Third Coalition

In the Napoleonic Wars, the Third Coalition against Napoléon emerged in 1805, and consisted of an alliance of Great Britain, Austria, Russia, Naples, and Sweden against France.

The coalition, seeking to take advantage of the concentration of Napoléon's forces in the north for an invasion of Britain made plans to attack Italy and Bavaria. The allied armies organized in Germany and Italy, with Karl Mack von Lieberich mounting an invasion of Bavaria while waiting for the Russian army under Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov to reinforce him. The Bavarian army, allied to Napoléon, was forced to retreat northward, abandoning Munich. Napoléon's army was at Boulogne, waiting for conditions to be right for an invasion of England.

Napoléon left Boulogne in August, marching his army rapidly to the Rhine. Crossing the Rhine in late September, he marched around Mack's right, surrounding the Austrian army at Ulm. Pushing back Austrian attenpts to regroup, he cut off Ulm from Austria, forcing Mack to capitulate in October. Kutuzov, on the Austrian-Bavarian border, was forced to retreat into Vienna, and then north into Moravia to meet reinforcements, abandoning Vienna on November 13. Napoleon marched north to meet the allied armies, finding them at a defensive position at Austerlitz. In the Battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon lured the Austrians into an assault by a feigned retreat, then stormed the heights they had left, surrounding and destroying all but the right wing under Bagration.

The Austrian army in Italy under Archduke Charles was forced to retreat without a battle by the French victories in Germany, and allied landings in northern Germany and Naples were abortive. Austria was eliminated from the coalition and evicted from Italy by the Treaty of Pressburg.

Meanwhile, British admiral Horatio Nelson defeated the combined fleets of France and Spain at Trafalgar, removing permanently the threat of a French invasion of Britain.

Napoléon had defeated Russia in battle but it remained in the war, and Prussia entered the war in 1806, in protest at French violation of its territory in the 1805 campaign. This was the War of the Fourth Coalition.

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