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Schematic plan · The Seven Year's War

Battle of Prague (1757)

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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 wingReserveReserveHorseHorseHorseHorseGunsGuns01 km2 kmN

Prussia (Pr Army, 65,000 men under Frederick II) attacked Austria (Aus Army, 62,000 men under Lorraine) in Bohemia. The CAA Database of Battles records 4 hours of fighting on a front of 4.8 km, a frontal attack against hasty defense, and that Prussia won. Losses: Prussia 14,300 (22%), Austria 13,400 (22%).

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

Prussia

Frederick II

UnitArmMen
Prussia left wingInfantry10,750
Prussia centreInfantry14,333
Prussia right wingInfantry10,750
Prussia reserveInfantry8,958
Prussia cavalry of the leftCavalry8,500
Prussia cavalry of the rightCavalry8,500
Prussia artillery (214 guns)Artillery3,210
Frederick IICommander—
In this plan65,001

Austria

Lorraine

UnitArmMen
Austria left wingInfantry11,219
Austria centreInfantry14,958
Austria right wingInfantry11,219
Austria reserveInfantry9,349
Austria cavalry of the leftCavalry6,300
Austria cavalry of the rightCavalry6,300
Austria artillery (177 guns)Artillery2,655
LorraineCommander—
In this plan62,000

What the sources report

PrussiaAustria
Strength, this plan65,00062,000
Losses, this plan14,30013,400

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 65, “Prague”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting
4 hours
Winner
the attacker
Terrain
Rolling, Mixed
Weather
Dry, Sunny, Temperate, Summer, Temperate
Defender’s posture
Hasty defense
Front width
4.8 km (attacker), 5.2 km (defender)
ForceStrengthLossesHorseGunsPlan and outcome
Prussiaattacker65,00014,30017,000214Frontal attack; Breakthrough; Pursued
Austriadefender62,00013,40012,600177Defensive/offensive plan; Frontal attack; Withdrew

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