Battle of Austerlitz 1805
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Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
Key facts
| Date | 2 December 1805 | Wikidata |
|---|---|---|
| Year | 1805 | Wikidata P585 (point in time) |
| Era | 19th century (1800–1913) | derived from year |
| Location | Czechia | Natural Earth (modern borders) |
| Continent | Europe | Natural Earth |
| War / conflict | Napoleonic Wars, War of the Third Coalition | Wikidata P361 |
| Participants | Austrian Empire, French colonial empire, Russian Empire | Wikidata P710 |
| Coordinates | 49.1281, 16.7625 | Wikidata P625 |
About the battle
The Battle of Austerlitz was fought on Monday 2 December 1805, near Austerlitz (then in the Austrian Empire, now in the Czech Republic), being the decisive engagement of the War of the Third Coalition. The Grande Armée under the command of Emperor Napoleon I defeated a combined Russo-Austrian army. One force was an imperial Russian army under the command of Tsar Alexander I and General Mikhail Kutuzov, while the other comprised an imperial Austrian army under the command of Emperor Francis II. The battle was known contemporaneously as the Battle of the Three Emperors (after the three monarchs present on the field).
The battle is often cited by military historians as one of Napoleon's tactical masterpieces, in the same league as other historic engagements like Hannibal's Cannae (216 BC) or Alexander the Great's Gaugamela (331 BC). The military victory of Napoleon's Grande Armée at Austerlitz brought the War of the Third Coalition to an end, with the Peace of Pressburg signed by the French and Austrians later in the month. These achievements did not establish a lasting peace on the continent. Austerlitz had driven neither Russia nor Britain, whose armies protected Sicily from a French invasion, to settle.
After eliminating an Austrian army during the Ulm campaign, French forces seized Vienna in November 1805.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Battle of Austerlitz (revision 1378712638), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; shortened by selecting paragraphs and trimming at a sentence boundary; formatting and citations removed. No text added.
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