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The Pyramid of Austerlitz is a 36-metre-high pyramid of earth, built in 1804 by Napoleon's soldiers on one of the highest points of the Utrecht Hill Ridge, in the municipality of Woudenberg, the Netherlands. [1] Atop the pyramid is a stone obelisk from 1894.
In 1804, the French General Auguste de Marmont established an army camp (le Camp d'Utrecht) in this central location in the Batavian Republic, the present Netherlands, where over a period of several months he forged together various battalions into a large, well-trained army, capable of beating the British enemy should there be any repetition of the invasion of 1799. In the autumn of 1804, satisfied with the military power of the new army, and to occupy his bored soldiers, Marmont had his soldiers build an earth and turf monument inspired by the Great Pyramid of Giza, which Marmont had seen in 1798 during Napoleon's Egyptian campaign. Even the erosion-exposed stepped surface was imitated. Construction lasted 27 days. The pyramid hill was 36 metres (118 ft) high, and surmounted by a 13-metre (43 ft) wooden obelisk. It was named "Mont Marmont" or "Marmontberg".
In the summer of 1805, Marmont departed with his army to southern Germany to fight in the War of the Third Coalition, which culminated in the Battle of Austerlitz (now Slavkov u Brna), the battle in which Napoleon decisively defeated the Russians and Austrians.
In 1806, despite protests from Marmont, Louis Bonaparte, the new king of Holland, renamed the hill the Pyramid of Austerlitz, and gave the same name to the trading post at the nearby camp of Bois-en-Ville.
After leaving the Netherlands in 1805, Marmont gave the monument and the use of the nearby homestead Henschoten to three soldiers, Louis Faivre, Jean Baptiste La Rouche and Barend Philpsz, who were also to maintain the pyramid. Nevertheless, the wooden obelisk soon deteriorated, and was demolished in 1808. In 1816 the Marmont pyramid and its associated land were sold to the future mayor of Utrecht, Hubert MAJ van Asch van Wijk.
In 1894, Johannes Bernardus de Beaufort, who both owned the Henschoten estate on which the pyramid stood and was mayor of Woudenberg, had the current stone obelisk built on the pyramid. This also began to collapse.
In view of its 200th anniversary in 2004, the highly dilapidated pyramid was restored between 2001 and 2004. This was done on the initiative of the province of Utrecht, the Den Treek-Henschoten estate and the municipality of Woudenberg, which had previously set up the Austerlitz Pyramid Foundation.
The very dry summer of 2003, followed by heavy rain in 2004, caused further subsidence, and restoration was resumed in 2007. The pyramid was reopened to visitors in 2008, along with a new visitor centre interpreting the period of French rule in the Netherlands. Further piling was carried out in 2010 and 2012 to stabilise the mound.
The Pyramid of Austerlitz is an inspiration for the larger Lion of Waterloo, the pyramid built by King William I as a monument to the Battle of Waterloo where Napoleon was defeated. The mound marks the spot where his son William II was injured.
The Pyramid is a national monument, monument number 39543.
The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815, near Waterloo, marking the end of the Napoleonic Wars. A French army under the command of Napoleon was defeated by two armies of the Seventh Coalition. One of these was a British-led force with units from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Hanover, Brunswick, and Nassau, under the command of the Duke of Wellington. The other comprised three corps of the Prussian army under Field Marshal Blücher; a fourth corps of this army fought at the Battle of Wavre on the same day. The battle was known contemporarily as the Battle of Mont Saint-Jean in France and La Belle Alliance in Prussia.
The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of conflicts fought between the First French Empire under Napoleon Bonaparte (1804–1815) and a fluctuating array of European coalitions. The wars originated in political forces arising from the French Revolution (1789–1799) and from the French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802), and produced a period of French domination over Continental Europe. The wars are categorised as seven conflicts, five named after the coalitions that fought Napoleon, plus two named for their respective theatres; the War of the Third Coalition, War of the Fourth Coalition, War of the Fifth Coalition, War of the Sixth Coalition, War of the Seventh Coalition, the Peninsular War, and the French invasion of Russia.
The Battle of Austerlitz, also known as the Battle of the Three Emperors, was one of the most important military engagements of the Napoleonic Wars. The battle occurred near the town of Austerlitz in the Austrian Empire. Around 158,000 troops were involved, of which around 24,000 were killed or wounded. The battle is often cited by military historians as one of Napoleon's tactical masterpieces, in the same league as other historic engagements like Cannae or Gaugamela. The military victory of Napoleon's Grande Armée at Austerlitz brought the War of the Third Coalition to an end, with the Peace of Pressburg signed by the French and Austrians later in the month. These achievements did not establish a lasting peace on the continent. Austerlitz had driven neither Russia nor Britain, whose armies protected Sicily from a French invasion, to settle. Prussian resistance to the growing power of French military invasions in Central Europe led to the War of the Fourth Coalition in 1806.
Woudenberg is a town and municipality in the central Netherlands, in the province of Utrecht. In 2023, it had a population of 14,410.
The War of the Third 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 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.
The Napoleonic era is a period in the history of France and Europe. It is generally classified as including the fourth and final stage of the French Revolution, the first being the National Assembly, the second being the Legislative Assembly, and the third being the Directory. The Napoleonic era begins roughly with Napoleon Bonaparte's coup d'état, overthrowing the Directory, establishing the French Consulate, and ends during the Hundred Days and his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo. The Congress of Vienna soon set out to restore Europe to pre-French Revolution days. Napoleon brought political stability to a land torn by revolution and war. He made peace with the Roman Catholic Church and reversed the most radical religious policies of the Convention. In 1804 Napoleon promulgated the Civil Code, a revised body of civil law, which also helped stabilize French society. The Civil Code affirmed the political and legal equality of all adult men and established a merit-based society in which individuals advanced in education and employment because of talent rather than birth or social standing. The Civil Code confirmed many of the moderate revolutionary policies of the National Assembly but retracted measures passed by the more radical Convention. The code restored patriarchal authority in the family, for example, by making women and children subservient to male heads of households.
Austerlitz is a village in the Dutch province of Utrecht. It is a part of the municipality of Zeist, and lies about 6 km east of Zeist.
Auguste Frédéric Louis Viesse de Marmont was a French general and nobleman who rose to the rank of Marshal of the Empire and was awarded the title Duke of Ragusa. In the Peninsular War Marmont succeeded the disgraced André Masséna in the command of the French army in northern Spain, but lost decisively at the Battle of Salamanca as France ultimately lost the war in Spain.
Édouard Adolphe Casimir Joseph Mortier, Duke of Treviso, was a French military commander and Marshal of the Empire under Napoleon I, who served during the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. He served as Minister of War and Prime Minister of France from 1834 to 1835. He was one of 18 people killed in 1835 during Giuseppe Marco Fieschi's assassination attempt on King Louis Philippe I.
The Battle of Ulm on 16–19 October 1805 was a series of skirmishes, at the end of the Ulm Campaign, which allowed Napoleon I to trap an entire Austrian army under the command of Karl Freiherr Mack von Leiberich with minimal losses and to force its surrender near Ulm in the Electorate of Bavaria.
General Dominique-Joseph René Vandamme, Count of Unseburg was a French military officer, who fought in the Napoleonic Wars. He was a dedicated career soldier with a reputation as an excellent division and corps commander. However, he had a nasty disposition that alienated his colleagues, and would publicly criticize Napoleon, who never appointed him marshal.
The Lion's Mound is a large conical artificial hill in the municipality of Braine-l'Alleud, Walloon Brabant, Belgium. King William I of the Netherlands ordered its construction in 1820, and it was completed in 1826. It commemorates the spot on the battlefield of Waterloo where the king's elder son, Prince William of Orange, is presumed to have been wounded on 18 June 1815, as well as the Battle of Quatre Bras, which had been fought two days earlier.
The Ulm campaign was a series of French and Bavarian military maneuvers and battles to outflank and capture an Austrian army in 1805 during the War of the Third Coalition. It took place in the vicinity of and inside the Swabian city of Ulm. The French Grande Armée, led by Napoleon, had 210,000 troops organized into seven corps and hoped to knock out the Austrian army in the Danube before Russian reinforcements could arrive. Rapid marching let Napoleon conduct a large wheeling maneuver, which captured an Austrian army of 60,000 under General Mack on 20 October at Ulm. The campaign is by some military historians regarded as a strategic masterpiece and was influential in the development of the Schlieffen Plan in the late 19th century. Napoleon himself wrote:
The Battle of Amstetten was a minor engagement during the War of the Third Coalition between the First French Empire and the alliance of Austria and Russia. It occurred on 5 November 1805, when the retreating Russo-Austrian troops, led by Mikhail Kutuzov, were intercepted by Marshal Joachim Murat's cavalry and a portion of Marshal Jean Lannes' corps. Pyotr Bagration defended against the advancing French troops and allowed the Russian troops to retreat. This was the first fight in which a major part of the Russian Army opposed a significant number of French troops in the open. The total number of Russo-Austrian troops was around 6,700, while the French troops numbered roughly 10,000 troops. The Russo-Austrian forces suffered more casualties but were still able to successfully retreat.
Prace is a municipality and village in Brno-Country District in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 1,000 inhabitants.
The VI Corps of the Grande Armée was a French military unit that existed during the Napoleonic Wars. It was formed at the Camp de Boulogne and assigned to Marshal Michel Ney. From 1805 to 1811, the VI Corps fought under Ney's command in the 1805 Austrian Campaign: War of the Third Coalition, Prussian Campaign of 1806 and Polish Campaign of 1807 of the War of the Fourth Coalition. General Jean Gabriel Marchand was in charge of the corps for a period when Ney went on leave. The VI Corps was revived in 1812 for the French invasion of Russia and placed under Marshal Laurent Gouvion Saint-Cyr. It consisted entirely of Bavarian soldiers at that time. During the disastrous retreat from Moscow, the corps was virtually destroyed. In 1813, during the War of the Sixth Coalition, it was rebuilt and reorganized with French troops. Marshal Auguste de Marmont took command of the corps and managed it until Napoleon's abdication in 1814. It took part in many battles including Dresden and Leipzig in 1813. During the War of the Seventh Coalition, General Georges Mouton commanded the VI Corps at the Battle of Waterloo.
Antoine François Eugène Merlin was a French soldier and general of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, who fought in central Europe, the Peninsular War and at Waterloo. Later in life, he became a politician and sat in the Chamber of Deputies as a supporter of the July Monarchy.
Major General Jean Baptiste Baron van Merlen was a army officer born in the Austrian Netherlands who, following the varied fortunes of his homeland, fought on both sides during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Fighting in a series of campaigns in the Netherlands, Germany and Spain, he played an important part in the battles of Quatre Bras and Waterloo, where he was killed in action.
Charles Étienne de Ghigny commanded a Kingdom of the Netherlands light cavalry brigade at the Battle of Waterloo. He joined a French light cavalry regiment in 1792 and served in the same regiment for 22 years, becoming its lieutenant colonel in 1806. He fought in the Peninsular War in 1810–1811 and in the latter year became colonel of the regiment. He fought in the 1812 French invasion of Russia, the 1813 German Campaign and the 1814 French Campaign. In 1814 he led a cavalry regiment at Fère-Champenoise and Paris. He changed his allegiance to the Netherlands in 1815 and was appointed major general. He was promoted to lieutenant general in 1826. He switched allegiance to the Kingdom of Belgium in 1831 and received the Order of Leopold in 1837.
The Waterloo 1815 Memorial is a Belgian museum complex located on the site of the Waterloo battlefield in Belgium. It includes a museum inaugurated in 2015, the Lion's Mound, the Panorama of the Battle of Waterloo and the Hougoumont farm.
