It was fortunate for the French that no Allied reserves were at hand to exploit this success. Napoleon’s first reaction was to send forward Bessières with the cavalry of the Imperial Guard. The first two squadrons were repulsed by the Russian guardsmen, but the second wave of the counterattack, three squadrons of horse grenadiers supported by batteries of horse artillery, fared considerably better. This struggle was now joined by the division of General Drouet, detached by Marshal Bernadotte on his own initiative when he saw how critical affairs were in the center. The advent of this reinforcement stabilized the situation, and Napoleon thereupon sent forward his senior aide-de-camp, General Rapp, with two squadrons of chasseurs of the Guard and one of Mamelukes to give the coup de grâce. The tired Russians were unable to withstand the impact of this new attack, and within ten minutes 500 grenadiers were dead and 200 members of the nobly-born Chevalier Guard—the Tsar’s personal escort—together with their commander, Prince Repnine, were taken prisoner. These captives were led back in triumph to the Emperor who remarked that: “Many fine ladies of St. Petersburg will lament this day.” Meanwhile the survivors of the Russian Imperial Guard reeled back toward Krzenowitz, hotly pursued by Bernadotte’s command. With this repulse, the Allied center ceased to exist; it was shortly after 2:00 o’clock in the afternoon and the moment of exploitation had come, although events had not followed exactly the course Napoleon originally anticipated.
Napoleon rapidly issued new orders. The occupation of the Pratzen Heights was entrusted to Bernadotte; the Guard, Oudinot’s grenadiers and Sout’s battle-weary divisions were to swing south to envelop Buxhowden from the north and east, while Davout attacked from the west. By 2:30
P.M., Buxhowden found himself in a decidedly critical situation. His wing of the army was now isolated from its fellows, and no orders were forthcoming from either Kutusov or the Tsar; Vandamme was soon in occupation of Augezd, and Davout’s divisions were passing from the defensive to the attack and driving remorselessly forward once more toward the villages of Zokolnitz and Tellnitz. Too late, the Russian marshal ordered half his force to retreat to the east before the French blocked the route, and the remainder to fight their way north up the west bank of the Goldbach. Vandamme caught the eastbound columns and pinned them down; the forces pressing north were soon halted by the combined action of St. Hilaire and Marshal Davout. After a long day of attrition and heavy casualties—Corporal Blaise’s unit alone lost four captains, two lieutenants and 70 men killed, a further dozen officers wounded, while the colonel had three horses killed under him—the mood of the French troops was predictably grim. General Thiebault of St. Hilaire’s division records: “Up to the last hour of the battle, we took no prisoners, it would not do to run any risk; one could stick at nothing, and thus not a single living enemy remained to our rear.” Davout’s order to his men was simply, “Let not one escape.”
By 3:00 o’clock the Russians were being driven back into the frozen lakes and marshes to the south. Przbysewski’s division laid down its arms, and half Langeron’s division also passed into captivity. Buxhowden’s column, retreating east, was cut in two by Vandamme from Augezd, and only the marshal with the head of his column succeeded in escaping toward Austerlitz. General Doctorov, completely isolated with his back to the lakes, ordered sauve qui peut and his 5,000 men scattered to seek their individual safety. Many tried to escape over the frozen lakes, but Napoleon ordered up 25 cannon to bombard the ice, and the effect of the cannonballs added to the weight of the heedlessly galloping enemy gun teams caused the surface to crack and break, depositing several thousand unfortunates into the freezing waters. The French bulletins later claimed that as many as 20,000 perished in this way, but this figure is undoubtedly a gross exaggeration; only 5,000 Allied troops were in the vicinity of the lakes at this time, and it is probable that 2,000 were drowned (some authorities put the figure as low as 200). However, it is certain that 38 guns and 130 corpses of horses were recovered from the waters of Lake Satschen after the battle.
As defeat developed inexorably into disaster on the Allied center and left, Marshal Bagration decided that the time had come to extricate his relatively intact wing of the army. The battle to the north had been fierce during the early afternoon, and at one point the Russians had almost overwhelmed Suchet’s recruits on the extreme left before Lannes was able to retrieve the situation by attacking Bagration’s center and left with the remainder of his corps, but by 3:00 o’clock, Bagration’s retreat was under way, and by 4:30
P.M., all firing had died away on the northern flank. The French were too weary to harry Bagration sufficiently, and within the next 40 hours he succeeded in putting 60 kilometers of ground between himself and the battlefield.
At five in the evening, a general cease fire was sounded over the entire battlefield. The gruesome task of assessing casualties now began. It appears probable that 11,000 Russians and 4,000 Austrians lay dead on the field, and that a further 12,000 Allied troops were made prisoner, together with 180 guns and 50 colors and standards. Thus the Austro-Russian army lost some 27,000 casualties—or one third of its original effective strength. The French however, escaped relatively lightly: perhaps 1,305 were killed, a further 6,940 wounded, and 573 more captured.
Napoleon had gained his decisive victory, and it duly brought his campaign to a triumphant conclusion. The Third Coalition was now on the verge of collapse. The day after the battle the Austrian Emperor was to seek an armistice while the Tsar and his Russians retreated toward Hungary and Poland. News of the great victory in Moravia was to hasten the death of a heartbroken William Pitt, France’s most inveterate foe. But all this lay in the future as a jubilant but exhausted Napoleon wrote a brief note to his wife, the Empress Josephine: “I have beaten the Austro-Russian army commanded by the two Emperors. I am a little weary. I have camped in the open for eight days and as many freezing nights. Tomorrow I shall be able to rest in the castle of Prince Kaunitz, and I should be able to snatch two or three hours sleep there. The Russian army is not only beaten but destroyed. I embrace you. Napoleon.”29
In the Moniteur and the Correspondance, this last sentence is recorded as follows: “and while the Russians march to turn my right they will expose their flank.” This is a simple instance of Napoleon’s minions “tuning” an official bulletin to fit events.
38
THE INGREDIENTS OF SUCCESS
The lessons of the Campaign of 1805 are both many and significant. For the first time Napoleon was in undisputed control of the entire French war effort, and Europe came to learn the full meaning of a “Napoleonic campaign.” The year also saw the creation and the blooding of the Grande Armée, destined to be the scourge of the armies of Europe for a further decade of turbulent and bloodstained history. It was undoubtedly the most highly developed war machine of its era, and after Austerlitz it had established a reputation which struck fear into the hearts of many future opponents.
As Napoleon himself described it in a letter to Roederer: “We used to have the Army of Italy, of the Rhine, of Holland, there was no French Army. Now it exists, and we shall see it in action.”30 All fronts were directed by the same mastermind toward the same ultimate goals; Massena on the Adige or St. Cyr at Naples were as much part of the overall strategic plan as the corps of the army marching toward the Danube. The concentrated system of command, placing so much of the burden of decision on Napoleon’s shoulders, would at times become excessively dependent on his direction of affairs and thus lead to mistakes being made—as when Murat slipped out of his control during the pursuit of Kutusov—but at least there were no colleagues or rivals with sufficient prestige to challenge and ignore his orders, as there had been in both 1796 and 1800.
The bold and crushing strategic movement from the Rhine to the Danube provides a valuable instance of Napoleon putting into operation his “Principles for Opening a Campaign.” There was only a single line of operations, and although the army advanced on a broad front, the axis was generally astride the ce
nter line running from Mannheim to Donauwörth. In the second place, Napoleon considered that the objective of any maneuver should be the enemy’s main body. In 1805, he slightly violated this principle by falling first upon General Mack, in command of the Austrian second army, but the justification of this action lies in the Emperor’s full realization that the Danube was the really critical front, and that the Austrians were committing a major strategical error in according priority to the Italian theater by stationing there the larger army of Archduke Charles. Napoleon’s third maxim on this subject stresses the desirability of marching toward the enemy’s flank or rear. The march to the Danube is a perfect example of this concept in action. Fourthly, Napoleon always stressed the importance of turning the enemy’s strategic flank. This presented difficulties during this campaign, for in addition to his main communications running from Ulm to Vienna (eastward), Mack possessed a secondary link southward to the Tyrol and the Archduke John’s army. Nevertheless, Napoleon succeeded in sealing off both escape routes after crossing the Danube and thus isolated his prey. Finally, the Emperor made sure that his own communications were secure; these were in danger if Mack crossed the Danube to the north bank, if the Russians arrived ahead of schedule from the east, or if Prussia decided to intervene in the war from the north. Napoleon carefully weighed up all these possibilities and took as many sensible precautions as possible to avert such an event or combination of them. Reserve camps and fortified cities lined the Rhine, considerable bodies of men were detached to guard his rear areas (although this inevitably reduced his battlepower) and full use was made of established “centers of operations” such as Augsburg, Munich, Vienna and Brünn, close to the front.
The Marshalate—the initial creation of May 19, 1804 (in alphabetical order)
The campaign is also notable for Napoleon’s use of his cavalry arm. The success of the initial movement largely rested on the factors of speed and surprise, and both of these requirements were provided by Murat’s reserve and the corps cavalry. These forces performed a number of vital functions, using their mobility to execute the feint in the Black Forest which utterly deceived General Mack as to the direction of the coming storm, to carry out detailed reconnaissances, secure the safety of the Grande Armée’s flanks and rear, and above all to establish a curtain or screen which disguised the army’s forward movements. In close proximity to the foe, the cavalry also performed the additional roles of pursuit (Murat’s drive to Trochtelfingen and Nuremburg is a case in point) and light combat (as, for instance, at Wertingen). Although Murat made several devastating errors which threatened to compromise the success of the whole campaign at various junctures, especially when he permitted Kutusov to escape to the north bank of the Danube, Napoleon was, nevertheless, well aware of the debt he owed to his cavalry commander and brother-in-law, and consequently overlooked his shortcomings and mistakes.
If Mack’s capitulation at Ulm was a triumph for Napoleon’s strategy, the even more impressive victory at Austerlitz was a vindication of his tactical sense and his intuitive gifts. In later years, Napoleon attempted to attribute his success to strategical causes. “The victory of Austerlitz was only the natural outcome of the Moravian plan of campaign. In an art as difficult as that of war, the system of campaign often reveals the plan of battle. Only experienced soldiers will understand this.”31 While it is true that the enemy was practically half beaten before the first shot was fired, and that the whole episode is a masterly example of what can be achieved by brilliant use of deception to lure the enemy into a carefully devised trap, the day was transformed into a triumph by the tactical skill displayed by the Emperor and the qualities of endurance and courage shown by his men. It is interesting to compare Napoleon’s mastery with his opponents’ ineptness. The French Emperor, aware of the peculiarities of the terrain, very wisely kept the bulk of his army concentrated in a central position which would enable it to meet attack from any direction. The Allies, on the other hand, were anything but united. Under Weyrother’s plan, the Austro-Russian army was virtually divided into three wings—two of which were not strong enough to withstand a heavy attack, and the third, if anything, excessively provided for. Military history is full of examples of battles that were lost through failure to mass sufficient troops for the main attack, but Austerlitz provides a rarer example of the dangers of over-provision. The 54,000 men of Buxhowden’s wing were continually getting in each other’s way during the early stage—admittedly the fog did nothing to help—and this confusion undoubtedly assisted the sustained defense of Legrand’s gallant division. But the fatal consequence of this was that the main attack absorbed every possible soldier that could be spared and deprived the Allies of a formed reserve with which to meet unexpected crises. The Russian Imperial Guard, for all its gallantry, was not sufficient in itself to meet the massed attack of Soult’s troops supported by the Guard cavalry and Bernadotte’s corps. By holding back these formations until the crisis of the battle, Napoleon provided himself with a formidable masse de décision whose impact could not be withstood. Similarly, Napoleon uniquely employed Murat’s cavalry as a mobile reserve to redress the problems that developed on the left.
Even if Buxhowden’s attack had succeeded in overrunning the Goldbach and its neighboring villages, there is considerable doubt whether the second phase of the Allied battle plan could have been successfully implemented. Swinging north, Buxhowden’s columns would very soon have been faced by the obstacle of the Turas wood, while Kienmayer’s cavalry would hardly have been able to hold off Davout’s corps and prevent him from launching a rear or flank attack on the slow-moving Russian left wing. Furthermore, the Allies had no concerted arrangements for cooperation between their left and center during this phase, and, separated by the Goldbach, they would still be dangerously exposed to a French counterattack against the center of their line. Altogether, the Allied scheme was based on overconfidence and miscalculation; the fact that Napoleon deliberately encouraged the rashness of his adversaries in no way diminishes their responsibility for the catastrophe that overwhelmed them.
A last lesson that Austerlitz teaches is that the counterattack or tactical offensive is the true key to defense. Strategically Napoleon was undoubtedly on the defensive, but this did not dissuade him from reassuming the tactical initiative all along the battleline (once the trap was sprung), thus snatching overwhelming victory from the jaws of apparent defeat.
The political significance of the events of 1805 was perhaps even more important for the future of Europe over the following decade. The campaign and battle represent the acid test of survival for the First Empire as well as the Grande Armée, its instrument. Only eighteen months had elapsed since the proclamation of the Empire, only one year since the coronation, and in the ruthless conditions of European politics Napoleon’s new-found dignity had to win international acceptance by force of arms if it was to survive the machinations of the vested interests represented by the established crowned heads of the Third Coalition. In actual fact, Napoleon was surprised by the impact of his victory; its true magnitude was only brought home to him on the day after the battle when no less a personage than the Austrian Emperor waited upon him to beg for peace. Napoleon reported this dramatic meeting to Talleyrand in a letter dated December 4:
The Emperor of Germany asked for an interview, which I granted; it lasted from two till four
P.M. I will tell you what I think of him when I see you. He wished to conclude peace on the spot. He appealed to my feelings; I defended myself, a kind of warfare which I assure you was not difficult. He asked me for an armistice which I conceded…. Inform the Austrians that the battle has changed the face of affairs and that they must expect harder conditions; that I complain, above all, of their conduct in sending me negotiators on the day they intended to attack me, in order to throw me off my guard….32
This was going a bit far, since it had been at Napoleon’s request that representatives had been exchanged in the period immediately preceding the battle. B
ut the Emperor had lost none of his native Corsican cunning for wringing the maximum advantage—however unscrupulously—from a favorable situation.
In due course, after considerable wrangling, the Treaty of Pressburg was signed on December 26. The terms were harsh: Austria was compelled to cede Venice to swell the new Kingdom of Italy; the Tyrol, Voralburg and other Alpine territory was awarded to the faithful French ally, the ruler of Bavaria; Swabia was given to the Duke of Württemberg.
With Austria prostrate, Russia repulsed and Prussia about to be seduced from her agreements, the Third Coalition of William Pitt could only share the fate of its two predecessors. The renewed shattering of his hopes proved too great a burden for the frail physique of the British Prime Minister, and within a few weeks William Pitt was dead (January 1806). Nevertheless, after a brief attempt to reopen negotiations by the new (though short-lived) Prime Minister, Charles James Fox, France’s greatest enemy remained defiant; moreover, since Trafalgar, it would seem that Great Britain could maintain her hostility with impunity. Again and again during and after the Austerlitz campaign Napoleon poured bitter words against “perfidious Albion.” Even in the victorious bulletin issued after Austerlitz, he could not refrain from loosing a storm of anti-British propaganda: “May all the blood shed here, may all these misfortunes fall upon the perfidious islanders who have caused them! May the cowardly oligarchs of London support the consequences of so many woes.”
The Campaigns of Napoleon Page 55