The extreme right flank of the French line was held by Général de Division Claude Juste-Alexandre-Louis comte de Legrand’s division of Soult’s IV Corps. At dawn on December 2, Legrand’s soldiers could hear the sound of marching columns through the thick morning mist that covered the battlefield. With only 2,400 men, his division was about to face an onslaught by more than 30,000 Allied soldiers.

At 8:30 a.m. Dokhturov’s I Column rolled forward to attack Telnitz. Austrian General-Feldwachtmeister Carl Freiherr Stutterheim described the attack: ‘Twice the Austrians were repulsed; and twice they again advanced to the foot of the hill, which it was necessary to carry, in order to arrive at the village….Two Austrian battalions…charged the enemy with impetuosity, attacked the village, gained possession of it and were followed by the remainder [of the column]. The French, on the approach of such superior numbers, evacuated the defile, and drew up on the further side [of the Goldbach] in order of battle.’

To the north, Langéron’s II Column, reinforced by Przhebishevsky’s III Column, swarmed forward to attack the village of Sokolnitz. ‘The French,’ recorded Langéron, ‘defended themselves doggedly along the length of the stream and to the left of Sokolnitz. The 8th chasseurs and the regiments of Wibourg and Perm suffered a great deal, but at last, these three regiments and the column of Przhebishevsky carried the village and the French were forced to retire….’

By early morning the coalition forces had pushed the French out of Sokolnitz and Telnitz and were bending back the right flank of the French army. Columns IV and V, under Miloradovich and Liechtenstein, were marching across the Pratzen plateau and down onto the French right. The Austro-Russian left wing under Bagration was advancing to pin down the French left wing. Liechtenstein’s cavalry was spreading out to fill the widening gap between the Allied center and right. Thus far, all was going according to Weyrother’s plan.

About this time, according to Corporal Elzéar Blaze of the French 108th Régiment de Ligne, a captured French officer was brought before Tsar Alexander for interrogation.

‘Of which army corps are you?’ the tsar asked.

‘The third,’ the Frenchman replied.

‘Marshal Davout’s corps?’

‘Yes, sire.’

‘That can’t be true — that corps is in Vienna.’

‘It was there yesterday; today, it’s here.’

It was true. After a forced march of 80 miles, covered in just 50 hours, Davout’s III Corps had arrived to support the French right flank. The coalition attacks through Telnitz and Sokolnitz, slowed, then faltered.

Meanwhile, in the fog-filled valley below the Pratzen plateau, Napoleon stood quietly, gazing intently toward the plateau. Concealed by the low heights behind him stood the mass of his cavalry, Oudinot’s Grenadier Division and the Imperial Guard. With them, too, stood the soldiers of Bernadotte’s I Corps, 11,000-strong, who had force-marched from Iglau during the night. Napoleon now had 75,000 men and 157 guns to face the Allies’ 73,000 men and 318 guns.

Napoleon asked Soult, ‘How much time do you require to crown that summit?’ ‘Ten minutes,’ answered the marshal. ‘Then go,’ said the emperor, ‘but you can wait another quarter of an hour, and it will be time enough then!’

At 9 a.m. two divisions of Soult’s IV Corps marched forward. Supported on their left by Bernadotte’s I Corps, the French columns climbed the slopes of the plateau and emerged from the fog. The astonished Russians fought to hold back the French attack. Kutuzov tried to call back the rear of Miloradovich’s column, but few units could be turned around in time. The French pushed over the Pratzen, and the coalition troops fell back in confusion toward Austerlitz.

At 10:30 Kutuzov counterattacked the Pratzen. Soult stopped his line from collapsing by skillful deployment of his corps artillery. At 1 p.m. a new Russian attack swept in as its Imperial Guard Cavalry under Grand Duke Constantin Pavlovich stormed up from Austerlitz. Soult was in the middle of the fire. One of his officers was wounded; a ball struck the horse of his aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Auguste Petit, breaking its halter. Unable to resist this new attack, some of Soult’s exhausted troops broke and abandoned the summit. Napoleon ordered Général de Brigade Jean Rapp to lead the French Imperial Guard cavalry against the Russian attack. ‘[I]t was not until I came within gun-shot of the scene of action,’ recorded Rapp, ‘that I discovered the disaster. The enemy’s cavalry was in the midst of our square, and was sabering our troops. A little further back we discerned masses of infantry and cavalry forming the reserve. The enemy relinquished the attack, and turned to meet me….We rushed on the artillery, which was taken. The cavalry, who awaited us, was repulsed by the same shock; they fled in disorder, and we, as well as the enemy, trampled over the bodies of our troops, whose squares had been penetrated…all was confusion; we fought man to man. Finally, the intrepidity of our troops triumphed over every obstacle.’ Although wounded twice, Rapp himself captured Prince Nikolai G. Repnin-Volkonsky, colonel of the Russian Chevalier-gardes.

Meanwhile, on the french left, Lannes’ V Corps attacked Bagration to prevent the Russian from joining the struggle in the center. Lannes’ advance was stubbornly contested by Bagration and Liechtenstein, but Murat led his heavy cavalry in a charge that overwhelmed the Russian force. Bagration began a measured withdrawal from the battlefield.

Calling the remainder of the Imperial Guard to the Pratzen plateau, Napoleon ordered it and Soult’s survivors to swing south along the heights to envelop the Austro-Russian left. ‘We charged like lightning,’ wrote Thomas-Robert Bugeaud, a Velite Grenadier in the French Imperial Guard, ‘and the carnage was horrible. The balls whistled. The air groaned with the noise of cannon and power threatening voices, closely followed by death. Very soon the enemy’s phalanx was shaken and thrown into disorder; at last we overthrew them entirely.’

By 3:30 p.m., French guns and infantry were firing from the Pratzen into the massed enemy below. The only possible Austro-Russian escape route lay over the frozen ponds at their backs. The coalition soldiers tried to flee over the ice, but it broke under the French bombardment, and the retreat became a rout. Sometime after 4 p.m. the guns fell silent; the Battle of Austerlitz was over.

The coalition forces had lost a staggering 29,000 men dead, wounded or captured, along with most of their guns and equipment. The Grande Armée had suffered fewer than 8,300 dead or wounded and some 600 prisoners. Recorded Langéron: ‘The fact is that neither the regiments, nor the commanders, nor the generals had the necessary experience to resist the veteran warriors of Napoleon, that it was a great error to confront them and an even greater error to believe that we had only to present ourselves to defeat them.’

Three days after the battle, Emperor Francis II, disgusted with Tsar Alexander and his Russians, signed an armistice with France. Alexander, disgusted with Francis II and his Austrians, limped away to the east. The Third Coalition collapsed. On December 26, 1805, France signed the Peace of Pressburg with Austria. By the treaty Austria lost Venice, Istria and Dalmatia to France, and the Austrian Tyrol to Bavaria. Napoleon I, emperor of the French, 10 years before an unknown French general, was on his way to becoming master of Europe.

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This article was written by James W. Shosenberg and originally published in the December 2005 issue of Military History magazine. For more great articles be sure to subscribe to Military History magazine today!

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