Battle of Austerlitz - Battle

Battle

See also: Order of Battle at the Austerlitz campaign

Napoleon could muster some 72,000 men and 157 guns for the impending battle, although about 7,000 troops under Davout were still far to the south in the direction of Vienna. The Allies had about 85,000 soldiers, seventy percent of them Russian, and 318 guns. So, The French Army was inferior in number.

At first, Napoleon was not totally confident of his victory. In a letter written to Minister of Foreign Affairs Talleyrand, Napoleon requested Talleyrand not tell anyone about the upcoming battle because he did not want to disturb Empress Joséphine. According to Frederick C. Schneid, the main concern of Napoleon was not the tranquility of Joséphine; the French Emperor worried more about how he could explain to Joséphine if the French Army was defeated.

Read more about this topic:  Battle Of Austerlitz

Famous quotes containing the word battle:

    The battle which I witnessed took place in the Presidency of Polk, five years before the passage of Webster’s Fugitive-Slave Bill.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.
    George Orwell (1903–1950)

    The Battle of Waterloo is a work of art with tension and drama with its unceasing change from hope to fear and back again, change which suddenly dissolves into a moment of extreme catastrophe, a model tragedy because the fate of Europe was determined within this individual fate.
    Stefan Zweig (18811942)