Le récit oublié de la bataille d'Austerlitz par le maréchal Berthier : une relation officielle avortée

The ignored narration of the battle of Austerlitz by the Marshal Alexandre Bertier : An official avorted relation ; The triumph at Austerlitz on 2 December 1805 marked France’s victory over the forces of the Third Coalition. It was now essential to spread the news of the victory to the peoples of France and Europe, and this was something set in hand from the morrow of the battle. On 3 December the thirtieth edition of the Bulletin of the Grand Army was published, narrating the course of the action. However, a victory of this order merited a more official notification, along the lines of those previously for the Italian campaign, Egypt and Marengo. Alexandre Berthier, Prince of Neuchâtel, the major-general of the Grand Army and Minister of War, drafted a first version and sent it on 28 March 1806 to General Sanson, director of the War Ministry depot with a covering letter in which he recommended that this account be used as the basis of ‘planning minutes’ that the minister had orderd be conducted since December 1805. But why write such an account ?. As minister of war, Berthier had received reports from all the principal protagonists, Soult, Davout, Murat, and had to assembl e all the documentation on the battle for safe keeping at the ministry’s depot. Loyal to the Emperor, Berthier took care to respect the account in the thirtoeth edition of the Bulletin of the Grand Army, as he related to Napoleon in a letter of 1 July 1806 that accompanied his account. But on 19 July Napoleon replied, writing that T have received your account of the Battle of Austerlitz, and it leaves much to be desired.’ Consequently the account languished, unpublished, in the depot of the War Ministry. An official account supervised by Napoleon himself appeared in 1810 over the signature of Tranchant de la Verne. However Berthier’s narrative is interesting from several standpoints : first, for the precise topographical details it provides ; next-because Berthier recounts his own part in things ; third because of all the information about operational and psychological intelligence that emerges from the report ; fourth, because of the sense of the brutality of the fighting that comes across ; finally, because of the revelation here that Napoleon had intended to pursue the enemy into Bohemia if he had failed to force a decisive battle, and to do this by means of requiring General Parmentier, commander of French forces at Brunn, to ‘ hold out for at least three days if, in light of the outcome of the battle, he was left to fend for himself with just his own forces’. In contrast the roles of Soult and Davout during the battle, the former attacking the enemy’s centre on the heights of the Pratzen plateau and the latter time and again holding together the right flank of the French deployment -roles that Michel de Lombards underlined in his article entitled ‘Devant Austerlitz dans les traces de la pensée de l’Empereur’ in the Revue Historique de l’Armée (No. 3) of 1947 — remain of secondary significance in Berthier’s account, though paid their fair dues. This article is accompanied by a reproduction of the greater part of Berthier’s unknown document.