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Schematic plan · The Seven Year's War

Battle of Maxen

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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 groundCentreLeft wingRight wingReserveCentreLeft wingRight wingReserveGunsDaun01 km2 kmN

Austria (Aus Army, 38,000 men under Daun) attacked Prussia (Pr Army, 13,500 men under Finck) in Saxony. The CAA Database of Battles records 6.5 hours of fighting on a front of 4.8 km, a double envelopment against hasty defense, and that Austria won. Losses: Austria 1,000 (3%), Prussia 1,000 (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

Daun

UnitArmMen
Austria left wingInfantry9,120
Austria centreInfantry12,160
Austria right wingInfantry9,120
Austria reserveInfantry7,600
DaunCommander—
In this plan38,000

Prussia

Finck

UnitArmMen
Prussia left wingInfantry3,179
Prussia centreInfantry4,238
Prussia right wingInfantry3,179
Prussia reserveInfantry2,649
Prussia artillery (17 guns)Artillery255
FinckCommander—
In this plan13,500

What the sources report

AustriaPrussia
Strength, this plan38,00013,500
Losses, this plan1,0001,000

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 78, “Maxen”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting
6.5 hours
Winner
the attacker
Terrain
Rolling, Mixed
Weather
Dry, Sunny, Temperate, Autumn, Temperate
Defender’s posture
Hasty defense
ForceStrengthLossesHorseGunsPlan and outcome
Austriaattacker38,0001,000——Double envelopment
Prussiadefender13,5001,000—17Defensive plan; Annihilated

Attacker’s advantages intelligence +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.