The battle of Austerlitz, fought on December 2, 1805, has justifiably been hailed as Napoleon's masterpiece. The decisive tactical encounter of the battle took place on the Pratzen Heights, a dominating elevation overlooking the French lines. As the Russian/Austrian ar my descended from these heights to attack the French right, Napoleon counterattacked the weakened Allied center. According to Napoleon's plan, the Pratzen should have been only lightly held by the Russians. However, due to an error in the Allied deployment, substantial numbers of Russians were still on the Pratzen when the French arrived near the summit. A bitter battle ensued between the two divisions of Marshal Soult and the Russians, ably seconded by Austrian infantry. Spearheading the French advance was the brigade of General Thiebault, comprising the 14th and 36th line regiments. Its mission was to sweep the village of Pratze and then advance upon the heights. The following account is taken from the Memoirs of Baron Thiebault published in New York in 1806. It is extremely interesting from several standpoints. First, the account demonstrates that the margin of French superiority at the decisive point was narrow (most popular accounts have overlooked this, assuming that Soult's Corps was only lightly opposed in their advance up the Pratzen). Second, the tactical finesse of the French is clearly illustrated with their use of a column formation to advance up to contact and subsequent reliance upon a linear formation to conduct the actual firefight. The Baron's Account So to the slopes of Pratzen Heights in Moravia, where the mist has just cleared and Thiebault's brigade has begun the advance. The 1st battalion of the 14th has just reached the village of Pratzen in line where it is ambushed by Russian infantry and routed. The second battalion, deploying into line at the run, successfully counter attacks, and now the brigade is aced by a major Russian counterattack: Returning to my line, I amended my arrangements. I bade Major Fontenay load all the guns with round and grape, and to his remark that this would ruin them I added, "It will be all right if they last ten minutes". I had them laid for a distance of thirty or forty yards, and had ten cases of grape and ten round-shot laid by each. I repeated to the men the injunction to take good aim before firing and to aim at the men's belts and the center of the sections, so as to waste no shots. Having thus utilised every moment, I let the formidable masses approach to the appointed distance, and then my nine guns, abruptly unmasked, and my whole line poured in one of the most destructive fires ever seen. Once out of range of our guns, the remains of the regiments we had repulsed had been promptly reformed; and when Kamenski's brigade, reinforced by two regiments, had restored the balance of the fight with us, it was joined by those regiments. It had resumed the offensive with desperation, and, in spite of our former success, our position could not fail to be still highly critical. We saw marching on our front a hostile force four or five times stronger than ourselves The enemy had hurled himself upon us from all sides, and, though we struggled desperately for the ground, we were forced in turn to give way. Indeed, it was only by yielding to the more violent shocks that we kept some sort of dressing among our troops and saved our guns, the loss inflicted by them no longer checking an enemy who seemed maddened by our resistance. At last, after a terrible tussle lasting more than twenty minutes, we had managed to get a breathing space, and a brisk fire almost at point-blank range had again taken the place of the bayonet, when General Saint-Hilaire called Morand and myself to him and said, "This is becoming unbearable, and I propose, gentlemen, that we should take up some position to our rear which we can defend". Hardly had he uttered the last word when Colonel Pouzet of the 10th, was in the middle of us with one spring of his horse... he burst out, "Retire, general? If we take one pace to the rear, we are done for. There is only one way to get out of this with honour, and that is, to put our heads down and go at everything in front of us; and, above all, not leave the enemy time to count us". This was admirably accurate and honourable at once. "Bravo, Colonel Pouzet!" I exclaimed; "this is one of the finest moments of your life." We ran back to our regiments and redoubled our efforts: and, thanks to the magnificent attitude of our men, without yielding a foot of ground, we repulsed repeated charges delivered with fury and with the frightful howls usual to the Russians. Thanks to this prodigious tenacity, at the end of half an hour our turn came at length to execute a decisive charge, breaking the enemy's line, capturing three batteries, and becoming for good and all masters of that part of the Pratzen plateau. The 14th and 36th had two-thirds of their officers killed or wounded; while of the 236 grenadiers of the 36th, seventeen only remained with the colours in the evening. Back to Table of Contents -- Courier Vol. IV No. 5 Back to Courier List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1983 by The Courier Publishing Company. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com