In 1796, the War of the First Coalition raged in Italy and pitted the aristocracies of Europe against Revolutionary France. The French had bottled up a large Austrian army in the fortress town of Mantua, but another large Austrian army of 28,000 marched to relieve the siege, and together they would throw the French out of Italy. The French commander, a young up and coming Napoleon Bonaparte, needed to stop the relief force. He left small fixing forces for the garrison and other Austrians in the area, and concentrated on the large relief force. But even his tactical genius couldn’t make up for the numbers and terrain, and he was defeated in three attempts. The Austrians closed in on Mantua.

Napoleon, now badly outnumbered and with no terrain available that could make up for the troops lost in his previous three defeats, decided to attack. He would march around the flank of the Austrians and crush them. But first he needed to cross the Arpon River at the town of Arcola. On 15 November 1796, Napoleon’s small army found it strongly defended by a large Austrian detachment. Nonetheless Napoleon ordered his men to force the crossing over the narrow bridge. There was no other choice, it was his last chance to prevent the siege from being lifted.

The Austrian position was strong and the French took hundreds of casualties in the first failed attempt. When he saw the next faltering, Napoleon himself grabbed the fallen colors and charged across the bridge, with dozens of men dying to his left and right. But by now the bodies were stacking up, and his friend Gen Augereau dragged him back lest Napoleon also get shot. However, as the attacks continued, he stayed with the colors near the bridge for the rest of the day. Napoleon had his horse shot out from under him, and his aide de camp and several of his staff killed and wounded. When dusk fell, the Austrians still held the other end of the bridge.

The next day, boats were found and a marshy ford was discovered, and Napoleon crossed in several places. But the Austrians also had reinforced the town, and attacked the crossings. The battle raged all along the river. At one point as Napoleon was rallying a broken battalion, his horse was shot and he fell into the marsh. Only a gallant rescue by Gen Marmont and his staff prevented Napoleon’s capture. The day ended with the bridge still in Austrian hands.

The battle resumed on 17 November, but by now most of the Austrian relief force had arrived. Napoleon had to reduce the Austrian numbers facing him, so he came up with a bold ruse. He took all of his trumpeters and drummers and sent them around the Austrians where they began to play marching tunes. The Austrians redeployed to face this new “threat” which weakened the force defending the bridge. Napoleon struck with a massive column across the bridge that had orders not to stop. The column literally climbed over dead and dying Frenchmen and trampled the Austrian blocking force. He then struck the Austrians in the town and those facing the ruse in the rear, and routed them completely.

Despite heavy losses, momentum was on his side, and Napoleon continued to attack over the next few days. Within a week, the Austrians themselves were thrown out of Italy. On 23 November 1796, Napoleon occupied Venice, ending its 1000 years of self-rule. In the harbor he captured a 44 gun frigate, which he named the Muiron, in honor of his aide that was killed at his side. Napoleon returned to Paris a legend in his own time and a fearless Hero of the Revolution.

Around midnight prior to the battle on 2 December 1805, French Marshal Davout arrived at Emperor Napoleon’s headquarters ahead of his corps. His advance guard was four hours behind him. His corps would cut it close, by minutes in some cases, but they had made it to the battle in time. Napoleon had just returned from visiting the campfires of his men and was elated to see him. Without Davout, the upcoming Battle of Austerlitz was a gamble; with Davout victory was all but assured. The Holy Roman Emperor Francis of Austria and Tsar Alexander of Russia were convinced Napoleon’s army was understrength, disorganized, and out maneuvered. All day, cavalry skirmished in order to identify enemy dispositions and they found that the French right was held by but a single division. That was exactly what Napoleon wanted them to see. He had no doubt the Allied emperors would force Marshal Kutuzov, the capable commander of the Allied armies, to attack the supposedly weakened French right.

Once the Allies attacked, the hard part was over. The French plan for the rest of the battle was simplicity itself: Davout would delay then block the Allies on the right, Lannes and Bernadotte would fix the Russians on the left, and Soult with the main effort would attack the weakened center and break the line. The Imperial Guard, in reserve, would handle any unexpected difficulties. After that, Murat with the cavalry would rout the Allies.

And that’s exactly what happened.

After some initial success on the French right, the Allies were surprised to find Davout’s III Corps steadily reinforcing the fortified village of Tellnitz and the stout walls of Sokowitz Castle. The Allies would go no further. When Soult’s 16,000 men stepped out of the late autumn Bohemian morning mist and advanced up the Pratzen Heights, the battle was essentially over. The Allied center was too weak, and their command and control too cumbersome to react.

It would just take some hard fighting, and about five hours, for the Allied emperors to realize it. The Russian Imperial Guard made a valiant counterattack in order to try and stop Soult, but it was in vain. By 4pm, the Allied army was routed. As the Allies routed in all directions, thousands of troops drowned when a French bombardment broke the ice on the Satschan ponds.

The Battle of Austerlitz is probably the only time in history a commander could legitimately say, “I love it when a plan comes together.”

On the night of 29 November 1805, Louis Davout, Marshal of France, commander of the La Grade Armee III Corps, and current occupier of Vienna, received a dispatch from Napoleon that he was abandoning the Pratzen Heights and Davout should prepare to hand over the city to the Austrians. But Davout knew it was bullshit, the letter was only in the event the courier was captured. It was just a week before when Napoleon chose the Pratzen Heights as the place where he was going to destroy the Austrian and Russian armies.

The Prince of Burgundy once said, “When a d’Avout is born, a sabre is unsheathed.” This was never so true as for Louis Nicholas Davout, who was the son of a minor aristocrat but survived the French Revolution despite his upbringing. He was almost universally disliked by everyone whom he worked with: his officers for his cold and aloof demeanor, his soldiers because of his uncompromising stance on readiness, training and discipline, and his peers because he was the youngest and most active of Napoleon’s marshals. Nevertheless, the “Iron Marshal” was respected by all for his reasoned tenacity, undisputed competence, and most importantly, Davout earned the absolute unquestioned trust of Napoleon.

That trust was not misplaced. It was not a question of whether III Corps would show up to the battle but when. Austerlitz was 80 miles away (eighty, eight – zero) and Napoleon planned to attack in two days. The planning factor for a march was 20 miles a day, and a forced march was 25 miles a day. Davout planned to do 40 miles a day for the next two days.

On the night of the 29th, he bade his officers to mingle with the crème of Viennese society so as to not rouse Austrian suspicions but stipulated that they needed to return by 0300 the next morning. At 0330 on 30 NOV 1805, the III Corps struck camp and, at dawn, began their march. With 68lb packs they marched for 32 hours over the next 48.

And then they immediately fought a battle in which they bore the brunt of the Allied attack.

On the afternoon of 29 November 1805, a visibly distraught Emperor Napoleon I met the personal aide of Tsar Alexander I of Russia to hammer out the conditions of an armistice between the French, and the Allied Russian and Austrian armies. The day before Napoleon enthusiastically accepted the Russian offer for an armistice and pulled his armies off of the commanding Pratzen Heights. The aide reported Napoleon’s demeanor, and the Allied scouts reported the chaotic French withdrawal from the heights. These were seen as signs of French disorganization and weakness, so Tsar Alexander and Emperor Francis II of Austria decided to finish Napoleon off once and for all, especially since he had just 43,000 troops in the area and they had 86,000.

But Napoleon didn’t desperately need peace – he desperately needed a battle.

Napoleon’s actions were a ruse. He needed the Allies to attack. The biggest problem with his corps system was that they had to live off of the land. Foraging left a barren wasteland in the wake of the march and the only option was to move forward or starve. Unfortunately for Napoleon, the retreating Austrians stripped Vienna bare and Marshal Kutuzov was doing the same with his Russian armies to the north. If Kutuzov retreated further, which he planned to do, then Napoleon would have to abandon Vienna and return to friendly Bavaria. But Tsar Alexander smelled weakness, and overruled his commander. The combined Austrian and Russian armies would occupy the Pratzen Heights the next day and attack Napoleon the day after.

But Napoleon didn’t have 43,000 troops outside of the village of Austerlitz, he had 67,000.

It was enough.

The weather took a turn for the worse in late summer of 1805, and the French Navy could not out maneuver the Royal Navy in order to allow the Napoleon’s invasion of England. When the War of the Third Coalition expanded, Napoleon’s Grande Armée marched east to defeat Russia and Austria. Nonetheless, the French fleet, under Admiral Pierre Charles Silvestre de Villeneuve, still needed to break Britain’s control of the seas. After Napoleon departed, Villeneuve sailed south to Cadiz, where his fleet combined with the Spanish ships of the line, then France’s ally. With the Franco/Spanish fleet, Villeneuve finally had the numbers to challenge the British who, pursuing Villeneuve, were conveniently awaiting them just over the horizon.

That fleet was led by one armed one eyed Vice Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson, already a household name in the British Empire for his victories against the French, Spanish, and Danes over the past 25 years. In the morning of 21 October 1805, Villeneuve sailed out of the Cadiz harbor with a favorable wind (relatively) to engage the British off of Cape Trafalgar. Upon sighting the 44 ships of the combined French and Spanish navies, Nelson sent off one last message to his fleet, “England expects that every man will do his duty” and then immediately attacked. His 33 ships sailed straight at the French and Spanish line in two columns, with his own ship, the 100 gun HMS Victory, leading the charge.

Villeneuve couldn’t believe what he saw and vowed to make Nelson pay for his audacity. The Holy Grail of fleet actions in the Age of Sail was to “cross the T” of an enemy fleet, i.e. to maneuver to a position where your ships could fire broadsides at a closing enemy who could only fire their bow, or forward, guns. The discrepancy in firepower inevitably led to the defeat of the fleet whose “T” was crossed. Moreover, a cannonball that penetrates the side of the ship usually only affects a few crew or guns, depending on the width of the ship. A cannonball that penetrates the bow (or stern) of a ship, causes great destruction along the entire length of the ship, affecting many more crew and guns in the process. The understrength British, outnumbered by a third, were exposing themselves to just such punishment by sailing directly at the broadsides of the combined Franco/Spanish fleet. The British were effectively crossing their own “T” against a numerically superior force. It was madness.

But crossing his own T was Nelson’s plan. He was gambling that the training and seamanship of the British sailors were superior to the gunnery of the French and Spanish sailors. Nelson believed his ships would not be exposed for too long before his men could bring their own broadsides to bear, and close with and board the French.

He was right.

As Villeneuve sailed north, Nelson’s ships sailed through the French fire, and though they took some damage without being able to reply in kind, they bisected and then isolated the southern half of the French fleet. Despite the French broadsides, he effectively crossed the French “T” but in this instance a lowercase “t”. Once the British were among the French and Spanish line, the British broadsides fell upon the sterns of the northern half of the combined fleet and the bows of the southern half. Furthermore, with this one bold stroke, the northern half was effectively taken out of the battle, as they had to fight the wind to turn around, and the southern half sailed directly into the teeth of the British cannon. This also effectively forced the southern half of Villeneuve’s fleet to sail directly into the British line where they could to be boarded by the British once they closed the distance.

As the northern half of the Franco/Spanish fleet sailed out of range, the British savaged the southern half. It took three hours of hard fighting but the issue was never in doubt. However, Nelson, being Nelson, was at the forefront of the battle. Around noon, his Victory was locked in a mortal struggle with the French ship Redoubtable. At 1:15pm while walking on the quarterdeck directing fire, he was shot by a French marine in Redoubtable’s rigging. He would live just long enough to learn of the confirmation of his decisive victory.

The British Isles were safe from invasion and the Royal Navy would be the undisputed master of the world’s oceans for the next one hundred years.

In 1805 the recently crowned Emperor Napoleon ended the Peace of Amiens and began the War of the Third Coalition against Great Britain and Sweden. He had amassed his army at Boulogne for an invasion but the French Navy couldn’t guarantee a safe crossing of the English Channel and the weather was turning steadily worse (sounds familiar). In September, Austria and Russia entered the Coalition, and this would lead to a serious and overwhelming threat from the east if the Austrian and Russian armies ever linked up. So Napoleon struck first. He secured an alliance with Bavaria and then moved to invade Austria before Russian troops could arrive. Austria mobilized and invaded Bavaria, but Napoleon’s La Grande Armee moved much quicker, due to its use of the highly effective Corps System.

Napoleon’s corps were just larger versions of the combined arms divisions he pioneered in his earlier Italian campaigns. He found his flexible combined arms infantry divisions, consisting of infantry battalions supported by two cavalry squadrons and four or five artillery batteries under the direct command of the division commander, routinely outfought Austrian and Italian pure infantry formations that lacked supporting arms. Napoleon’s corps were the next logical step.

Napoleon’s corps were standardized, self-sufficient, combined arms formations about the same size as an army in Frederick the Great’s time, fifty years before. Revolutionary zeal and increased conscription brought about by Imperial France’s “nation in arms” allowed Napoleon to field several corps at the same time. In October 1805, Napoleon had eight corps committed against Austria in the War of the Third Coalition: seven infantry and one cavalry. The cavalry corps was tasked specifically for reconnaissance, security, pursuit, and exploitation. Each infantry corps was comprised of about 25,000 men consisting of the aforementioned infantry divisions, and cavalry and artillery pure brigades, with supporting specialists such as engineers, pontoon bridges, and supply trains, all under a trusted subordinate capable of independent command.

These corps’ commanders were Napoleon’s chosen ones: the Marshals of France, and they were promoted strictly on merit and military efficacy. Generals could be political appointees or promoted because of birth, such as Napoleon’s brother Jerome, but never a marshal. The 26 men chosen over the years by Napoleon to be Marshals of France came from all walks of life, and were a collection of talent and ability rarely seen in history. Only the Diadochi, Jesus’ Apostles, the Genghis Khan’s generals, the viziers of Suleiman, the Sun King’s advisors, and America’s Founding Fathers occupy the same historical pedestal. Napoleon trusted his marshals implicitly to carry out his mission orders and did not micromanage them with directives. With the self-sufficiency and inherent initiative of the corps system, and without the burden of a supply tail due to the French Army’s liberal use of foraging, the Marshals and their corps maneuvered much more quickly and with greater agility than France’s enemies.

Austria, like the rest of Europe, still maintained the army-level unit, an unwieldy formation of about 100,000 men, as the lowest level of synchronization and integration between combined arms. Furthermore, the Austrian commander, General Mack, had no equivalent to Napoleon’s Marshals. Unlike Napoleon whom issued orders just to his corps (eight in the Ulm campaign), Mack’s headquarters had to issue orders to each and every regiment, which was more than a hundred, with each order handwritten and delivered beforehand. Finally, the Austrians were still tied to fixed supply lines, according to the rules of European limited warfare of the eighteenth century which sought to shield civilians from the effects of war. Needless to say, the Austrians simply couldn’t respond to the speed and agility of Napoleon’s corps.

Napoleon’s La Grande Armee marched 500 miles in 40 days. In the first weeks October 1805, Mack managed to only make it to Ulm, on the Danube in the Black Forest just northwest of Munich before he was surrounded by Napoleon’s marshals. He was out maneuvered to the north and to the south, and anytime he attempted to riposte, his detachments were thoroughly beaten by the brilliantly led use of synchronized combined arms inherent in the individual French corps. On 14 October 1805, French Marshal Michel Ney routed the Austrians at the Battle of Elchingen, which completed the trap. After a few small battles against the disorganized Austrians, Mack surrendered his remaining troops on 20 October. Only Prince Schwarzenberg, Napoleon’s future brother in law, managed to break out of the encirclement and join the Russians. The Austrians lost more than 60,000 men, Napoleon, but 2,000.

Napoleon said of Ulm, “I have destroyed the Austrian army by simply marching.”

The road to Vienna was open. The heart of Central Europe, the Austrian Empire, the German Confederation, and the Holy Roman Empire, created by Charlemagne a thousand years before, lay within Napoleon’s grasp.

In the last decade of the eighteenth century and first decade of the nineteenth, the German state of Bavaria had prospered in its alliance with first Revolutionary, and then Napoleonic France, while being one of the few states of the Confederation of the Rhine to maintain its effective independence. In 1808, constitutional reforms were introduced which freed the serfs and swept away the last vestiges of the medieval Holy Roman Empire. In this happy and prosperous time, during which the internal inconsistencies of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Eras had yet to manifest themselves, Bavaria acquired some smaller German states as part of peace negotiations with Austria. At the Treaty of Schönbrunn after Napoleon’s victory in the War of the Fifth Coaltion, Bavaria was required to cement an alliance with the least reliable of Napoleon’s Confederation allies, Saxony.

On 10 October, 1810, Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria (the grandfather of the future “Mad King Ludwig”) wedded Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen, in Bavaria’s largest city, Munich. The Crown Prince invited the citizens of the city to the wedding festivities held in the fields in front of the city’s gate. Thousands showed up and the citizens named them “Therese’s Fields”. With beer and wine tastings, 40,000 spectators watched horse races from the side of a hill leading to the city, and by the end of the day the festival was recognized as a celebration of all things Bavarian.

The festival was such a rockin good time that it naturally occurred again the next year, and annually thereafter. We know it today as Oktoberfest.