Austerlitz: Empires Come and Empires Go

Austerlitz: Empires come and empires go Monthly Strategy Report June 2017 Alejandro Vidal Crespo Director of Market Strategies Monthly Strategy Report. June 2017 Austerlitz: Empires come and empires go The success of the French Revolution in 1789 had profoundly disrupted the balance of power in Europe, not so much from a strictly military perspective, but from the concept of war itself and its consequences. Whereas under the Ancien Régime, the consequence of battle was a realignment of forces between various closely-related royal families, the emergence of the French Republic gave way to a new scenario in which it faced the need to wipe out a novel political system on the one hand and the absolute need to survive on the other. The image of Louis XVI beheaded by guillotine had sown terror in the masses and now the rules were simply kill or be killed. The intrinsic mission of the Revolution and the Republic was to expand to the rest of the population, oppressed by masters, who naturally wanted not only to keep the Revolution at bay but sought to eradicate it from France entirely and restore the monarchy. Thus, the scenario shifted from one of more or less tactical alliances devised to place a given relative at the head of a kindred kingdom to one of absolute ideological conflict, an all-against-one scenario to which France had grown accustomed and to which it adapted by way of a very powerful army of devoted soldiers, dogged and competent officers, and generals chosen by merit, when not directly by guillotine-based natural selection. During the rule of Robespierre and the Jacobins, failure was simply not an option, nor was it under the subsequent Directorate. Confronting them were armies of subjects commanded by mediocre, randomly appointed officers and generals. The situation in 1803 was complex; in 1801 the Peace of Amiens was signed, ending hostilities wherein a Second Coalition (1798-1801) against France and led by the British had been defeated after a promising start, with Napoleon abandoned without a fleet in the shadow of the pyramids in Egypt. But France’s subsequent victories in the battles of Marengo and Hohenlinden definitively handed dominance to Napoleon, who had risen in the ranks to First Consul and de facto ruler after overthrowing the Directorate in the Coup of 18 Brumaire. The Peace of Amiens imposed harsh conditions on the United Kingdom, including the return of many American colonies to France, and the island of Minorca, my beloved home, to Spain. Minorca had been in the hands of the English, virtually without interruption, since its invasion in 1708. A refusal to evacuate Malta and the French repression of the Haitian Revolution (duly supported by the British) led the United Kingdom to declare war against France in 1803. The British Prime Minister at the time, William Pitt the Younger, in his second term as head of the government, had made the fight against Revolutionary France his raison d’état by adopting several legislative and non-legislative measures to combat the Republic. England’s policy toward the rest of the European powers was essentially to badger France and Spain in the American colonies by imposing its increasingly evident dominion of the seas and exhausting France on the continent by financing and indirectly participating in all kinds of alliances and armed conflicts. This is precisely what Pitt the Younger did in 1804, when he organised a Third Coalition against Bonaparte, who, in turn, assembled 150,000 men off the coast of the English Channel in a clear threat to the United Kingdom, after crowning himself Emperor before an astonished Pope Pius VII. England first allied with Sweden, then with Russia and Austria to counter Napoleon, whose plan was to invade the British Isles. In order to keep the English fleet away from the Channel, he devised a complicated plan: he enlisted the Spanish fleet and formed a combined armada that made Lord Nelson believe they were launching an attack in the Caribbean. But the whole house of cards collapsed at Cape Finisterre, and the combined fleet had to seek refuge in Cádiz, only to be defeated later by Nelson at Cape Trafalgar. Monthly Strategy Report. June 2017 Napoleon abandoned his invasion plans and turned his sites toward the continent and combat on land. He quickly mustered the 150,000 troops stationed in Britain and crossed the Rhine to face the Austrian battalions under General Karl Mack, whom he roundly defeated at the Battle of Ulm. After this loss, the Austrian army was savagely pushed eastward by the Grande Armée, which—two months later, in November 1805—took Vienna. Next, Napoleon crossed the Danube where, on the other side, a third emperor awaited, the Russian Tsar Alexander I. Because the Tsar’s army was still some distance away, Austrian forces withdrew east to present-day Czech Republic to meet its allies. The Tsar appointed a Russian veteran and renowned strategist, General Mijaíl Kutúzov, as head of the combined Russian-Austrian forces. Kutúzov was decisive from the outset, and Napoleon was in a difficult position despite having advanced so much; he was far from home, which made his extended logistical lines an obvious risk. Moreover, the Prussians, who shared the Holy Roman Empire with the Austrians and who had remained on the sidelines, could enter the conflict at any moment, with the massive French army prowling around their backyard. Napoleon was perfectly aware of this and was eager to quash the campaign as swiftly as possible. But Kutúzov did not advance, rather, he continued to retreat toward the east to the Carpathians in an effort to force a negotiation with the French, who could not and should not proceed further. Napoleon then deployed all of his strategic genius. He advanced 53,000 soldiers to Austerlitz, a strategic position on a hill within the range of 90,000 Russo-Austrian soldiers. In addition, he began to dispatch his generals to the chanceries, giving the impression that the French army was weak and sought a negotiated peace. As a final test, the Austrian Emperor, Francis I, offered Napoleon an armistice, which the Corsican accepted enthusiastically. That same day, Bonaparte again showed ineptitude before an emissary of the Tsar, Count Dolgorouki, and then he proceeded to abandon the hills of Austerlitz, leaving the most strategic enclaves of the battlefield unprotected and displaying tremendous weakness and disorganisation on the right flank, which defended the route back to Vienna, his natural retreat. But it was all pretence, a simple strategy to lure the enemy into a confrontation. Napoleon had another 20,000 troops within a day’s march to reinforce the supposedly weak right flank, which, moreover, stood among a swarm of streams and lakes, making an attack difficult. Napoleon also planned for his left flank and cavalry to close in on the enemy like a vice if they took the bait and decided to attack on the right. And that is precisely what happened. The Austrian and Russian generals were persuaded and convinced the Tsar that they had a unique opportunity to destroy the right flank and send Napoleon back to France, if not further. Kutúzov stood alone in his opposition to the plan, and was consequently relieved of his command. On 2 December 1805, the Allied army took the Pratzen Heights, a strategic position in the centre of the battlefield purposely abandoned by Napoleon, and viciously attacked the French right flank. That flank, already reinforced with the arrival of reserve troops, withstood the onslaught while General Vandamme’s 16,000 bayonets charged furiously to recover the Pratzen Heights, and two divisions of cuirassiers under Marshall Murat (who would become King of Spain in 1808) crushed the combined cavalry of the Tsar and the Prince of Liechtenstein from the left flank. Finding themselves surrounded, the Allies fled haphazardly into the tangle of frozen lakes and rivers. According to chronicles of the event, the French bombarded the ice, shattering it under the feet of the Allies and causing heavy human and material losses to the Russians in the icy waters. As a result, the Austrians and Russians lost 37% of their men; the French lost only 13%. Peace was reached in Pressburg, ushering in a decade of French domination on the continent. Austria bore the brunt of the agreement, suffering heavy territorial losses and compensations. Napoleon mandated the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine, a political formation of German states under the aegis of Monthly Strategy Report. June 2017 France that would last until 1813, when Napoleon was defeated at Leipzig. Such was Prussia’s opposition to the formation of this confederation that it declared war in 1806. In Austria, the Emperor’s position of absolute impotence led to the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, a supranational union between Austria and Prussia dating from Charlemagne. Unable to maintain the Empire and fearing that Napoleon would impose his reign, Francis I preferred to abolish the title, and thus an Empire that had endured for nearly a millennium passed definitively into history. Napoleon, meanwhile, returned to France in triumph with hundreds of cannons confiscated from his enemies, which he ordered to be melted down and used to build the Vendôme Column. It is said that his success at the Battle of Austerlitz convinced him of is invincibility and unassailable genius. He would later arrive at Bailén, Leipzig and Waterloo to prove otherwise, paving his way to the islands of Elba and Saint Helena..

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