La Bataille de Prusse 1809

Despite Big Victories, French Were Not Expected Victors

Review of the World of Austerlitz & Jena News of the Day Becomes Trap That Foils Anticipation Of Coalition Victories In Both 1805 and 1806.

The Battles of Austerlitz and Jena were grimly fought more than 200 years ago, but what actually happened and how it was perceived at the time has, for the most part, receded into the mists of myth, and shrouded by legend and to that what might have really happened has become what we have wished it to be. The legends swirling around Napoleonic glory have replaced the daily grind of what might have really happened in the moment. The reality of the events leading to the great Bonapartist achievements have long been lost in our own consciousness to what we have imagined it to be---either the great victories as perceived by Napoleon’s supporters, or as great evils by his many detractors after over two centuries of subsequent events.

But what if what had happened during those events of more than 200 years ago are viewed more through the prism of the contemporary vision in which those events were presented as an ongoing set of occurrences playing forth as a series of news events coming out of Austria, Moravia, Saxony and Brandenburg in the fall and winter of 1805- 6, and thus forcing us to look at the memorable events as contemporary problems that Napoleon, and his Third Coalition opponents, needed to manage rather than to reflect upon. Several original source documents were used in the authorship of this piece---especially the journal of the English physician, Dr. Henry Reeves, as well as after action battle reports from several Russian commanders reporting after their defeat of at Austerlitz; and life in the Prussian courts as reported by Dr. Reeves, but also considered in the life of Prince Louis Ferdinand, the magnificent musician, but only a middling, at best, general. Prussian court life would be oblivious, if not contemptuous, of the Revolution personified by Napoleon sweeping throughout Germany. During the middle weeks of October 1805, Napoleon had accomplished his historic maneuvers in moving from the English Channel to the depths of southern Germany with his new creation, La Grande Armée , which directly led to what has been described as the Capitulation of Ulm, and was moving towards Vienna when our story begins.

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