Background
Frederick II of Prussia won a bloody battle against Austria and was now besieging Prague. Austrian Marshal Daun arrived too late to participate in the battle of Prague, but picked up 16,000 men who escaped from the battle. With this army he slowly moved to relieve Prague, forcing the Prussian forces to split.
Frederick took 34,000 of his men to intercept Daun. Daun knew that the Prussian forces were too weak to both besiege Prague and keep him away from Prague for a longer time (or to fight the Austrian army reinforced by the Prague garrison), so his Austrian forces took defensive positions on hills near Kolín. Frederick was forced to attack the Austrians, who were waiting on the defensive with a force of 35,160 infantry, 18,630 cavalry and 154 guns. The battlefield of Kolín consisted of gently rolling hill slopes.
Frederick’s plan was to envelop the Austrian right wing with most of his army. Along the Austrian lines (Prussian right wing and center) he kept only enough troops to hide the concentration on the Prussian left wing. The Prussian main force would turn right toward the Austrians to attack their right flank. The Prussian left wing would locally outnumber the Austrians. After the Austrian right wing was defeated the battle would be decided.
Frederick’s main force turned toward the Austrians too early and attacked their defensive positions frontally instead of outflanking them. Austrian Croatian light infantry (Grenzers) played an important role in this; harassing the regular Prussian infantry under Generals Christopher Hermann von Manstein and Joachim Christian von Tresckow, they provoked them into a premature attack.
The disunited Prussian columns blundered into a series of uncoordinated attacks, each against superior numbers. By the afternoon, after about five hours of fighting, the Prussians were disoriented and Daun’s troops were driving them back.
Prussian cuirassiers under Oberst Friedrich Wilhelm von Seydlitz (promoted to major-general on that day) finally showed up. There were many charges and counter-charges on the Křečhoř Hill. The first Guard battalion under General Friedrich Bogislav von Tauentzien saved the Prussian army from a worse fate, covering the Prussian retreat.
The battle was Frederick’s first defeat in this war, and forced him to abandon his intended march on Vienna, raise his siege of Prague, and fall back on Litoměřice. The Austrians, reinforced by the 48,000 troops in Prague, followed them, 100,000 strong, and, falling on Prince August Wilhelm of Prussia, who was retreating eccentrically (for commissariat reasons) at Zittau, inflicted a severe check upon him. The king was compelled to abandon Bohemia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kol%C3%ADn
The Game
We decided to do something a little different this game and try out the hidden pregame maneuver rules. This was done by assigning each brigade an index card. Each card then moved on the table until the pregame movement was concluded after six turns. The Austrians pretty much set in their starting positions to await the Prussian main point of attack. The Prussians decided to move along the Austrian front to try to get their cavalry into a flanking position on the far Austrian left. They maneuvered all their cavalry to the front to mass for the eventual attack. The Austrians then decided to move their left cavalry forward to pin the Prussian advance.
Once the pregame maneuver was done, all the formations were deployed in their final positions and fighting commenced.
Early Game: The Prussians began by trying to sent their cavalry against the Austrian right flank. The Austrians countered this with their own cavalry and began shifting more cavalry to the center to take advantage of the gap that the Prussians had created by having their cavalry move forward away from their slower moving infantry. The initial cavalry charges did not go well for the Prussians, as their charges were thrown back into the supporting cavalry, disrupting the supporting forces and pretty much sending the entire flank into a state of confusion.
Mid Game: Seeing the cavalry fight was not going well, the Prussian infantry closed ranks and deployed for the defense. The Austrians began their cavalry attack into the center to support their right flank cavalry. The hope was to take the initiative against the Prussians while they were in disarray. The Prussian cavalry was able to get its act together and thwart the Austrian attacks. The cavalry fight then turned into a large swirling fight with both sides trying to get the advantage. However, with similar numbers on each side, neither could get the advantage.
End Game: With the cavalry fight turning into a stalemate and the Prussian infantry on the defensive, the Austrians decided the time was right to sent their left flank forward to cut off the Prussian lines of communications. With no cavalry support available, the Prussians decided to hold firm with their infantry against this attack, but were quickly cut off, resulting in the entire Prussian army now being cut off from their lines of communications. At this point it was clear that the Austrians had scored an unhistorical strategic victory!
– Mantueffel