Daniel McLaughlin sets the scene for this weekend's re-enactment near Slavkov u Brna of the victory of Napoleon's forces in the Battle of Austerlitz in December 1805
It has taken eight years and €500,000 to arrange, and the occasion will see 16,000 meals and thousands of litres of alcohol consumed by some 4,000 men whose uniforms and weapons have been lovingly prepared to re-enact Napoleon's greatest victory, at a place once known as Austerlitz.
Tomorrow, these "soldiers" in Napoleonic dress will march out on to snowy fields and, amid the cacophony of 1½ tonnes of igniting gunpowder and 200kg of explosives, the "battle" will begin.
Two centuries ago, Napoleon watched the fog lift from these fields to reveal his triumph over the emperors of Austria and Russia, whose forces enjoyed greater numbers but not the spirit or masterful leadership of the French.
The enthusiasts gathered in this sleepy corner of the Czech Republic for the re-enactment will be reminded that Napoleon's victory ended the Holy Roman Empire and secured French domination of continental Europe.
Many will also come prepared for their own battle: against plans for the erection of a Nato radar station - resembling a 28-metre-high golf ball - on fields where some 160,000 soldiers clashed, and 30,000 laid down their lives, on December 2nd, 1805.
"We are organising thousands of 'soldiers' from dozens of countries, and expecting 100,000 visitors, so we have to run this like a military operation," says Ondrej Tupy, the event organiser who, come tomorrow, will have the role of an infantryman in the doomed Habsburg army.
Turning his back on a busy highway which crosses the battlefield, Tupy gazes up at Santon Hill, where Napoleon's cannons were arrayed and whose current chapel is a reconstruction of one torn down by French troops to bolster their trenches.
"In the days before the battle, 'soldiers' from the Austrian, Russian and French armies will gather in the villages of the area and perform manoeuvres, make camps, visit period markets and so on," says Tupy, a history graduate.
"We have rented 42 hectares of farmland for the battle, and the soldiers will 'fight' for control of a house built specifically for the event. And we have not invited just anyone - this is the cream of Napoleonic clubs from around the world."
Napoleon arrived near Austerlitz, or Slavkov u Brna, as the Czechs now call it, after abandoning plans for a naval attack on Britain and ordering his men to march from the northwest coast of France to the heart of central Europe.
There, his forces defeated the hapless General Mack at Ulm before going on to seize Vienna, the seat of the Habsburgs, before facing the allied forces of Austria's Francis I - the Holy Roman Emperor - and Tsar Alexander I's Russian troops.
On "11 Frimaire of the year XIV", according to the French revolutionary calendar, 71,000 soldiers of Napoleon's grande armée routed the 91,000-strong allies on this boggy plain, dotted with low hills, about 100km north of Vienna.
By holding some soldiers in reserve to suggest a weak spot in his ranks, Napoleon drew the allies into a trap, catching them unawares as his reinforcements flooded in and spread panic and death among their ranks.
Perhaps 20,000 Austrian and Russian soldiers were killed, and many more were taken prisoner. The thousands of bronze cannons captured were later melted down to create the victory monument which stands in the Place Vendome in Paris.
It was exactly a year after Napoleon had crowned himself emperor and he had told his victorious men that, on their return to France, they would simply have to say they had been at the Battle of Austerlitz for people to reply: "Here is a hero!"
The Russian forces slunk back east and Francis I of Austria lost his title of Holy Roman Emperor, enabling Napoleon to wrap some of his lands into a Confederation of the Rhine and seize other Habsburg dominions in present-day Italy and Croatia.
Austerlitz helped Napoleon to forge his empire, but his legacy is controversial. Some academics call him a despotic inspiration for Hitler; protests this weekend in France will recall his reinstatement of slavery in the Caribbean, and the French president and prime minister are staying away from Slavkov u Brna.
For Czechs living there today, another controversy is raising hackles.
"Austerlitz was an extraordinary event for Europe, and these fields are a mass grave," says Tupy, speaking in the oak-beamed gloom of the posthouse where Napoleon spent his victory night, which is now an inn serving hearty meals and fine Czech beer. "That is why we are fighting our own battle now."
He says the residents of 20 local villages have put their signatures to a protest against plans to build a radar station in the middle of the battlefield on a spot which the Czech defence ministry calls the "optimum location" for their part of a Nato radar network spanning Europe.
"Experts have told us there are better places to put this," says Tupy's boss, Miroslav Jandora, the businessman behind the "Austerlitz 2005" project.
"But, by putting this radar at the site of an old, much smaller, Warsaw Pact facility, they will save money on new infrastructure, and we are curious about where this unspent money will go," Jandora says.
"We accept that the Nato radar should be built, but why have this silver-white bubble there, on a mass grave, near a peace monument, and visible from miles around?"
He says the presence of almost 4,000 men in Napoleonic dress will help the angry locals to make their point in front of the world's TV cameras. "I cannot tell you that any protest is planned," he says. "But it would be quite a spectacle, wouldn't it?"