According to his intelligence the French, once over the river, had set off on a forced march towards Znaim, which was on Kutuzov’s route, sixty or seventy miles away. To get to Znaim before the French offered the best hope of saving the army. To let the French get there first would mean exposing the whole army to a disgrace like that of the Austrians at Ulm, or to complete destruction. But to reach Znaim with the whole army before the French got there was impossible. The road for the French from Vienna to Znaim was shorter and better than the road for the Russians from Krems to Znaim.
On the night he received the report Kutuzov dispatched Bagration’s advance guard of four thousand men off to the right over the mountains from the Krems-Znaim road to the Vienna-Znaim road. Bagration was to march without stopping, and take up a position facing Vienna with his back to Znaim, and if he did manage to get there before the French, his task was to delay them for as long as possible. Meanwhile Kutuzov set off for Znaim with all the heavy transport.
Bagration covered the thirty miles over the mountains at night in foul weather, with no road and with hungry, badly shod soldiers. Leaving a third of his men straggling in his wake, Bagration reached Hollabrünn, on the Vienna-Znaim road, a few hours before the French, who were marching there from Vienna. Kutuzov still needed a good twenty-four hours to get to Znaim with his heavy transport and so, to save the army, Bagration with his four thousand hungry and exhausted soldiers needed to hold up the entire enemy army confronting him at Hollabrünn for a day and a night – an obvious impossibility. But an odd twist of fate made the impossible possible. The success of the trick that had given the Vienna bridge into the hands of the French encouraged Murat to try and outwit Kutuzov too. Encountering Bagration’s feeble detachment on the Znaim road, Murat mistook it for Kutuzov’s whole army. With a view to administering one final, crushing defeat to this army, he decided to wait for the troops coming up behind him from Vienna. With this in mind he proposed a three-day truce on condition that neither army changed position or made any movement. Murat insisted that peace negotiations were under way and this truce was proposed to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. Count Nostitz, the Austrian general in charge of the advance posts, trusted Murat’s word as conveyed by an emissary and fell back, leaving Bagration’s detachment unprotected. Another emissary rode along the Russian lines to make the same announcement about peace negotiations and propose a three-day truce to the Russian troops. Bagration’s response was that he had no authority to accept or to decline any truce, and he dispatched an adjutant to Kutuzov with a report of the French proposal.
A truce was Kutuzov’s only hope of gaining time in order to give Bagration’s exhausted forces some rest and to get the transport and heavy convoys (the movement of which was concealed from the French) one stage further along the road to Znaim. The offer of a truce gave them out of the blue one last chance to save the army. Once informed of it, Kutuzov promptly dispatched Adjutant General Wintzengerode, who was with him, to the enemy’s camp. Wintzengerode was instructed not only to accept the truce, but to propose terms for surrender, and meanwhile Kutuzov sent his adjutants back to speed up the transport of the baggage and equipment of the whole army along the Krems-Znaim road. Bagration’s starving and exhausted detachment was to provide cover single-handedly for the troop and transport convoy by just staying there facing an enemy eight times as strong.
Kutuzov was right in two respects: that the offer of surrender, which did not tie his hands in any way, gave time for at least some of the transport to reach Znaim, and also that Murat’s blunder would very soon be discovered. Napoleon was at Schönbrunn, less than twenty miles from Hollabrünn, when he received Murat’s dispatch and the proposals for a truce and surrender. He saw through the trick immediately and sent the following letter to Murat by return:
Schönbrunn,
25 Brumaire, 1805 at eight o’clock in the morning.
TO PRINCE MURAT
I can find no words to express to you my displeasure. As a mere advance guard commander you have no right to enter into truces without orders from me. You are losing for me the spoils of a whole campaign. Break the truce immediately and march on the enemy. You must have it declared to them that the general who signed this surrender had no right to do so, and that only the Emperor of Russia has that right. If, however, the Emperor of Russia should ratify the aforesaid convention, I shall do likewise; but this is nothing but a trick. March on and destroy the Russian army . . . You are well placed to seize its baggage and artillery.
