[JasonC]

It is a pretty poor account of the battle itself. Most is preliminaries about the campaign leading to it and dubious "color" about various generals before. The sketch of the Russian plan does not remotely do it justice, nor explain Napoleon's counter and why the Pratzen was key to it. The struggle on the Pratzen itself is presented as an affair of French cavalry sweeping all before it, which is laughably false. The fight on the right is presented as decided by the arrival of Davout, but that only brought the numbers to even, and the actual performance of the French on that wing is barely recounted. But holding off more there with less is what formed the reserve that made the Pratzen attack.

The key Russian mistake and Napoleon's timing is barely alluded to, and anybody who doesn't know the battle wouldn't even recognize it. They passed the key terrain linking their left wing to the rest of the army, without stationing any strong reserve on it. Mostly because they assumed the site of the battle was going to be considerably farther west and southwest. Napoleon timed the move to seize the heights after the Russian left had already passed it, and thereby broke off the Russian left wing from the rest of the army.

The Russian counterattack on the Pratzen was the attempt to link up again with the cut off wing. It came relatively early in the battle but was the decision point. It was decided by throwing in layers of reserves, and by small tactics. After that, the French crushed the cut off wing from three sides, with its fourth on a marsh.

Davout's march from Vienna is mentioned, but not the full distance he came. Actually his force covered that of the Austria southern army (from Italy). He held that away from the main campaign, then broke contact, marched north in time for the battle, but cut it close enough that Charles had no chance of reaching the same spot in time. His men then held the main Russian effort with inferior numbers, and went over to the attack once confusion set in as they tried to deploy to fight in three directions at once. Davout's performance exceed anything any other corps in Europe could have been expected to do.

But none of it was any magically greater elan, the Russians were as brave as you please. It was brains. And not because the Russian plan was stupid, it wasn't. They made one key mistake in not bringing their guard up to the Pratzen hard behind the left wing main effort, and keeping it there. They were also too predictable - some have said the battle played out as though Napoleon were giving orders to both armies, because he could tell so well how they'd react to his own moves.

Alistair Horne has a good history of the battle, much better than a magazine article.

[indcons]

Thanks for posting this fascinating post....do you have an online link for more info? There are excellent books on MilHist; however, good online articles are tough to find.

I must admit that I don't follow Napoleon closely (though I am interesyed in learning more). My primary MilHist topics of interest are ACW, guerilla warfare, Mongol conquests under Genghiz Khan, Alexander, and Zhukov.

[hc87]

Any suggestions on a good general history of Napoleon's campaigns? I'm looking for the equivalent of Shelby Foote's The Civil War?

Thanks.