Korbitz, Part V. Hadik vs. Finck

After many months I finally get the time to finish the Korbitz refight. My camera still jammed I decided to took pictures with PhotoBoot: of course they aren’t the best possible but still help to understand the course of the action. 

I decided to represent all the battlefield north of the Triebitsch so both Lamberg and Brentano are deployed from the start.

The initial situation is the following:

seen here from the Prussian

and the Austrian perspective:

The whole affair is different from that between Wunsch and Zweibrucken: here the Austrian have a clear-cut superiority but they have only three turns to obtain a result.

The Austrian plan is to fix the enemy infantry with the, and the cavalry with Schallemberg command whereas Brentano shall turn the Prussian right with his Croats opening the road for Lamberg: since it is impossible to exhaust all the Prussian division because Zweibrucken failed to do it, to prevent a Prussian victory the battle Hadik must inflict more losses to the Prussian. The “butcher bill” of the action between Wunsch and Zweibrucken was 16-5 for the Prussian.

This is the situation after the first turn:

the cavalry battle is still undecided whereas the Austrian center has disarrayed the Prussian infantry: the two Prussian grenadier units of the second line move towards the Croats.

After the second turn the battlefield looks like:

the Prussian cavalry is exhausted and Hadik decided to send Lamberg to the right to exploit the success, since Schallemberg is one SP close to exhaustion. In the center the Prussian lose a Grenadier unit and retreats.

In the final third turn the Austrian pushes the attack but the Prussian cavalry resists to the attack of both Schallemberg and Lamberg cavalry: in the center Hadik exhausts the Prussian infantry. The last Prussian move is a retreat toward Meissen. 

Hadik was able indeed to exhaust both the Prussian commands, the battle being better managed that the Zweibrucken one: however Brentano, Schallamberg and the Infantry center are 1SP close to the exhaustion. the total losses are 22-14 for the Prussian which wins the battle. Again a superior Austrian-Imperial force fails to annihilate a Prussian force. The failure however was more from the strategic point of view: indeed Zweibrucken arrived piecemeal on the battlefield and Hadik was able to engage battle too late. In this sense I feel that the scenario was a good simulation of the frustrating situation the Austrian have to deal with in Saxony in 1759.