The Russian General-in-Chief, Kutusoff, fell into the snare laid for him, and sent a large division of his army to turn the right of the French.  The troops detached for this purpose met with unexpected resistance from Davoust, and were held in check at Raygern.  Napoleon immediately seized the opportunity.  They had left a deep gap in the line, and upon that space Soult forthwith poured a force, which entirely destroyed the communication between the Russian centre and left.  The Czar perceived the fatal consequences of this movement, and his guards rushed to beat back Soult.  It was on an eminence, called the hill of Pratzen, that the encounter took place.  The Russians drove the French infantry before them:  Napoleon ordered Bessieres to hurry with the imperial guard to their rescue.  The Russians were in some disorder from the impatience of victory.  They resisted sternly, but were finally broken, and fled.  The Grand Duke Constantine, who had led them gallantly, escaped by the fleetness of his horse.

The French centre now advanced, and the charges of its cavalry under Murat were decisive.  The Emperors of Russia and Germany beheld from the heights of Austerlitz the total ruin of their centre, as they had already of their left.  Their right wing had hitherto contested well against all the impetuosity of Lannes:  but Napoleon could now gather round them on all sides, and, his artillery plunging incessant fire on them from the heights, they at length found it impossible to hold their ground.  They were forced down into a hollow, where some small frozen lakes offered the only means of escape from the closing cannonade.  The French broke the ice about them by a storm of shot, and nearly 20,000 men died on the spot, some swept away by the artillery, the greater part drowned.  Buonaparte, in his bulletin, compares the horrid spectacle of this ruin to the catastrophe of the Turks at Aboukir, when “the sea was covered with turbans.”  It was with great difficulty that the two emperors rallied some fragments of their armies around them, and effected their retreat.  Twenty thousand prisoners, forty pieces of artillery, and all the standards of the imperial guard of Russia, remained with the conqueror.  Such was the battle of Austerlitz;—­or, as the French soldiery delighted to call it, “the battle of the emperors.”

The Prussian envoy now returned, and presented to Napoleon his master’s congratulations on the victory thus achieved.  The Emperor whispered to Haugwitz, “Here is a message, of which circumstances have altered the address.”  Frederick-William, however, had 150,000 men under arms, and it by no means suited Napoleon’s views to provoke him to extremities at this moment.  He entered into a treaty with Haugwitz; and Prussia was bribed to remain quiescent, by a temptation which she wanted virtue to resist.  The French Emperor offered her Hanover, provided she would oppose no obstacle to any other arrangements which he might find it necessary to form:  and the house of Brandenburg did not blush to accept at his hands the paternal inheritance of the royal family of England.