The Campaigns of Napoleon

by David G Chandler

  Napoleon was determined to foster the illusion of French weakness by all means in his power, and was now equally concerned to draw the enemy into a position from which they would attempt to attack his right flank. Learning, on the 27th, that the first enemy columns were tentatively moving from Olmütz in a westerly direction, the next day the Emperor ordered Soult to abandon both Austerlitz and the Pratzen Heights with every appearance of confusion in order to lure the enemy into occupying them. The next day Napoleon formally requested a personal interview with Alexander, and received a visit from Count Dolgorouki, the most extreme firebrand on the Tsar’s staff. The scene was set for a further piece of deception. Napoleon gave every appearance of hesitation—even trepidation—during the meeting, including going as far as the outposts to meet the young plenipotentiary. “After the first compliments, the Russian officer desired to discuss political questions. He then laid down the law with an impertinence hard to imagine…. he was, in a word, a youthful trumpeter of England. [Napoleon could never rid himself for long from his obsession with his implacable insular opponents.] The Emperor controlled his indignation with difficulty, and this young man, who wielded a strong influence over the Tsar, returned full of the notion that the French army was on the eve of its doom.”18 Meanwhile, orders were on their way to Bernadotte and Davout, desiring them to march with all speed to join the Emperor northeast of Brünn.

  The prey had snapped up the bait; now to play him in the right direction. An indecisive victory would not solve the French dilemma; an all-out triumph was essential to extricate the Grande Armée from its strategic difficulty. Under conditions of superiority, Napoleon would have strained every nerve to outflank his enemy and sever his communications—the prerequisite of a crushing victory. As things stood, however, the French were not strong enough to undertake the envelopment of the Allies, and in consequence, the Emperor had to devise stratagems which would lead the enemy to uncover their own rear area. This could be done if the foe concentrated the bulk of his force against the French right. By masterly contrivances Napoleon lured his enemy toward disaster. The cunning withdrawal of Soult from the good position of the Pratzen provided the enemy with the apparent opportunity of turning the French flank and interposing themselves between the Grande Armée and Vienna. Thus, by apparently uncovering his own line of retreat, Napoleon led the Allies to expose their own. In fact, the French possessed a second center of operations in Brünn, and if the worst came to the worst, a retreat to the northwest, brushing aside the Archduke Ferdinand’s remnants around Prague, was at least a possibility as Prussian forces had so far given no sign of intervening. The Allies, on the other hand, possessed no such secondary line of retreat; if their Wischau-Olmütz communications were severed their position would be extremely critical. In the final phase of his careful plans for withdrawal, Napoleon pulled back Murat’s cavalry from the vicinity of Wischau on November 30, ordering the last units to simulate panic and complete disorder. The Austrian advance guard followed cautiously behind them, but when Wischau fell into their hands without a struggle the Allied generals finally decided to go all out in an attempt to cut Napoleon off from Vienna, if he were so unwise as to stand and fight.

  “All these assorted deceptions had their effect. The young hotheads who were directing Russian affairs allowed their natural presumptions to run away with them. It was no longer merely a question of fighting the French army, but of turning its flank and overwhelming it.”19 Perhaps the most masterly of all Napoleon’s stratagems was about to deliver the soldiers of Holy Russia and Imperial Austria into his hands.

  Napoleon, meantime (November 21 in fact), had settled on the place where he would turn and rend his over-confident pursuers. De Ségur records:

  On going back from Wischau he stopped on the highway about two leagues and a half from Brünn, near Santon—a small mound by the side of the road, a kind of rather abruptly truncated cone—and gave orders that the foot of it should be excavated on the enemy’s side so as to increase its escarpment. Then turning off toward the south he entered a high plain contained between two embanked streams running from the north to the southwest.

  The Emperor slowly and silently went over this newly discovered ground, stopping several times on its most elevated points, looking principally towards Pratzen. He carefully examined all its characteristics and during this survey turned towards us, saying, “Gentlemen, examine this ground carefully, it is going to be a battlefield; you will have a part to play upon it.” This plain was indeed to be within a few days the field of the battle of Austerlitz.20

  37

  THE BATTLE OF THE THREE EMPERORS—AUSTERLITZ

  The northern extremity of the battle area is marked by the 700-foot mound of the Santon, overlooking the main highway from Brünn to Olmütz, which runs immediately to its south. This road runs over two streams, the Goldbach and its tributary the Bosenitzer, flowing south through steep and narrow gorges to join at the village of Puntowitz. This hamlet forms a triangle with Lapanz (or Schlappanitz) and Jirschikowitz (Girschkowitz), enclosing between them an area of rising ground known today as the Breitesfeld, climbing to a height of 850 feet at its peak, the Zurlan. Nestling behind this height to the westward lies the village of Bellowitz. From Puntowitz the Goldbach wends its solitary way south toward Kobelnitz, Zokolnitz and Tellnitz through a gradually broadening valley containing marshy fields, and, at the time of the battle, a series of small lakes or meres which have since disappeared. To the west of the Goldbach lies a long, low ridge and to the east the ground climbs steadily toward the village of Pratzen and the plateau beyond, which levels out at a height of between 900 and 1,000 feet above sea level. Two re-entrants lead from the stream toward the Heights. To the north and east of this dominating feature lie the villages of Blasowitz and Krzenowitz respectively and to the south, the township of Aujest Markt (Augezd). The town of Austerlitz lies three miles away to the east of the Pratzen Heights on the banks of the Littawa River.

  After making a detailed inspection of this ground, the Emperor formulated his plan of battle. He decided to allow the enemy the unopposed occupation of the Pratzen Heights, making the Goldbach and its nearby villages the dividing boundary. In order to lure the enemy’s main attack in that direction, the right wing of the French line would be kept deliberately weak, although Davout’s corps should be at hand to reinforce it. The bulk of the French army was to be concealed in the dead ground behind the Zurlan; at the right moment, this force would be unleashed against the Pratzen Heights to break through the enemy’s weakened center and fall on his rear. Meantime, the northern flank would be held by the garrison of the Santon supported by a strong force of Murat’s cavalry. Pivoting on the Pratzen, the enemy would, it was hoped, uncover their own line of retreat.

  The Eve of Austerlitz, December 1, 1805, by General Lejeune. Napoleon questions peasants about the movements of the Russo-Austrian Army. Troops are demolishing a house (on the left) and moving its timbers to strengthen the gun positions being prepared on the Santon mound in the far distance.

  On November 29, the French forces that were already to hand took up their initial positions. The defense of the Santon was entrusted to Lannes’ corps, consisting of the divisions of Suchet and the younger Cafarelli. Field fortifications were erected around the mound, and a battery of eight guns installed. To the right of the Vth Corps, Murat’s reserve cavalry was bivouaced together with a park of twenty-four light field guns. In the dead ground to the south of the main road, the ten battalions of the Imperial Guard and the grenadiers of General Oudinot were stationed alongside forty more guns, and to their rear and left, a space was reserved for Bernadotte’s Ist Corps, still on the road to the battlefield. The French right flank was deliberately extended and held by Soult’s IVth Corps, the divisions of Vandamme and St. Hilaire being massed in the vicinity of Puntowitz, and Legrand’s command being split up into garrisons for the villages of Kobelnitz, Zokolnitz and Tellnitz. In due course, the weakly held southern extremity of the French l
ine would be successively reinforced from the direction of Vienna by the arrival of Davout’s cavalry and the following divisions of Friant and Gudin.

  So affairs rested until December 1 when the enemy at length made their appearance from the northeast. The first Russian columns occupied the Goldbach Height to the north of the road, but by the afternoon the formations of their center and left wing were seen to be deploying onto the Pratzen Heights. By evening, 85,400 Allied troops had reached the field together with 278 guns, and the Tsar and Austrian Emperor established their joint headquarters in the village of Krzenowitz. A further force of 5,000 Russians was also coming up from Olmütz. On the further side of the Goldbach rivulet, Napoleon now disposed of 66,800 men and 139 cannon; Bernadotte’s corps had duly arrived, but there was still no sign of Davout.

  Throughout the afternoon of December 1, a hot discussion continued at the village of Krzenowitz. Each faction in the Allied headquarters had its own proposals to make, and this made the formulation of a final plan a tedious affair. The Emperor Francis, prematurely old, depressed and discredited by the disasters already suffered by his armies, continued to advise caution. So did the wily veteran Kutusov, but his views were not put forward with the greatest vigor. The young and talented Tsar at length favored the advice of his aides-de-camp, who included Dolgorouki, Lieven, Volkonski and Stroganov, and approved the plan put forward by the Austrian chief of staff, Weyrother, “a veteran of the Viennese offices,” who did not share his master’s predilection for continued temporization and therefore supported the hotheads who were advocating immediate action.

  Although the first moves of major units began in the late afternoon, it was not until 1:00

  A.M. the next morning that the Allied commanders were summoned to receive their detailed orders. General Langeron recorded the scene for posterity: “When we had all assembled General Weyrother arrived, unfolded upon a large table an immense and most accurate map of the environs of Brünn and Austerlitz, and read the dispositions to us in a loud tone and with a self-satisfied air which indicated a thorough persuasion of his own merit and of our incapacity. He was really like a college teacher reading a lesson to young scholars. Kutusov, seated and half asleep when we arrived, at length fell into a sound nap before our departure.” Langeron noticed that of all the generals only Doctorov examined the map attentively.21

  The general intention of Weyrother’s plan was to turn the French right flank by making a crossing in force over the Goldbach between the villages of Tellnitz and Zokolnitz, followed by a swing to the north which would envelop the French as they fled for the security of Brünn. Kienmayer’s cavalry would accompany this attack in its initial stages, but once a footing over the Goldbach had been achieved, the Austrian was to strike westward to sever the Brünn-Vienna road near the town of Gross Raigern and thus preclude the possibility of any further reinforcements reaching the French from that quarter. A secondary attack would meanwhile be launched against Napoleon’s left flank down the axis of the Olmütz-Brünn highway with the intention of tying down the French forces stationed there during the crucial moves to the south.

  The implementation of this plan involved the subdivision of the Allied army of 85,400 men into seven parts. No less than 59,300 troops were allocated to mount the main attack against the French right under the overall command of Buxhowden. Led by Kienmayer’s advance guard, General Doctorov’s 13,600 troops of the first column would open the battle by capturing the village of Tellnitz before swinging north to join Langeron for a joint-crossing over the Goldbach. By that time Langeron’s column (11,700) should already have stormed Zokolnitz with the assistance of Przbysewski’s third column (10,000) on his right. Once over the stream, these three forces would unite north of the lake near Kobelnitz, and launch a determined attack against the French center, who would, by that time, presumably be holding a new front stretching from Puntowitz to Turas. At this stage of the battle, the fourth Allied column, consisting of Kollowrath’s Austrians and Miloradovitch’s Russians and totaling 23,900 men, would make a frontal attack against the “hinge” of the inverted French battleline at Puntowitz after a direct advance from the Pratzen Heights. Throughout this main attack, Bagration’s 13,000 infantry would be pressing the French left and endeavoring to capture the Santon while Lichtenstein’s 4,600 cavalry linked right and center. In reserve behind the center, the Grand Duke Constantine would command the 8,500 élite troops of the Russian Imperial Guard to the north of Krzenowitz. These measures it was confidently anticipated, would encompass Napoleon’s destruction

  The Battle of Austerlitz, December 2, 1805: general situation, late the previous evening

  However, a combination of dozing generals and early morning over confidence had already led to one major error in the planning which was destined to determine the fortunes of December 2. The size of the Allied main attack would inevitably denude the center of troops and lay this open to attack by the French; only part of Miloradovitch’s and Kollowrath’s column? would be available to defend the area during the crisis of the battle, and this fact might well invite a French counterattack. This objection to Weyrother’s plan was actually put forward at the conference by General Langeron but the sleepy consensus of opinion was that the danger was more imaginary than real. The Allied high command considered that Napoleon was already more than half beaten. If this was not the case, why had the French not forced action on the 1st, while the Allies were inconvenienced by their approach march? Why had Napoleon relinquished control of the dominating Pratzer without so much as a skirmish? These arguments convinced Weyrother at least that the risk to the weakened center would be negligible; in any case, the Grand Duke Constantine’s reserve would be available to deal with any French attack toward the Pratzen. This amounted to a fatal miscalculation, proving the complete efficacy of Napoleon’s deliberate deception plan. The bait was swallowed, and the hook firmly embedded; bar mischances, the outcome of Austerlitz was practically decided.

  Throughout December 1, the French Emperor was kept minutely informed of the enemy’s moves. Most of the day was spent inspecting units and ensuring that their weapons were in good order, but in the late afternoon a large enemy movement toward the village of Augezd was reported as Kienmayer, Langeron and Doctorov moved into their appointed places facing the French right. From that moment a jubilant Napoleon was sure that the enemy was conforming to the required plan. “Before tomorrow evening this army will be mine,”22 he stated with conviction. One anxiety remained to nag at his mind and that was the continued absence of Davout, but he was certain that his subordinate would arrive in time to play his part on the right. This faith was justified, for in the late evening he received news that Davout’s leading formation, Friant’s division (6,000 strong) had made contact .with Legrand’s patrols and would bivouac for the night at Gross Raigern within a few miles of the Goldbach.

  Serving with this formation was, of course, our informant Corporal Blaise, and he has left an interesting account of his division’s 80-mile forced march from Vienna carried out in the space of fifty hours, which illustrates the type of performance the French infantry could achieve:

  We left the village where we were lodging at nine in the evening. We marched until two in the morning when we halted in a wood. There we lit some fires and slept until five when we returned to the road. All day we marched and again camped in the woods; at six o’clock that evening we had not even had time to prepare our eagerly-awaited soup when we were informed that we should be leaving again at nine. We consequently preferred to fill the time until then with sleep; we had been issued with three days’ bread ration at Vienna before setting out so we didn’t go short, but it was all we had to eat. Then, leaving our position, we marched on until five

  A.M. when the regiment halted…. The colonel, whose interest in our welfare had never flagged from the opening of the campaign, now gave us an abundance of wine. This rallied our strength and put us in a fit state for continuing the march. When the officers considered that the g
reater part of the men had rejoined their companies we set off again, the colonel leaving behind an officer to rally the stragglers. At length we reached a village at seven in the evening where we camped alongside a division of dragoons…. I leave it to you to guess whether or not we employed the night for sleep after so long a march!23

  Back on the main battlefield, at 8:30

  P.M. the Emperor issued his preliminary orders for the following day. Sixty-five thousand troops were to mass behind the Santon and in the angle formed by the two streams. On the extreme right, Legrand’s division of Soult’s corps was at all costs to hold back the main anticipated Austrian attack until the IIIrd Corps could come up to its aid. On the opposite flank, Lannes was charged with the defense of the Santon and its environs, with Murat’s cavalry reserve on his right hand. Bernadotte’s Ist Corps was to move up from behind the Santon and re-form between the villages of Girschkowitz and Puntowitz, ready to launch an attack against Blasowitz. Between them, these three major formations should be sufficient to keep the Allied right in play. The main French attack would then be made by two divisions of Soult’s corps; by 7:30 in the morning, Vandamme’s and St. Hilaire’s troops were to be formed up on the further bank of the Goldbach as if for a move to the flank, but at the given signal their task was to storm the Pratzen Heights and break the Allied center. The Imperial Guard and Oudinot’s grenadiers were to be held in reserve, available to strengthen the southern flank in case of emergency or, more importantly, to exploit the capture of the Pratzen by a movement designed to envelop the enemy.