KK – Battle of Chotusitz, May 1742

This their second and last major battle of the 1st Silesian War gave both the Austrians, under Prince Charles, and the Prussians, under Frederick II, a chance to redeem mistakes from the Battle of Mollwitz the year before. For the Prussians’ part, Frederick had spent more than a year retraining, remounting, and refitting his cavalry, which had embarrassed him so egregiously at Mollwitz. For the Austrians, under the new commander, Prince Charles, their infantry saw 1742 as a much better trained and disciplined force than the raw recruits had been at the beginning of the war. Each side was anxious to test themselves again.

Unfortunately for Frederick, Charles surprised him with his forces dispersed. The Prussian rear guard of some 12,000 (including most of the cavalry) under Prince Leopold von Anhalt-Dessau, was caught on the early morning of 17 May by Charles’ entire army of 25,000, who were supposed to still be two days march away. Instead of providing intelligence and security, as light cavalry would later be tasked to do, the Prussians’ sole hussar regiment under Bronikowsky was bedded down comfortably somewhere near Kutterberg (modern Kutna Hora) and it took a few hours to locate and rouse them for battle.

The Prussians were initially caught flat-footed in this battle, just as they had caught the Austrians at Mollwitz the year before. Frederick, with the bulk of his army’s infantry, was at least three hours march away in Kutterberg. Leopold began frantically sending messenger after messenger to him beginning around 0500 to come quick, but many of these messengers were intercepted by roving Hungarian hussar patrols, who seemed to be, at least, doing their duty as light cavalry rather than spending their time preying on civilians in the countryside.

Strategically Chotusitz was decisive for Frederick in that it allowed him to negotiate a separate (if temporary) peace with Maria Theresa and extricate himself from this first of the two Wars of the Austrian Succession with possession of Silesia, an extremely rich and populous province, which added an additional million subjects to his 2.2 million Prussians. He used this two year truce and his new Silesian resources to build up his army to continue part two of the war in 1744.

http://obscurebattles.blogspot.com/2013/03/chotusitz-1742_30.html

With my recent play tests of various lace wars rules ending in frustration, I decided it was time to go back and work on my own KaiserinKrieg home brew rules. I was very happy with the last iteration of the rules, but kind of struggled with fighting larger battles in the course of a short afternoon. Hence, the attempts at various conceal sets. Due to the size of battles, something that focussed on brigades as the maneuver element was in order. My earlier rules focused on the battalion. This worked fine for small battles, but was problematic for larger ones. One challenge was the sheer number of units and the other was always trying to get the battlefield to fit on the table! Well, I went back and converted the rules up one level of play and tweaked the rules to fit. This would be the first test!

I decided to go with a somewhat small battle to start. Since the last game we played was Mollwitz, I figured why not just go for the next battle! So, Chotusitz it was. I did not have any scenarios on hand to steel (I mean borrow) from, so I just went to Obscure Battles website and figured it out. I based the table on the battlefield. With the reduced ground scale, I was able to represent the depth of the battle, not only the historical fighting area. It looked so different, my players did not even realize what the battle was until I told them! I organized the brigade as one stand of infantry for every 500 men and one stand of cavalry for every two hundred. I set up the troops based on the initial jumping off points.

The game started with the Austrians trying to launch an attack across the front against the outnumbered Prussians. The cavalry was game, but the infantry wings refused to budge.. So, we started with a heavy cavalry fight on the Austrian left wing against the Prussian right wing cavalry. Surprisingly, the Prussians managed to hold their own long enough for some help to arrive (good dice is always a great strategy). However, the Austrian infantry doggedly refused to get themselves together and move forward.

The cavalry fight continued on the left, as the Prussian main army moved forward and supported effort. This caused the Austrian cavalry to start to get pushed back, due to the losses. The Prussian infantry pressed the advantage and attacked forward to try to turn the Austrian flank. Meanwhile, the Austrian infantry continued to hold their position. Meanwhile, the right flank Austrian cavalry was happy just pinning the Prussians holding Chotusitz. This did force the infantry to fall back into the town, rather than risk the charge, but it basically resulted in both forces just pinning one another.

In the center, the Austrian infantry finally decided to follow their orders and started their attack against the Prussian center. The only problem was the Prussians were now attacking their flank. The remnant of the Austrian flank cavalry and advanced guard tried to slow down the attack and support the infantry. However, the Prussians pushed forward began their swing around the flank. This was too much for Charles, and the Austrians decided to quit the field before it was too late. We ended with a Prussian victory! This one was more decisive than the actual battle, so I deemed it a major victory!

The game went well, we wrapped it up with a clear decision (Austria army morale collapsed). Still need a couple of small rule tweaks, but overall they played well. In retrospect, I should have done more to force a see saw battle with the scenario design. The Prussian main army column should have been a foot farther back. I also should have had the Austrians start out the scenario on attack to get them going before the Prussians could counter with their main army. Something to remember the next time!

• Manteuffel