Unit Frontages

[mollinary]

Seeking the help of the hive mind here. I am working to adapt For King and Parliament iECW rules into the 18th century. What I like to do is take a couple of historical battles, and play about with them to see how various mechanisms work. At present I am looking at the Battle of Kesselsdorf 1745, as a middle sized engagement I can still fight with one infantry unit on the table representing a battalion. I have accurate maps of the battle field at 1:25000, and the Prussian staff history maps showing unit positions. My problem is fitting those units intot he spaces provided , with what I thought were appropriate battalion footprints.  For example, I have a line of 18 Prussian Infantry battalions in line. The map says these should fit into a frontage of lust under 2 kilometres. With no intervals this still only equates to a frontage of 110 metres per battalion. With intervals, I would assume a frontage of 100 metres. Is this fair for 500 man battalions? All views considered, quoting of sources would be much appreciated!

[Dr Dave]

I reckoned on closer to 100 m?

500 men, say 480 in the ranks, 160 per rank, 0.6m per man = 96 m. So I'm close to your calculation.

Next question should be are the numbers per bttn right - If "Yes" then map is wrong?

[Westmarcher]

To provide even more leeway, I wouldn't be surprised if the supernumeraries were double the number than the estimate of 20 Dr Dave assumes in his calculation (thinking of more NCO's, officers, colour party and drummers, for example). Somehow, General Sir David Dundas's later reforms for the British Army also spring to mind to help your cause. In these, I seem to recall he allowed for only 21 inches (roughly 0.53 m) frontage per man (this seems too little to me but, apparently was such) - Dundas was a great fan of Frederick the Great and his model was the Prussian Army.