Napoleon's Greatest Triumph E-Book

Gregory Fremont-Barnes

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 192

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

In August 1805, Napoleon abandoned his plans for the invasion of Britain and diverted his army to the Danube Valley to confront Austrian and Russian forces in a bid for control of central Europe. The campaign culminated with the Battle of Austerlitz, regarded by many as Napoleon's greatest triumph, whose far-reaching effects paved the way for French hegemony on the Continent for the next decade. In this concise volume, acclaimed military historian Gregory Fremont-Barnes uses detailed profiles to explore the leaders, tactics and weaponry of the clashing French, Austrian and Russian forces. Packed with fact boxes, maps and more, Napoleon's Greatest Triumph is the perfect way to explore this important battle and the rise of Napoleon's reputation as a supreme military leader.

Leseprobe

All images supplied from the author’s collection.

First published as Battle Story: Austerlitz 1805 by Spellmount, 2013

This paperback edition first published 2019

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© The History Press, 2013, 2019

Gregory Fremont-Barnes has asserted his moral right to be identified as the Author of this work.

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ISBN 978 0 7509 5167 8

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CONTENTS

Introduction

1   A Short Background to the Napoleonic Wars

2   The Armies

3   The Days Before Battle

4   The Battle of Austerlitz

5   Costs and Consequences

6   The Legacy: A Decade of Conflict

A Napoleonic Timeline

Further Reading

INTRODUCTION

Fought between Napoleon’s Grande Armée and Austro-Russian forces operating in Moravia, 37 miles (60km) north-east of Vienna and widely regarded as the tactical masterstroke of Napoleon’s long military career, Austerlitz stands as one of the greatest victories in military history. A single December day’s fighting crushed the Third Coalition, with far-reaching political and strategic implications for French control in Central Europe. Austerlitz also represented a brilliant exercise in grand tactics; in the face of numerically superior forces, Napoleon encouraged Allied commanders to follow the course of action which he intended by establishing a battlefield scenario that he could control, before he proceeded to implement his plan: splitting the Allied army in half before defeating its component parts in turn.

Austerlitz is noteworthy, too, for the fact that Napoleon’s prowess and the effectiveness of the Grande Armée as a fighting force reached its apogee there, and it constituted the battle of which the emperor himself was most proud. The climax of a remarkable campaign, Austerlitz crowned the efforts of an army which demonstrated one of the key elements of strategic success: speed. The Grande Armée, poised around Boulogne on the Channel coast for the invasion of England, broke camp and in twenty days reached the Rhine; two months later it entered Vienna; and a fortnight later, under the emperor’s command, it destroyed the Third Coalition in an eight-hour engagement. If Napoleon gambled supremely in the campaign of 1805, he generally gambled correctly, partly benefitting from his own well-developed plan, as well as by the errors committed by his opponents.

French bivouac on the evening before Austerlitz. Napoleon’s Grande Armée, at the peak of its morale and honed to a superb level of fitness and training between 1803 and 1805, constituted the best fighting force of its generation.

Austerlitz is all the more remarkable for the fact that it might very well have gone badly wrong. While it began auspiciously when Napoleon’s forces enveloped an entire Austrian army at Ulm, in Bavaria, followed by the occupation of Vienna, the Grande Armée faced a potentially perilous position by the following month, for while Austrian forces had been reduced to a remnant, the Russians managed to elude the advancing French and rendezvous with strong reinforcements near Austerlitz. Operating at a considerable distance from France, his resources stretched, facing a coalition mounting operations across a broad front, with the Prussians mobilising sufficient forces to tip the balance against him and with two Austrian armies still intact and situated to his rear, Napoleon could neither retreat for fear of its interpretation as retreat nor pursue the Allies any deeper into Austrian territory lest he risk his own encirclement and destruction. His only option lay in striking quickly and effectively, for he required nothing short of decisive victory.

With this in view, Napoleon sought to entice the Allies into fighting a battle on his own terms – using ground of his choosing and with a strong element of deception – thus compensating for the numerical advantage enjoyed by his opponents. In the event, he did precisely this, selecting an area just west of the village of Austerlitz which offered him the opportunity to design a plan to provoke the Allies into attacking on unfavourable terms. Accordingly, he sent his aide to Allied headquarters, tasked with persuading Tsar Alexander of Russia and Emperor Francis of Austria that Napoleon was anxious to avoid battle and keen to negotiate peace. Napoleon reinforced this impression of timidity by withdrawing his troops from the strategically important Pratzen Heights, west of Austerlitz. By conceding this dominant position to his opponents and by deliberately weakening his right flank, Napoleon encouraged the Allies to attack at points of his designation – all according to his elaborate plan of deception. Finally, in a calculated move, the French emperor positioned his reinforcements well back from view, leaving the impression of weak numbers – and consequently deceived the Allies into seriously underestimating French strength. A strong element of risk attended this plan, however, for success depended entirely on the Allies seizing the heights, and at the same time the French right wing withstanding the onslaught of superior numbers.

Crossing the River Inn on 28 October, French troops enter Austria. In their strategic plan the Allies certainly never envisaged conducting the campaign on home soil.

The Austrian surrender at Ulm, 20 October 1805, during the campaign in Bavaria prior to the French invasion of Habsburg territory. This and other capitulations left to the Russians responsibility for most of the Allies’ next six weeks of campaigning.

Quite apart from its significance at the grand tactical level, Austerlitz left a long-standing political legacy, eliminating the last marks of Austrian influence and territorial holdings in Germany and Italy, leaving Napoleon master of half the continent and therefore solidly on the road to establishing the greatest empire in Europe since the fall of Rome – a position achieved only eighteen months after the destruction of the Third Coalition. He consolidated his hold over Italy by annexing the last Habsburg territories in the region, adding them to the Kingdom of Italy, of which Napoleon crowned himself king, and occupied Naples, eliminating the last vestiges of resistance on the peninsula. He placed his sisters on the thrones of several German states, nearly all of which he fashioned into a new political entity: the Confederation of the Rhine, all dependent on, or subservient to, France. On this basis – quite apart from the masterful means employed by Napoleon during the Ulm campaign and at Austerlitz five weeks later – the battle led directly to a substantial shift in the European balance of power, placing France in so dominant a position as to require a further decade of fighting before the Continent could finally eradicate the menace of Napoleonic imperialism.

A SHORT BACKGROUND TO THE NAPOLEONIC WARS

A Decade of Bloodshed: The French Revolutionary Wars, 1792–1802

When hostilities broke out in May 1803 between Britain and France – after a brief period of peace lasting fourteen months – this renewed conflict marked the beginning of a series of campaigns, some co-ordinated, others not, which eventually involved practically every state in Europe, known as the Napoleonic Wars (1803–15). The first phase, the War of the Third Coalition, an alliance of Britain, Russia, Austria, Sweden and Naples, arose out of Britain’s diplomatic initiative and, to a lesser extent, a similar effort on the part of the tsar and his deputy foreign minister, Prince Adam Czartoryski. It was this coalition – the third attempt by the great (and many lesser) powers to limit the growth of French power and influence – whose fate the Battle of Austerlitz sealed in a single day in December 1805.

To understand the genesis of events which led to that seminal event, one must cast back into the previous decade for, to be strictly accurate, the Napoleonic Wars represented merely an extension of the conflict which had begun a decade before, known as the French Revolutionary Wars. During this series of conflicts, most nations formed at some point part of at least one of the two great yet unsuccessful coalitions seeking to curb the growing power of republican France. We must therefore turn to the roles played by the principal European powers in the great struggles of the 1790s, examine the events which concluded hostilities in 1802, consider the factors which contributed to their renewal in May 1803 and, finally, establish the circumstances which led to the formation of the Third Coalition, whose forces Napoleon shattered in the greatest battle of his long and distinguished command.

Russia, under Tsarina Catherine (the Great), took no part in the War of the First Coalition (1792–97). On her death in 1796 the tsarina was succeeded by her son, Paul, who suffered from bouts of mental illness and quixotic behaviour. In 1799, he joined the Second Coalition (1798–1802) as a consequence of the growing French threat to Russian interests in the Mediterranean, especially the occupation of Malta, seized during Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt the previous year, as well as the dissolution of the Order of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem, who had ruled the island since 1530. The dispossessed knights sought assistance from Paul, whom they made Grand Master of the Order. The Russians achieved early successes in the field, fighting in Italy and Switzerland, but relations with Austria became strained and Russia withdrew from the war in late 1799. When Paul was assassinated in a palace coup in March 1801, his 23-year-old son, Alexander, succeeded him as tsar. Alexander and his deputy foreign minister, Prince Adam Czartoryski, were to play prominent roles in the formation of the Third Coalition. In the meantime, with the French ousted by the British from Malta in 1800 and Egypt the following year, Alexander did not renew his country’s participation in the War of the Second Coalition (consisting of Austria, Russia, Turkey, Britain, Naples and Portugal). Russia and France concluded a formal peace settlement in October 1801, whereby the French recognised Russia’s interests in the eastern Mediterranean and promised to consult Alexander concerning the reorganisation of the borders of many of the small German states, in whose affairs Russia took a great interest, partly as a consequence of the tsar’s connection, through his wife, with the Electorate of Baden.

Prussia had, along with Austria, numbered among the first of the Great Powers to declare war on revolutionary France in 1792 and constituted a mainstay of the First Coalition, which would grow to include Spain, Holland, Britain, Sardinia, Naples, Portugal, the minor German states of the Holy Roman Empire and others. She briefly invaded France in 1792, but after her repulse at the Battle of Valmy she ceased to play a significant further part in the war and eventually withdrew from the coalition by the Treaty of Basle in April 1795. Prussia was swiftly followed by Spain, largely owing to the distractions arising to the former, Russia and Austria by the partitions of Poland in 1793 and 1795. Prussia remained neutral during the War of the Second Coalition, though King Frederick William III and Alexander developed a friendship from June 1802, owing to shared interests in limiting French influence in Germany.

Austria, under the Habsburg emperor Francis II, who came to the throne in 1792, controlled a vast Central and Eastern European empire containing a multitude of nationalities, including Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Italians, Poles and others, and would prove one of the most implacable enemies of France. Austria remained active throughout the War of the First Coalition, even when practically all the other members, apart from Britain, had abandoned the cause by April 1796. By this point Austria had waged numerous campaigns in the Low Countries and along the Rhine, and was imminently to engage the French in northern Italy under the young General Napoleon Bonaparte. In the event, Bonaparte’s campaigns of 1796–97 proved a great success and brought his army within 80 miles (129km) of Vienna after the decisive French victory at Rivoli, resulting in the Treaty of Campo Formio in October 1797. By its terms, Austria recognised the French occupation of the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium) – overrun by republican forces two years before; conceded the loss of Lombardy; accepted as a fait accompli the French occupation of the left bank of the Rhine; and recognised the Cisalpine Republic, a satellite state of the French republic in Italy. Austria, in turn, received territory along the Adriatic coast, Friol and possessions formerly belonging to Venice east of the river Adige. In short, Campo Formio represented a major blow to Habsburg power and prestige.

Emperor Francis II of Austria (1768–1835; reigned from 1792). A determined opponent of Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, he presided over a sprawling, multinational empire which ceded territory as a result of four different punitive treaties, in 1797, 1801, 1805 and 1809.

When the Second Coalition was formed and the campaign began in March 1799, Austria again played the dominant role, with Russia, as briefly described earlier, in support; but the Austrians felt legitimate concern at Paul’s erratic behaviour, jealousies persisted over the relative gains resulting from the partitions of Poland and Vienna baulked at the slow speed of Russian forces as they moved west to aid the Austrians in Bavaria and Italy. Both sides met with initial success in these two theatres of operation; however, relations broke down during the subsequent campaign in Switzerland, resulting in the withdrawal of Russia from the war.

Allied fortunes took a further turn for the worse when, in a dramatic move, Bonaparte returned from Egypt, leaving the army behind, and staged a coup in November 1799, resulting in his rise to power as First Consul. With Austria isolated on the Continent, France renewed the war effort, meeting success in Germany and, despite initial reverses in Italy, Bonaparte began a new campaign in that theatre, leading his army across the Alps in May 1800, capturing Milan and inflicting a serious defeat on the Austrians at Marengo on 14 June. An armistice resulted, but when negotiations failed, the Austrians renewed the campaign and lost decisively at Hohenlinden, near Munich, in December. This resulted in the virtual death blow of the Second Coalition due to the signature of the Treaty of Lunéville in February 1801. By its punitive terms, Austria reaffirmed its commitment to the clauses contained in Campo Formio, which had marked the end of the War of the First Coalition. By signing a separate peace, Austria left Britain as the only major power still opposing France, placing the government under Henry Addington in an awkward diplomatic position, under considerable pressure domestically to make peace.

The young General Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Rivoli. The Italian campaigns of 1796–97 established his reputation as a remarkable field commander.

In the course of Britain’s war against revolutionary France between 1793 and 1802, the prevention of French territorial expansion and the re-establishment of the balance of power on the Continent had formed the dominant themes of William Pitt’s foreign policy. Principally a naval power, Britain found herself unable to challenge French aggression unassisted. As in the wars against Louis XIV and the various struggles of the mid-eighteenth century, she sought to achieve her war aims through the construction of coalitions with the Great Powers of Europe, including subsidies to support their armies, the seizure of French overseas colonies, harassment of maritime trade and the dispatch of small expeditionary operations to the Continent and the West Indies. Britain also sent armies to the Low Countries in 1793–95, to Holland in 1799 and to Egypt in 1801. The Royal Navy, on the other hand, stood in much greater prominence than the army, fighting several fleet actions – the First of June (1794), Camperdown (1797), St Vincent (1797) and the Nile (1798) – while also engaging in numerous smaller operations in the Atlantic, the Channel, the North Sea and the Mediterranean.

William Pitt (the Younger), prime minister of Britain, 1783–1801 and 1804–06. He played a pivotal role in the construction of the Third Coalition, but died in January 1806 from the cumulative effects of overwork and heavy drinking, a process exacerbated by news of the Allies’ defeat at Austerlitz, which left him deeply disconsolate.

Yet such policies – military, naval, financial and diplomatic – consistently failed to cow the power of France, and as we have seen, the fate of the First and Second Coalitions proved a bitter testament to the fact. Poor Allied military co-ordination, mutual jealousies over the territorial spoils of war, ill-conceived strategy and the distractions caused by the partitions of Poland led to the defection of some powers and the defeat of others. At sea, Britain established undisputed command of the waves and conquered virtually the entire French colonial empire, yet proved unable to compensate for the continental advantages reaped by the revolutionary armies in the Low Countries, Germany, Switzerland and northern Italy. Still, France, wearied by wars spawned by revolution and fuelled by her own success, nevertheless desired peace, sending an overture of peace to King George III in March 1801. So long as Britain remained supreme at sea, Napoleon was unable to re-establish the French New World Empire. By virtue of distance, the recent acquisition of Louisiana from Spain could not be exploited, nor could France hope to recover San Domingue (Haiti) from the native rebels who had recently liberated it. With her overseas trade severely curtailed by British blockade and fleet action, France found she could no longer reap the benefits which war on the Continent had provided since 1792; finally, the death of Tsar Paul and his replacement by the more belligerent Alexander, as well as British successes in Egypt in 1801, signalled the end of any prospect of Franco-Russian co-operation against the last remaining members of the Second Coalition: Turkey and Britain.

In Britain, calls for peace were equally pressing. By 1801 the country found itself without continental allies as a result of the series of separate arrangements described earlier between France and Austria, Russia and Prussia, respectively, in the course of the Wars of the First and Second Coalitions. Various states, large and small, had, in fact, begun to turn against Britain’s maritime policies of blockade and the principles which underpinned the practice of searching and seizing neutral vessels. No longer would they tolerate Britain’s policy of exhorting the Continent to arms, accruing to herself the advantages of colonial acquisitions and overseas markets without the losses attendant upon direct operations against France. In short, while the continental powers stood to lose vast stretches of territory by confronting the republic on land, Britain remained relatively secure from attack. Moreover, little remained in terms of spoils for Britain, for few French colonies still resisted capture, while many of the most important ports of the Continent remained closed to British trade in any event; others that were still open to them, such as those of Portugal, stood on the verge of seizure by hostile Spain. Thus, with Britain mistress of the seas and France supreme on land, both sides regarded further recourse to arms as futile. Protracted negotiations ended the stalemate, and, by the terms of the Treaty of Amiens, concluded in March 1802, an uneasy peace settled over Europe after a decade of uninterrupted war.

The Breakdown of Anglo-French Accord

Just as the origins of the Second World War may be traced back to the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, the origins of the Napoleonic Wars – and specifically the campaign which concluded with the Battle of Austerlitz – may be found in the circumstances surrounding the breakdown of the peace of Amiens. This settlement ranks, like Versailles, among the most controversial ever reached by a British government, for many contemporaries believed Britain had come out considerably worse in the arrangements. This view is largely borne out by an examination of the treaty’s terms. The key elements stipulated that all French and Dutch overseas colonies, including the Cape Colony at the southern end of Africa, were to be restored by Britain, whose troops were to evacuate Egypt. France was to receive Elba, while Minorca and Malta were to be returned to Spain and the Knights of St John, respectively. France, for its part, agreed to evacuate the Kingdom of Naples and the Papal States.

Britain’s extensive cessions caused alarm and despondency among Pitt and his supporters, who had only recently left office; with seemingly daily evidence to confirm Napoleon’s aggressive tendencies, those sacrifices were being keenly felt. The surrender of strategic points around the globe prompted stinging criticism from Lord Grenville and William Windham, the former Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs and of War and the Colonies, respectively. To such men, the return of all French colonial possessions, along with the return of the Cape Colony and Malta – whose superb port of Valetta served as the Royal Navy’s vital strategic base in the central Mediterranean – constituted an act of weakness and humiliation. Nevertheless, the prevailing view in Britain held that the war-weary nation required the respite offered by peace. From the government’s perspective, disadvantageous as the terms might be, Britain stood in no position to demand extensive indemnities from France. In the end, however, Amiens offered Britain virtually no security – only a short-lived and costly truce.

The absence of Britain as a signatory to the Treaty of Lunéville, concluded between France and Austria in 1801, had far-reaching consequences, most notably the great potential offered to France for territorial acquisitions on the Continent without the legal interference of Britain. Napoleon was not required to evacuate his troops from Dutch territory or recognise the Batavian Republic’s independence; therefore Holland itself, as well as the Cape of Good Hope, a Dutch possession, lay subject to his influence. Nor did arrangements a year later, at Amiens, require French recognition of the sovereignty of the Helvetic (Swiss), Cisalpine (northern Italian) or Ligurian (Genoese) republics, whose independence Lunéville exclusively guaranteed. Consequently, with Austria cowed and exhausted by its defeat in numerous disastrous campaigns stretching back to 1792, the terms of Lunéville could be respected or violated at the First Consul’s will, and it is not surprising that contemporary opinion regarded France as the major beneficiary of Amiens. George III himself referred to the peace as ‘experimental’ – forced on Britain by the abandonment of her allies. It was not long before France reaped the advantages offered at Lunéville and Amiens, for rather than assuage Napoleon’s appetite for territorial aggrandisement, Amiens encouraged it; indeed, parallels with the policy of appeasement in the 1930s are not entirely out of place here.

The causes of the rupture of peace are both varied and complex. Britain’s mounting discontent with the situation after the signature of the treaty and, ultimately, the country’s desire for war rested on three factors: the economic isolation caused by the closure of continental ports to its exports; the encroachment of France on its weak neighbours; and the assembly of military and naval forces along the Channel coast, which Britain interpreted as preparations for invasion.