Napoleon’s great deception and then the glory of the “Sun of Austerlitz”

First the actor’s performance to lure the enemy into a trap, then the leader’s flash of genius for a dazzling victory. On 2 December 1805 in Austerlitz, now Slavkov u Brna, Napoleon signed his most sensational victory. The French emperor had been bold as always and absolutely astute in pushing the Austro-Russian army to give him battle in Moravia, in the plain he had chosen with the intention of destroying in one fell swoop on the land front the Third Coalition of which Great Britain was also part, with the Kingdom of Naples, the Kingdom of Sicily and Sweden. There were nearly 160,000 soldiers on the field.

The eagles of the Grande Armée over the skies of Vienna

That war had been started in September by Francis II of Habsburg-Lorraine by invading Bavaria, an ally of France, while the Russian army of Tsar Alexander I set out to join the Austrian army under the orders of Prince General Mikhail Kutuzov, appointed commander of the allied forces. Napoleon had reacted by sending the Armée d’Angleterre, the large army trained for the invasion of England, then canceled due to the naval disaster of Trafalgar, into the heart of Europe. The Austrian forces had been routed by the French maneuver and the Napoleonic imperial eagles paraded in triumph through the streets of Vienna, no longer defensible by the Habsburgs. However, Napoleon needed a decisive victory, both for the lengthening of the supply lines and for the wear and tear of the winter campaign.

Kutuzov’s strategy rejected by the Austrians

Kutuzov had intelligently understood the emperor’s need to provoke an open and general clash, and had strategically decided on a retreat that would put him in a position to wear down the enemy by facing him on a more internal battlefield where he expected to be able to annihilate him. But the allies did not follow him in his plan. Napoleon at Austerlitz, where he had established himself, wanted the Austro-Russians, in numerical superiority (almost 90,000 against 73,000), to attack him, rather than him taking the initiative in unfavorable conditions. And he made sure that they found the opportunity that he himself had designed to lure them into a lethal trap irresistible, starting by ordering a retreat and having his Grande Armée take up a defensive deployment.

The recitation before the emissary of Tsar Alexander I

On 25 November Napoleon had sent General Savary to the enemy camp with the offer of a truce, which was obviously interpreted as a sign of weakness and a desire to avoid the clash. Two days later, Emperor Francis II proposed an armistice which Napoleon publicly welcomed with unusual joy, at the same time ordering a retreat from Austerlitz and abandoning the Pratzen plateau, advising himself to do so with confusion. To Austro-Russian observers it seemed like yet another detail of a situation favorable to them and the allies hastened to take possession of the strategic heights. Napoleon’s final stroke of genius, as a consummate actor, came out on 28 November when he received Alexander’s spokesman to whom he had let it be known that he wanted a personal meeting with the Tsar.

He reported that Napoleon had materialized coming out of a ditch, completely covered in mud and in poor condition. He had appeared worried and anxious to reach an agreement, even fearful despite having rejected the proposals that had been sent to him, which were also unacceptable. Alexander became convinced that the French army was demoralized and its commander, unable to face a battle, was looking for a negotiated solution. But the French defensive position allowed control of Austerlitz, the road to Olmütz (Olomouc) and the road to Vienna, which was part of his plan. The French emperor now had to offer a big bait to the Austro-Russians who would certainly take the bait, because they already showed the ardor to fight and in fact Kutuzov had been relieved of the general command passed to Franz von Weyrother.

The lethal trap designed in advance is triggered

Concealing the forced arrival of an army corps that left Vienna, with the maneuver Napoleon made people believe that the French army was at least a third smaller than it actually was, and even with an exposed flank, pushing the enemy to come down from the Pratzen plateau to attack him exactly where he wanted, so as not to miss an easy prey. The battle began at 8am on 2 December. All orders were given verbally to marshals and generals, and for this reason we have no documentary evidence on Austerlitz.

The expected French reconquest of Pratzen would have divided the allied forces in two and there would have been no more history, also due to the quality of the fighting troops. A thick fog protected the French spearhead prepared to deliver the lethal blow, leaving the Austro-Russians unaware of the existence of an army corps of as many as 17,000 men. When the sun dissolved the milky haze, Napoleon pronounced the phrase that has entered history, inviting his soldiers to admire “the sun of Austerlitz” as a harbinger of a great victory. Everything in that battle strategy had fallen into place, all the deadlines had been respected and all the lines of action systematically put into practice according to the strategist’s plan. The trap was perfect and there was no escape for the Austro-Russians.

The Peace of Pressburg and the end of the Holy Roman Empire

When the sun of Austerlitz had set after illuminating the French triumph, the only soldiers of Emperor Francis II and Tsar Alexander I left on the ground were the dead, wounded and prisoners. All the others were routed, and Napoleon’s masterpiece was not total only because with their disorderly escape they had escaped total annihilation on the battlefield. The allies had lost about 40% of their entire army. Napoleon spent that night of victory on a bed of straw in an old coaching inn.

The next day he was joined by Archduke John who presented him with the surrender of the Austrian army, disbanded and followed by the French to destroy it. The emperor asked to see Francis II, as an equal: the Habsburg of the ancient European dynasty and the upstart spoke in front of a bivouac fire on 4 December, and a plaque commemorates it. On the 6th in Slavkov Castle, the armistice sanctioned on the 26th by the Peace of Pressburg was signed which established the end of the Holy Roman Empire, the expulsion of the Austrians from Italy and the birth of the German Confederation under French tutelage and with an anti-Prussian function.