At dawn on 30 September 1745 Frederick the Great woke to find the Austrian and Saxon army of Prince Charles of Lorraine, nearly twice the size of his own, on the hills above his camp near Soor in northeastern Bohemia. Instead of retreating, he swung his army round and attacked uphill. Prussian cavalry and infantry stormed the heights, the allied army broke, and Frederick, who later said that at Soor he had been fighting for his life, was free to march back to Silesia.
Caught in camp
The battle was part of the Second Silesian War, in which Frederick II of Prussia fought to keep the province of Silesia that he had seized from Austria. By late September Frederick's army was in northeastern Bohemia, near the Silesian border, and he was about to withdraw into Silesia. His camp lay near the village of Burkersdorf, close to today's Trutnov in the Czech Republic.1
Charles of Lorraine, the brother of Empress Maria Theresa, saw his chance. During the night his army moved through the woods round the Prussian flank, and under cover of the morning mist his regiments took post on the hills overlooking Burkersdorf, with guns on the height known as the Graner Koppe. The Royal Collection Trust, which holds another plan of the battle, notes that the allies used the high ground to reconnoiter the Prussian position and plan to encircle it.2
The odds
British Battles gives Frederick about 22,500 men, 16,700 infantry and 5,800 cavalry, against some 40,200 Austrians and Saxons, including about 4,000 irregular troops. The Czech news agency ČTK, reporting on recent archaeological finds, gives round figures of about 20,000 Prussians against about 40,000 Austrians and Saxons.3
Up the Graner Koppe
Frederick turned his army to face the enemy and threw his whole weight at the hill. Prussian cuirassiers rode up the valley and routed the Austrian cavalry on the heights, then turned on the infantry around the Graner Koppe. The first Prussian infantry attack on the summit was driven back, but a second attack by veteran regiments drove the Austrians off it, and at Burkersdorf the Prussian Guard under Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick took an Austrian battery. The allied line collapsed.4
While the battle was being won, Austrian hussars and Trenck's pandours fell on the Prussian camp. British Battles says they carried off Frederick's personal baggage, including his whippet and his flutes, and the army's war chest.5
Losses and aftermath
British Battles puts Prussian losses at 856 killed and 3,055 wounded or missing, among the dead Prince Albrecht of Brunswick, and allied losses at 7,444 killed, wounded and missing. ČTK gives almost 10,000 casualties on both sides together. In September 2025 archaeologists from the Museum of Eastern Bohemia in Hradec Králové found a mass grave of soldiers from the battle on the route of the new D11 highway near Trutnov.6
Frederick held the field for five days to show that he had won, then withdrew into Silesia. Frederick's own verdict, quoted by British Battles, was that at Soor he had been fighting for his life. The date is given in the Gregorian calendar.7
