Schematic plan · War of the Second Coalition

Second Battle of Zurich

24 September 1799
Switzerland
Victory for France

All battles The event in the chronicle Wikipedia

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.

France (Fr Army, 35,000 men under Massena) attacked Russia (Allied Army, 23,000 men under Korsakov) in Switzerland. The CAA Database of Battles records 24 hours of fighting on a front of 14 km, a river crossing, frontal attack, single envelopment against prepared defense and fortified defense, and that France won. Losses: France 4,000 (11%), Russia 8,000 (35%).

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

France

Massena

Unit	Arm	Men
France left wing	Infantry	7,560
France centre	Infantry	10,080
France right wing	Infantry	7,560
France reserve	Infantry	6,300
France cavalry of the left	Cavalry	1,750
France cavalry of the right	Cavalry	1,750
Massena	Commander	—
In this plan		35,000

Russia

Korsakov

Unit	Arm	Men
Russia left wing	Infantry	4,320
Russia centre	Infantry	5,760
Russia right wing	Infantry	4,320
Russia reserve	Infantry	3,600
Russia cavalry of the left	Cavalry	1,750
Russia cavalry of the right	Cavalry	1,750
Russia artillery (100 guns)	Artillery	1,500
Korsakov	Commander	—
In this plan		23,000

What the sources report

	France	Russia
Strength, this plan	35,000	23,000
Losses, this plan	4,000	8,000

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 113, “Zurich Iii”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 24 hours
Winner: the attacker
Terrain: Rolling, Mixed
Weather: Dry, Temperate, Autumn, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Prepared defense, Fortified defense
Front width: 14 km (attacker), 32 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Franceattacker	35,000	4,000	3,500	—	River crossing; Frontal attack; Single envelopment; Breakthrough
Russiadefender	23,000	8,000	3,500	100	Defensive/offensive plan; Annihilated

Attacker’s advantages leadership +1 · morale +1 · initiative +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

US Army Concepts Analysis Agency; tidy edition by Jeffrey B. Arnold, CAA Database of Battles (CDB90), no. 113 · ODC-BY-1.0Strengths, losses, front widths, hours of fighting, tactics and outcome.
Wikipedia contributors, Second Battle of Zurich · CC-BY-SA-4.0

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.