Austerlitz, Battle of

The Battle of Austerlitz (2 December 1805), also known as the Battle of the Three Emperors, is one of the most important and decisive engagements of the Napoleonic Wars.

In what is widely regarded as the greatest victory achieved by Napoleon, the Grande Armée of France defeats a larger Russian and Austrian army led by Tsar Alexander I and Holy Roman Emperor Francis II.

The battle occurs near the town of Austerlitz in the Austrian Empire (modern-day Slavkov u Brna in the Czech Republic).

Austerlitz brings the War of the Third Coalition to a rapid end, with the Treaty of Pressburg signed by the Austrians later in the month.

The battle is often cited as a tactical masterpiece, in the same league as other historic engagements like Cannae or Arbela.

After eliminating an Austrian army during the Ulm Campaign, French forces manage to capture Vienna in November 1805.

The Austrians avoid further conflict until the arrival of the Russians bolsters Allied numbers.

Napoleon sends his army north in pursuit of the Allies, then orders his forces to retreat so he can feign a grave weakness.

Desperate to lure the Allies into battle, Napoleon gives every indication in the days preceding the engagement that the French army is in a pitiful state, even abandoning the dominant Pratzen Heights near Austerlitz.

He deploys the French army below the Pratzen Heights and deliberately weakens his right flank, enticing the Allies to launch a major assault there in the hopes of rolling up the whole French line.

A forced march from Vienna by Marshal Davout and his III Corps plugs the gap left by Napoleon just in time.

Meanwhile, the heavy Allied deployment against the French right weakens the allied center on the Pratzen Heights, which is viciously attacked by the IV Corps of Marshal Soult.

With the Allied center demolished, the French sweep through both enemy flanks and send the Allies fleeing chaotically, capturing thousands of prisoners in the process.

The Allied disaster significantly shakes the faith of Emperor Francis in the British-led war effort.

France and Austria agree  to an armistice immediately and the Treaty of Pressburg follows shortly after, on December 26.

Pressburg takes 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 confirms the Austrian loss of lands in Italy and Bavaria to France, and in Germany to Napoleon's German allies.

It also imposes an indemnity of forty million francs on the defeated Habsburgs and allows the fleeing Russian troops free passage through hostile territories and back to their home soil.

Critically, victory at Austerlitz permits the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine, a collection of German states intended as a buffer zone between France and Central Europe.

The Confederation renders the Holy Roman Empire virtually useless, so the latter collapses in 1806 after Francis abdicates the imperial throne, keeping Francis I of Austria as his only official title.

These achievements, however, do not establish a lasting peace on the continent. russian worries about growing French influence in Central Europe spark the War of the Fourth Coalition in 1806.

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