The Battle of Austerlitz (1805): Napoleon's Greatest Victory

On 2 December 1805, on a stretch of rolling ground near the town of Austerlitz in Moravia (in the present-day Czech Republic), Napoleon Bonaparte fought the battle that would come to define his reputation as a commander. Facing a combined Austrian and Russian force under Tsar Alexander I and Emperor Francis II — nearly 85,000 men against his own roughly 68,000 — Napoleon won what is often called his masterpiece: the Battle of the Three Emperors.

A battle won before it was fought

Austerlitz is remarkable less for its scale than for how deliberately it was engineered. In the days before the battle, Napoleon deliberately weakened his right flank and withdrew from the strategically valuable Pratzen Heights, inviting the allied commanders to believe the Grande Armée was exposed and demoralized. The allies took the bait, moving the bulk of their forces to encircle what they believed was a vulnerable right wing — stretching their center dangerously thin in the process.

That was exactly what Napoleon had planned for. As the allied army committed to its flanking maneuver, he launched a concentrated assault straight through their weakened center on the Pratzen Heights, splitting the allied army in two. Marshal Soult's corps spearheaded the attack, and once the heights were taken, the French were able to turn on each isolated wing of the allied force in turn.

The collapse of the Third Coalition

The result was decisive. Allied losses are estimated at around 27,000 killed, wounded, or captured, against French losses of roughly 9,000. The defeat effectively ended the War of the Third Coalition: Austria signed the Treaty of Pressburg within weeks, ceding territory and withdrawing from the war, while Russian forces retreated eastward. The battle also cleared the way for Napoleon to reorganize much of Germany into the Confederation of the Rhine the following year, formally dissolving the centuries-old Holy Roman Empire.

Why Austerlitz still matters

Military historians continue to study Austerlitz for its use of deception, terrain, and timing — deliberately ceding ground to draw an enemy into a trap, then striking with concentrated force at the decisive point. It's a battle that shows Napoleon at the height of his operational skill, years before the campaigns in Spain and Russia would begin to erode the Grande Armée's dominance.

The correspondence Napoleon sent in the weeks around Austerlitz — orders to his marshals, letters to Joséphine, dispatches back to Paris — trace the campaign in far more detail than any single battle account can capture. The interactive map plots these letters against the places and dates they were written from, letting you follow the 1805 campaign as it actually unfolded.