Feigning weakness, Napoleon lured the Allied army into attacking his deliberately exposed right flank, then punched through their weakened center on the Pratzen Heights. The Battle of the Three Emperors shattered the Third Coalition, forced Austria out of the war within days, and marked the high tide of Napoleon's military genius. Some 16,000 Allied soldiers were killed or wounded and 20,000 captured, against roughly 9,000 French casualties.
Napoleon had spent days deliberately appearing vulnerable, pulling troops back from the Pratzen Heights and sending peace-seeking signals to convince the Tsar and the Austrian Emperor that the French army was demoralized and ripe for destruction. It worked perfectly: the Allied commanders, eager for glory, marched their forces off the high ground to encircle what they believed was a retreating enemy, exposing their own center in the process.
At dawn, a thick fog blanketed the battlefield—the famous "sun of Austerlitz" broke through just as Napoleon's reserves stormed back up the Pratzen Heights and split the Allied army in two. Retreating Russian troops fled across frozen ponds that collapsed under artillery fire, drowning hundreds. Austrian Emperor Francis II sued for peace within two days, and the coalition that had opposed France collapsed. Napoleon considered it the finest battle of his career, and military academies still teach it as a model of deception and calculated risk nearly two centuries later.
Key people: Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexander I of Russia, Francis II of Austria