Now Playing
Pratzen Heights: The Trap Napoleon Set Before the Battle Began
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
One year after crowning himself Emperor, Napoleon faced the Third Coalition at Austerlitz — and engineered the most perfectly executed battle in military history. Discover how a deliberately weakened flank and a fog-shrouded dawn turned eighty-five thousand allied troops into a catastrophic defeat.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Here's something worth sitting with before we begin. On the morning of December second, eighteen oh five, Napoleon Bonaparte had been Emperor of the French for exactly one year.
To understand why Austerlitz mattered as much as it did, you need to remember what we covered last episode. The coronation of December second, eighteen oh four, was a calculated act of self-legitimation.
By the autumn of eighteen oh five, the strategic picture was serious. Austria and Russia had committed to combined operations against France.
Napoleon entered Vienna in November. Capturing the Austrian capital was significant, but it didn't end the war.
The numbers weren't overwhelming in either direction, but the allied force held a real advantage on paper. The combined Austro-Russian army numbered around eighty-five thousand men with roughly two hundred and seventy guns.
The night before the battle, Napoleon did something that became one of the most celebrated gestures of his reign. He walked through the French camps without full ceremony, visiting soldiers by firelight.
Dawn came cold and heavy with fog. The fog was important.
Soult's corps hit the allied center at a moment when it had been stripped of its strongest forces. The surprise was near-total.
By midday, the allied army was in full retreat in the south, and the northern allied flank had been driven back. Alexander, according to accounts of the battle, wept.
The political consequences arrived immediately. Austria signed the Treaty of Pressburg within weeks.
Austerlitz is studied in military academies to this day because of how much Napoleon compressed into that plan. The deception of the right flank.
In the days after Austerlitz, Napoleon addressed the army in a proclamation that was read aloud in camps across Europe. He told his soldiers that it was enough for them to say "I was at Austerlitz" and people would reply "there is a brave man." He understood the moment's mythic potential and moved quickly to fix it in collective memory.
Chapter summary auto-generated from the verified script. Listen to the full episode for the complete content.