in front. His inspiration lay not only in choosing a suitable field, but in anticipating what his enemy would do. He expected the Russians and Austrians to try to outflank him by occupying the Pratzen as a base from which to turn the French line by attacking the right wing from the rear. To do this, the Russian army would be stretched out along the few miles of the plateau, itself exposed to a possible counter-thrust, which the French would mount from the plain, cutting the enemy army in two and destroying it. This is exactly what the Russian generals Mikhail Kutuzov and Franz von Weyrother decided to do, though Kutuzov was aware of the risks involved. Expecting the Coalition armies to outnumber Napoleon by perhaps two to one, the object was to keep the French front line occupied by a limited threat, while the rest of the army crept along the plateau and behind the enemy. It was not a poor plan, though it depended on Napoleon not realizing the danger until too late. In fact, Napoleon planned the battle to take exactly this form; holding the front line, keeping a weaker but sufficient force on the right wing, at the end of the plateau, and sending the bulk of his army up the slopes of the plateau to shatter the enemy from the flank.
© Georgious Kollidas/Shutterstock
This engraving of Napoleon Bonaparte by the English engraver D J Pound was published in London in 1860. It shows the French emperor in sombre mood with hand characteristically tucked into his waistcoat.
No battle goes exactly to plan, but in this case Napoleon understood his enemy so well that had he had spies at the Coalition headquarters, set up at the small town of Austerlitz, they could hardly have informed him better. During the night of 1 December, some 56,000 Coalition infantry and a large body of cannon made as secret an advance as they could across the Pratzen plateau. Their objective was to be in position the following morning to attack the French right through the villages of Telnitz and Sokolnitz, then cross onto the Turas Plain where the main French force could be rolled up from behind. The plan went wrong from the start. The cavalry under Prince Lichtenstein had misunderstood its orders and was at the front of the columns moving across the plateau instead of behind it on the cavalry plain. The effort to reverse the movement of men and horses slowed up the advance and meant that early the following morning there were fewer Russians to storm the French right than intended. Somehow, the French and Italians of Davout’s right wing, still waiting for reinforcements on the march to the battle, held up a force five times their size. This was the most risky element of Napoleon’s plan, for if the front here cracked quickly, the enemy might indeed take his forces from the rear. The French defenders and the Russian attackers took heavy casualties and the villages changed hands many times, but the line did not break.
Napoleon’s main army was poised to attack the plateau. Heavy mists meant that the move into position was invisible to the Coalition columns, while the higher plateau was bathed in sunshine, making the enemy entirely visible to the French below. Around 29,000 French troops commanded by Marshal Jean-de-Dieu Soult suddenly appeared out of the mist, to the consternation of the enemy. The delay caused by the movement of Coalition cavalry meant that more Russians were on the plateau than expected and there were fierce contests to control the heights. But Kutuzov, already wounded, could see what was happening and tried to rescue an imminent disaster. The Russian Imperial Guard, held in reserve near Austerlitz, were sent to drive the French back, but despite savage hand-to-hand fighting, some of it close to where Napoleon, now on the plateau, was directing the battle, the Guard was decimated. At the front line, French cavalry and infantry held back and then repulsed the smaller Russian cavalry forces under Prince Pyotr Bagration, who, seeing the disaster unfolding, retreated in good order. For the 35,000 Russians crammed into the far end of the plateau and still unable to penetrate the French right wing, there was little hope. The battle was effectively won by mid-day, but the fighting on the ridge and in the villages continued; Kutuzov’s order to retreat took four hours to reach the drunken commander, General Frederick Buxhouden, who by mid-morning was too intoxicated to understand anything. The Russians began retreating while bombarded by French cannon and attacked from the rear. Thousands tried to cross the frozen Satschen Lake, hauling cannon across, until the ice broke. Several hundred drowned, the guns were lost and thousands more dragged themselves, frozen and exhausted, onto the muddy banks, to be slaughtered or captured by the French.
This was a classic victory and Napoleon savoured the moment. Tsar Alexander burst into tears when the disaster was over. The Coalition remnants retreated, but the French army was too exhausted by the contest to pursue them. The Coalition losses have been estimated at 27,000 dead, wounded and captured, though precise Russian figures are lacking; French losses were 1,305 dead, 6,940 wounded and 573 prisoners. This was Napoleon’s finest battle, a testament to his strategic intuition and charismatic example.
| No. 13 | BATTLE OF MAIPÚ 5 April 1818 |
‘This battle,’ announced General José de San Martín to his troops shortly before the fight at Maipú, ‘is going to decide the fate of all America.’ This was a grandiose claim for a battle involving no more than a few thousand men in the remote Latin American territory of Chile, but San Martín – ‘the Liberator’ – was about to defeat the last attempt by the Spanish Empire to retain its grip on the country. Defeat would mean the re-imposition of Spanish rule; victory would send a message to Madrid that Latin America was going to free itself entirely from European rule, just as the United States had done some forty years earlier.
The outcome of the battle rested almost entirely on the organizational and strategic qualities of the commander of the army of liberation (known formally as the Army of the Andes), which San Martín had brought to Chile more than two years before with 5,000 soldiers and horsemen and 9,000 pack animals. He was an unusual liberator. Born to a Spanish family in a remote part of what is now Argentina, San Martín was sent back to Spain where he became a colonel of cavalry in the Spanish army, fighting in north Africa and then against Napoleon in the Peninsular War. He was strongly influenced by enlightenment ideas, but remained a political conservative in favour of monarchy. The crisis caused by Napoleon’s invasion and the overthrow of the Spanish crown encouraged San Martín to return to the country of his birth in 1812, two years after a revolt in Buenos Aires against rule from Spain. He formed a lasting commitment to the cause of political independence for the states and provinces of South America. San Martín joined the fledgling Argentine army as a colonel of grenadiers and spent the next two years imposing on a ramshackle military organization the principles of discipline, loyalty and sound training. He was a commanding personality: upright, honest, efficient and committed entirely to his conception of a ‘Continental Plan’ to free all America from colonial oppression.
San Martín’s tough stance on military reform and his growing reputation provoked plots and jealous rivalries. Yet nothing stopped his plan to create a new Army of the Andes in Mendoza, capital of Cuyo province, within striking distance across the mountain chain from the Spanish colony of Chile, struggling for its independence under General Bernardo O’Higgins, son of an Irish-Spanish official. In February 1817, San Martín brought his army of men, better trained and equipped than any rival force, across the high passes of the Andes, along narrow defiles and in bitter cold. Arriving on the other side, his army immediately inflicted a heavy defeat on the Spanish Chilean army at Chacabuco, killing 600 for the loss of only 12 men.
The Spanish retreated south, while San Martín entered the capital, Santiago, and established Chilean rule. The Spanish forces in the far south were neglected. Reinforcements arrived by sea under General Manuel Osorio and in spring 1818, 4,600 troops moved north to try to restore Spanish rule. O’Higgins’s army was caught and beaten as it tried to retreat, and the Spanish now bore down on Santiago, intent on a savage retribution for the insurrectionary insolence of the Chileans.
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A painting of the liberator José de San Martín hangs in the National Historical Museum