Dan Snow's History Hit - Battle of Austerlitz: Napoleon's Greatest Victory

Episode Date: December 10, 2021

2 December is a special date for those fascinated by Napoleon Bonaparte. Not only is this the date he crowned himself Emperor of France in 1804, but also the date of his greatest victory a year later, the Battle of Austerlitz. James Rogers from the Warfare podcast is joined by world-leading historian Andrew Roberts to dissect the conditions, tactics and aftermath of Napoleon's greatest battle. If you’re enjoying this podcast and looking for more fascinating Warfare content then subscribe to our Warfare Wednesday newsletter here. Passages read by Matt Lewis Music: Not My Taste (a) - Doug B Rossi, Tony Phillips Majesty (a) - Bradley Andrew Segal, Haim Mazar Force of Nature (a) - John Christopher Lucas Lemke.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. The Battle of Austerlitz was fought on the 2nd of December 1805, just a couple of months after the Battle of Trafalgar. One would be Britain's greatest naval victory of the early 19th century, the other was probably Napoleon's single greatest victory on land. The two of them, by carrying so close to each other, helped to set the scene for the rest of the Napoleonic Wars that would last for an almost uninterrupted ten years, right up to the final volley of the Battle of Waterloo. The Battle of Austerlitz probably shows Napoleon at the peak of his powers, his use of deception, his determination drive, his ability to be everywhere on the battlefield,

to provide on-hand leadership at the moment of crisis. It's a battle that very much supports his claim to one of the great military geniuses of all time. In this episode of Dan's Social History, we have got James Rogers. He's on our sibling podcast, Warfare. He talked to Andrew Roberts about the Battle of Astlitz. It performed so well on that feed, we thought we'd bring it over here and give an airing. Andrew Roberts has been on this podcast many times before. He is obviously one of Britain's best-selling historians, Churchill expert, just written his biography of George III, which we talked about on this podcast. And he's written about Napoleon in the past as well. Great to hear his opinion about Napoleon's greatest triumph. If you wish to watch a

documentary about the Battle of Astlitz, I've been there. Oh yes, I have. I've been there in the early days of history. We shot a documentary on the field in early December. It's freezing cold. We didn't have any food. We were staggering around that place like a disorientated Russian infantry unit on the Prattson Heights. But unlike them, we emerged victorious. So please go and check it out on History Hit TV. It's our digital history channel it's like netflix for history lots of documentaries on there all these podcasts without the ads you're gonna love it just go to historyhit.tv more people signing up all the time and i should mention everyone thank you very much from the limington museum we did raise the money thanks to you we raised the thousands of pounds required to keep that wonderful hoard of Iron Age coins in

Limington, where it was both hidden away 2,000 years ago, and where it was recently discovered by the metal detectorists, who very properly reported the coin hoard to the authority. So that will now remain forever protected, exhibited, curated at the local Limington Museum. I'm very proud of history. Thank you to all of you for for doing that and those of you who donated. Thank you very much indeed. But before you go and subscribe to History Hit TV, it's Andrew Roberts and James talking about our stylets. Hi, Andrew. Thank you so much for coming on the History Hit Warfare podcast. How are you doing today? Thanks very much indeed, James. That's very kind of you. I'm in the middle of a six-week tour of the United States and North America, plugging my biography of King George III at the moment, so it's great to have an opportunity to talk to you.

Ah, where are you talking to us from today on this tour of America? I'm in Mexico today. Next week will be California. The week after that, New York. I feel very sorry for you. That sounds like you're having a terrible time. Well, it's very sunny, I have to admit. As we're all sitting in Europe freezing, you'll be very pleased to know there is most definitely a cold snap that's turned. I've seen the first frost of the year this morning, so we all wish we were in Mexico. Well, it's a good thing that we're talking about Austerlitz, actually, because the weather was quite important as far as that was concerned. It was a very cold night before Austerlitz, and I'm sure we'll get on to the weather later on. I did have a question about the weather,

actually, because of course we are approaching this anniversary of the Battle of Austerlitz, which took place on December 2nd, 1805. Would you say that this is one of Napoleon's greatest victories? It was the greatest victory of Napoleon's in an entire career that spanned some 60 battles. I think it's generally recognised by most historians to have been the absolute Naples ultra of battles for him. The Battle of Austerlitz is the most splendid of all I have fought. I have fought 30 battles of the same sort, but none in which the victory was so decisive and so little in doubt. The infantry of the guard was not sent into action. The men were weeping with rage. Tonight I am lying in a bed in the beautiful

castle of Count Cornitz and I have changed my shirt which I hadn't done for a week past. I shall get two or three hours sleep. The Emperor of Germany sent Prince Lichtenstein to me this morning to ask for an interview. We may possibly get peace before long. Well, set this up historically for us. How did Napoleon get to this point politically, where he was outnumbered and about to engage his 68,000 troops or so against almost 90,000 Russians and Austrians? Politically, how did he get to this point? Well, he'd been crowned emperor exactly a year before, on the 2nd of December 1804. And the British government, under William Pitt the Younger, financed a massive third coalition against him, which was going to be paid for by Britain. But the lion's share of the armies were going to be provided by Austria and Russia.

And by the August of 1805, it became clear that he had to do something about this. His ally, Bavaria, had been invaded that August, on the 13th of August. So he had to respond. He had all his army, majority of the Grande Armée, in and around Boulogne and on the Channel Coast, up and down the Channel Coast, threatening an invasion of Britain. So he had to act incredibly quickly and turn them all round and get them marching 600 miles to the Danube to take on the Austrian and Russian army that were invading Bavaria. Okay, so this is a pretty key pivotal moment. He's got a long march on the go and he's got to meet, well, it's also called the Battle of the Three Emperors, isn't it?

Because we know that Napoleon is one of these, but he's got to go and meet the other two. Napoleon, of course, this pivoting, splitting, tactical whiz with a military background at least. But who are the other two that he's facing? Well, he's got Tsar Alexander I of Russia, and he's also got the Emperor Kaiser, as it's known, Francis of Austria. So these three emperors do turn up on the battlefield. But even before the battle, in fact, long before the battle, Napoleon has pulled off an extraordinary coup in managing through the use of the core system to get his army 600 miles to the Danube anyway, along all the roads that he mapped out, according to dates that he set out right at the beginning of the campaign, on the news that

Bavaria had been invaded, in fact. And it was one of the most extraordinary campaigns as far as he was concerned, because of this incredibly good staff work by him, but also by his chief of staff, Alexandre Berthier. And this core system is an extraordinary system, which entirely revolutionises warfare. In fact, his greatest contribution to the history of warfare was his use of the core system, which continues really. First of all, it was adopted by all the other armies in Europe by 1812, and then it stays in existence until 1945. And what it consists of, essentially, is to split his army up into mini-armies, a series of corps which had their own artillery, cavalry and infantry, but also their own staff work, their own intelligence, their own victualling departments, their own medical departments, and so on. And so they could act as mini-armies. And as mini-armies, they could

engage the enemy. They were all within one day's march of one another. So one could engage the enemy as the others started to envelop the enemy. And this is what happened at the beginning of the Austerlitz campaign at the Bavarian city of Ulm, which had been captured by the Austrians. And the General Mack, who was in charge of the Austrians in Ulm, was forced to surrender with some 30,000 of his men, because he'd been completely surrounded. And the question is, of course, why weren't the Russians closer? Was it just bad staff work? Or, as some historians have suggested, was it the 11-day gap between the Julian and the Gregorian calendars, which meant that the Russians actually were 11 days behind where they should be? It's an intriguing question. So was it Napoleon's speed, the speed of his cause,

which meant that he was able to catch the enemy perhaps a little bit quicker than they thought they'd be caught? An awful lot quicker, yes. And he had 170,000 troops at this stage bearing down on Ulm. And of course, some of his greatest commanders were the core commanders, people like Bernadotte and Marmont, Meurat, Ney, Davout, Lannes. These were the Marshal Soult. These were the Marshals who had only just been made Marshals only a few months earlier. And they were keen to prove themselves. And across a 200-mile battlefront, they attacked and really routed the initial Austrian force at Ulm. It is an incredible victory, but take us down into the strategic and tactical nitty-gritty.

This is the History Hit Warfare podcast. These are things that we want to know about. We want to know about terrain, tactics, territory, and how this leads through to victory. So I don't know, where should we start? Should we start with the weather? Because you mentioned it from the very top. How does the weather start to affect preparations for this battle and how the battle plays out? Well, the weather is cold. There are two lakes in front of the Emperor's headquarters, the lakes. There are two lakes in front of the emperor's headquarters, by emperor I mean Napoleon's headquarters, on the Zoltan, which is his sort of raised hillock that he is watching the battle from. And there are a couple of places where there are some important skirmishes going on, but otherwise, which he can't see, but otherwise he can see pretty much everything, insofar as anyone can see anything, because it was a very misty day.

And the sun of Austerlitz, as it's famously referred to, is a key factor, because the sun comes up at about nine o'clock in the morning and burns off all of the mist. And it's this mist that has prevented the Austrians and Russians from spotting where Napoleon has placed his troops. And he's placed them in a way, especially under Marshal Soult, where they can capture this high ground, a plateau called the Pratzen Heights, which are pretty much in the middle of the battlefield. And he's very good, Napoleon, in the course of this campaign at tricking the enemy. He uses various ruses to try to make the enemy not appreciate where he is, but also to overestimate themselves and to consider that Napoleon is weak and pulling back.

Whereas in fact, that's exactly what he wanted to do. He wanted to try to encourage them to take as many troops off the Prats and Heights as possible, thereby weakening the centre. And there are lots of Napoleonic battlefields where he tries enveloping movements, he tries to attack on the right or the left flank. But in Austerlitz, it's a central thrust through the centre at Pratzen, which establishes his victory. It's interesting because the soldiers said up until the Battle of Austerlitz, and of course, after Ulm had fallen, they'd taken Vienna and then they'd marched off into Bohemia.

And they said that the emperor no longer needs our bayonets, he just needs our legs, because it was all a war of manoeuvre until the moment of Austerlitz. But on the 2nd of December 1805, he definitely needed their bayonets. So Napoleon manages to move his troops up the plateau at Pratzen, or does he manage to lull some of them weakness. And on his right flank, he's fighting various skirmishes in villages that go backwards and forwards during the day and stay. And so nothing's really going on on his right flank. And then comes the moment when the mists burnt off and suddenly some 16,000 of Salt's division come punching through the centre.

Now, as you mentioned, you're right. The numbers are in the favour of the Austrians and Russians. They've got about 69,500 infantry, about 16,000 cavalry and 237 guns. Whereas Napoleon only has 50,000 infantry and roughly the same amount of cavalry, 15,000. He's got a few more guns, 282, but he uses them extremely well, as I'm sure we'll come on to later on in the talk. Listen to Dan Snow's history here. James is talking to Andrew Roberts about Austerlitz. More coming up. I'm Matt Lewis.

And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and Popes. Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends.

Murder. Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Wherever you get your podcasts. How long does this battle last in total, first of all? It's the whole day. There's the original fighting shortly after dawn on the right flank, but then it's not, as I say, until about 10 o'clock in the morning,

right flank but then it's not as i say until about 10 o'clock in the morning so after the mist has cleared that salt attacks in the um in the center and then it goes on it's actually not one of the longest of the um no i was gonna say yeah it's it's also it's only fought across about a seven mile wide front but the point is that of, days are very short in December. So you have the sun coming up all right, but it also goes down very early. And the other major point is that the success of the French in the centre means that the Russian and Austrians are broken and they quit the field. When they turn around and flee, they have to do, quite a few of them at least, have to do so across the frozen lakes. And Napoleon ordered his artillery batteries to fire at the ice of the lakes. And according to some accounts, you know, entire squadrons of cavalry

and cannon, horse artillery and so on, goes crashing through the ice to destruction. When the lakes were recently, I say recently, over 10 years ago now, but nonetheless, recently in historical terms, they were dredged. Actually, they found relatively little, relatively few bits of the sort of paraphernalia that you'd expect if it had been a major aspect of the battle. But it was true that he did fire and smash the ice as they were retreating. Well done, soldiers. In the Battle of Austerlitz, you have accomplished all I expected of your valour. You have crowned your eagles with immortal glory. An army of 100,000 men, commanded by the emperors of Russia and of

Austria, has been dispersed or captured in less than four hours. What escaped your arms was drowned in the lakes. Forty flags, the standards of the Russian Imperial Guard, 120 guns, 20 generals and more than 30,000 prisoners are the result of this eternally glorious battle. What probably caused a lot more pain for the Austrians was the fact that although they had metal cuirasses at the front of their cavalrymen's protection, they didn't have any on the back. And so if you're chased by a lancer,

you're in extreme danger by not having a back cuirass in the way that the French had both front and back cuirasses. It's hard to prepare for retreat, isn't it? Yes, nobody likes to do that. And yet, actually, retreat is, again and again, so important because that's how you counterattack. I remember my don at Cambridge, in my first tutorial there, said, Professor Norman Stone, I'd said something in history that had happened was inevitable. And he said, there's nothing inevitable in history, never use the word inevitable in history, except for German counterattack. And that's so totally true, true of the First World War, true of the Second World War. And you can only counterattack

if you have retreated. So the retreat is, and this is an essential part of warfare. I'm writing a book, I'm just publicizing a book that I've written about the King George III. And the retreat of Washington in the initial stages, his Fabian strategy of retreating and only fighting battles when he was absolutely certain, he thought he was certain of winning them, was the obvious sensible thing to do in the opening stages of a revolutionary war with an untrained Continental Army. So yes, you've got to be able to retreat properly. And Napoleon knew that as well. He was involved in several retreats before the famous retreat from Moscow. Something that I believe Alan Brook planned and trained for as well was retreat. Yes, I know. It's almost as important a part of the military repertoire

as advance. If it's done properly, it can be a devastating manoeuvre. And also, you see a lot of what are essentially retreats by closing up lines and pockets and salients in both the First World War and the Second World War. They look like retreats, but in fact, they're strengthening the line by making it more straight. So I could talk about retreats all day. We could do a whole other podcast about the importance of retreat. But we've got to the point where Marshal Nicholas Salt has taken 20,000 infantry up the slopes. We've got a point where the battle is perhaps, you could say, largely won. And then you're talking about the artillery, the artillery that's used to smash up the ice and to take the ground beneath, well, I suppose it's water, frozen water, from beneath

the troops. Now, is that the only way in which the artillery is used to ensure victory here? No, no, it breaks up the major lines of Austrian and Russian attackers. I mean, he was a gunner. He understood artillery probably better than any of the other two arms of his army. And he knew when to use canister and grape shot and when to use shot and where to position the guns. He was particularly good at making sure that they had arcs of fire where they could be at their most devastating. You also, of course, one of the things that he used to do in most of his battles, and often, again, to devastating effect, was to hold back the Imperial Guard. and often, again, to devastating effect, was to hold back the Imperial Guard. His crack troops, the Imperial Guard, were held back at Austerlitz until such time as he could see where there was a moment of breakthrough. Then he would pour them in, which he did in Austerlitz,

to enormous effect. Partly this was morale, because they had never been defeated and they knew that, but so did their opponents. And partly this was just their extreme usefulness and their capacity. They were nicknamed the immortals, which they liked because it sounded as though they would never die. But also some other elements in the army called them the immortals because he used them so rarely. elements in the army called them the Immortals because he used them so rarely and instead put the regular soldiers in the front line. So there was a kind of slight ambiguity about that nickname. Easy to be immortal when you rarely engage in battle, isn't it? That was certainly the joke that was made against them, yes. So we can say that this is a resounding victory for Napoleon, but not one

without great casualties. How does Napoleon react to the wounded? Very distressed all the way through his career that he feels this. He goes out of his way to make sure that Baron Larry and the medical teams get everything they need. He knows how important good treatment of the wounded or as good treatment as possible in the context of early 19th century warfare, how good that is, and how important that is for the morale of the troops. I've never subscribed to this theory that he was just a monster who didn't care about his troops. He did. But the trouble is that with the exigencies of basically the horrors of Napoleonic warfare with regard to the edged weaponry and the lead musket balls, and what a great shot could actually do to people, compared to the really very still basic

medical abilities that the doctors had and practices that they used and drugs that they were able to use, basically it was brandy, meant that if you were wounded in the French Revolutionary or Napoleonic Wars, it was extremely bad news for you, especially if gangrene got in, which it did, you know, even up to the marshalate. And there are plenty of Marshals who died of that. And how do we know this about Napoleon? How do we know about his feelings at this time? Are these things he's writing back in his letters to the Empress? Where do we get this information from? Yeah, he's constantly writing to the Empress, but then there are also enormous numbers of people who are around him, who are with him, who see him cry at the death of Bersier, for example, who noticed the way that he goes out of his way to make sure that the

drummer boys are warm and sitting by the campfire, who make sure that the sentries are given their glasses of wine before the marshals get them and so on. You know, it's basic leadership stuff. And he was very good at all of that. You know, the sort of just the sheer leadership lessons that he personified were ones that military leaders have followed ever since, really. I mean, he was, one of the battles before Ulm, they needed to capture some heights in order to take Ulm. And he took off his own cloak to a wounded soldier and put it over him and said, if you bring me back this cloak after the battle, I will recognize you and I will give you the legendre and a pension because you deserve it so much. Because he'd actually seen him fight in the battle. And that's the kind of leadership that really does electrify,

not just obviously the man who's fighting, but everybody else around who sort of knows that the emperor is sort of watching them. And that kind of leadership is sort of money-can't-buy type of leadership. Memoirs of the Duke de Revigo. The emperor came back in the evening along the whole line where the different regiments of the army had fought. It was already dark. He had recommended silence to all who accompanied him, that he might hear the cries of the wounded. He immediately went to the spot where they were, alighted himself, and ordered a glass of brandy to be given them from the canteen which always

followed him. I was with him the whole of that night, during which he remained very late on the field of battle. The squadron of his escort passed the whole night upon it in taking the cloaks from the Russian dead for the purpose of covering the wounded with them. He himself ordered a large fire to be kindled near each of them, sent about for a muster-master, and did not retire till he had arrived, and, having left him a picket of his own escort, he enjoined him not to quit these wounded till they were all in the hospital. These brave men loaded him with blessings,

which found the way to his heart much better than all the flatteries of courtiers. It was thus that he won the affection of his soldiers, who knew that when they suffered, it was not his fault, and therefore they never spared themselves in his service. So tell us, how does Austerlitz end in terms of political ramifications? What does this mean for Napoleon and his conquest? And how does Francis I of Austria try to bring this to an end politically? Well, he comes immediately after the defeat, either the day after or two days after, I forget, to make peace. And it's a swinging peace on Austria. It costs Austria land. Once the Austrians are clearly making peace, then the Russians can't

continue on. The Prussians didn't get involved until it was too late. And so they were the next for the chop the next year in the Jena campaign in 1806. But no, it was a moment that the crushing of the Third Coalition was, in many ways, Napoleon's finest hour. has the story of the Third Coalition and some fantastic base relief marble figures that show the great moments in the campaign. And so it's sort of there forevermore to be glorified in the Napoleonic story. But he doesn't learn the lesson of the campaign, which is obviously how important it is to make peace afterwards. And there are, by 1813, he tries but fails to make peace because the Austrians and others, but particularly the Austrians under Metternich, have worked out that the only way to defeat him ultimately is to wear him down and refuse peace. Well, Andrew, thank you so much for taking the

time to discuss Napoleon's greatest victory. Tell us, where can people read more about this battle about Napoleon? Well, it's chapter 16 of my biography, Napoleon the Great, which is, of course, the first place that I would encourage anybody to read about it. It's quite an exciting chapter. Knowing that I was coming on this show, I reread it recently. And I must say, it's a real page turner, even if I say so myself. If you want a much more detailed blow by blow account, then you can always go to David Chandler. it's called the campaigns of Napoleon and it's a fabulous book if you want something a bit more bite-sized then there are any number of books about about Napoleon and indeed about Austerlitz wonderful Andrew thank you so much for coming on the podcast enjoy Mexico and we look forward to welcoming you on again soon thank you very much indeed James I've much enjoyed it if you're

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