The early hours of December second, 1805, were misty, although there was a sharp frost; but by seven the sun had dimly risen, and soon the thick fog lay only along the streams. At that hour the Russians and Austrians began their marching. Those behind the Pratzen heights passed swiftly up, and, uniting with those already there, marched in the general direction of the forest near Turas, intending to cross the intervening Goldbach and with their own left, which stood at Telnitz and Sokolnitz, surround Napoleon's right wing. The battle-field of Austerlitz is approximately an isosceles triangle, the short base extending north and south between Raigern and Brünn, a distance of about seven miles, and the equal sides, twelve miles in length, converging in Austerlitz to the eastward. About half-way on a perpendicular let fall from the apex, and parallel with the base, the Goldbach flows on the west side of the Pratzen plateau, nearly due south, the villages of Schlapanitz, Puntowitz, Kobelnitz, Sokolnitz, and Telnitz being at about equidistant intervals from north to south on its banks. A mile north of Schlapanitz the road from Brünn to Olmütz forms the north side of the triangle; the forest of Turas lies about two miles to the west of Puntowitz, on a high plain. In a line eastward of Schlapanitz, about a mile from that village and from each other, are the villages of Girzikowitz and Blasowitz. Napoleon's bivouac was on the high hill northwest of Schlapanitz, at the base of which, on the other side, was Bellowitz. North of the Olmütz road is a commanding hill, dubbed by the veterans of the Egyptian expedition with an Egyptian name, Santon, from a fancied resemblance of the little spire which crowned it to a minaret. This was to be the pivot of the battle, and Napoleon fortified it with a redoubt and eighteen pieces of cannon. South of it stood the left wing under Lannes; next toward the south stood the cavalry under Murat; then the center under Bernadotte; and Soult with the right was west of Puntowitz. Oudinot was eastward, in front of the imperial bivouac, with ten battalions; and ten battalions of the guard, with forty field-pieces, were westward behind it. Davout, having arrived the night before, was at Raigern. Legrand stood between him and Sokolnitz, on a pond lying southeast of that village.
At five in the morning Davout marched from Raigern, and about nine joined Legrand to engage the enemy's left. Meantime, at a quarter to eight, Soult began to climb the Pratzen slopes with the divisions of Vandamme and Saint-Hilaire. In about twenty minutes—the exact time in which he had declared he could do so—he had made good his position, and was fiercely engaged with the column of Kollowrath, which formed the enemy's center, and with which Kutusoff was present in person. The latter, realizing for the first time what the loss of Pratzen would mean, endeavored to concentrate toward the right; but his efforts were unavailing: he could only stand and fight. The two Austro-Russian columns on his left swooped down to the Goldbach, and seized both Telnitz and Sokolnitz. Simultaneously with Soult's advance, Bernadotte and Murat moved forward, encountering between Girzikowitz and Blasowitz the enemy's cavalry under Prince Lichtenstein, and the Russian imperial guard under the Grand Duke Constantine. Napoleon advanced to observe the conflict, and a little before eleven, at the critical moment, when the regiment of his brother Joseph was on the verge of being engulfed and lost, he threw in the cavalry of his own guard, under Bessières and Rapp, upon the Russian guard, turned the scale against them, and with his own eyes saw Constantine withdraw. The Russian vanguard under Bagration had meantime come in from Bosenitz, and was hotly engaged with a portion of the French left. The entire cavalry mass of Lichtenstein and Murat was commingled in bitter conflict. With the retreat of Constantine began the rout of the whole Austro-Russian right wing. Lannes, supported by the Santon redoubt, had stood like a rock until then; at once he precipitated himself, with the divisions of Suchet and Caffarelli, upon Bagration, and drove him back. Lichtenstein, who, up to that moment, had at least held his own,—if, indeed, he had not shown himself the stronger,—could no longer stand, and late in the afternoon he too began to yield.
Between eleven and twelve Soult had cleared the Pratzen heights, and pushing ever toward the right, had finally, just as the sun burst in splendor through the clouds, separated the enemy's left wing from its center. The latter had been sadly weakened both by detachments to strengthen the left and by its losses in conflict. At noon it began to retreat, and Napoleon, having satisfied himself that all was well on his left to the north, rode south to join Soult, and in passing despatched Drouot's division against the fugitive Kutusoff, whose column was thus overpowered and thrown into utter confusion. Since nine in the morning Davout had stood on the west shore of the Goldbach, flinging back the successive charges of the enemy's overgrown left. The continuous struggles had been terrific; the stream literally flowed blood as the soldiers of both sides crashed through the ice, and, unable to disengage themselves from the muddy bottom, stood fighting until they died. By two o'clock, however, his labors were over: the great move of the day, Soult's echelon march, right shoulder forward, was complete; Saint-Hilaire and Vandamme had recaptured the villages of Sokolnitz and Aujezd; the three southernmost Austro-Russian columns were entirely surrounded, and only a few from each escaped to join the remnants of their right, center, and reserve, running for life across frozen ponds and ditches, by dikes, and over rough-plowed fields toward Austerlitz. About five thousand of the fugitives, mostly Russians under Doctoroff and Langeron, had risked themselves on the ice of the Satschan lake and were hurrying across when Napoleon arrived. He ordered the field-pieces to be turned on the ice so that the balls weakened and cracked it.[35] In a few moments it gave way; with shrieks and groans many sank into the slowly rising waters and disappeared under the tossing icefloes. According to the account of the bulletins, frequently doubted but never refuted, nearly two thousand of them were drowned: when the ponds were drained after the battle forty Russian guns and many corpses were found. The fighting strength of the coalition was destroyed; so likewise was their moral courage. Shortly after Kutusoff's retreat, General Toll found Alexander seated weeping by the wayside, and accompanied by only a single adjutant.
Hostilities were scarcely ended for the day before Francis despatched Lichtenstein with proposals for an armistice. Napoleon received the envoy while making his round of the battle-field, but refused to treat for two days. He intended to reap the fruits of victory, and ordered a skilful, thorough pursuit. Such was the rout of the allies that the position of the shattered columns of Austria and Russia was not known until the fourth of December. The Czar was in such danger of being captured that early in the day he sent to Davout a flag of truce and a hastily penciled note declaring that the Austrian emperor had been in conference with Napoleon since six that morning, and that a truce had been arranged. This falsehood enabled Alexander to escape across the river March and avoid being made a prisoner of war. It was only in the afternoon that the Emperor Francis was received by Napoleon in a tent near Holitsch, and it was not before the sixth that the campaign was ended by Austria's acceptance of such terms for an armistice as the Emperor of the French chose to impose.
Considering the character of the battle, the terms first suggested were not hard: No loss of territory for Austria if the Russian emperor would withdraw to his own territories and shut out England from his harbors; otherwise Napoleon would take Venetia for Italy and Tyrol for Bavaria. Alexander would not listen to the embargo project, nor to Francis's desperate suggestion that they should continue the war. On the sixth, having, according to Savary, exchanged fulsome compliments with Napoleon, he marched away for Russia, leaving his ally to take the consequences of what was really his own rashness. This was a complete rupture of the coalition: its weightiest stipulation was that none of the members should make a separate peace. The only hope of Austria for endurable terms now lay in Prussian coöperation. But Haugwitz could no longer offer the ultimatum agreed upon at Potsdam; the battle had of course utterly changed the situation. Napoleon now demanded nothing less from Prussia than the long-desired alliance offensive and defensive. On December fifteenth Frederick William's envoy assented provisionally, and set out for Berlin to secure the royal assent, if possible. His master was to keep Hanover and close her ports to the English; to give Cleves, Wesel, and Neuchâtel to France; to cede Ansbach to Bavaria; and to acknowledge the latter as a kingdom, with such eastern boundaries as Austria would agree to yield.
For an instant Napoleon thought of continuing the war to annihilate Austria forever. Talleyrand's hand, however, had been crossed, as no one doubted, with an enormous bribe from Austrian sources, and he persuaded the Emperor not to follow the bad advice of his generals, but to "rise higher as a statesman" and make peace. With his assent to this went ever larger and harder demands, until Francis actually contemplated a renewal of the desperate and unequal struggle alone and unassisted. He had in all probability a fighting chance, but his longing for peace prevailed. When the treaty was signed, on December twenty-sixth, 1805, at Presburg, Austria surrendered Venice, with Friuli, Istria, and Dalmatia, to Italy; ceded Tyrol to Bavaria; consented to the banishment of the Bourbons from Naples; accepted all the new arrangements which had recently been made by Napoleon in Italy, and agreed to pay a war indemnity of forty million francs. The contributions laid on Austrian lands in irregular ways during the progress of the campaign had been probably more than as much again. The recognition of Bavaria as an independent kingdom, and the rearrangement of German territories, put an end to the empire; Francis, having in 1804 assumed the title Emperor of Austria, was heartily tired of the rather bedraggled imperial Roman style which he still wore. Würtemberg received five cities on the Danube, the counties of Hohenems and Wellenburg, with part of the Breisgau, and became a kingdom like Bavaria; Baden got the rest of the Breisgau, together with Ortenau, Mainau, and the city of Constance; Bavaria received not only Tyrol, with the Vorarlberg, but Brixen, Trent, Passau, Eichstädt, Burgau, Lindau, and other minor possessions, to round out her new frontier. In scanty amends Salzburg and Berchtesgaden were assigned to the Austrian Empire.
The fighting on both sides at Austerlitz was in the main superb. "My people," said the Emperor to his soldiers—"my people will see you again with delight; and if one of you shall say, 'I was at Austerlitz,' every one will respond, 'Here stands a hero.'" The legions of the Empire had indeed fought with unsurpassed bravery, as had likewise the Austrians. The Russians were not so steadfast. In their first experience of the "furia Francesa" their old notions of courage were wiped out. "Those who saw the battle-field," said the "Moniteur," "will testify that it lay strewn with Austrians where the fight was thickest, while elsewhere it was strewn with Russian knapsacks." Such was the effect upon his men that not only did Alexander leave his ally in the lurch and march back into Poland, but he felt called on to publish a bulletin asserting the valor of his own, and the timidity of the Austrian troops. But the "Battle of Austerlitz," as it is called in French phrase, the "Fight of the Three Emperors," as the Germans designate the day, was epochal, not merely for the courage displayed, but for the tactical revolution it wrought. It was the first true Napoleonic battle. Thenceforward the greatest conflicts were arranged on its commanding principle—a principle which had long been used, but was then for the first time fully developed and accepted.
Throughout the preceding period of warfare an army was set in motion as a whole, every portion being from first to last in the commander's hand ready for manœuvering. If any division was hemmed in, or any portion of the line was broken, the result was defeat. From 1805 onward any single part, center or either wing, could be annihilated, and the victory still be won elsewhere by the other parts. For this two things are essential: first, fresh troops to throw into the proper place at the proper time; second, a line of retreat, with a new basis for operations, previously prepared. The highest military authorities go so far as to say that in a well-arranged battle one portion of the line should even be sacrificed to the enemy in order to secure victory with the others. The pursuit after Austerlitz was as fine as the attack, and so colossal and comprehensive was Napoleon's genius that he had made complete arrangements for withdrawing in case of defeat, not, as the enemy thought, toward Vienna, but through Bohemia to Passau. The total numbers engaged were, on the side of the allies, about ninety thousand; on that of the French, about eighty thousand. The Austrians and Russians lost fifteen thousand killed and wounded, with twenty thousand taken prisoners, while the French had seven thousand killed and wounded in the long and dreadful stand made at the Goldbach by their right, and about five thousand elsewhere. The Emperor thought it a small price to pay for the hegemony of Europe, and his favorite title was "Victor of Austerlitz." "Soldiers," he cried at Borodino, as the sun burst through the dun clouds, "it is the sun of Austerlitz!" and his flagging army revived its drooping spirits.