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Schematic plan · War of the First Coalition

Battle of Neresheim

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A schematic plan, generated from the statistics of the CAA Database of Battles: the armies' size and width, the hours of fighting, the plan of attack and the outcome are as recorded; the ground and the positions are not.
Rolling, Mixed groundCentreCentreLeft wingRight wingLeft wingRight wingReserveReserve010 km20 kmN

Austria (Aus Army, 40,000 men under Archduke Charles) attacked France (Fr Army of the Rhine and Moselle, 45,000 men under Moreau) in Germany. The CAA Database of Battles records 12 hours of fighting on a front of 40 km, a frontal attack, single envelopment against hasty defense, and that Austria won. Losses: Austria 3,000 (8%), France 3,000 (7%).

This plan is generated from those figures. It shows the shape of the battle the database describes: the size and width of the armies, the plan of attack and the outcome. It does not show where the units actually stood.

The armies

Austria

Archduke Charles

UnitArmMen
Austria left wingInfantry9,600
Austria centreInfantry12,800
Austria right wingInfantry9,600
Austria reserveInfantry8,000
Archduke CharlesCommander—
In this plan40,000

France

Moreau

UnitArmMen
France left wingInfantry10,800
France centreInfantry14,400
France right wingInfantry10,800
France reserveInfantry9,000
MoreauCommander—
In this plan45,000

What the sources report

AustriaFrance
Strength, this plan40,00045,000
Losses, this plan3,0003,000

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 104, “Neresheim”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting
12 hours
Winner
the attacker
Terrain
Rolling, Mixed
Weather
Wet, Heavy precipitation, Temperate, Summer, Temperate
Defender’s posture
Hasty defense
Front width
40 km (attacker), 40 km (defender)
ForceStrengthLossesHorseGunsPlan and outcome
Austriaattacker40,0003,000——Frontal attack; Single envelopment; Stalemate; Withdrew
Francedefender45,0003,000——Defensive plan; Stalemate

Attacker’s advantages leadership +1 · intelligence +1 · surprise +1

CDB90 (US Army Concepts Analysis Agency, 1990), tidy edition by Jeffrey B. Arnold; data under ODC-BY 1.0.

Notes

On this reconstruction

Generated automatically from the statistics in CDB90. Frontages, depths, distances, the order of events and the terrain are schematic: they follow the recorded strengths, front widths, hours of fighting, tactical plan and outcome, not maps or accounts of the battle, and which flank the envelopment fell on is a guess. The sources give no hours; the timing is conjectural.

Sources

Facts gathered from Wikidata (CC0), Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0) and Wikimedia Commons (licence per file); the plan and its text are timeastra’s own.