| War of the Third Coalition | |||||||
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| Part of the Napoleonic Wars and the Coalition Wars | |||||||
 Click an image to load the appropriate article. Left to right, top to bottom: Battles of Ulm, Trafalgar, Durenstein, Schöngrabern and Austerlitz | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
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| Casualties and losses | |||||||
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Austrian Empire: 20,000 killed or wounded 70,000 captured Russia: 25,000 killed or wounded 25,000 captured Naples: 20,000 killed, wounded or captured Total casualties: 160,000 killed, wounded or captured |
France: 13,500 killed 37,000 wounded 5,000 captured Italy: 350 killed 1,900 wounded Spain: 1,200 killed 1,600 wounded Bavaria: 300 killed 1,200 wounded Total casualties: 62,050 killed, wounded or captured | ||||||
The War of the Third Coalition[note 1] (French: Guerre de la Troisième Coalition) was a European conflict lasting from 1805 to 1806 and was the first conflict of the Napoleonic Wars. During the war, France and its client states under Napoleon I and its ally Spain opposed an alliance, the Third Coalition, which was made up of the United Kingdom, the Austrian Empire, the Russian Empire, Naples, Sicily, and Sweden. Prussia remained neutral during the war.
Britain had already been at war with France following the breakdown of the Peace of Amiens and remained the only country still at war with France after the Treaty of Pressburg. From 1803 to 1805, Britain stood under constant threat of a French invasion. The Royal Navy, however, assured its naval dominance at the Battle of Trafalgar in October 1805.
The Third Coalition itself came to full fruition in 1804–05 as Napoleon's actions in Italy and Germany (notably the arrest and execution of the Duc d'Enghien) spurred Austria and Russia into joining Britain against France. The war would be determined on the continent, and the major land operations that sealed the swift French victory involved the Ulm Campaign, a large wheeling manoeuvre by the Grande Armée lasting from late August to mid-October 1805 that captured an entire Austrian army, and the decisive French victory over a combined Austro-Russian force under Alexander I of Russia at the Battle of Austerlitz in early December. Austerlitz effectively brought the Third Coalition to an end, although later there was a small side campaign against Naples, which also resulted in a decisive French victory at the Battle of Campo Tenese.
On 26 December 1805, Austria and France signed the Treaty of Pressburg, which took Austria out of both the war and the Coalition, while it reinforced the earlier treaties of Campo Formio and of Lunéville between the two powers. The treaty confirmed the Austrian cession of lands in Italy to France and in Germany to Napoleon's German allies, imposed an indemnity of 40 million francs on the defeated Habsburgs, and allowed the defeated Russian troops free passage, with their arms and equipment, through hostile territories and back to their home soil. Victory at Austerlitz also prompted Napoleon to create the Confederation of the Rhine, a collection of German client states that pledged themselves to raise an army of 63,000 men. As a direct consequence of those events, the Holy Roman Empire ceased to exist when, in 1806, Francis II abdicated the Imperial throne, becoming Francis I, Emperor of Austria. Those achievements, however, did not establish a lasting peace on the continent. Austerlitz had driven neither Russia nor Britain, whose fleet protected Sicily from a French invasion, to cease fighting. Meanwhile, Prussian worries about the growing French influence in Central Europe sparked the War of the Fourth Coalition in 1806.
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