TVAROZNA (Czech Republic), Dec 3: An estimated 30,000 spectators and 3,500 participants from across Europe converged in the snow on a small Czech village on Saturday to mark the 200th anniversary of Napoleon’s famous victory at Austerlitz

In a cacophony of cannon and musket fire lasting 90 minutes, all the key stages of Napoleon’s strategic masterpiece unfolded at the village of Tvarozna for the first time since the battle itself.

The French emperor himself was even there — or at least 37-year-old Mark Schneider from Virginia, in the United States, chosen to play the key role.

On Dec 2, 1805, Napoleon’s 75,000-strong army crushed the numerically superior Austro-Russian force opposing him.

The emperor drew his opponents onto a battlefield of his choice with reinforcements arriving overnight, leaving his enemies facing a stronger force than they expected.

In six hours of battle, Napoleon crushed his opponents and redraw the map of Europe in the punitive peace that followed.

Organisers of Austerlitz 2005 spent seven years and 15 million koruna (500 million euros) preparing Saturday’s reconstitution outside Brno, in the southeast of the Czech Republic, the biggest event of its kind ever staged in Europe.

“Austerlitz is now the showpiece (Napoleonic) event in Europe,” said David Banks, 60, president of the European Napoleonic Society, who took to the field in the role of an Austrian general.

Banks, from Newcastle, northeast England, formed part a small British contingent for the Austerlitz re-enactment.

Spectators paid 60 euros (70 dollars) for good seats, with the cheapest tickets going for nine euros. Czech public television screened the event live.

Unlike the real event 200 years earlier, the modern battlefield was covered with snow. —AFP