Austerlitz Alternate

DECEMBER 2ND, 1805

The War of the Third Coalition rages in Europe. Napoleon Bonaparte's Grande Armée sweeps everything before it. With a big victory over an Austrian Army in Ulm, the French have occupied Vienna, the capital of the Austrian Empire.

The Russians have entered Austria to come to the help of their Allies and under pressure from the British. The Austro-Russians and the French are about to clash at a small, unknown town called Austerlitz.

And then everything changes. The French are stopped trying to retake the Pratzen Heights and the day's battle end in a stalemate for both armies. Kutusov, the allied army's leader in the absence of young Tsar Alexander (who fell ill and is still somewhere in Galicia), decides to retire the army northward with the Austrian Emperor's approval.

The news galvanizes the Revolution's enemies and of the Empire, jealous of Napoleon's success and wanting him gone. The Prussians decides to join the war and move their troops into Austria to link their forces with the two other powers. The German states and other countries like Naples rethink their stances in the conflict. And the French Emperor's internal enemies, ever-wishing the return of the old regime, start to plot to overthrow the government in Paris.

All the while, the Ottoman Empire, convinced by the French several months earlier to enter the war, has decided to intervene in favor of Bonaparte and invade southern Hungary with an Army. Austria is on the brink of annihilation, but Napoleon's Grande Armée also has a big challenge ahead since it now needs to defeat three major powers simultaneously.

Everything will come down to either Napoleon's genius to overcome the odds and win regardless of the troops arrayed against him, or else his defeat and the end of the French Empire.

This is the story of the Napoleonic Wars.