Austerlitz: Napoleon and the Eagles of Europe (42 page)

Kaiser and tsar met at Czeitsch at about noon on 3 December. Alexander told Francis, ‘Act according to your own interests’, for he intended to continue his retreat across the March to Hollitsch. Disappointed, Francis later wrote that this decision ‘deprived us of very necessary support at the moment when we had to treat for peace’.
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The Russians arrived at Göding during the day and Kutuzov gave the order for the disordered companies, regiments and columns to be reformed. He also intended crossing the river but Weyrother rode up, and in the name of the tsar, ordered the army to remain and bivouac on the north bank with the river at their backs. Langeron commented bitterly that the order ‘convinced many among us that he wanted to complete his work and deliver us to the French’.
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At about 2.00pm French troops approached Bagration’s rearguard on the main road at Urchitz and skirmished for a couple of hours before he and Kienmayer fell back after dark over the Spáleny stream. Following his previous night spent in the humble surroundings of the Posoritz post house, Napoleon spent this night in the luxurious splendour of the Kaunitz Castle in Austerlitz. Here, surrounded by numerous captured enemy banners and standards, the trophies of war, he basked in the glory of the crushing defeat he had imposed on the armies of Austria and Russia. Never had Napoleon achieved such a crushing victory and so dominated a battlefield, but the errors committed by the Allies contributed much to the enormity of his triumph. He was able to
muse, ‘I fought thirty battles such as this one; but never one where victory was so pronounced and destiny so finely balanced.’

The next morning, 4 December, a suspension of arms took place, and at a little after 2.00pm, Napoleon and Francis, with Liechtenstein in attendance, met by a mill less than a mile north of Nasedlowitz, where the road crossed the Spáleny stream. The meeting lasted some two hours and by the end of it an armistice was agreed, coming into effect the following day, with the articles being finally signed on 6 December.

Napoleon returned to Austerlitz and Francis to Czeitsch, while two officers, Général de division Savary and Generalmajor Stutterheim, rode to Hollitsch to seek Alexander’s acceptance of the terms. If he agreed, they were to ride on and locate Merveldt and Davout and inform them that hostilities were over. But there was still time for one more panic in the Allied camp.

During the afternoon, while talks progressed, Gudin’s division and light cavalry from Davout’s main body approached Göding. News of this French advance on the town brought orders for an immediate withdrawal. Langeron saw:

‘The adjutants of the emperor and Kutuzov galloping by shouting: “Retire! Pass by the town and the bridge this instant!” etc. Everyone precipitated towards the gate, which was soon overburdened, fortunately we did not have wagons and we were no longer encumbered with our guns and caissons.’
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It was a tense moment but the Allies had one final card to play in the game of bluff that started back at the Tabor bridge. Merveldt sent a message to the advancing French troops, falsely claiming that a general armistice was already in place. When the news reached Davout he remained suspicious but Merveldt backed it up with a confirming note from the tsar. In these circumstances Davout ordered his men to stop and the relieved Russians continued to pass unmolested across the March river to Hollitsch.

Savary and Stutterheim reached Hollitsch at about midnight and gained an immediate audience with the tsar. They informed him of the terms of the armistice and he readily accepted: the Russian army would leave the Austrian states in the shortest possible time and return to Russia. The two envoys then rode off into the night to search out Merveldt and Davout, who they located in the early hours of 5 December: thus the last two belligerent forces in the field put down their weapons. The war was over, now it was a question of settling the peace.

Napoleon returned to Brünn on 7 December and by 12 December was back at the Schönbrunn Palace outside Vienna. The following day he met with Prussia’s foreign minister, Haugwitz, whom he had dismissed from Brünn eight days earlier. Haugwitz had arrived to deliver Prussia’s ultimatum, but
now, due to the dramatically changed circumstances, he instead offered Napoleon his king’s congratulations on the great victory.

Fully aware of the nature of Haugwitz’s mission, Napoleon replied by suggesting that his master would not be speaking of friendship if the result of the battle had brought a different decision. Then Napoleon further discomforted Haugwitz by severely rebuking him for the Treaty of Potsdam between Prussia and Russia. Having knocked the Prussian minister off balance he drew him back by dangling the much-coveted territory of Hanover before him in exchange for the minor Prussian controlled lands of Ansbach, Cleves and Neufchâtel. With Haugwitz dazzled by the offer, Napoleon continued to pressurise him, adding that all existing Prussian treaties should be abandoned for one between Prussia and France: Prussia was to enact any economic sanctions against Britain that France decreed and Prussia’s other foreign minister, Hardenberg, be dismissed from office. Increasing the pressure, Napoleon required Haugwitz to sign the agreement within a few hours, and on 15 December he acquiesced. The minister had arrived to deliver an ultimatum and departed having traded Prussia’s honour. Later Prussian attempts to moderate the terms failed and when Haugwitz attended Napoleon in Paris in February 1806 to ratify the treaty, the emperor humiliated him again, adding further clauses that confirmed France’s dominance.

With the tsar and his army marching back to Russia, and Prussia emasculated by the Treaty of Schönbrunn, Napoleon turned his attention to Austria. Talleyrand, Napoleon’s able foreign minister and now Grand Chamberlain, had long since urged a policy of moderation towards Austria. He saw Austria as an opponent to Russian expansion when the presumed break-up of the Ottoman Empire occurred. By punishing Austria with the confiscation of Italian and German territory but sweetening the loss with Ottoman lands in the east, he hoped to embroil Austria and Russia even more, freeing France to turn once more to face her implacable enemy, Britain. Again, three days after Austerlitz, Talleyrand urged the emperor not to break up the Austrian monarchy, claiming, ‘it is indispensable to the future safety of the civilized world.’ But Napoleon had his own ideas of suitable punishment for Austria: he knew the Habsburg Empire was at his mercy and he intended to exploit it to the full.

On 23 December Talleyrand arrived at Pressburg to dictate Napoleon’s terms of peace: it was not a discussion. The Austrian negotiators only extracted one concession, the reduction of a financial indemnity from 100 million francs down to 40 million (£2 million in 1805). Napoleon eliminated Austrian influence in Italy by claiming the lands of Venetia, Dalmatia and Istria, all bordering the Adriatic and appending them to the fledgling Kingdom of Italy, forcing Austria to acknowledge him as king. In Germany, Tirol and Vorarlberg were handed to Bavaria as a reward for her loyalty, while Baden and Württemberg were aggrandized by the addition of Habsburg lands in Swabia.
In all, the Habsburg Empire lost 2.5 million subjects. The electors of Bavaria and Württemberg became kings and the margrave of Baden a grand duke, with their sovereignty guaranteed by Napoleon. It marked the first steps in the formation of the Confederation of the Rhine, Napoleon’s replacement for the ancient and decrepit Holy Roman Empire.

In return for this exclusion from Italy and severe limiting of her authority in Germany, Napoleon granted Austria the sop of Salzburg. The Austrian diplomats made a desperate plea for the retention of Tirol and Dalmatia without success and on 26 December they reluctantly signed the Treaty of Pressburg. For Napoleon it appeared a brilliant diplomatic triumph, but in Austria it bred a feeling of humiliation, then resentment, and eventually a determination for revenge.

La Grande Armée marched through Vienna at the beginning of its homeward journey, the first departures taking place on 9 January 1806 and the last units leaving twenty days later. Meanwhile, Maréchal Massena, having pursued Archduke Charles across northern Italy, headed south to conquer Naples. But despite the promises of Napoleon’s bulletins and proclamations, the majority of the army did not return home. Due to the tense situation with Prussia, most of the army went into cantonments throughout southern Germany, in a great belt from the rivers Rhine and Main to the Danube.

There remained much ill-feeling amongst Napoleon’s senior commanders and one, Maréchal Lannes, taking umbrage at his minor mention in the report of the battle, published in the Bulletin de la Grande Armée, decamped forthwith from Austerlitz and returned to France. Many of the others continued to bicker and spit at each other as Napoleon, with an eye to the diplomatic and political benefits to himself, later awarded the honours of victory. Murat, who had married Napoleon’s sister Caroline in 1800, became grand duke of Berg and Cleves, while Berthier was awarded the principality of Neufchâtel, both territories appropriated from Prussia. Although Napoleon had cause to reprimand Murat twice during the campaign, he remembered his important scouting mission to Bavaria back in September and the capture of the Tabor bridge. However, it was the naming of Bernadotte as prince of Ponte-Corvo, a rich Papal enclave on Neapolitan soil, which raised the hackles of most of the rival marshals. Although clearly undistinguished in the campaign, Napoleon used the award politically to settle Bernadotte – who continued to show evidence of his republican origins – firmly in the imperialist camp.

The performance of Soult’s IV Corps during the battle was remarkable. While Vandamme’s division captured the northern end of the Pratzen Plateau and then, turning south, took Augezd and cut off the Allied escape route, Legrand’s heavily outnumbered division maintained a desperate defence of the line of the Goldbach, supported by part of Friant’s division of III Corps. But
perhaps the performance of Saint-Hilaire’s division is the most extraordinary. Having started the battle on the Goldbach facing east, they ended the battle back on the same stream facing west, having stormed the plateau, driven off the defenders of Pratze, captured the Pratzeberg and descended from the plateau to take Sokolnitz.

Yet of the whole army, it was a formation of IV Corps, 4ème Ligne that attracted Napoleon’s displeasure. At a review in Vienna he harangued them for losing the eagle standard of their first battalion, despite the fact they had captured two Russian standards. He eventually replaced the eagle in Berlin in 1806.

Prussia, having failed to commit to the war in 1805, where she could perhaps have played a pivotal role alongside the armies of Austria and Russia, now found herself browbeaten into a humiliating treaty with France. But when Napoleon then offered Prussia’s reward of Hanover back to Britain without any notice, Prussia finally balked. Despite forming an alliance with Russia, Prussia took to the battlefield against France alone in October 1806, resulting in a crushing defeat for her army at the twin battles of Jena and Auerstädt.

The Russian army began its long march home through northern Hungary and Galicia on 8 December. As well as receiving supplies from the Austrian authorities, the Hungarian population welcomed the defeated army and readily offered up what food they could spare. But this abundance soon dried up once the army crossed back onto Russian soil, when the rigours of the campaign and weather took hold, bringing disease to the army. Langeron recalled that a quarter of the army was struck down with what he called ‘hospital fever’: ‘there was no hospital, nor hospital equipment prepared. The patients were piled up in certain houses and many became victims of the lack of care, medicine and even of food.’

Thus the curtain closed, bringing a wretched end to a miserable campaign for Russia’s army. However, the inquests continued for some time. Despite blaming the Austrians for all that had gone wrong – for there was now no love lost between the two allies – there seemed a need to punish individuals. Many held Kutuzov to blame for not pressing his views determinedly enough on the tsar, but he vehemently denied any responsibility for the defeat for years to come.

Kutuzov remained out of the military front line for the next few years, with various governors’ appointments, before returning to active command against the Turks in 1811. In 1812 Kutuzov was appointed commander-in-chief of all Russian forces and by his strategy of retreating before the French, as he had advocated in 1805, he wore down the French and eventually forced them out of Russia.

Both Buxhöwden and Miloradovich had the ear of Kutuzov and the tsar, convincing them of their loyal service, while Buxhöwden managed to heap the blame for his own failings at Austerlitz on the foreign officers under his
command: Przhebishevsky (Polish) and Langeron (French). Langeron, invited to resign and sent to Odessa, served in the Army of Moldavia for five years before his rehabilitation in 1812. Two years later he marched into Paris at the head of his corps. Przhebishevsky, on his return to Russia, after being held prisoner by the French, faced a court martial on the erroneous grounds that he surrendered at the beginning of the battle. Although cleared of this charge, his case passed to the Council of State, which, looking for a scapegoat, found him guilty of numerous other charges including not securing his line of retreat, failing to maintain communication with the other columns and also failing to supply his troops with sufficient cartridges. Sentencing saw him demoted, reduced to the rank of a private for one month, and ordered to resign from his command. Langeron reports that Przhebishevsky was finally reinstated as lieutenant-general some ten years later.
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The two battalions of the Novgorod Musketeer Regiment that fled past Kutuzov and Alexander early in the battle did not escape punishment. As a mark of humiliation the officers wore their swords without sword knots while the lower ranks lost their swords completely and had five years added to their twenty-five-year term of service.