BBB, Lace Wars Variant – Battle of Mollwitz, April 1741.

Background

The Battle of Mollwitz was fought by Prussia and Austria on 10 April 1741, during the First Silesian War (in the early stages of the War of the Austrian Succession). It was the first battle of the new Prussian King Frederick II, in which both sides made numerous military blunders and King Frederick II of Prussia fled the battlefield, but the Prussian Army still managed to attain victory. This battle cemented Frederick’s authority over the newly conquered territory of Silesia and gave him valuable military experience.

The War of the Austrian Succession was sparked by the death of Charles VI in 1740 and the succession of his daughter Maria Theres^. The Habsburg monarchy was originally subject to Salic law, which excluded women from inheriting it; the 1713 Pragmatic Sanction set this aside, allowing Maria Theresa to succeed her father.

That became a European issue because the Habsburg monarchy was the most powerful element in the Holy Roman Empire, a loose federation of mostly-German states. Its position was threatened by the growing size and power of Bavaria, Prussia, and Saxony, as well as Habsburg expansion into lands held by the Ottoman Empire. The Holy Roman Empire was headed by the Holy Roman Emperor, which was, in theory, an elected post though it had been held by a Habsburg since 1437. France, Prussia and Saxony now challenged Austrian dominance by nominating Charles of Bavaria as Emperor.

In December 1740, Frederick II seized the opportunity to invade Silesia and begin the First Silesian War. With a population of over one million, the Silesian mining, weaving and dyeing industries produced 10% of total Imperial income. Under Kurt Christoph Graf von Schwerin, the Prussians quickly over-ran most of the province and settled into winter quarters but failed to capture the southern fortresses of Glogau, Breslau, and Brieg. Maria Theresa sent an army of about 20,000 men led by Wilhelm Reinhard von Neipperg to take back the province and assert herself as a strong monarch.

In the end, the Prussians won a close victory against a numerically inferior enemy due to the leadership of Field Marshal Schwerin and the superior training of the Prussian infantry. After the battle, the Austrian army was not pursued and remained intact. Neipperg retreated to Neisse, remaining in Silesia to await reinforcements. Frederick returned to his army the morning after the battle, restored his lines of communication, and subsequently brought the siege of Brieg to a successful conclusion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mollwitz

The Game

It has been a very long time since we have done any 15mm mass battle Lace Wars games. This has been for a number of reasons, but for “reasons”, that will be changing. I was going to dust off my old Kaiserin Krieg rules, but decided to go in a new direction. We use Bloody Big Battles for most of our eighteenth century battle games. We like the rules, because the mechanics are generally streamlined and we can manage them in our game group that has a lot of occasional players.

We had tried a game of BBB rules for SYW in the past, but it did not really work very well. This was no surprise, as the rules are designed for the 19th century! Basically, we found the unit maneuverability was just way too great and there was too much temptation for armies to form their units in attack columns or to pack multiple units together. Not a very linear look!

I wanted t get back to BBB for some other periods, with 18th century being a priority. I looked over some of the suggestions on the Yahoo groups, but felt they drifted too far away from what I was looking for in relations to the strength of the core rules. So I went back to the drawing board and worked on some other ideas. I then typed them up on a quick reference guide and printed them out. I will do a separate post on the full rules modifications.

I chose the battle of Mollwitz, as it is a very linear fight that would be a good test to focus on the mechanics. TJ agreed to put together the terrain and forces, based on the OOB I sent him. I could not get to my mixed winter cloth, so we opted for green to match the figure bases. The table was set up on a nine by five tabletop, with a little extra terrain on the flanks to allow maneuverability.

The armies were organized into wings, with each unit representing a brigade. This was later changed to regiments, to give more units to cover the number of players we had showing up to the game (all of our games are multi player). Each wing had its own commander, along with the army commanders.

In order to speed up game start, we set up the game from the starting battle positions of the armies and passed on the earlier maneuvers. This meant that the armies were lined up in battle lines facing their opponents in their general historical positions.

The Austrians quickly realized that they had an advantage with their cavalry and a strong disadvantage with their infantry. Therefore, they made their battle plans to basically attack with both cavalry wings, holding their infantry back. The hope was to defeat the Prussian cavalry and attack their Prussian infantry from the rear and flank and destroy the army in total.

The Prussian plan was to advance forward on a broad front to overwhelm the Austrian infantry, while holding the cavalry at bay until the infantry could win the battle.

We started the game with the Prussians taking the first turn and advancing slowly on a brought front. The Austrians then responded by sending their left wing cavalry forward aggressively to engage the Prussians early. The Prussians continued going forward, while the Austrian’s left flank went in with cold steel. The initial charges pushed back the Prussians, but did not result in a decisive action, but a prolonged fur ball of cavalry charging and counter charging.

On the Prussian left wing, the decision was made to go in with the Prussian cavalry and catch the slow moving Austrian cavalry before they could move forward and threaten the Prussian center. The charges went in and faired quite poorly… This allowed the Austrians to counter and sadly win each fight, pushing the Prussians back and getting a breakthrough.

In the center, the Prussian infantry advance started to break up by brigade, causing their attack to go against Austrians piecemeal. This allowed the Austrians to mass their infantry fire effectively (continually rolling 11s on their shots did not hurt either). They then moved their second line forward to engage the Austrians, while their first line got much needed ammo resupply. The fights continued, with the Prussians never being able concentrate their forces, putting them on the back foot the entire fight, even though their infantry were superior.

The end game was clear by turn seven. The Austrian left flank cavalry wrestled the upper hand and pretty much destroyed their Prussian counterparts. The Prussians had to commit their artillery and some of their infantry to just slow down the onslaught.

On the Austrian left, their main attack bogged down against the Prussians, as they used their infantry to stabilize the front. However, they had broken through earlier and those cavalry units were working their way to support the Austrian left.

The center turned into a total disaster for the Prussians. Their infantry never managed to get control of the fight and started to collapse one after the other against the stalwart Austrians.

It was at this point that the Prussians threw int he towel. We did a quick check on losses and determined that the Prussians had reached army morale, so it was official. We ended with an unhistorical Austrian victory. The face Europe will be changed forever!

The game finished up in a few hours, with a clear winner. Most everything flowed well. I need a few tweaks on the modifiers to reward/punish a few things, but overall I think we were happy with the results. We will just have to try again next month!

• Manteuffel