On December 1, 1805, Napoleon deliberately ceded the Pratzen Heights to lure the Allied army into a trap. The deception that preceded Austerlitz was as precise as the battle itself.
On the evening of December 1, 1805, Napoleon Bonaparte did something unusual for a general about to fight one of the most important battles of his career: he ordered his troops to pull back. The Pratzen Heights — a low plateau dominating the center of the Austerlitz battlefield — were abandoned to the Allied forces of Austria and Russia. It looked like weakness. It was the trap.
The Battle of Austerlitz on December 2 produced roughly 36,000 Allied casualties against approximately 9,000 French losses, from armies of roughly equal size. Military historians consistently rank it among the most tactically complete victories in European history. Understanding why requires understanding what happened the night before.
Napoleon's Grande Armee had been moving fast since August, pivoting from its invasion-of-England posture at Boulogne to execute a sweeping envelopment of Austrian forces at Ulm in October. By early December, the French held Vienna but faced a reorganized Allied army of approximately 85,000 Austro-Russian troops under Tsar Alexander I and Emperor Francis II of Austria. Napoleon had roughly 73,000 men available, though only about 67,000 would be engaged at Austerlitz.
The Allied plan, largely developed by Austrian Chief of Staff Franz von Weyrother, called for a massive flanking attack against Napoleon's right. The objective was to cut the French line of communication with Vienna and force a decisive engagement on Allied terms. The plan required the Allies to descend from the Pratzen Heights and march their heavy columns south — leaving the plateau temporarily unoccupied.
Napoleon had anticipated this. French reconnaissance, including observations from Marshal Soult and General Savary's intelligence mission to the Allied camp in late November, had identified the likely Allied scheme. Napoleon's response was to make the plan irresistible.
The French right flank — the sector the Allies planned to envelop — was deliberately thinned. Napoleon positioned only Marshal Legrand's division and a cavalry screen in the area, creating the appearance of a weak, overstretched line. He then ordered his center, under Marshal Soult's IV Corps, to conceal itself in the fog and terrain behind the Goldbach stream, below the Pratzen Heights.
"One sharp blow and the war is over," Napoleon reportedly told his marshals on the evening of December 1. The battle plan he laid out that night was recorded by his chief of staff, Marshal Berthier, and later published in the Correspondance de Napoleon.
The Allies took the bait. Weyrother's operational orders, distributed at 1:00 a.m. on December 2 and later captured by the French, show the Allied command fully committed to the flanking maneuver. By dawn, Allied columns were descending the Pratzen Heights en masse, moving south toward the French right — exactly as Napoleon had intended.
At approximately 9:00 a.m. on December 2, 1805, Napoleon turned to Soult and asked how long it would take his corps to reach the top of the Pratzen Heights. Soult, whose men had been waiting in the valley below, replied: "Less than twenty minutes, sire." Napoleon waited another fifteen minutes, allowing more Allied troops to descend into the valley below, then gave the order.
Soult's IV Corps — approximately 16,000 men — moved in two division columns through the morning fog and seized the Pratzen plateau in under 25 minutes. The Allied center, stripped of troops to reinforce the flanking attack, collapsed. Russian General Miloradovich's division attempted to hold but was overwhelmed. The Pratzen, once lost, split the Allied army in two.
The Allied left, now isolated in the valley below, found itself attacked from three sides: the French right, which had absorbed and held the flanking assault; Soult's corps descending from the plateau behind them; and Davout's III Corps arriving from the south after a forced march of over 100 kilometers in 48 hours.
Allied losses at Austerlitz are recorded in Austrian and Russian official histories at approximately 36,000 men killed, wounded, or captured, plus 180 cannon and 45 standards. French losses were approximately 9,000. The Allies lost around 20,000 prisoners alone. The Russian Imperial Guard cavalry charged the Pratzen in a desperate counterattack and was shattered by the French Guard infantry supported by artillery — one of the few occasions in the Napoleonic Wars when the Guard infantry fired in anger.
Napoleon's order of battle for Austerlitz comprised eight corps-level formations. Soult's IV Corps (divisions of Vandamme and Saint-Hilaire) executed the central attack. Bernadotte's I Corps protected the hinge between center and left. Lannes's V Corps held the French left against Bagration's Russian force, which was stopped cold. Murat's cavalry reserve screened and exploited throughout the day.
What made Austerlitz possible was not merely tactical brilliance on the day but the intelligence and deception operation that preceded it. Napoleon's use of General Savary as a diplomatic envoy to the Allied camp in late November was partly a reconnaissance mission. Savary observed Allied dispositions and disposition of troops, confirming the likelihood of the flanking maneuver.
The deliberate weakening of the French right, the concealment of Soult's corps, and the abandonment of the Pratzen Heights were calculated provocations designed to make the Allied plan appear viable. Napoleon was not reacting to Allied decisions on December 2 — he had structured the battlefield to make those decisions inevitable.
David Chandler, in his authoritative The Campaigns of Napoleon, identifies Austerlitz as the clearest example of Napoleon's practice of "strategy of the central position" combined with deliberate deception at the operational level. The battle is studied at military staff colleges not as an example of superiority in numbers or firepower, but as a model of how a commander can manipulate an opponent's decision-making before the first shot is fired.
The night before Austerlitz — the abandoned heights, the thinned flank, the hidden corps — was where the battle was actually won.
Macmillan, 1966
Cassell, 1996
Imprimerie Imperiale, 1863
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