the lion of the russian army - Florida State University

CHAPTER VII
“Five Against Thirty”
The Preliminaries to Austerlitz and Battle of Schöngrabern, 1805
By the summer of 1805, Europe was on the eve of a new war. Napoleon was
preparing for the invasion of Great Britain and his gigantic army was assembled along
the Atlantic coast in the vicinity of Boulogne. Since the outbreak of the French
Revolution, Great Britain had been France's most tenacious enemy. Fearing French
hegemony in Europe as well as its revolutionary ideology, the British politicians had
formed a series of coalitions against France to preserve the ancien regime and balance of
power in Europe. In 1805, to prevent the French threat to mainland Britain, Prime
Minister William Pitt succeeded in forming the Third Coalition against France.
Russia was one of the first to respond to the British advances. After the collapse
of the Second Coalition, France and Russia were on friendly terms. In fact, Emperor Paul
had ordered a Cossack corps to march to India as part of a joint Franco-Russian campaign
against British India. However, Russia’s foreign policy changed drastically after the
assassination of Emperor Paul on 24 March 1801. One of Alexander’s first decisions as
Emperor was to abort the campaign to India and to recall the Cossacks. Alexander
gradually modified his father’s anti-British policy and signed a Russo-British Convention
on 17 June 1801. However, Alexander desired good relations with France as well, so he
negotiated a treaty of friendship with Napoleon in the fall of 1801. Russia’s neutrality
coincided with a period of peace in Europe. By the Treaty of Lunéville (1801), Austria
had to accept French expansion into northern Italy and the left bank of the Rhine River.
The next year, 1802, Britain and France signed the peace treaty at Amiens. However,
both sides regarded the peace as a truce and did not honor their commitments under the
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