"Austerlitz" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wounded, or captured. The left wing of the Allies was annihilated. So far all was well for the Child of Destiny; but Nemesis was preparing to exact her dues very swiftly. A victory can scarcely be so called, unless it be well followed up; and whether Dresden should be another Austerlitz depended upon what might be done during the next two or three days. Napoleon did not act with his usual energy on that critical occasion, and in seven months he had ceased to reign. Why did he refrain from reaping the fruits of victory? Because the weather, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... wood,” but the term is really “Auster-acre,” the eastern-acre or field (Latin, Australis ager); as at Bawtry there is land called by the similar name, “Auster-field,” and we have most of us heard of the battle of Austerlitz, when Napoleon conquered the forces of Austria and Russia, in 1805. To the north lies another wood, known as “Hardy-gang” wood, a name derived from the following local tradition:—Once upon a time a wild man lived in the fastnesses of this wood (the woods about here were, within the writer’s ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... when my friends and I Made happy music with our songs and cheers, A shout of triumph mounted up thus high, And distant cannon opened on our ears: We rise,—we join in the triumphant strain,— Napoleon conquers—Austerlitz is won— Tyrants shall never tread us down again, In the brave days ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had been detected and tried in Paris a most redoubted coiner. He had carried on the business with a dexterity that won admiration even for the offence; and, moreover, he had served previously with some distinction at Austerlitz and Marengo. The consequence was that the public went with instead of against him, and his sentence was transmuted to three years' imprisonment by the government. For all governments in free countries aspire rather ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... No matter how much superior to the biographer his subject may be, the man who writes the life feels himself, in a certain sense, on the level of the person whose life he is writing. One cannot fight over the battles of Marengo or Austerlitz with Napoleon without feeling as if he himself had a fractional claim to the victory, so real seems the transfer of his personality into that of the conqueror while he reads. Still more must this identification of "subject" ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... by one who has lived through the greatest European wars, and has heard the ablest generals reduce to their real strength the largest armies. We find in M. Thiers' History of the Consulate and Empire, that at Austerlitz, on the 2d of December, 1805, Napoleon had but from sixty-five to seventy thousand men, and the combined Austrians and Russians but ninety thousand. At Leipzig, the biggest of modern battles, when all the French ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... fighters, comrades," one of the veterans said. "Parbleu! I who tell you, have fought against them, and they are not to be despised. They are slow at manuoevring, but put them in a place and tell them to hold it, and they will do it to the last. I fought at Austerlitz against the Austrians, and at Jena against the Prussians, and in a score of other battles in Germany and Italy, and I tell you that the Russians are the toughest enemies I have met, save only your Islanders, Jules. I was at Talavera, and the way your people ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... army was then turned eastward against the armies of the coalition which England, under Pitt, was forming; and in a series of astonishing campaigns it was used to beat down the Austrians in 1805 at Austerlitz; to overwhelm the Prussians in 1806 at Jena and Auerstadt; and to force the Russians, after {190} a severe winter campaign in East Prussia, to come to terms in 1807. Napoleon and the Tsar, Alexander, meeting on the bridge at ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... Austerlitz, I find myself saying, 'I did well there,' and for Waterloo and St. Helena my chagrin and misery are personal. Why should I doubt that once my own spirit dwelt in another body—in his, perhaps?" His voice mounted, and he continued, "But this time the spirit must go further. It must never ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... prolific of learned scientists and philologers than of able generals. Notwithstanding, the average American (and, judging from the dictatorship of Maitre Gambetta, the Frenchman) would not have hesitated to supersede Napoleon at Austerlitz or Nelson at Trafalgar. True, Cleon captured the Spartan garrison, and Narses gained victories, and Bunyan wrote the "Pilgrim's Progress;" but pestilent demagogues and mutilated guardians of Eastern zenanas have not always been successful in war, nor ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... are well matched. My blood reddened the plain of Austerlitz, where the great French nation was avenged on Brunswick and Souwaroff. We have all perished, buried in a triumph. We can shake hands ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... in an uncertain sort of way. Whether it was due to the troops or to Belgian staff officers hurrying by in their cars, I had the impression of the will and not the way and a parallel of raw militia in uniforms taken from grandfather's trunk facing the trained antagonists of an Austerlitz, or a Waterloo, ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... approaches the heavy artillery is sacrified: Sire, what orders?"— "Forward, forward!" Seruzier, a colonel of artillery, gives, in his "Military Memoirs," the following sketch of a scene after the battle of Austerlitz.—"At the moment in which the Russian army was making its retreat, painfully, but in good order, on the ice of the lake, the Emperor Napoleon came riding at full speed toward the artillery. 'You are losing time,' he cried; 'fire upon those masses; they must be engulfed; fire upon the ice!' ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Grand-duke of Russia, son of Paul I.; distinguished himself at Austerlitz; was commander-in-chief in Poland, where he ruled as despot; waived his right to the throne in favour of his ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... step till a week after Austerlitz. The Light Cavalry of the Grand Army had its hands very full of interesting work for a little while. Directly the pressure of professional occupation had been eased Captain Feraud took measures to arrange ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... but, for lack of documents, we have nothing of Caesar but general features—a summary outline. Of Napoleon we have, besides the perfect outline, the features in detail. Read his correspondence, day by day, then chapter by chapter;[1167] for example, in 1806, after the battle of Austerlitz, or, still better, in 1809, after his return from Spain, up to the peace of Vienna; whatever our technical shortcomings may be, we shall find that his mind, in its comprehensiveness and amplitude, largely surpasses all ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... true that they are losing courage? Of course, everyone knows that they are a gallant race, and that although the Germans, by their relentless science and unending attention to detail, are rated superior in machine-like warfare, they can never be quite like the brilliant conquerors of Jena, Austerlitz, and a hundred other battles; and yet no one expected the French were going to cling to the ruins of their Legation with the bulldog desperation of which they complained in the English at Waterloo; a desperation making each house a siege in itself, and only ending with the total destruction ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... thee at last? Now then, sir—two tight double knots each way with your honorable permission, and the money's safe. Feel it! feel it, fortunate sir! hard and round as a cannon-ball—Ah, bah! if they had only fired such cannon-balls at us at Austerlitz—nom d'une pipe! if they only had! And now, as an ancient grenadier, as an ex-brave of the French army, what remains for me to do? I ask what? Simply this: to entreat my valued English friend to drink a bottle of Champagne ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... exhibition of pictures in London, Paris, Rome, Milan, Munich, New York or Boston, it would have been the cynosure, the target of ecstatic admirations. It was just such another work as his celebrated 'Pont d'Austerlitz,' which hung in the Luxembourg. And neither a frame of 'chemical gold,' nor the extremely variegated coloration of the other merchandise on sale ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... rosette in her hair with a diamond in the centre, and she attracts every eye for a whole evening; another revives the hair-net, or sticks a dagger through the twist to suggest a garter; this one wears velvet bands round her wrists, that one appears in lace lippets. These valiant efforts, an Austerlitz of vanity or of love, then set the fashion for lower spheres by the time the inventive creatress has originated something new. This evening, which Valerie meant to be a success for her, she had placed three patches. She had washed her hair with ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Colossus? No, by a dwarf. People laughed at the notion. They no longer said "What a crime!" but "What a farce!" For after all they reflected; heinous crimes require stature. Certain crimes are too lofty for certain hands. A man who would achieve an 18th Brumaire must have Arcola in his past and Austerlitz in his future. The art of becoming a great scoundrel is not accorded to the first comer. People said to themselves, Who is this son of Hortense? He has Strasbourg behind him instead of Arcola, and Boulogne in place of Austerlitz. He is a Frenchman, born a Dutchman, and naturalized ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... light of old age upon herself? This question made her flesh creep. She would gladly, at that moment, spend half her savings on refitting her house if some fairy wand could do it in a moment. Where is the general who has not trembled on the eve of a battle? The poor woman was now between her Austerlitz and ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... and it was Petiet, not he, who finally "organised victory" by sending Moreau to the Rhine, and Bonaparte to Italy. Napoleon, who knew them both, made Petiet governor of Lombardy, and chose him, not Carnot, to organise the great camp at Boulogne. When Petiet died, not long after Austerlitz, Napoleon gave him a much grander funeral in the Pantheon than can be got up now for the grandfather of Carnot. Most people have forgotten Petiet, and it is a blunder to remind them of him. But this is a government of blunderers. ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... knights and true as ever drew Their swords with knightly Roland; Or died at Sobieski's side, For love of martyr'd Poland; Or knelt with Cromwell's Ironsides; Or sang with brave Gustavus; Or on the plain of Austerlitz, ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston
... Montebello, born April 11, 1769, distinguished himself at Lodi, Aboukir, Acre, Austerlitz, Jena and, lastly, at Essling, where he was mortally wounded. He died May ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... quitted Strasburg by the gate of Austerlitz. While listening to my friend I kept an eye open, and examined the present state of the fortress, the incidents of the road to Kehl, and that fairy Ile des Epis, a perfect little Eden in the Rhine, where the tall trees and nodding flowers bury the tomb of Dessaix, with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... mart with lies; While unburnt Moscow yet had news to send, Nor owed her fiery exit to a friend. She came—Waltz came—and with her certain sets Of true despatches, and as true gazettes: Then flamed of Austerlitz the blest despatch, Which Moniteur nor Morning Post can match; And, almost crush'd beneath the glorious news, Ten plays, and forty tales of Kotzebue's; One envoy's letters, six composers' airs, And loads from Frankfort and from Leipsic ...
— English Satires • Various
... the taking of the capital, and the events which preceded the capture, would force the Emperor Alexander to make peace, as he had been compelled to do after the battle of Friedland in 1807, and the Emperor Francis in 1805 and 1809 after Austerlitz and Wagram; for if Buonaparte did not obtain a peace at Moscow, there was no alternative but to return—that is, there was nothing for him but a strategic defeat. We shall leave out of the question what he did to get to Moscow, and whether ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... happen to be. Essentially they are not princes, not Russians, but figures in the great procession; they are here in the book because they are young, not because they are the rising hope of Russia in the years of Austerlitz and Borodino. It is laid upon them primarily to enact the cycle of birth and growth, death and birth again. They illustrate the story that is the same always and everywhere, and the tumult of the dawning century to which they are born is an accident. Peter and Andrew ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... the Seine sparkles; London shuts down upon the Thames, and there is no point of view for the whole river panorama. Paris rises amphitheatrically, on either side the Seine, and the eye from the Pont d'Austerlitz seems to fly through the immense reach like an arrow, casting its shadow on every thing of beauty ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the grandeur of Alpine scenery. From this they emerged into the softer beauty of the Italian clime. It was the Simplon Road which they traversed, that gigantic monument to the genius of Napoleon, which is more enduring than even the fame of Marengo or Austerlitz; and this road, with its alternating scenes of grandeur and of beauty, of glory and of gloom, had elicited the utmost admiration from each. At length, one day, as they were descending this road on the slope nearest Italy, on leaving Domo d'Ossola, they came to a place where the ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... entered Paris through the Barrier d'Italie. Still, he traversed the Boulevard de l'Hopital with a firm step, being a fine well-made man, apparently about forty-eight years old. On arriving at the bridge of Austerlitz, he crossed to the toll-bar at the further extremity, and was accosted by the keeper, an invalid soldier, who demanded the toll. Upon this he made a sign that he did not understand French; but, on the other pulling out a sous piece, to intimate ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... "the Battle" were indeed immense, far more important than those of Agincourt or Austerlitz: a whole nation was transformed and became a new one. The vanquished Anglo-Saxons no more knew how to defend themselves and unite against the French than they had formerly known how to unite against the Danes. To the momentary enthusiasm that had gathered around Harold many energetic supporters ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... not too young to show courage, no matter what may come. You are not too young to keep alive the spirit of the sons of France—the spirit that won at Austerlitz and Jena, that rose, like the phoenix from its ashes, after Gravelotte and Sedan, when the foe believed that France lay crushed for evermore! Perhaps you, like all who are French, may be called upon to make sacrifices, sometimes ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... old man of ninety, gayly stooping to kiss the hand of a lady to-night in his hospitable palace, like the young man that he is, has a memory stretching from the battle of Austerlitz across the gigantic struggles of the century to the battle of Sedan,—all of which he has seen, and a part of which ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... come out upon the bridge of Austerlitz, and paused, involuntarily. Below us was the busy river, with its bridges, its boats, its crowds along the quays; far ahead, dominating the scene, the towers of the cathedral; and the warm sun of June was over it all. We leaned upon the balustrade ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... to play it in his way and be defeated. The general-in-chief must see the end from the beginning, just as Napoleon, sticking his map of Europe full of pins, decided that he could defeat the Austrians at Austerlitz, the Prussians at Jena. That is genius. The general-in-chief makes his plan on the supposition that all his orders will be obeyed promptly, that no one will shirk responsibility, that not one of all the vast multitude will ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... helping himself to some poulet a l'Austerlitz, "petimus bene vivere—quod petis, ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... repeating, and leaves behind him enthusiasm and respect. The Paris Figaro says that he has the gift of setting souls afire, of arousing that elan in the French fighter which made that fighter perform military miracles when the "sun of Austerlitz" was high. It has been declared by a French writer that Foch knows the human element in the French Army better ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... was invited to Potsdam, and repaired thither immediately; and on the 3d of November, 1805, he engaged Frederick in the third coalition. The Prussian array was immediately withdrawn from the Russian frontiers, and M. de Haugwitz repaired to Bruenn to threaten Napoleon with it. But the battle of Austerlitz shut his mouth; and within a fortnight after, the wily minister, having quickly turned round to the side of the conqueror, signed with him the participation of ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... placed the dreaded fortress of Spielberg, once the royal seat of the lords of Moravia, and now the most terrific prison under the Austrian monarchy. It was a well-guarded citadel, but was bombarded and taken by the French after the celebrated battle of Austerlitz, a village at a little distance from it. It was not generally repaired, with the exception of a portion of the outworks, which had been wholly demolished. Within it are imprisoned some three hundred wretches, for the ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... the long struggle between the North and South in America, our first visits too were for the Conciergerie, Invalides, and Notre Dame, where my father had not been since he had gone as a very young man with all Paris to see the flags that had been brought back from Austerlitz. They were interesting days, those first ones in Paris, so full of memories for father, who had been there a great deal in his young days, first as an eleve in the Ecole Polytechnique, later when the Allies were in Paris. He took us one day to the Luxembourg Gardens, to see if he could find ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... and his comrade agreed but so-so. For the Colonel, it seems, is a stickler of BONEY'S— Served with him of course—nay, I'm sure they were cronies. So martial his features! dear DOLL, you can trace Ulm, Austerlitz, Lodi, as plain in his face As you do on that pillar of glory and brass,[1] Which the poor DUC DE BERRI must hate so to pass! It appears, too, he made—as most foreigners do— About English affairs an odd blunder or two. For example misled by the names, I dare say— He confounded ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al |
