Battle of Mollwitz 1741 – Post of Honour Review

The Post of Honour rules are by Keith Flint who is also the author of the  Honours of War rules published by Osprey.  Both sets of rules are for the Seven Years War – 1756-63.    The rules are supported by an excellent honoursofwar.com  http://honoursofwar.com/  forum which contains modifications for fighting the War of Spanish Succession (WSS), War of Austrian Succession (WAS) and others around that period sometimes called the lace wars.

 As I game this period in 6mm, I use the standard polemos basing of one 60mm x 30mm base per foot battalion/ cavalry regiment rather than several smaller bases. 

 For my first use of POH  I chose the WAS  battle of Mollwitz in the WAS.  Far better men than I have provided detailed analysis of the battle, so I’ll just point you towards,  Obscure Battles http://honoursofwar.com/, Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mollwitz  and British Battles https://www.britishbattles.com/frederick-the-great-wars/the-battle-of-mollwitz/ (not that any British troops were present).

I fought the battle solo, due to lockdown and found the rules easy to read and remember.  Having previously used the HoW rules  was an advantage as the command and control and / manoeuvre rules are similar. 

The turn sequence  starts with alternative movement phases but then has simultaneous firing and melee phases.  On the whole, this worked fine.  I’d suggest that firing is calculated in groups of units for both sides rather than all of one side and then all of the other, by which I mean Austrian battalion "A" shooting at Prussian Battalion "B" and then the reverse, rather than all of the Austrians then all of the Prussians.    This helps when you are trying to remember whether a battalion was weakened before this round of firing or during it.

Units can take a number of hits before they are weakened and take penalties in their firing and melee.  After further hits units are destroyed.  The rallying rules are very important.  Having reserves who can march forward past the 1^st line to “shelter” them and allow them to rally, is key to success.

In retrospect Mollwitz may not have been the idea battle to test the rules as I halved all movement distances in order to simulate the 2’ deep snow on the ground that April. (Mollwitz is in modern day Poland and it was a cold year.)  The half speed movement increased the effectiveness of firing as troops could only approach to charge range slowly.  This was awkward for cavalry who were unable to change from outside of musket range and had to take twice as much fire when charging infantry.

 Overall, I felt the battle has a period feel to it and the result was a near perfect  recreation of the actual battle.

The Battle

The left flank of the battle field has two small river and three small villages.  In the actual battle everything was under 2’ of snow.

The empty battlefield

Some of the buildings

The Prussian forces were squashed on the plain with small cavalry forces on each flank.  Two gun batteries were situated before the battle lines.  One feature I like about the PoH rules is the pre-battle bombardment phase.

Prussian Deployment

The battle started with the Austrian right wing  moving on the flank of the Prussian line.  In retrospect with the slower movement they would have been better off just going straight ahead at the Prussians as they had both a numerical and quality advantage.

Flanking Austrians

The Austrian left and Prussian right wings clashed in a mass cavalry brawl.  The Prussian Carabiniers were lead by the king himself. (As per the actual battle.)  True to the real battle the Austrian cavalry whipped the Prussians and Frederick had to retire to the infantry.

In the actual battle the two Prussian grenadier battalions formed square.  The PoH rules seemed to lack this ability.  

A four way cavalry fight. (Quite easy to calculate)

The two battle lines slowly closed on one another while the Prussian grenadiers on the right flank  held off the Austrian cavalry.

 The Austrians were at a disadvantage firing using the old volley fire system and wooden ramrods and the Prussian infantry blow chunks out of the Austrian battle line.    The Austrian 2^nd line had been drawn off to protect their right flank which prevented the Austrians rallying as easily as the Prussians.  

The Infantry advantage lay with the Prussians in both quality and quantity. 

The Austrian battle line broke, just as they did in 1741 and the battle was lost.  The Austrian cavalry had won both wings but were unable to swing the battle in the favour of Austria.

I fond the Post of Honour rules gave a reasonably quick battle; a nice period feel and gave a historically accurate result.  (To be fair I’d have been very worried if the Prussians had lost.  They had over 50% superiority in infantry who were better equipped and trained than the Austrians.

Domstadl – 30 Jun 1758 – Seven years War a Lockdown Experiment

This battle was a lockdown experiment.  The two generals both played remotely and had to rely on written notes from their subordinates and pictures representing what they could see (or described by their subordinates).

I issued briefing packs to both generals and then interpreted their orders as best as I was able and allowing local commanders to apply their initiative.  The game really brought home to me how little information generals had to work from, especially as these were the days before efficient general staff.  

In a normal game generals have perfect helicopter vision even in battles spread over 2000 yards or more.  It’s also difficult to truly surprise a player unless you have an umpire occasionally throwing a spanner in the works.  This battle had very limited visibility, a time lag when transmitting orders and very strong "fog of war".

The Briefings for the players:

•             Prussian briefing

•             Austrian briefing

•             Map provided to the generals

•             Blackpowder unit stats (not shared with the players)

For those interested in the actual battle see: http://www.kronoskaf.com

My original intention had been to publish all of the exchanges of orders but a combination of my poor record keeping and trying to pull messages and pictures out of Google Messenger has made that just too hard.

 To give you a flavour of the game…the original Prussian orders were:

 Orders: From Prussian: Lt General of Cavalry Hans Joachim von Zieten

 

•             Col. von Tresckow to reform his brigade and rally/organise where possible, forming line to face the emerging Austrian bgde.

•             Col. von Bahr to rally/organise his bgde and support Carlowitz bgde.

•             Carlowitz bgde to form line and face the Austrian horse.

•             Prinz Ferdinand bgde to flank convoy and prepare for enemy Hussars.

•             Col. von Kyau to tail convoy.

•             Col. von Werner to move into gap between Kyau bgde and Prinz Ferdinand bgde on rear right flank.

•             Convoy to organise and attempt to resume moving towards Domstadtl in 3x4 wagon column.

•             Rath bgde to advance towards outskirts of Domstadtl halting at 150 yrds prepared for enemy fire.

Some pictures as the battle unfolded 

The Prussian Camp at Altlibe, looking to the high ground to the east and the scouting Prussian hussars.

The waggon train setting off

Messages back to  Lt General of Cavalry Hans Joachim von Zieten

Message from Brigadier General Tresckow

Sir, we have reached the bridge south of Altlibe .  The men’s spirits are high. We are singing good stirring Prussian hymns. Not even the rain, which is getting heavier, is dampening our spirits. I intend to cross as per your plan.

V.Tresckow

p.s keep my son busy as your ADC.  Lots of hard work will do him the world of good.

 

A dispatch  by Hussar

Sir, no enemy yet in sight.  The road to Ober Gundersdorf remains clear.  I can see that several waggon trains remain parked in the lager as the road south is congested with the rest of the train.

Col v.Werner

And later in the game …

Brief to  Lt General of Cavalry Hans Joachim von Zieten

No sooner do your couriers leave when the sound of scattered musket fire is hear from the head of the column. A small brigade of Austrian Grenze have ambushed the Tresckow brigade. V.Tresckow is wheeling his brigade into line.  The Grenze officers are waving their men back to the woods.  Some of the waggons are scattering, some trying to form a three wide column.  One waggon is stuck on the bridge going the wrong way.

 

 Lt General of Cavalry Hans Joachim von Zieten orders in response...

Tresckow brigade to engage with Grenze.  Do not pursue beyond the column front.  Make all attempts to reorganise the wagon train.  Bahr brigade to advance on the Grenze flank in support.  Once able to contact, Tresckow brigade can return to the advance on Domstadtl with Rath brigade.

Ambush by Grenze!

Then more Austrian regular infantry, then cavalry and guns

It's all going a bit "Pete Tong" (Pete Tong = wrong for those who are not familiar with Cockney rhyming slang).

The main Austrian force arrives over the hill at Neudofel and engage the northern half of the waggon train who have yet to cross the bridge.

In the end the Prussians managed to just hold off the Austrian army in the north at Neudofe and the Prussians in the south were able to steamroll the Austrians in the south at Domstadtl.  

However the Austrian hussars did leave burning waggons scattered across the battlefield.

Conclusion

All in all, it was a very interesting way to fight a battle.  Both Generals only had a broad idea what was going on due to lag between orders and briefings back from their subordinates.  The generals did things like relying on their intelligence briefing; e.g. the Prussian commander guarding against (non-existent) Austrians from Gundersdorf but not throwing out scouts to Barn in the west and therefore being surprised when an Austrian force crested the hill at Neudorfel.

 The Austrian General struggles with the technology and took a while before he could see the photos.  Once he was able to catch up, things got rolling.

 It was a very close run battle and the Prussian Plan to surround the waggon train paid off.  The players were surprised by the size of the waggon train which was 13 x 6cm waggons. It’s size caused challenges for the defenders and left gaps the for Austrian hussars to do what hussars do best and raid.  However, they were too light to be able to stand up in the face of formed Prussian infantry.

 Final count

• 5 waggons saved by the Prussians.
• 2 damaged, crewless waggons rescued by the Prussians

 Total 7 saved out of 13

• 4 waggons destroyed by Austrian hussars
• 1 waggon destroyed by Austrian Grenzer
•  1 waggon destroyed by Austrian infantry

Total 6 destroyed by Austrians

 Minor Prussian victory - Prussians held the field with the majority of the waggon train.

Lessons learnt

Would I do it again...yes but it was a surprising amount of work, writing updates to the players and taking pictures to share with them.  Especially as the pictures had to be shrunk down in size before I posted them on-line.  (I must have taken 150+ pictures and shared ~50 with the players.

If I did it again I'd certainly make sure both players could send and receive my posts before I started the battle.