Refighting Hohenfriedberg

THE Battle of Hohenfriedberg was fought 275 years ago this month between a Prussian army under Frederick the Great and an Austro-Saxon army under Maria Theresa's brother-in-law Charles of Lorraine.
Three years earlier Prussia had withdrawn from what became known as the War of the Austrian Succession after Austria agreed to cede most of Silesia.
But Frederick, worried about successful Habsburg diplomacy in Italy and seeing most Imperial troops committed to Flanders, invaded Bohemia in July 1744.
He easily captured Prague, but a combination of guerrilla tactics by Hungarian irregulars and Saxony's unexpected entry into the war on the Austrian side obliged the Prussians to retreat.
In January 1745 the Austrians, emboldened by the death of the Bavarian Elector Charles VII, who, much to their fury, had been elected Holy Roman Emperor, went further on the offensive.
They invaded Bavaria, knocking the electorate out of the war after defeating a French army in April at the Battle of Pfaffenhofen (http://timspanton.blogspot.com/2020/05/refighting-battle-of-pfaffenhofen.html).
Defeat the following month at Fontenoy (http://timspanton.blogspot.com/2020/05/refighting-fontenoy.html), although disappointing, was largely a British affair and did not dampen Maria Theresa's enthusiasm for revenge on Frederick.
Indeed plans were already well-advanced for her brother-in-law, Prince Charles, to invade Silesia from Bohemia by crossing the Giant Mountains (Riesengebirge in German), which now form part of the Czech-Polish border.
Some of Frederick's generals wanted to garrison the passes, but the king preferred to let Charles and his army, comprising about 40,000 Imperialists and almost 20,000 Saxons, to debouch into Silesia, where he hoped to crush them in a single blow.
Charles placed his headquarters, at least temporarily, in the small village of Hohenfriedberg (even today the village, which is now in Poland and is called Dobromierz, has a population well under 1,000).
His army was bivouacked on a line of four even smaller hamlets, each of which had its own copse of trees, mainly for the purposes of winter firewood.

The battlefield before the armies arrive - the hamlets left to right are Pilgramshain, Günthersdorf, Thomaswaldau and, beyond the Striegauer Wasser, Halbendorf (hamlet spellings taken from those of the distinguished map-maker John Fawkes)

Frederick had a slightly smaller army - as usual, exact numbers vary in the sources - but the Prussian infantry were still the cream of Europe, and he had spent the two years of peace improving his cavalry so it would no longer, as at Mollwitz, be outclassed by the Austrians.
He also ensured his army had its fair share of light troops, especially hussars, who successfully scouted the Austro-Saxons, although 'successfully' in this case is a relative term.
The king decided on a a dawn attack, led by hussars and grenadiers, on Charles's left wing, which was mainly composed of Saxons.
The idea was to attack the Saxons in the flank, but a slight adjustment of the Saxon position, combined with problems of manoeuvring at night and shortfalls in the scouting, meant the attack hit them head-on.
Nevertheless the attack had surprise on its side, and a furious fight ensued, alerting the rest of the Habsburg forces.

The situation with the battle-proper about to get underway, which is where our refight will start