December 2, 1805

Battle of Austerlitz

Napoleon defeats the Russo-Austrian army at Austerlitz

Napoleon's bulletin turned a confused retreat across shallow frozen ponds into a story of 20,000 men drowning.

2 December 1805, west of Austerlitz

On 2 December 1805 Napoleon's Grande Armée fought the combined Russian and Austrian army west of Austerlitz in Moravia, near present-day Slavkov u Brna.

Following Franz von Weyrother's plan, Allied columns came down off the Pratzen Heights toward Napoleon's deliberately weak-looking right wing. There, Davout's arriving III Corps helped hold the villages along the Goldbach.

The centre, emptied and then taken

Napoleon sent Saint-Hilaire's and Vandamme's divisions of Soult's IV Corps against the thinned Allied centre. They captured the Pratzen Heights and split the Allied army.

It was not a one-corps battle. French Guard cavalry beat the Russian Guard cavalry, Lannes drove back Bagration's wing, and French forces encircled Allied troops around Sokolnitz. Kutuzov, the nominal Allied commander, was slightly wounded in the fighting for the Pratzen position.

The bulletin, and what was in the ponds

By nightfall the French held the field and the battered Allied army was retreating eastward. One explicitly sourced modern accounting summarised by the U.S. Army puts Allied losses near 27,000 — roughly 15,000 dead and 12,000 prisoners — against 1,305 French killed, 6,940 wounded and 573 captured, with 180 guns and 50 colours taken. Published totals vary with which returns are counted.

Napoleon's bulletin claimed 20,000 Allied soldiers had drowned in the frozen ponds. When the ponds were later drained, the evidence recovered amounted to two or three human bodies and about 150 dead horses.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 6 sources 2 audit passes

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

What the sources leave uncertain

Published strengths and casualty totals vary considerably according to which returns, missing men and late-arriving formations are counted. The verified figures above are one explicitly sourced modern accounting, not an uncontested final total.
Kutuzov was nominal commander, but Alexander I and the Allied headquarters exercised decisive influence. Assigning the defeat primarily to one individual is an interpretation, not a settled fact.