by Mark Leshkevich
[REGNUM] On December 2 (New Style) (or November 20 (Julian Calendar) 1805), the "Battle of the Three Emperors" took place near the village of Austerlitz in Austrian Moravia, now Slavkov u Brna in the Czech Republic. Napoleon's forces routed two numerically superior armies—the Austrian and, alas, the Russian, commanded by Mikhail Kutuzov.
For the French, the "Sun of Austerlitz" remains a symbol of Bonaparte's supreme military prowess. For the Austrians, it symbolizes the beginning of the decline of the Habsburg Empire. For the Czechs, it's a tourist attraction. In the Russian historical consciousness, this 220-year-old event occupies a rather strange place.
220 years later, we remember Borodino, Shipka, and Stalingrad well, and we re-create Nuremberg and the Battle of Kursk as many times as we like. But Austerlitz remains a silent figure: in school textbooks, it's buried in a paragraph between the War of the Third Anti-Napoleonic Coalition and the Treaty of Tilsit.
In the popular imagination, these are scenes from War and Peace, where 27-year-old Alexander I and the "passionate" generals drown out Kutuzov's hoarse voice. A defeat after which, it seems, "the road to Borodino began," but we prefer not to think about the road itself.
Meanwhile, for contemporaries, Austerlitz was more than just a slap in the face to Russia and Austria. It was seen as a touchstone for an entire world order: the old monarchies of Europe versus revolutionary, and then Napoleonic, France. Bonaparte's empire, a kind of prototype of the European Union, led by the continent's most progressive country, was perceived as a new world replacing the old. But history decreed otherwise.
WHY ALEXANDER DIDN'T LISTEN TO KUTUZOV
To understand what happened at Austerlitz, we must begin not with the guns, but with diplomacy. At the beginning of the 19th century, France and Russia were formally considered almost allies: Napoleon, through his envoys, assured Alexander I that he wanted "harmony and friendship," not war. Everything was shattered by the Anglo-French War of 1803.
London sought partners on the Continent against Bonaparte, and St. Petersburg was gradually drawn into a coalition with England and London's ally, Austria. Russia entered the conflict not as the victim of a surprise attack (as it had in 1812), but as a willing participant in the Third Coalition. Alexander hoped to simultaneously stem the rise of France and strengthen his own influence in Europe.
The diary of the Austrian attaché Karl von Stutterheim reveals that Alexander was ripe for war even before the high-profile scandals surrounding Napoleon. In the winter of 1804, the Tsar persistently lobbied Vienna for an alliance, declaring that war "elevates the soul" and that Bonaparte's ambitions must be stopped, lest France sooner or later overwhelm the rest.
For the young emperor, the upcoming campaign was a moral crusade against the "usurper" and a chance to establish Russia as a European arbiter. The diplomats' cautious calculations were drowned out by this enthusiasm.
Napoleon responded as best he could. The "Great Army" marched rapidly to the Danube, encircled the Austrians at Ulm, entered Vienna, and pushed Kutuzov's army north to Olmütz (now Olomouc, Czech Republic).
Here, the allies had assembled a large force. But Napoleon had a unified command and a clear plan, while Russia and Austria had dual power.
Kutuzov insisted on a defensive and protracted campaign, but Alexander needed a quick victory. The Austrian headquarters issued unrealistic plans that Tolstoy would ridicule in War and Peace: "die erste Kolonne marschiert, die zweite Kolonne marschiert" ("the first column marches, the second column marches").
The Allied armies adopted a plan developed by Austrian General Franz von Weyrother, immortalized by Andrei Bolkonsky's remark: " We went with Weyrother to check the dispositions. Once the Germans get their act together, there's no end!"
The careful Austrian plan involved a blow to the French right flank (it was assumed that Napoleon would deploy relatively weak regiments here) at the cost of exposing the Austro-Russian positions on the Pratzen Heights - and became the starting point of the failure at Austerlitz.
WHAT WENT WRONG
The morning of December 2 began as the allies had planned. The Russo-Austrian army descended into the foggy lowlands, its columns stretching south, seemingly cutting off Napoleon's right flank and the route to Vienna.
At the Pratzen Heights, a key position, there remained comparatively weak units: several battalions, reserve units.
This is precisely what the French emperor sought. Military theorists of the 19th century (in particular, the distinguished Russian scholar of German descent, Heinrich Leer ) noted that the allies objectively had a numerical advantage, but they had deprived themselves of the most important thing—a favorable position and unified command.
Napoleon, on the contrary, assembled a "striking force." While our and Austrian forces were stretched out across the gullies and marshes to the south, Nicolas Soult's corps ascended the deserted Pratzen Heights.
Below, near the villages of Telnitsy and Sokolnitsy, a heavy battle ensued: the allied units under the command of the future hero of the Patriotic War Pyotr Bagration, covering the right flank, repelled the attacks of the corps of Louis-Nicolas Davout.
But the fate of the battle was decided in the center.
BAGRATION AND THE CAVALRY GUARDS SAVED THE HONOR OF THE ALLIES
Having waited for the main Allied forces to advance, the French literally rose above our and the Austrian "left shoulder." The attack from the heights cut the Allied line in half.
Memoirists and the official historian of the campaign, Alexander Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky, wrote that it was at this moment that it became clear: the battle was lost, and all that remained was to withdraw the troops and save the core of the army.
What unfolded next was not a “chess game,” but a struggle for survival.
On the left flank, Austrian units, pinned against frozen ponds near the village of Sazan, attempted to retreat and came under fire from French artillery. Some perished in the icy water, while others managed to hastily retreat to the city of Brno.
The right flank, under the command of Bagration, as before in the “affair” at Schöngraben, fought until dark and left in an organized manner, covering the retreat.
At its most critical moment, the "white bone" of the Cavalry Guards Regiment stood up for the honor of the Russian army. This heavy cavalry unit was recruited from the best families, who were kept in the second echelon for emergencies. And now, that moment had come.
The Emperor's brother, Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich, attempted to break through to the Pratzen Heights with his infantry guards, but was crushed by a furious counterattack by the light cavalry of Napoleon's Guard. Our infantrymen were routed and pinned down against one of the rivers on the Field of Austerlitz. They would have been cut down had not the Life Guards, but above all the Horse Guards, for whom this was the first battle in the regiment's history, covered the crossing.
Their performance against the superior French forces may have inspired Bulat Okudzhava and Isaac Schwartz to write the song "Cavalry Guards, the Age is Short."
In the otherwise serene history of the Cavalry Regiment, there were only two suicidal "actions": the attack at Austerlitz and the skirmish at the Raevsky Battery during the Battle of Borodino. But it was Austerlitz that cost the most blood—13 officers and 226 enlisted men were counted "out of action." The regiment's commander, Prince Nikolai Repnin-Volkonsky, was seriously wounded and captured.
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The reckless attack of the Russian cavalry guards so impressed Bonaparte that he personally visited the captured officers in the infirmary and lavished compliments on Repnin. "The praise of a great commander is a soldier's best reward," the prince replied. "I give it to you with pleasure," Napoleon responded.
The French Emperor could afford magnanimity. According to Russian and foreign researchers, the allies lost between 30,000 and 45,000 men killed, wounded, and captured, a significant number of them Russian regiments.
French losses, according to the same sources, were half as much, which for a war in the early 19th century seems like an almost catastrophic gap.
AUSTERLITZ IN RUSSIAN: WHO WROTE THE FIRST SCIENTIFIC HISTORY?
For our army, the defeat at Austerlitz was not a total rout: the Russian forces retreated not as a mob of fugitives, but as an exhausted but combat-ready army. This is a fundamental point, insisted upon by both Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky and the historian General Leer.
The defeat was severe, but it did not break either the command system or the fighting spirit. This is precisely why, just a few years later, these same units would again stand against Napoleon—first in Prussia, in the "affairs" of Pultusk (1806), Preussisch-Eylau (1807), and then in the Battle of Borodino.
Official historiography of the first half of the 19th century sought to maintain a balance. On the one hand, emphasizing the courage of the troops and the personal involvement of the emperor was the task of imperial history, written "by the highest command." On the other hand, ignoring the shortcomings was impossible.
In the preface to Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky's " Description of the First War of Emperor Alexander with Napoleon," published in 1844, he explicitly stated: Europe knows only the French versions of the 1805 campaign, and Russian society needs its own detailed account of the events. In other words, the authorities (at that time, Nicholas I reigned ) did not abstain from analyzing failures, but they imposed strict limits on them: through an analysis of plans, marches, maneuvers, and the behavior of the allies.
Soviet historiography added another layer. Albert Manfred, a leading French scholar and specialist in the revolutionary era and the Napoleonic Wars, emphasized that Russian soldiers in this story were part of a pan-European line of resistance to Napoleonic hegemony.
During the reign of the Pokrovsky school, Bonaparte was considered almost a progressive figure, but from the 1930s onwards, a more patriotic approach prevailed, becoming dominant by the 1950s and 1960s, when Manfred worked.
The scholar analyzed the mistakes of Alexander and his entourage quite harshly, but at the same time consistently demonstrated that Kutuzov's military training and the experience of the defeats of 1805–1807 became the foundation for the future victory of 1812. Soviet historians integrated the failure of Austerlitz into patriotic mythology, in the positive sense of the word.
Post-Soviet studies also add a foreign policy context. Historians emphasize how Russia gradually moved from the idea of a "special alliance" with France to participation in the Third Coalition: under the influence of London, the influence of Anglophile circles at court, and Alexander's personal desire to act as an arbiter of European affairs.
In this logic, Austerlitz is not a random clash, but the result of a choice made by St. Petersburg. And the modern reader receives not a picture of a "victim of aggression," but an honest story of how a great power enters a major European war and learns from its own miscalculations.
AUSTERLITZ IN FRENCH: HOW PALE THE "SUN"
In France, Austerlitz long lived as pure legend. For Napoleon's army, it was the "ideal battle," and for the Second Empire, the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Republics, it was a convenient symbol of national valor, unrelated to colonial wars and internal political divisions.
But, as modern French researchers note, over time, the memory of defeats—Russia in 1812, Waterloo—began to supplant the cult of brilliant victories.
French historiography remains largely focused on its own experience. Analyzing the Napoleonic theme through the prism of historical memory, one can see that it is precisely the tragic themes, regularly raised at official ceremonies, that prove more important for national identity than the "sun of Austerlitz."
This is also evident in the way the French press discussed the anniversaries of the Napoleonic Wars: they argued about what exactly to celebrate – the triumph of the empire, the common European tragedy, or the victims of colonial policy.
In this picture, Austerlitz is “our great victory somewhere in Moravia,” and not a place where thousands of Russian, Austrian, and French soldiers lie.
AUSTERLITZ "ON THE SPOT": WORKING WITH MEMORY AND THE TOURISM INDUSTRY
Over the course of two hundred years, the Czechs and Moravians transformed Austerlitz into a distinctly concrete space of memory. In 1912, the Mound of Peace was erected on the Pratzen Heights—a monument for which funds are being raised, including in the Russian Empire.
The figure of four warriors with the coats of arms of Russia, Austria-Hungary, France and Moravia, a mass grave without division into armies – this is an attempt to transform the battlefield into a field of reconciliation.
The Brno Region Museum has sprung up nearby, presenting the Napoleonic era as part of regional history. They work with documents on the deployment of Russian troops, display artifacts from the Borodino Museum, and recreate scenes from the Soviet film "War and Peace" on panels.
Tourists are offered the entire "land of three emperors": a route through Slavkov (formerly Austerlitz), Pratzen, Tvarzona, and the Santon Hill. In the summer, there are "Napoleonic Days," and in the winter, battle reenactments featuring dozens of clubs from various countries, including Russia.
However, behind this tourist "attraction" lies serious work. In the early 2000s, with the participation of Russian diplomats and local activists, a monument to the fallen soldiers of the Bagration Corps was unveiled in Tvarzhonaya.
In Křenovice, where Kutuzov's headquarters were located, a monument to the commander himself was erected. At the unveiling, Czech politicians frankly acknowledged that one can lose a battle, but still win a war, and a reminder of Kutuzov is no less necessary here than the cult of Napoleon.
WHAT DO WE CARE ABOUT AUSTERLITZ 220 YEARS LATER?
What does this story offer us in 2025, beyond academic interest? Firstly, it brings back into focus the Russian soldiers who, in 1805, were fighting not for "foreign dynastic interests," but for Russia's vision of Europe's future.
Yes, Russia entered the coalition as a great power with its own calculations. Yes, the political leadership makes mistakes. But the same regiments stood on the field near Slavkov that, a few years later, would fight at Preussisch-Eylau, Friedland, and Borodino. Their memory should not depend on whether they won on a particular day.
Secondly, Austerlitz forces us to rethink the familiar set of "glorious dates." The victory of 1812 and the collapse of the Napoleonic system would have been impossible without the experience of the earlier campaigns. It was after 1805 that the Russian command became more cautious about Austrian plans, more firmly insisted on its own decisions, and changed the system of staff training. The line from Austerlitz to the Tarutino Maneuver can be traced both in documents and in the works of military historians.
And finally, discussing Austerlitz is a test of the maturity of our historical memory. The ability to honestly analyze defeats without questioning the honor of the army and the state, and to learn from these defeats, distinguishes a great country from a collection of beautiful legends.