Battle of Austerlitz

Date

2 December 1805

Category

Military & conflict

Region

Moravia (Austerlitz)

Era

Modern

Significance

On 2 December 1805, near Austerlitz in Moravia, Napoleon won what is often regarded as his greatest tactical victory. Outnumbered, his roughly 68,000-strong Grande Armée faced about 90,000 Russian and Austrian troops in what became known as the Battle of the Three Emperors.

Napoleon deliberately weakened his right flank and abandoned the commanding Pratzen Heights to lure the Allies into attacking, then unleashed a concealed central thrust that split their army and rolled it up. The crushing French triumph ended the War of the Third Coalition: the Treaty of Pressburg forced Austria to cede territory and exit the war, kept Prussia temporarily neutral, and confirmed French military dominance on the European continent for years to come. The defeat also accelerated the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, which Francis II would formally dissolve the following year. Austerlitz stands as a textbook example of the decisive battle of annihilation.

Empires active in 2 December 1805

• Russian Empire
  1721 CE to 1917 CE
• British Empire
  1583 CE to 1997 CE
• Qing Dynasty
  1636 CE to 1912 CE
• Spanish Empire
  1492 CE to 1976 CE
• Portuguese Empire
  1415 CE to 1999 CE
• Mughal Empire
  1526 CE to 1857 CE

Related military & conflict events

• Haiti declares independence after a successful slave revolution
  1 January 1804
• Napoleon's invasion of Russia
  June to December 1812
• Battle of Waterloo
  18 June 1815
• First Opium War and the Treaty of Nanking
  1839 to 1842 (Treaty of Nanking, 29 August 1842)
• The Taiping Rebellion
  1850 to 1864
• American Civil War and the abolition of slavery
  1861 to 1865 (Emancipation Proclamation 1 January 1863; 13th Amendment ratified 6 December 1865)

Also relevant

• The Peninsular War
  1808 to 1814

Essential reading

• The Great Irish Famine
  1845 to 1852
• Qing conquest of the Dzungars and the creation of Xinjiang
  1755 to 1759
• Emancipation of the serfs in Russia
  3 March 1861 (19 February O.S.)
• The Franco-Prussian War, German unification and the Paris Commune
  19 July 1870 to 10 May 1871; German Empire proclaimed 18 January 1871

Further reading

Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire

The wider story

Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire

Roger Crowley

Fast-paced narrative of Portugal's seaborne empire.

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