Recalling the model of the standard linear battle and
the horrendous toll it took of the carefully trained infantry,
it becomes readily understandable why the generals of the
baroque era were loath to risk the expensive armies
entrusted to them in battle. Maneuvering was cheaper
and, on occasion, this might even produce effective results
without the linear slaughter, as Frederick himself was to
learn the hard way during the campaign of 1744.
So long as both sides subscribed to this aversion to unsheath the sword, a threat to the lines of communication, the capture of a fortress, the holding of strategically important points, all these and more remained viable and logical objects of a campaign. One offered battle only if victory was certain, and one accepted it only if the consequences of avoiding it might turn out even worse.
Eugene and Marlborough became the mavericks of their time because they sought battle more often than they avoided it. Everybody knew, of course, that the best way to gain one's objectives was by damaging the opponents capacity to fight, i.e. to damage his army. But Eugene and Marlborough had sufficient confidence in themselves and their armies to risk battle even if the outcome wasn't a sure thing.
In this, Leopold von Dessau and numerous Brandenburg troops were active participants and Frederick William (then still the Prussian crown prince) a far more keensighted and astute observer than most thought him to be. Between them, they had come to a correct appraisal of the fusil as the decisive weapon of the future. Not that the fusil was a new weapon. It had already been around for quite some time and everybody used it. But it was left to the Old Dessauer and his sovereign-to-be to make a correct appraisal of this weapon and of the dynamics it had brought into play.
That much of anything at all came of this was to no small measure due to the fact that Frederick William was soon to become a sovereign and that his own military competence was equal to that of any officer in his army.
The Old Dessauer was very much aware that the limits of potential firepower had nowhere been reached. Most European battalions did well to fire three volleys in two minutes. This was not merely a matter of the individual soldier's ability but also a function of the fire control systems, i.e. the methods of command, practiced under combat conditions.
Ramrods
Still, the men in the ranks were a good place to start with, because everything else could be little more than a derivative of that. But when the men were driven hard to load fast, the wooden ramrods broke with distressing frequency. So, out with the wood, in with the iron. In 1698 he equipped the grenadiers, in 1699 the rest of the musketeers in his regiment with iron ramrods. The rest of the army had to wait until 1719, before re-equipment with iron ramrods was completed. At first, these were made of iron. But when it was seen that they could be bent, the new issue was tempered.
The steel ramrod brought another advantage in the quest to shave seconds off the time a soldier needed to reload his musket. The old ramrods had been conical, that is, tapering to a flared end which was to seat the charge by ramming it down the barrel. Unfortunately, when seated in it's rest under the barrel, the fat end was on top. Thus, when withdrawn, the rod had to be turned once to seat the charge and then again when returning the rod to its rest.
Of course, a soldier of ordinary height, say 5'5" or 5'6", would have to change his grip twice to bring his hand down close to the business end that was to be inserted into the small receptacle, be this the fat end which was to go into the barrel, or the thin end which was to go into the rest.
On the other hand, a man standing 5'10" or better, had a much easier time of it. His armspan was sufficient to remove the ramrod in one smooth move. Even though he would have to turn it as well, there was no need for him to change his grip on the rod. A good reason for tall soldiers.
A truly cylindrical ramrod would have been very heavy. But a steel rod, tapered, with two flaring ends, and only about half the diameter of the ends along about 90% of its length, would pretty well cut its weight in half. Thus, even if it was cylindrical in name only, there was no need to turn the ramrod during its travels between the bore and the rest. It offered no additional advantages to the tall men, but it made the shorter men their equals when it came to loading and firing.
Ballistic Performance
With speed accomodated, the next step was to a more effective ballistic performance of the musket. There was nothing practical which might be done with the smoothbore barrel by way of improving its accuracy. Lengthening the barrel by about a hand's width, however, while not appreciably improving the accuracy, would offer a substantial gain in muzzle energy.
Another reason for tall soldiers to handle these muskets. Amid the snickers of the courtiers in Paris and Vienna over that mad little Prussian's mania for tall soldiers, the suspicious glances that a few seasoned veterans like Prince Eugene cast in the direction of Potsdam went quite unnoticed. What was at the bottom of all this in military terms?
Commonly, it was not attempted to open small arms fire at distances above 300 paces. If a musket was aimed with zero elevation, i.e. parallel to the ground, the ball would already hit the ground at somewhere between 200 and 250 paces. Of course, if the ground was hard or frozen, the ball would ricochet once or twice and might reach out to 400 or 500 paces. At maximum elevation, on the other hand, a musket ball could carry 1,000 paces.
However, even at half that distance, its remaining velocity in excess of deadfall would be minimal. That is to say, serious injuries could be caused only to exposed and sensitive parts of the body, i.e. the head, elbows, knees and shins. With the long musket, as issued to the musketeer regiments Nos. 1 to 32 and 34, the maximum range of good hit probability, coupled with real knock-down power, was extended beyond the European normal range of 150 to 200 paces.
Examining one of the much publicised test firing tables assembled in Prussia in 1810, the old Prussian Model 1780 (already shortened) produced 32% hits at 200 and 300 paces, while the hits scored at 100 paces rose to 46%. A later version of the same musket with an improved butt scored 75% hits at 100 paces. During the early Eighteenth Century, there was not much to choose between the European muskets when it came to hit probabilities.
However, in the critical range between 100 and 200 paces, where most of the decisive musket action went down, the Prussian models packed real clout. And if the range closed further, its punch became even worse!
It would, however, be unrealistic to transpose these raw percentages from the firing tables directly into a conversion factor for the wargamer's dice. These tests were conducted by firing 200 rounds at a solid target, 6'6" high and about 40 yards wide. And, of course, the atmosphere of these tests could hardly reflect combat conditions. Furthermore, an advancing infantry line does not represent a solid target. With the files covered, considerable daylight can be seen through the ranks, indeed, about fifty percent of the area covered by the front of an infantry battalion. Only on the instant of firing would the men of the rear ranks step into the intervals.
We have now reached that juncture where the Prussian musketeer, armed with a more effective musket, could deliver volleys on command, at 20 second intervals, without being unduly hurried. This against potential opponents who could deliver such fire at about 30 second intervals. Individual performances, of course, while firing at will and without commands, could fall substantially to either side of this mean.
The name of the game was for everybody to do it together, at the same time. On the one hand, the effect of a volley strike was pychologically more damaging than an equal amount of incoming fire distributed over a longer period. On the other, firing on command kept the men under the control of the officers and noncoms that much longer.
But the Old Dessauer and Frederick William had seen something else as well, fully as effective as firing a better musket faster. Those who remained in place and fired, were able to dish out more punishment than those who advanced, i.e. attacked.
Everybody knew this, of course. Even the two idiots at Fontenoy, who had to have an argument on some point of honor in order to determine who would lay the first and most carefully loaded salvo on whom. But the two Prussians figured out a way to beat the system.
In modern times, even the layman accepts the fact that the attacker must expect to suffer higher casualties than the defender. This, of course, is primarily the outgrowth of the idea that the defender is dug in or fights from cover, while the attacker, of necessity, must break his own cover at one point or another. Even so, the modern soldier is entirely capable of firing his repeating weapons while moving. With the muzzle loader, this was possible only once.
Open
In the Eighteenth Century, the infantry lines stood in the open. One had, in fact, taken ordinary men and attempted to turn them into duellists, more often than not failing to provide the necessary motivation to sublimate their instincts of self-preservation. Indeed, by comparison, the degree of courage required to face an opponent on the so-called field of honor for one or perhaps two go-arounds, pales before that which was expected from the soldier in the firing line of a linear battle. With casualty rates of 20% to 30% common, but reaching up to 50% and even higher in many instances, Russian Roulette has better odds!
When a battle line was formed in the linear era, it was a decided advantage to hinge this line on a village which might be fortified and defended. It was also good to have them before the front. Who hasn't heard of Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte in front of Wellington's position?
Before the Austrians introduced massive numbers of light troops and irregulars for such purposes, it was the practice to use line troops both to attack and defend such places. Thus, especially in the linear era, we see time and again how line battalions are flogged into the small arms fire zone until they can no longer take it, whereupon they are simply replaced by new battalions.
And this would go on until, hopefully, the losses of the defenders rose to a critical point or, more commonly, the number of attackers exceeded the number of cartridges left in the pouches of the defenders. Once such a town was taken, the battle line would often stand in jeopardy. Especially if a flank was anchored there.
Going straight for the line, however, could be equally costly. The long lines could be moved only slowly, lest alignment should be lost. And order in the front was imperative if effective fire control was to be exercised. But a line could not move and fire at the same time. Nor could individual battalions make unsupported dashes at a fully deployed enemy front. It would have been suicidal. Thus, if an attack was to be made, orders for such a move would come at least from brigade or division.
These, however, were not yet tactical units but were subdivisions of the line, just as the battalion was divided into divisions and platoons. This brought about inevitable delays. After everybody had been notified and ceased fire, to listen for the command, the line would go forward a specified distance, then halt, realign and then, on command, resume the next round of the firefight. All in all, enough time for the defenders to get in two, perhaps even three or more volleys without a reply. They would, of course, also be the first to benefit from the shortened range.
Newly Acquired Firepower
Was the newly acquired firepower of the Prussian line to accomplish no more than to redress the firing time lost during an offensive move, by shooting better and faster than the other side just before and after they had made their move? A way had to be found to combine fire and movement. The answer came with the platoon fire system which was to turn the Prussian musketeer battalions into moving batteries.
Although several different firing sequences were still known and practiced, platoon fire in place, during advance and retreat became the core of Prussian fire control and the basis for the daily diet of drill, drill, drill.
To this end, fire by ranks was totally abolished in 1730 and by 1740, the regular battalions were formed up in 190 files (the grenadiers 120 files until 1743, then 160 files) 3 ranks deep. Even though the battalion was divided into five companies for household purposes which should have suggested its subdivision into ten platoons for speed and convenience, this was not done until Kolin in 1757.
By then the musketeer/fusilier battalions had been augmented to 255 files (216 files for the grenadiers), which would have made continued division into the customary eight platoons impractical. They would have become too large and unwieldy. Thus until then, on a day shooting was to be done, be it in exercise or in earnest, the battalion front was not told off into eight platoons until it fell in to move out.
Instead of the relatively weak concentrations of fire by single or double ranks out of the division or battalion front, as was the general practice, the Prussian platoon would fire all of its three ranks at once, about 70 muskets on a 20 yard front.
Within each battalion, the eight platoons fired through according to a fixed scheme. Loaded and shouldered, the battalion advanced at the quick step (i.e. 75, later 100 cadence) into the small arms zone. Having reached the point where firing was to commence, the battalion comma,nder would give the appropriate order. At this, the battalion came to a halt and then advanced with the socalled Avancierschritt, the advancing pace. One can still see this done today, when British troops parade and switch from the quick to the slow march.
From here on, everything went automatically, as the platoon leaders took over. Commencing on the right flank, the first platoon, on the command March!, would take three large and quick paces forward. On the third pace, the front rank dropped to one knee and the second and third closed up to the tip of the sabers. Then, Ready!. The musket is raised to where the lock is in front of the man's nose and the hammer is cocked. Aim! . . . Fire!
This, of course, in true Prussian style, was not done with pomp and ceremony, but quick! One-two-three-bang! Even today, the Germans don't do the manual of arms in a measured cadence but with speed and snap.
Theoretically, the commander of the eighth platoon, on the opposite flank, was to be one command behind. But in practice, he went by the sound of the volley.
It all happened very fast anyway, so it made no difference. On the sound of the first platoon's volley, the eighth platoon would take its three long paces out of the front and fire. This, then, was the signal for the second platoon on the opposite end.
And so it went, commencing on the flanks and going to the center: 1st-8th-2nd-7th-3rd-6th-4th-5th and then out to 1st again.
Conservatively reducing the volley rate from 3/platoon/ minute to 2.5, or 5 volleys per every two minutes, a Prussian battalion would deliver 40 platoon volleys out of a front of about 160 paces every two minutes, and average of one every three seconds. And all the while, that firing line came on at the rate of about 35 short, or the equivalent of ten long paces per minute.
When this example is expanded into a practical situation, say, with three battalions advancing (there could be more, of course), then seventy-odd musket platoon volleys would come crashing out of a front of about 500 paces at the rate of ONE PER SECOND! We are now talking about a kind of FIREPOWER a comparatively recent book, bearing this title, never even brought up for discussion!
Advancing at a Slow March
While all this firing was going on, those platoons, loaded and shouldered, awaiting their turn, were advancing at the slow march, maintaining alignment with the color section which marched in the center of the line. When their turn came, they would take three long paces forward, fire, reload and march off at the quick step until they had reached the line of the color section again, when they would fall back into the slow march, awaiting their next turn. Firepower had learned how to walk.
All of this worked with frightening precision on the parade ground when Frederick took over what was the best infantry in the World in 1740. Foreign visitors were struck dumb when observing a line of a dozen Prussian battalions advancing with platoon fire. And after the shock had worn off, they were given to setting down on paper the most extravagant claims about Prussian firepower. However, extravagant or not, the reality was frightening enough. But how did it work under combat conditions? The search for the answer is not easy.
Most of the realiable diarists, who had first hand knowledge, frequently fall tantalizingly short of providing us with those revealing details we want to know. They generally neglect to mention that which was mundane to them or else they merely elude to it in oblique terms. Yet, an image does come through in the synthesis of personal narratives, general orders aiming at correcting one fault or another the general narratives and official reports.
It is the general concensus of the contemporary professionals that so-called Bataillenfeuer (battlefire) was inevitable sooner or later. Gaudi, for example, tells us that soon, the first rank would no longer drop to one knee, so that all three ranks would burn off on standing foot, causing the men in the rear rank to shoot high. It was sought to counteract this by admonishing the men to aim low - at "half the man". Officers and noncoms would, of course, keep an eagle eye on the level of the muskets as they glanced down the ranks just before the order to fire was given.
On the other hand, there is Berenhorst (generally acknowledged to be highly critical and presenting the worst of all possible views), an eyewitness, who claimed that after two or three platoons had fired through in orderly sequence, the rolling "battlefire" would inevitably start, bringing the advance to a halt. Neither the sergeants, nor the officers, from the lieutenants to the brigadiers, could handle the men any more.
Weighed against this, must be the voices of others and the practical results achieved in battle - both in victory and in defeat. Individual behaviour of units probably ran across a limited, but still varied spectrum.
In Practice
It seems that, in practice, a battalion commander could do little more than give the order to advance with fire. From then on, the show was in the hands of the platoon leaders. Fire and movement, practiced over and over and over, had become part of the solders' mental clockworks. Still, it seems hardly credible that the platoon leaders could time their own moves to the sound of a volley coming somewhere from the right or left. On the parade ground, perhaps, but not in battle when there was incoming freight mixing with the sounds of the battalion guns and the screams of the wounded.
Realistically, it must have become a matter of "every platoon for himself". Sooner or later, platoon leaders would fall, and so would the noncoms who had taken their place. Then, the men in the ranks would begin to blaze away at will. So long as some platoons remained in hand, their forward motion would carry the free-lance marksmen along. Perhaps, unconsciously, they would continue to follow the cadence of a neighboring platoon for a while.
However, as losses continued to mount and more
platoons were thrown out of cadence, the advance would
eventually come to a halt unless the enemy gave way first.
With losses often running past 50%, this was inevitable.
But where and when would it happen - at 150 paces? at
120 paces? One can often be mislead by the circular
orders. Frederick himself frequently indulged himself in
peptalks to the effect of "close to twenty paces, give them
a volley in the face and charge with the bayonet!" More
realistically, attacks would be decided somewhere in the
100 to 150 yard zone.
Somewhere inside that zone, there would either occur a standing firefight or an attack would collapse. If the attacker succeeded in traversing that zone, the psychological ascendancy was already his.
It went something like this at Mollwitz, Soor, Hohenfriedberg and elsewhere. On opening day, at Mollwitz, the Austrians were shocked by the hail of musketry coming their way. One of their officers likened it to an unending thundercalp. At Hohenfriedberg, just before Gessler turned his Bayreuth dragoons loose for their legendary charge, the firefight had come to a stand. But the Austrians were already demoralized by the Prussian infantry. Great gaps had appeared in their lines as casualties mounted and the survivors crowded toward the center of their battalions, each man seeking cover behind his neighbor until they stood twenty and thirty deep behind the color sections!
What seems to have happened, of course, is that the rate of individual fire, unencumbered by command delays, rose to what must have been considerable maxima, whenever battlefire ensued among the Prussians.
At Mollwitz, the Prussians expended their 30 round supply of cartridges and had to reach for what was left in the pouches of those who had fallen. After that, the pouch supply rose to sixty rounds and, on occasion, that wasn't enough.
One of the better known diarists, Barsewisch, was a cornet and platoon leader at Hochkirsch. There, his regiment (v. Meyerink, #26), those who had survived the hours from 6AM to 11AM, had fired 120 rounds - two complete supplies! And that was a minimum, not counting what was retrieved from the casualties! During that time, they had beaten off ten spearate attacks, including two cavalry charges. Barsewisch's battalion finally succumbed to the third cavalry charge and, after the battle, the entire regiment could muster no more than 50 files. He, a cornet, was the only officer of 2nd Battalion remaining on his feet! But this took place much later, in 1 758.
Peak
After the First and Second Silesian War, the Prussian infantry entering the Seven Years' War in 1756 was at its peak. It was an army commanded by veteran officers and noncoms with many more in the rank and file. The years since 1745 had been filled with drill and maneuvers devoid of all parade ground fripperies and nonsense. Yet, no matter how good his army, the power of the coalition the House of Hapsburg had arrayed against Frederick dictated his actions from the start. He knew that time was his implacable enemy. He saw his only chance for survival in a quick and decisive defeat of the Austrians, before Russia and France could bring their combined weight to bear. There was no time to play the percentages and the cat and mouse game of who would attack and who defend, to wait until he had his opponents exactly where he wanted them. He had to take them when he could get them and hope to throw them down.
After the initial testing at Lobositz, Prague was to be the knockout punch. The Austrians were to be surrounded and forced to surrender. But one of the enveloping detachments was unable to cross the swollen Moldau river. And it was here, where colonel Seydlitz almost drowned in quicksand, thus ending a legend before it even started. With a hole left in the intended trap, a large part of the Austrian army got away and, reconstituted with string reserves, interposed itself between Frederick and Vienna.
Finding them in a strong position, an impatient Frederick attempts to do too much with too little. He and his Prussians suffer their first naked defeat. It was to be the most consequential of all. The Blitzkrieg was over. Even though the Austrians had been severely shaken, they were not yet defeated - Frederick had failed. More than that, three major battles fought in the space of eight months had torn great gaps into the ranks of his infantry. And the Allies were closing in! At Gross-Jaegersdorf, the Russians issue a stern warning but at Rossbach, Frederick's masterful dispositions and Seydlitz' galloping charges provide success beyond expectations. At the same time, Bevern, left behind at Breslau, suffers a serious reverse. Fritz hurries back, only to find himself confronted with the largest army the Austrians had ever fielded against him. Against odds of better than two to one and a large part of his own forces composed of Bevern's troops who had just been beaten, the Potsdam Guardmount looks puny indeed.
However the Austrians had picked the very worst place to make a stand. Not that there was anything wrong with their position. It was a good one, some of it even fortified with fieldworks. But they stood right on the training and maneuver grounds of Frederick's Silesian regiments. The Prussians knew every fold in the ground and Frederick promptly used one to hand the Austrians their most shattering defeat.
Having already recognized during the First Silesian War that a parallel, frontal approach would leave the vicissitudes of the battle in the hands of the subalterns instead of the general, he had subsequently attempted to approach the enemy at an angle, placing his line of advance (still perpendicular to his own battle line) so that it would form a more or less acute angle with the enemy's battle line. Thus leaving a part of his line, even though all of it might be advancing, disengaged. This meant that he could still alter the dispositions made for the disengaged wing, after the battle had started but before the lieutenants took charge.
Leuthen was different. Here, he attempted, for the first time, the celebrated oblique order. Instead of a straight line advancing at an angle to the enemy's, he would march across the enemy's front unobserved, then face a portion of this line in parallel fashion. Instead of his entire line marching off at once, it started, one battalion at a time, commencing from the right, each successive battalion stepping off fifty paces after the one to its own right.
In this way, the battle line looked like a set of stairs with fifty yard risers. This, of course, commenced from a long way out. Not only did this provide a refused wing, it also acted as a lever to unhinge the Austrian line, as the battalions turned inward to the left in their advance, thus providing an even sharper angle for thier attack.
This was exactly what Frederick wanted. From the start, he had put far greater stock in the act of crowding or pushing the enemy out of his position than in the casualties inflicted during the firefight. That's why his instructions forever emphasized closing with the enemy.
This very desire had misled him at Prague to send his infantry line forward at the quickmarch, in the attempt to reach the Austrian lines without musketry. Here, he was taught what an undisturbed firing line could do to an opponent who attempted to close without preparatory fire. Half a century later, the French were to experience this again and again, when they attempted to tangle with Wellington's firing lines.
Unlike the Prussians, the French of 1810, no longer had troops sufficiently drilled to quickly deploy their columns into line (which was the easy part) and to bring those lines forward, while firing (the hard part). Neither, for that matter, did the British. But Wellington's "Achilles' Heel" was never tested.
On 3 August 1757, Winterfeldt already writes to Frederick
-
"We will no longer get by with shouldered arms. Our
men put too much stock into their 60 cartridges. But
we can surely let them do battalion volleys, as soon
as they reach the enemy. In this way, we create
confusion among the enemy while, at the same time,
our men, who depend on shooting, are amused (read:
kept busy) and close in that much more readily.
"
And this heralded a new stage in Prussian fire tactics, as the war moved into what was now a perpetual state of crisis.
There was no way in which the recruits drawn from the regimental cantons could be trained to the old standards during the winter encampments. The Prussians may have had von Steubens by the hundreds, but they were playing in a different league. Crisis might have become chronic for the Prussians, but it has also become chronic for posterity to underrate the Austrians and the French, although more prudent assessements are made of the Russians, who did most of their fighting against the second and third string.
Many of the regiments had lost their recruiting districts through enemy occupation. Few mercenaries were to be had while the war was in progress and the Austrians were getting smarter each campaign. After 1759, they refused to exchange prisoners, thereby shutting off another source for the recoupment of at least some trained veterans. Nor could this be counterbalanced by impressing prisoners into the Prussian service. Most of these would desert at the first opportunity anyway.
Battalion Volley
In the face of all this, the battalion volley was the only rational answer. Only a few of the elite regiments and the grenadier battalions could be relied upon to still deliver platoon fire in moments of crisis, especially against cavalry. For this reason, they are always to be found on the flanks or in the advance party attacks. Yet, if there wasn't time to teach the involved evolutions of platoon fire to the troops, they could and still were taught to be fast on the draw.
Battalion volleys still crashed out of the front at the rate of one every twenty seconds, with the battalions now attempting to alternate with each other as the platoons had done. And, with everyone in the battalion doing the same thing at the same time, it was even possible to maintain order longer, long enough at any rate, to continue outgunning the opposition.
The battalions were brought well into the 200 yard zone quickly, at a 100 pace cadence, the closer the better. Then a quick series of volleys, each accompanied by the three long paces forward as in the past. If all went well and the battalion guns functioned properly, the moment of truth came quickly. It was a rule of thumb among Prussian officers that six volleys were sufficient to throw all but the Russians, who could absorb more. Again, once the small arms zone was entered, the decision came in a matter of minutes.
Quite apart from the "Miracle of the House of Brandenburg", occasioned by the death of the Tsarina Elizabeth, firepower and training that stood behind it, produced that surge to the front which was to remain a trademark of the Prussians. But it was the discipline occasioned by all that training, which proved decisive in moments of crisis.
At the end of the Seven Years' War, the balance sheet read seven victories and seven defeats (three suffered by Frederick himself). Yet, even in defeat, the Prussians rarely failed to severely damage the victors. And, as the power of the infantry declined, the effectiveness of the cavalry rose until, at the end of the war, with the infantry deep in the hole, it stood at the pinnacle of its success.
In view of the fact that the cavalry subsisted on a large percentage of volunteers and that it rarely suffered the crippling losses that were the lot of the infantry, this should not come as a surprise. Its experience accumulated at a faster rate than its losses, because it was led by soldiers, not beau sabreurs!
At Gross Jaegersdorf, the Russians did not even attempt to challenge the cavalry covering the Prussian retreat. At Rossbach, Seydlitz provided the bottom line before the infantry even got a chance to take a hand. At Leuthen, Zieten disposed of the Austrian cavalry and prepared the scene for the advance of the Prussian right while, on the left, Driessen cleaned up and broke Austrian resistance. At Zorndorf, the Russians fought like lions until Seydlitz came down on them with the effect of a scyth. At Kenersdorf, Seydlitz might have summoned the cavalry again to deliver the master stroke. But he is wounded before the moment of crisis arises.
Summation
In summation, the battlefield actions of the Seven Years' War fall into two broad phases, the operational and the tactical. As his infantry becomes relatively weaker, Frederick increasingly resorts to tactical surprises set up during the operational phases. These include unexpected directions of attack, envelopments of the flanks, operations with separate corps (Torgau almost went wrong because the wind blew in the wrong direction and Zieten did not hear the guns until it was almost too late) and, last but not least, catching his opponents when they are about to disperse to winter quarters, indeed, to catch them in quarters at any time of the year!
For the wargamer in general, the Frederician battles always offer the opportunity to play a battle in two distinct stages, one scenario, perhaps on a larger scale, featuring the operational approach. Then, the tactical playoff on a smaller scale, perhaps involving only a segment of the battle. Based on a good understanding of the mechanisms involved, the game designer should ba able to re-read the general battle reports and analyze them to a point where he can abstract from them that which is truly important and decisive.
The conclusion of this essay will include:
-
1. An evaluation of the Prussian army by the
regiment.
2. A few very necessary words about the battalion guns.
3. The modus operandi of the cavalry.
More Linear Tactics
Response: Letter to Editor (v2n6)
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