The Emperors of Russia and Germany beheld from the heights of Austerlitz the total ruin of their centre, as they had already of their left.

Their right wing had hitherto contested well against all the impetuosity of Lannes: but Napoleon could now gather round them on all sides, and, his artillery plunging incessant fire on them from the heights, they at length found it impossible to hold their ground.

They were forced down into a hollow, where some small frozen lakes offered the only means of escape from the closing cannonade.

The French broke the ice about them by a storm of shot, and nearly 20,000 men died on the spot, some swept away by the artillery, the greater part drowned.

Buonaparte, in his bulletin, compares the horrid spectacle of this ruin to the catastrophe of the Turks at Aboukir, when "the sea was covered with turbans." It was with great difficulty that the two emperors rallied some fragments of their armies around them, and effected their retreat.