A Detailed Account of the Battle of Austerlitz

The imperfect accounts which have reached the public, as to the details of the Battle of Austerlitz, are so contradictory to each other, and so little satisfactory to military men, that it has been thought proper to lay the following relation before them, in order to fix their ideas as to this memorable epoch.

In all ages, as in all countries, nations and armies have been the slaves of opinion. Hence it has ever been the policy of governments to heighten, by those means best calculated to excite national enthusiasm, the splendour of even the greatest victories; as well as to give a specious colouring to those reverses of fortune, which are too public to be passed over in silence.

The soldier, who here gives the relation of what he himself saw, neither wishes to flatter a government, nor to gain the good opinion of an army. His object will be, to detail, with truth, what he has either seen or been able to discover from others; and, forgetting the part he himself acted, he will speak with candour and impartiality of the events that passed under his own observation, without the slightest tincture of prejudice, or passion. Of these events, posterity must be the judge.

Nothing will be found here, but the simple recital, without commentary, naked, and devoid of art, of one of the most famous epochs of history. To attempt to reason on the operations of wars that have passed in our times would be giving too much scope to self-love, which always adopts or rejects, as suits our own opinions.

It is not the strength of the respective armies opposed to each other at the battle of Austerlitz, or the losses they sustained, which particularly distinguishes it, from many of those which took place in the first campaigns of the French Revolution, and the seven years war.