Nothing is ever what it seems or is ever what we imagine it to be. All our plans, best laid as they are, can never be totally counted on – the random, or the more powerful can sweep the best laid plans aside. That’s what the whole point of the battle of Austerlitz – plans that go awry due, in the case, to ego, bravado, and foolishness. Rostov failed to help the Tzar unlike his fantasies, and Napoleon was just cold.