Guard is the only reserve. That night soldiers light straw torches to light the Emperor's way through the camps, and the 'fires of Girzikowitz' burn much of the village.

2. 2 December, about 7 to 9:30 AM

   Fog on the Goldbach

   Before dawn, in thick fog, Kienmayer's Austrians open the battle against Telnitz, held by the 3rd Line and the Tirailleurs du Pô; local accounts put the first skirmishing as early as 5 AM, the usual narratives at about 7. Dokhturov's column comes down behind them and the French are pushed back across the stream. Langeron's column, delayed when Liechtenstein's cavalry rides across its line of march toward the north, bombards and storms Sokolnitz; Przybyszewski's column attacks the castle and the pheasantry, which change hands several times. Then Davout's leading troops arrive straight off the road from Raigern — Heudelet's brigade retakes Telnitz with the bayonet before Austrian hussars and the confusion of fog (two French units fire on each other) cost it the village again; Friant's division throws itself into Sokolnitz. By about 10 the Allies hold Telnitz and Sokolnitz, but by one count about 12,000 French, 2,500 of them dragoons, are holding three Allied columns on the stream.

3. About 8:30 to 11 AM

   The sun of Austerlitz

   As the sun breaks through over the hills to the east — the 'sun of Austerlitz' — Napoleon on Žuráň sees the Allied columns streaming off the Pratzen to the south. He reportedly asks Soult how long his men need to reach the heights; Soult says under twenty minutes, and Napoleon waits about a quarter of an hour more before letting him go. Saint-Hilaire's division climbs out of the mist through Pratze toward the Pratzeberg (where the Cairn of Peace stands today); Vandamme's makes for the Staré Vinohrady, about a mile to the north. Kutuzov, with the 4th Column, has only Miloradovich's Russians and Kolowrat's Austrians to hand; they fight hard on the crest for more than an hour, and Kamensky's brigade turns back from Langeron's column to strike Saint-Hilaire from the south. The French bring up artillery and hold. By late morning both summits are in French hands and the Allied army is cut in two.

4. About 10 AM to 1 PM

   The northern flank

   On the Brno–Olomouc road the fight is a separate battle. Liechtenstein's cavalry, shifted north, meets Kellermann's light horse between Blasowitz and Krug (Kruh) in waves of charges — about 20,000 horsemen by the battlefield trail's count; Constantine's uhlans charge alone and lose heavily, and Nansouty's and d'Hautpoul's cuirassiers finally ride down the Allied cavalry. French infantry — Caffarelli's division, with Bernadotte's corps coming up in support — takes Blasowitz. North of the road Bagration presses toward the Santon and briefly into Tvarožná, but Claparède's 17th Light and its battery hold the hill and the Russians are thrown back; General Valhubert is mortally wounded. Around midday Lannes goes over to the attack and drives Bagration back along the road toward the Old Post (Stará pošta), where two Austrian batteries cover his retreat.

5. About 1 to 1:30 PM

   Guard against Guard

   Grand Duke Constantine, whose Russian Imperial Guard (about 10,000 men) was meant to be the reserve, finds itself in the front line. Its infantry charges Vandamme's division on the Staré Vinohrady and breaks the first line; the Guard cavalry rides into a battalion of the 4th Line, seizing its eagle — the one French trophy the Allies took that day — and breaks the 24th Light trying to help. Napoleon, now on the Staré Vinohrady, sends Bessières with the Guard cavalry. A first charge of chasseurs and Mamelukes is checked and Colonel Morland is killed inside the Russian formation; General Rapp leads a second charge that, with Drouet's division of Bernadotte's corps sent in on his own initiative, routs the Chevalier Guards and the Life Guard Horse. Prince Repnin is captured; Gérard's painting of 1810 shows Rapp presenting him and the captured standards to the Emperor. The clash made a legend, but by one local assessment it changed little: the center was already lost.

6. About 2 to 3:30 PM

   The turn south

   With the Allied center gone, Napoleon swings his center to the right. Bernadotte takes over the Pratzen; Vandamme marches south along the plateau to the heights of Augezd (Újezd) and its chapel of St Anthony, where Napoleon comes to watch, cutting Buxhöwden's line of retreat; Saint-Hilaire and Oudinot's grenadiers come down the slopes behind the Allied columns while Legrand and Friant attack again from the Goldbach. Przybyszewski's column, caught around Sokolnitz castle and the pheasantry, is destroyed; Langeron gets part of his men away south. In the north Bagration, outnumbered, falls back in good order past the Old Post toward Rausnitz; Liechtenstein and the beaten Russian Guard retire through Křenovice toward Austerlitz. The Allied monarchs and their headquarters have already left the field.

7. About 3:30 to 5 PM

   The frozen ponds

   Dokhturov, with his own column, the remains of Langeron's and Kienmayer's cavalry, is pressed back against the Satschan and Menitz ponds south of Telnitz and orders his men to scatter. They escape along the causeway between the ponds and across the ice under fire from French guns on the Augezd heights; some guns and teams break through the thin ice. Napoleon's 30th Bulletin, a piece of propaganda written for France, claimed that 20,000 men drowned 'in the lakes'. The evidence says otherwise: when the Satschan pond was drained on Napoleon's order (8–12 December), the workers found many dead horses and abandoned guns — 38 guns and about 130 horses by one account — but only two or three bodies. A local school chronicle of Žatčany says the retreating Russians dumped cannon, carts and ammunition into the 'slightly frozen' water. Modern estimates of the drowned range from about 200 to 2,000, the lower end better supported. A cease-fire sounds at about 5 PM.

8. 3–6 December 1805

   Austerlitz

   Napoleon moves into the castle at Austerlitz where the Tsar and the Emperor Francis had slept two nights before, and gives the battle its name. The Allied army retreats toward Hungary; Davout follows until told an armistice has been agreed. Francis meets Napoleon at the Burned Mill (Spálený mlýn) near Žarošice (on 4 December in most accounts; one local source says the 3rd), and an armistice is signed in the castle on 6 December by Liechtenstein and Berthier; the Treaty of Pressburg follows on 26 December and the Third Coalition is broken. French losses are usually given as about 9,000 (1,305 killed, 6,940 wounded, 573 captured in a commonly cited count — the Bulletin admitted 800 killed); the Allies lost about 15,000–16,000 killed and wounded and 11,000–12,000 prisoners, with some 180 guns and 45 standards. Wounded and prisoners crowd Brno, Šlapanice, Sokolnice and Raigern for months; mass graves ring the villages. The Cairn of Peace on the Pratzeberg, designed by Josef Fanta (1910–1912, dedicated 1923), holds an ossuary chapel for the dead of all three armies.