Time Astra

Schematic plan · War of the First Coalition

Battle of Würzburg

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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 wingHorseHorseReserveLeft wingRight wingReserveHorseHorseJourdan05 km10 kmN

Austria (Aus Army, 44,000 men under Archduke Charles) attacked France (Fr Army of the Sambre and Meuse, 30,000 men under Jourdan) in Germany. The CAA Database of Battles records 10.3 hours of fighting on a front of 20 km, a frontal attack, single envelopment against hasty defense, and that Austria won. Losses: Austria 1,500 (3%), France 3,000 (10%).

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 wingInfantry7,440
Austria centreInfantry9,920
Austria right wingInfantry7,440
Austria reserveInfantry6,200
Austria cavalry of the leftCavalry6,500
Austria cavalry of the rightCavalry6,500
Archduke CharlesCommander—
In this plan44,000

France

Jourdan

UnitArmMen
France left wingInfantry6,000
France centreInfantry8,000
France right wingInfantry6,000
France reserveInfantry5,000
France cavalry of the leftCavalry2,500
France cavalry of the rightCavalry2,500
JourdanCommander—
In this plan30,000

What the sources report

AustriaFrance
Strength, this plan44,00030,000
Losses, this plan1,5003,000

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 105, “Wuerzburg”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting
10.3 hours
Winner
the attacker
Terrain
Rolling, Mixed
Weather
Dry, Sunny, Temperate, Summer, Temperate
Defender’s posture
Hasty defense
Front width
20 km (attacker), 13 km (defender)
ForceStrengthLossesHorseGunsPlan and outcome
Austriaattacker44,0001,50013,000—Frontal attack; Single envelopment; Penetration
Francedefender30,0003,0005,000—Defensive plan; Withdrew

Attacker’s advantages leadership +1 · momentum +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.