The Battle of the Three Emperors has returned to Austerlitz close to town of Slavkov u Brna within the Czech Republic after a two-year hiatus pressured by way of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hundreds of historical past buffs from 14 international locations wearing brightly colored army uniforms got here to re-enact the struggle that came about 217 years in the past on December 2, 1805.
However, following a raft of European sanctions on Russia for its ongoing invasion of Ukraine, Prague joined Poland, Finland and the Baltic states and stopped issuing Russian electorate vacationer visas in October.
As a end result, there have been no Russian contributors at this yr’s tournament.
“The Russian army is present here as always but only fans from the Czech Republic, Austria and Poland are wearing the Russian historical uniforms, so no change at all,” stated the organiser of the undertaking, Miroslav Jandora.
The struggle is regularly cited as Napoleon’s most precious victory, and then the reign of the Holy Roman Empire in Europe got here to an finish.
His military of 70,000 troops defeated nearly 90,000 Russian and Austrian squaddies.
“War is a horrible thing. It was horrible in 1805 when Napoleon fought here against the Russians and the Austrians, it’s horrible now in Ukraine with the Russians with Ukrainians fighting” said American actor Mark Schneider.
“I think we can learn from the past how horrible war is and hope that in the future we won’t have to see war anymore, ”Scheider concluded.
At Austerlitz, 18,000 squaddies died all the way through the 9-hour struggle whilst 4,000 have been wounded.
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