Austerlitz: The Sun of Bonaparte

December 2, 1805

On frozen ponds in Moravia, Napoleon lured the Austrians and Russians off a plateau and smashed them between two pincers of French infantry. Tsar Alexander wept. The Holy Roman Empire, already a museum piece, was finished. Austerlitz remains, by acclamation, Napoleon's masterpiece. The emperor would refer to it for the rest of his life as his finest hour, the battle where geometry became annihilation.