Dürnstein 1805

War of the Third Coalition

Austerlitz Campaign

Monday 11 November 1805

The French Provisional "VIII" Corps under Marshal Edouard Mortier: 9.424 total, 11 guns

The Russians under Mikhail Kutuzov: ~17,000 total, 162 guns

 

Weather: Cold and snowing

First Light:  0627   Sunrise:  0700   Sunset:  1626   End of Twilight: 1659
(calculated from U.S. Naval Observatory from location and date)

Present Day Location: Dürnstein, Austria  48°23′44″N 15°31′13″E
An excellent view on Google Maps of the entire valley from Dürnstein Castle.

This battle was not supposed to happen. In one of the most dramatic strategic campaigns in history, La Grande Armee under Napoleon had within weeks utterly destroyed the main Austrian Field Army under FML Mack at Ulm just three weeks before. It had, in the 19th century version of blitzkrieg, knocked out one contingent after another in a series of small battles against what was left of the Austrian force (see my four posts about these prior battles). The bulk of Napoleon's army was now on the south bank of the Danube driving toward a defenseless Vienna. Napoleon had entrusted three small divisions in an ad hoc corps under his trusted Marshal Edouard Mortier to secure  a bridge over the Danube at Krems. It was essentially supposed to be a housekeeping operation; the Russians were not yet present in force and the small expeditionary army under General of Infantry Mikhail Kutuzov was thought to be in retreat toward Moravia, much farther to the northeast. That was the belief, anyway.

Here is the situation in the morning. I have  re-rendered the map to reflect the snow-bound landscape, even though it was early November. Also please note that the sunlight is coming from the lower right of the map, which means that the hills and mountains would show shadows on the upper left. We have been conditioned, when looking at conventional relief maps to think that the light comes from the upper left. As with all my other maps, the troop formations are rendered to scale, so their footprint is what each unit would have actually occupied.

 

In reality a significant part of Kutuzov's army, over 23,000 men, had made it as far west as Krems on the north side of the Danube, about 43 miles (69 km) northwest of Vienna, having recently crossed the strategically situated bridge there and burned it behind them. Cossack scouts had alerted Kutuzov that the French had left a small corps, strung out in a gorge on the north bank of the river and that if he could trap them in detail before they reached Krems (where the country opened up), he had a chance to destroy in an entire isolated corps of the enemy. He had the bridge at Krems burned to eliminate any possibility of the main French forces on the south bank from coming to the aid of his prey.

Mortier, with about 10,000 in his ad hoc Provisional Corps, was making his way on the north side of the Danube, along the narrow gorge of this section of the great river toward the bridge at Stein, a suburb of Krems. He had lost touch with his cavalry division, supposedly screening his northern flank. and whose commander had apparently not got the word from Napoleon that he was now working directly for Mortier.. Groping his way eastward, more-or-less blind, he was unaware that he was about to walk into a trap. In addition to three infantry divisions (two French, one Dutch), with their attached artillery (26 guns in all) and about 500 cavalry, he also had assigned to him a flotilla of flat-bottomed barges to allow him to keep in communication with the left bank and to enable him to mount any amphibious jumps downstream--should the opportunity present itself. However, the majority of this "marine" asset was too far to the rear to be of any help in the coming fight.

With his lead division under General de Division Honoré Théodore Maxime Gazan de la Peyrière, or just Gazan from now on (though I do love those long French names), Mortier had hurried ahead on the north bank of the Danube to try and seize the strategic bridge at Mautern. Unfortunately, Kutuzov had got there first from the south bank and, after having brought his army over it, had burned it, thinking that he could keep the French on that side. Now Mortier found he had only one depleted division against the Russian host of 27,000. His other two divisions were days march behind him, the closest being Dupont's 3,900  back at Marbach, 25 miles away. He sent urgent messages back to tell Dupont to hustle.  Meanwhile, he had to hold on at Dürnstein , which was in a narrow gorge which seemed ideal for defense, much like the gorge at Thermopylae had seemed to the Spartan king Leonidas in 480 BCE.

Kutuzov himself dreams of another Thermopylae

General Kutuzov's plan was to entice Mortier's first division, 5,500 men under Gazan, to attack him at the head of a narrow, flat valley just east of the town of Dürnstein (below the ruins of the historic castle  where Richard the Lionheart of England had been held for ransom some 613 years prior). While launching a holding attack with a column of 2,700 men under Mikhail Miloradovich, Kutuzov's plan was to send two additional columns (7,400 total) under Generals Dokhturov and Strik around and up the plateau above the Danube gorge and descend on the French from the rear;  in imitation of Xerxes' annihilation of the Spartans at Thermopylae .

The sixty-year-old Kutuzov was no military genius. Czar Alexander had contempt for him; thought he was vastly overrated, as did nearly all of his staff, and nearly all of the Austrian Habsburg officers in the Alliance. He had been appointed extremely reluctantly by Alexander, who acted on political advice from his cabinet for public relations reasons; evidently Kutuzov was, for some reason, loved by the people and the army, who regarded him as just "a plain Joe", like them. As he was later to demonstrate at Austerlitz and Borodino, he was a bumbling leader and strategist, spending most of his time comfortably in the rear, drinking and eating and taking naps. And yet, he has been lionized in history as saving Russia during the War of 1812. I was amused when I saw his big portrait prominently displayed in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg ("The Gallery of Heroes" or whatever) when I visited there in 2007.

The Russian flanking columns didn't start their march until after midnight of the 11th in order to preserve secrecy. They were supposed to march up through the little town of Egelsee and then over to Scheinbenhoff, not more than four miles total, to be ready to make their way through the woods and mountain passes (less than another mile) in order to arrive in the rear of the French just after the morning attack at 0800 the morning. Timing was essential to this plan. They had only about five miles to go so they theoretically had plenty of time to get into position for their surprise attack. But an early snow had clogged the passes over the mountains. So the plan, while strategically clever, was too complicated for the operational capacity of the Russian Army of the time, even in good weather.

Mikhail Kutuzov
In the Hermitage Museum's
hall of heroes, by George Dawe

The Austrian allies on Kutuzov's staff criticized the complexity of the plan and the Russian's ignorance of local terrain and conditions. They also questioned the wisdom of splitting his force in the face of the demonstrably far more capable French, even if smaller in numbers. But the Russians themselves held the Austrians in contempt for having surrendered to the French so embarrassingly at Ulm. They remembered having beaten the French themselves just a few years before in the Alps when their brilliant general, Suvorov, had showed them how Russians fight. But Kutuzov was no Suvorov.

As if splitting his army in two weren't enough, Kutuzov made a further error by peeling off a further 5,000 men under Bagration to send them several miles to the northwest  to watch that quarter (and probably lay waste that sector of Austria, as they had been to every other town and village so far during this campaign). He also had Skepelov's column of another 4,254 men march to the northeast of Krems to guard that direction. The upshot was that he dissipated whatever numerical advantage he had before he even started the battle, reducing his force in the immediate vicinity to only about 17,000, and even these he had separated from each other, allowing them to be defeated in detail (ooops! spoiler alert!) He had kept all 168 of his guns, though, but 162 of them he had covering the burned bridges to Mautern, in case the French tried an amphibious maneuver down the Danube. He only allowed his attacking columns just six guns for close support. Mostly this was because of a severe lack of horses to pull the guns, particularly over rough, mountainous and snowy terrain.

Meanwhile, Mortier, aware that there were some Russians at the head of the canyon at Krems, hurried Gazan's division on Sunday the 10th through Dürnstein to drive them back from the strategic bridge at Stein. Gazan, in turn, pushed forward his light infantry regiment (4e Legere) to seize the hamlet of Rothenhof and drive back the Russian outposts.

Night marches in snow and mountains. What could possibly go wrong?

By dawn on Sunday, the 11th, the flanking columns under Dokhturov and Strik had only managed to make it only as far as the north head of the mountain passes, exhausted after having slogged through snow and vineyards in the dark. After marching since midnight in freezing weather, they still had to negotiate the difficult, snow-covered passes down through the mountains, a steep descent of almost 1,000 feet through narrow trails choked with snow.

During the march Dokhturov had problems with discipline as some of his troops could not resist breaking formation to loot the two villages they marched through (Egelsee and Scheibenhof). This was a perpetual problem with Russian troops, even though they were marching through supposedly allied (and therefore "friendly") territory, they proved to be as bad for the locals as the enemy--often worse. The discipline problem with a battalion of the Yaroslav Regiment was so bad that it was sent back in disgrace to Krems. In fact, the whole regiment was such a problem child that Dokhturov handed it to Strik to take with him.. 

Ill-discipline was also one reason, during the war, that Russian units arrived at the front at only a fraction of their original strength, without even having fought a battle. Half the army was AWOL, pillaging, burning, raping, and murdering the Austrian civilians they were supposedly here to defend from the French. Indeed, according to Thier in his History of the Consulate & Empire of France (1876), the local Austrians tended to regard their putative allies as the true invaders and the French as liberators, precisely because the former acted like a horde of barbarians and the latter like disciplined, civilized soldiers...at least by this stage of the war. It is likely, too, for this reason that the local guides Dokhturov had impressed were not as enthusiastic in helping the Russians find their way. So these guides may have also caused the delays. It is also not surprising that three weeks later, after the disaster of Austerlitz, Emperor Francis II was more easily persuaded to sign a separate peace with Napoleon. With friends like these...

Meanwhile, Miloradovich, who was assigned the task of the holding attack, waiting in Stein by the river with his six battalions of infantry and four guns, was ready to launch his own part of the trap by dawn. Of course, Kutuzov had completely lost touch with the wide flanking column he had sent off the previous evening and (in the absence of modern communications) was unaware that the timetable was off by several hours. Without awaiting word from Dokhturov or Strik that they had made their way down to behind Dürnstein , he ordered Miloradovich's attack to go in, supported by Essen's column of 3,600 held in reserve in Stein.

The first map above shows the situation at 0800, just as Miloradovich's holding attack begins. Dokhturov's and Strik's flanking columns had not even begun to attempt the steep descent through the mountain passes. In fact, even though they left Krems at midnight, by 0800 most of the troops hadn't arrived at the head of the passes, just four miles away.

 

The tactical significance of vineyards

This part of Austria, the Wachau district, has for thousands of years been a wine growing region, renowned for its excellent white grapes and cool climate. For the purposes of tactical significance, the entire area all along these banks of the Danube, would have been covered with dense vineyards.

The map has also been drawn to show this tactical feature of the vineyards carpeting the battlefield, even up the steep hillsides. While other maps of this battle ignore this feature, this would have posed a significant disadvantage to any attacking force and an advantage to a defender. If you've ever tried to hike across a vineyard, you know you can only go easily with the grain (up and down the vinerows), but going "cross grain" is like forcing your way through hedge after hedge every few meters (I wouldn't recommend this through a working vineyard today). Cavalry would have been hampered by the close vines and dense infantry columns would have been disordered trying to move through them (either with or cross grain). In the Dürnstein-Rothenhof sector, the vinerows today run generally perpendicular to the river on the flat, and parallel on the hillside. As the slope increases, there are step-like terraces, which would've been even more difficult to maneuver on. We assume this pattern would have been the same in 1805.

A shot of the terraced vineyards on the slope above Dürnstein. You can imagine what an obstacle this was for maneuvering massed troops.
Photo courtesy of Scott Williams from the Wikipedia article on the battle.

So even though the French occupied a seemingly flat plain between Dürnstein and Rothenhof, it was probably, for tactical purposes, broken ground, which gave the defending French an edge. One need only go to the satellite image in Google Maps (Dürnstein, Austria) to see the density of this terrain.

Click this link to go to Google Maps to see an excellent 360 VR view of the terrain. And this link to see a panorama of the entire valley. Or go to this site to see beautiful mages of what they look like.

And here is a shot I found on Pinterest of the very vineyards at Dürnstein in the snow, with the clocktower of the town in the foreground. You can see how it would be difficult to move perpendicular to the vinerows. 

 

Miloradovich at least does his part.

At 0800 the eastern Russian column under Miloradovich, consisting of three battalions of the Apsheron Musketeer Regiment, two battalions of grenadiers from the Smolensk and Little Russia Regiments, and a battalion of the 8th Jagers, (2,500 infantrymen in all) and four 6 pounder guns swarmed in close (but disordered) columns down through the vineyards and up the defile next to the river and onto the outnumbered 4e Legere (1,300) around Rothenhof. This column also had two squadrons of cavalry (the Mirapol Hussars) but, as was mentioned above, the ground, being covered by vineyards, restricted the use of cavalry. So we can only imagine that these horsemen played little part in the attack other than to hover in "support" on the roads behind the infantry.

Scott Bowden's excellent and highly detailed account of this battle in his "The Glory Years: Napoleon and Austerlitz" describes the Russian troops being hindered by their thick overcoats, while the French troops had been ordered to "drop packs and overcoats" in order to fight more nimbly; standard French practice. It goes without saying that during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, Russian troops proved themselves again and again to be ferocious fighters in actual combat, though their discipline may have been lacking on the march. In this case, even though the 4e Legere gave a good account of themselves, and the Russians may have been both encumbered by their coats and attacking crossways through vineyards, their overwhelming numbers around Rothenhof and the fury of their attack soon threw the French chasseurs back in disorder. Col. de Bazancourt, the skipper of the regiment,  sent back an urgent request for artillery and infantry support, but he got no response. Eventually, seeing he was outnumbered, he ordered his men to withdraw. But his boss, Gen. Graindorge, galloped up and ordered his men back.

Rallying a number of times, the three French battalions kept firing into the ranks of the oncoming Russians. But they kept coming and coming, and falling by entire ranks. At this point Miloradovich brought up four 6 pounder guns through the narrow defile along the river and proceeded to pour canister into the dwindling legere infantry. Seeing they were now outgunned, running low on ammunition, and suffering severe casualties, neither de Bazancourt nor Graindorge could stop the retreat. So Graindorge gave the order to sauve-qui-peut. The 1st and 3rd battalions on the left managed to extricate themselves and high-tail it back beyond Unterloiben, where Gazan and Mortier were setting up a strong-point defense with the rest of the division.  But on the right flank, the 2nd battalion found itself completely surrounded and pinned against the river by the Russian grenadiers and jagers. Some managed to bolt. The CO of the battalion, Chevillet, not wanting the precious eagle standard to be captured, broke it off its staff and flung into the Danube. Mortier, back in Oberloiben had sent a handful of boats down to rescue as many as they could. But the boats that Graindorge and Chevillet got in somehow got swept out into the deeper current and carried downstream, where they were captured by the Russians near Krems.

Most of the survivors of the 4e, though, managed to make it back behind Unterloiben, where they rallied, refilled their ammunition and got read for action again. But their brave stand had cost them 788 men, killed or captured.

Closeup of action around Rothenhof between 0800 and 0900: The 4e Legere trying to hold off the Russian columns and guns. Russians, coming out of a narrow ravine between the Dürnstein plain and Krems (see broad map above), had a disadvantage in firepower as they had to maneuver in tight columns of platoons (half-companies of 12-16 man frontage). The Apsheron battalions would've also had to charge perpendicularly across vineyards on the upward slope to get at the northern side of the French line. I have rendered the 8th Jager battalion as deployed in skirmish line ahead of the charging columns, which seems logical given their training. I also assume that they would have cut paths through the vinerows for the tight infantry columns to follow..  Copyrighted image protected by Digimarc digital code.

Mortier stops Miloradovich cold at Unterloiben

Meanwhile, while the 4e Legere were heroically trying to fight for time, Mortier and Gazan were bringing up the three battalions of the division's third regiment, the 103e Ligne, from Dürnstein to reinforce the 100e Ligne behind the village of Unterloiben. Gazan had also assembled all of the division's grenadier and carabinier (light infantry grenadiers) companies into an ad hoc battalion and had them fortify some stone buildings on the eastern side of the hamlet, 574 men in all. Any attacking force would have to either take this makeshift fort or be raked going past it to attack the main French line on the west side of town. This was a pattern of "strong point" defense that the French had used weeks before at Haslach, before Ulm, where it proved to be highly effective in breaking up assaulting columns being channeled through narrow village streets. A tactic that would still be used by modern infantry today in the 21st century.

Mortier was also able to post his three guns in the most advantageous position to devastate the Russians, having to come on in narrow columns down the village main street, in effect putting them into an enfilade as they made their way up the street. Each ball plowed deep into the stacked ranks behind each other, causing frightful carnage.

But on the Russians came, flowing around and past the French grenadiers' strong point on the east side of the village, taking galling fire from the flanks. Again and again they flung themselves at the steady French line regiments pouring volleys into them from close range across the grapevines, and  with the artillery battery mangling them with canister, only to be forced back (once again past the hornet's nest of blue coated grenadiers firing from the buildings) to rally east of town, where they would form up and charge once again. This went on for about three hours, like waves battering a breakwater, until the Russians were spent. Miloradovich went into the fight with about 2,700 men and finally limped back to Rothenhof with barely 1,000. For some inexplicable reason, Kutuzov, during all this time, never thought to support him with Essen's 3,600 reserves waiting in Stein. But then Kutuzov now, and three weeks later at Austerlitz, and again seven years later at Borodino, was never known for his alacrity in battle. In the Navy we used to have a joke for remote commanders like him, "I'd love to go with you men, but I'll be watching from the rear through a heavy lenses." To him, Miloradovich's heroic, three hour attack was only a diversion. He expected his masterstroke to fall at any moment from the mountain passes on the rear of the extended French.

Action at Unterloiben about from 0900 to about 1000. Miloradovich's infantry found it difficult to maintain order attacking perpendicularly across the vinerows, while the six battalions of Gazan's infantry merely needed to maintain their line, crouch until the Russians got close enough, then pop up and deliver a devastating volley. The Russians were thrown back again and again. Meanwhile, Col. Troupil's grenadiers fortified in the stone buildings on the east side of the town could deliver enfilading fire into the flanks of the Russian infantry as it went forward and back. Copyrighted image protected by Digimarc digital code.

The Russian stroke finally falls, too weak and too late.

At about noon, Miloradovich, having lost over 50% of his force, called off his assault and finally pulled his exhausted, wounded survivors back toward Rothenhof, given a little encouragement from the equally exhausted but victorious bayonets of the 100e and 103e Ligne, who chased the surviving Russians back through Rothenhof and as far as the outside range of Kutuzov's 162 guns at the Mautern bridge. In so doing they managed to capture the Miloradovich's four guns and all of the survivors of the 8th Jager battalion.

It was about this time that Strik's flanking column of five battalions (from the Butyrsk and remaining 8th Jager Regiment) finally started to trickle out of the steep, wooded defile to the north of Unterloiben, behind the French left. It had taken them nearly twelve, grueling hours to make the trek up and over the plateau and then down through the snow-packed pass. They had been marching all night and arrived exhausted and in disarray.

Unfortunately, as the first battalion emerged from the woods onto the steep slope, they were unable to deploy due to the broken nature of the vineyard-covered terraces. The two surviving battalions of the 4e Legere, having rallied, reloaded, and redeployed among the vinerows, met the first Russians with devastating volleys. They were supported by some dismounted squadrons of the 4e Dragons. In quick order the first Russian infantry to emerge were halted and started fleeing back up the defile, taking each succeeding battalion with them, until Strik's entire column was in retreat northward. All that work for nothing.

By noon, Kutuzov's intricate plan had fallen apart. The main blow, Dokhturov's wide flanking attack had not even begun to take place. Strik's column had emerged from the mountain passes around noon but was immediately met and thrown back by the 4e Legere. And Miloradovich had lost half his men in his fruitless, four hour fight to distract Mortier and retreated to Krems, with Campana in hot pursuit until stopped by Kutuzov's massive artillery batteries at the Mautern bridge.

View from the Dürnstein Castle toward the Danube, showing the villages of Loiben (Ober- in the far center and Unter- on the left, with the steeple). This would have been roughly the view (covered in snow) that Strik's men would've seen as they emerged from the mountain pass. Notice all the vineyards carpeting the narrow floodplain. In the winter these would've been mostly bare sticks and gnarly branches, which the French had pulled up for firewood. But they would still have hindered the deployment of infantry or cavalry.  Image from Wikipedia Mwinog277.

 

Mortier Starts to Pull Out of the Trap

Having successfully flicked away Strik's half-hearted feint on his flank, Mortier ordered what was left of his indefatigable 4e Legere to move east to Rothenhof once more and make sure Miloradovich's survivors kept retreating.  By 1400 all the firing in the valley has died down and the battle seems to have been won by the French.

Nevertheless, Mortier sensed that this was probably only the lull. He had been attacked by only a fraction of Kutuzov's army and he rightly anticipated that the main attack was going to fall on his rear, through Dürnstein. He had hoped that Dupont's division, which which was supposed to have been marching up from Murbach, 25 miles upstream, to rescue his trapped division. This withdrawal back through Dürnstein must have taken a couple of hours to organize as the detached grenadier companies in Unterloiben had to rejoin their battalions. And transport for the hundreds of wounded would have had to have been organized.

Some two hours later, at 1600, Gazan's division was making its way back up the river road through Dürnstein when the heads of Dokhturov's large column started to emerge (finally) from their 16-hour trek through the mountains and woods. Immediately a second battle began, which was even more desperate because the French were, by now, nearly out of ammunition, so they had to bludgeon their way up the road against the blocking Russians by bayonet charges. Mortier's staff and Gazan plead with the marshal to flee on one of the few boats moored at Dürnstein so a Marshal of France wouldn't be captured, but he refused, saying, (supposedly) "We must be saved or parish together!" Of course, this was probably romantic reconstruction in the tradition of 19th century memoir. But it wasn't in Mortier's nature, either, to abandon his men; he was a giant of a man (literally...6'5", 2 m) and a fighter. So he personally led charge after charge of elite dragoons and infantry against the Russians, slowly driving them back. Something Kutuzov could never do. 

Gazan led the 103e Ligne  up the slope above Dürnstein toward the castle to meet Gerhardt's two battalions of the Bryansk Musketeers, stumbling down out of the woods and trying to negotiate the vinyard terraces (see picture above). These were in no state to fight. In the difficult terrain they couldn't even get into order. They had been without sleep for two nights, had had nothing to eat, were freezing, and now, instead of surprising the French, they themselves got a nasty surprise with a devastating fire from French infantry lying in wait. It wasn't much of a fight. They fled back up into the mountains.

This is the view that Dokhturov's troops would've had when they eventually emerged from their trek through the mountains. Except it would've been a winter wonderland and they'd have been staring directly into the setting sun. Image from Google Street View, photo by Lukas Hauer.

 

 

Situation at sunset. I have rendered this map in warm colors to reflect the waning sunlight. Also you'll notice I change the direction of the light so it's now coming from the southwest. Wasn't that clever of me?

 

Dupont to the rescue, a reverse Thermopylae

But something was happening behind Dokhturov's dense columns debouching onto the narrow road behind Dürnstein. More firing and shouting could be heard up river. Dupont had come to the rescue! It was about time!

Dupont's division was led by the 9e Legere, probably one of the most elite and lethal units in the entire Grand Armee. The two battalions of chasseurs came on to the rearmost Russian regiment, the Vyatka Musketeers, like a buzzsaw. In short order they had annihilated that unit, sending the survivors fleeing back over the pass they had just spent hours struggling through. Some 400 of the Russians jumped into the freezing Danube to avoid being killed by the homicidal maniacs of the 9e. This started an uphill avalanche as each succeeding Russian battalion broke in panic and fled back up into the mountains. The 9e Legere were supported by four more fresh battalions of Dupont's infantry (the 32e and 96e Ligne).

At the other end of the road, from Dürnstein, Mortier was personally leading a counter-attack with the 103e Ligne into Dokhturov's battalions. First the Narva regiment, followed by the 6th Jager, turned and fled up whence they had come. They were starving, exhausted, and in no condition to fight.

Night was falling. It was about 1700 at this time of year. Confusion, followed by panic, started to infect all of Dokhturov's troops. Suddenly, where they had been the westward jaws of a vice on Gazan's division (Dokhturov could not have gotten word about the failure of Miloradovich's attack hours earlier), they themselves were now trapped in a vice and cut off from their base, enemies in front and in back, the freezing river on one side, and the rocky mountains on the other. The tables were reversed; what was supposed to be a Thermopylae (a classic double envelopment in a narrow pass) was unchanged, but the role of the Spartans had flipped to the Russians. And so they were cut down or they fled back up into the passes or jumped into the river.

By 1900 it was dark and the fighting had died down. Mortier, thanks to the superhuman fighting of Gazan's division and the timely arrival of Dupont, had avoided what would have been the first catastrophe of the entire 1805 campaign for the French. But it would have been more of a symbolic catastrophe than a strategic one. The outcome of this first act of the War of the Third Coalition had already been decided three weeks earlier, at Ulm. This was more of a victory of honor for French Eagles than a strategic one.

The Cost

The toll of the daylong battle was enormous for both sides. Of the 10,000 troops that were actually committed to the battle by Kutuzov, a staggering 6,000 were lost, 60%! Entire battalions were wiped out. In addition to these, another 1,700 to 2,000 fugitives of Strik's and Dokhturov's commands never rejoined their regiments, but slipped into the countryside (and eventually back to Russia, presumably).

But the French also lost heavily. Gazan's division, naturally, suffered the most, with some 2,152 lost (38% casualties). The most bloodied unit was, of course, the 4e Legere, which had fought the longest, against the greatest odds and had stood as the rear guard into the evening, losing over half of its roster killed, wounded or captured. Dupont's division, arriving toward the end of the battle and dishing it out more than taking it, lost only 106.

Because the French had retreated upriver from Dürnstein at the end of the day, Kutuzov declared victory. In his 18th century tradition of honor, the side remaining on the field of battle was the technical victor, even though both sides had retreated. Kutuzov was more of a public relations officer than an actual general.

Initially embarrassed by being ambushed, Mortier was now on the aggressive again and ordered another advance, seizing Stein and Krems on the 14th after the Russians had started a strategic retreat northwest into Bohemia, and commandeering the hospitals set up there by them. So the self-proclaimed Russian victory was, in fact, just a strategic defeat. One can't but wonder why Kutuzov was so popular with the men since he apparently thought nothing of wasting them for nothing.

The Assessment

Kutuzov, who had been handed a gift by Mortier's precipitate over-extension of the 10th of November, had thrown away his opportunity by splitting his forces in so many parts and relying on an overly complicated maneuver to outflank the French. Where he had initially outnumbered the French by two-to-one, he dissipated that advantage and everywhere his piecemeal attacks probed, they were actually outnumbered and over-extended themselves. While Mortier was in the thick of the fight, slashing away with his saber, Kutuzov was managing affairs in the rear at Krems during the entire battle; waiting for news, we assume. And his tea and pastries.

The Russians also theoretically enjoyed an overwhelming strategic advantage in artillery, (168 to 11 French tubes), but the snow, the steep and broken nature of the ground, and the strategic wastage of horses had prevented them from using all this firepower against Mortier. Except for six guns, most of Kutuzov's artillery was massed in battery on the bank of the Danube near Stein, ready to blast out of the water any attempted amphibious move by the French past Krems. As it happened, there was only one hapless boatload of Frenchmen (some survivors of the 4e Legere) whose boat had been picked up by the swift current and taken into the maw of the Russian grand battery, where it was blown into splinters.

It made no difference, though.

Strategically, in the context of the campaign, the Battle of Dürnstein made very little difference. What could have been a temporary setback for one corps of the French, was made null by Kutuzov's incompetence. Napoleon was delighted with the heroic performance of Mortier and his newly formed VIII Corps. And he sprinkled medals, titles, and field promotions all 'round. But even if Kutuzov's Thermopylae had succeeded in wiping out Gazan's division, the overall outcome to the campaign would have been negligible (as Thermopylae itself had been to Xerxes).

The 1805 campaign so far had been almost flawlessly executed by the French. They were already at the gates of Vienna, with the vast majority of the Habsburg field army destroyed and the Emperor Francis in flight. Kutuzov was already in retreat back toward the highlands of Moravia, racing to link up with reinforcements from Russia. As it happened, Dürnstein made more of a propaganda victory for the French as they inflated the odds against them, in some bulletins claiming that Mortier had held off 40,000 Russians (instead of the 10,000 that were actually engaged). This was probably where that big number in other histories came from.

Kutuzov was on his way back into Moravia where he was to link up with the rest of the Russian expeditionary force under Tsar Alexander and what was left of Austrian forces in central Europe. There he hoped to make a decisive stand against Napoleon on ground favorable to the Coalition--somewhere near Brunn, the high ground east of that town, near the Castle of Austerlitz, looked like a promising place to do that.

Wargame Considerations

A war game of Dürnstein could test a small number of  "what ifs". Though, given the nature of the combat efficiency, the discipline, and material condition of each of the combatants, the outcome would probably have been the same. But some of the following scenarios could be played out:

1. Assume Kutuzov is smarter than he actually was.

Instead of splitting his army into little packets and sending half of it to guard against imaginary threats from the north, the Russian player could assign the outflanking force to not just Dokhturov and Strik but also to Bagration's column (5,000 men). Additionally, Essen's idle reserve column, picking their feet back in Stein, could have been thrown in (like a reserve is supposed to be) to support Miloradovich after he had achieved his initial victory in the morning. The additional reserve column under Skepelov (4,000--see Orders of Battle below) could also have been used to press Mortier as he tried to escape the valley later in the afternoon.

2. What if Dupont doesn't arrive?

Another scenario could see if Mortier could have saved himself had Dupont not arrived in the nick of time at 1600. Roll dice (or use some other randomizing device) to make his arrival iffy. This would add an element of tension to any simulation since the side playing the French would not know, as Mortier didn't know, if the "cavalry" would arrive in the nick of time or not.

3. Suppose the weather was better.

To see if the unseasonably cold weather and the early snow was a factor, make the weather more balmy. The roads and ground movement could be normal. If your rules make the Russians fatigue more easily and fire more slowly because they would be wearing coats, you can have them take their coats off. and fight on more equal terms to the French.

4. Simulating the march indiscipline of the Russians

Part of the delay on the part of the Russians was on account of the sloppy discipline of the units. Several regiments (such as the Yaroslav Musketeers and the Pavolograd Hussars) had disgraced themselves by breaking and looting the surrounding countryside and every village they happened to march through. Russian officers were not, at this period, nearly as professional as the French. Moreover, there were not as many of them or of NCOs in the units to manage the serf soldiers, with a ratio in the Russian Army of 12:1 men to officers and NCOs compared to 4.5:1 in the French Army.

To simulate this lack of march discipline, generate a randomizing event (a die roll, for instance) every time a Russian unit moves through or near a village. If the test fails, the unit becomes completely disordered and is out of the game. Or a number of soldiers can be lost to looting or "melting" away when tempted by a village or woods to do so. For example, if you roll a "1" when the unit passes through a village, 10% of the strength (in combat power or model figures) is lost.

The Russians, however, were also ferocious and tenacious in battle, so this indiscipline could be ignored once the unit is engaged. Rallying for Russian units in combat should be as easy as that of the French, since historically they were noted for their ability to reform in battle.

5. Movement Restrictions

As mentioned above, the vineyard-covered nature of the battlefield would have greatly hampered all movement across it in tight formations. The French, being more trained and experienced in light infantry tactics, could operate in this ground more easily. Not so much the Russians. For a war game, consider all movement "across the grain" of vineyards to be the same as through woods. With the grain (e.g. parallel to the rows), movement can be normal. But regardless of direction, the vineyards would have broken up linear formations, so they would have disordered any close order formations moving through them. Cavalry could not move cross grain but only down the rows. Same with artillery.

In addition, while accounts don't describe the snow on the valley floor as being all that thick, in the passes it would have been deeper. So have troops moving downhill through the mountains and woods as moving even slower because of the ice and snow.

Orders of Battle

The following OOB and unit strengths are based on those given in Bowden's Napoleon and Austerlitz, p 479-481. I regard French strengths as reliable as they are from actual parade states just prior to the battle, on 6 November. Russian unit strengths are proportional estimates based on reported total strengths. Some accounts give the Russians as many as 40,000 at the battle, however, these are evidently based on an assumption of full unit rosters (e.g. 700 men per battalion vs the 300-400 that they actually mustered), not accounting for attrition from desertions and sickness from the 1,200 mile trek from Russia. 

The actual forces at Dürnstein are tallied,  Russian troops (e.g. under Bagration and Skepelov) are listed separately for those who would like to run a war game with these troops thrown in. Dumonceau's Dutch division is not included at all with the French OOB as it was too far to the west to have participated in time.

References

Bowden, Scott, Napoleon and Austerlitz, 1997, The Emperor's Press, Chicago, ISBN 0-9626655-7-6

Thiers, Adolphe, History of the Consulate and the Empire of France, 1876, William Nimmo, London

Hourtoulle, F.G., Austerlitz, 2003, Histoire & Collections, Paris, ISBN 2-91390371-1

Duffy, Christopher, Austerlitz 1805, 1977, Seeley Service & Co, London, !SBN 0-85422-128-X 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle of_Durnstein  


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