ould scarcely
resist the onset of superior forces.

Their plan was rash, even for an army which numbered about 80,000 men.
The Austrian General Weyrother had convinced the Czar that an
energetic advance of his left wing, which rested on the southern spurs
of the Pratzenberg, would force back Napoleon's right, which was
ranged between the villages of Kobelnitz and Sokelnitz, and so roll up
his long line that stretched beyond Schlapanitz. This move, if
successful, would not only win the day, but decide the campaign, by
cutting off the French from their supplies coming from the south and
driving them into the exhausted lands around Olmuetz. Such was
Weyrother's scheme, which enchanted the Czar and moved the fears of
the veteran Kutusoff: it was expounded to the Russian and Austrian
generals after midnight on December the 2nd. Strong in the great
central hill, the Pratzenberg, and the cover of its village at the
foot, the Czar had no fear for his centre: to his right or northern
wing he gave still less heed, as it rested firmly on villages and was
powerful in cavalry and artillery; but his left wing, comprising fully
two-fifths of the allied army, was expected easily to defeat
Napoleon's weak and scattered right, and so decide the day. Kutusoff
saw the peril of massing so great a force there and weakening the
centre, but sadly held his peace.

Napoleon had already divined their secret. In his order of battle he
took his troops into his confidence, telling them that, while the
enemy marched to turn his right, they would expose their flank to his
blows. To announce this beforehand was strangely bold, and it has been
thought that he had the plan from some traitor on the enemy's staff.
No proof of this has been given; and such an explanation seems
superfluous to those who have observed Napoleon's uncanny power of
fathoming his adversary's designs. The idea of withdrawing one wing in
order to tempt the foe unduly to prolong his line on that side, and
then to crush it at the centre, or sever it from the centre, is common
both to Castiglione and Austerlitz. It is true, the peculiarities of
the ground, the ardour of the Russian attack, and the vastness of the
operations lent to the present conflict a splendour and a horror which
Castiglione lacked. But the tactics which won both battles were
fundamentally the same.

He had studied the ground in front of Austerlitz; and the priceless
gift of strategic imagination revealed to him