La Bataille d’ Austerlitz 1805© Marshal Enterprises

All Things Austerlitz La Bataille d’Austerlitz happened more than 200 years ago, but despite its place in the dim recesses of our collective memory, it still has bright place in the pantheon of notable military

historical events. Austerlitz, more than perhaps any event, established the Napoleonic legend, and preserved a nascent French Empire for another decade. It remains as important an event as any in the history of the French.

Austerlitz is located in today’s Czech Republic—the eastern part in what might be described as the backwater Moravian province. Today, it is called Slavkov u Brna by its Czech Moravian population, as any Germans, who had been living there when it was called Austerlitz, had been expelled by the Czech government in 1945. Other than that many of villages which were around in 1805 have gotten a lot bigger given the population growth of the area, the area does not look terribly different than it did back then. Prominent in the area are the extensive vineyards, just as they were in 1805, nestled in the rolling hills of the area, which is one of the great watersheds of Europe with multiple streams becoming rivers throughout the region. Roughly a million more people live in Moravia now than what populated the area in 1805 changing what had been an area with a large German population to one exclusively of Czech background now. Slavkov u Brna is just a 23 kilometers east of the Moravian capitol of Brno (called Brünn at the time of the Battle of Austerlitz). Despite it being the largest city in Moravia, Brno has not changed the bucolic nature of the surrounding countryside and small villages in more than 200 years. So much of what is missing is the feeling of what it was like those 200 years ago when it was a vibrant part of the Austrian Empire. The German place names and the German people are all gone, so the flavor of the times is missing. A visit to Wagram or Aspern-Essling today will give a visitor a sense that those places are a part of Austrian history. Slavkov u Brna is not Austrian. However, the landmarks of the battlefield and its surrounding terrain still exist with little change over time. There is still a white chapel next to the Santon Hill, which was the mainstay

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