At dawn on 30 September 1745 Frederick II of Prussia, camped near Burkersdorf in Bohemia and about to march for Trautenau, learned that the Austrian and Saxon army of Prince Charles of Lorraine stood on the heights above his right flank. Outnumbered and surprised, the king turned his army under fire and attacked uphill. His cavalry routed the Austrian horse, his infantry took the great battery on the Graner Koppe, the Guards stormed a second, wooded height, and the allies fell back into the forest. Meanwhile Nádasdy's hussars plundered the Prussian camp, the king's baggage included. Also on this day: the last US flight of the Berlin Airlift, 1949.
Battle of Soor
30 September 1745 · 281 years ago
A camp on bad ground
The battle belongs to the Second Silesian War and was fought between the Prussian army of Frederick II and the Austro-Saxon army of Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine. According to his NDB and ADB biographers, Charles was Maria Theresa's brother-in-law, the brother of her husband Francis.1
The Prussian camp in Bohemia lay just west of Burkersdorf, with the village of Staudenz in front, in country of woods and ravines. Frederick had sent away so many detachments that, by his own count, only 18,000 men remained with him. Both he and the General Staff history say this small army could not occupy the high ground that dominated its right; the General Staff identifies it as the Graner Koppe, at 552 metres the highest point of the field.2
Surprised at dawn
During the night Charles's army marched through the forest and formed up on the heights above the Prussian right. According to the General Staff history, the deployment was complete an hour before daybreak. It says the Prussians had no inkling of it and that a misty autumn morning favoured surprise troop movements.3
The warning came while the king was dictating orders for the march to Trautenau. His memoir puts it at four in the morning, while his letter of 1 October says he was up at five; the General Staff history prefers Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick's half past five. Frederick blamed the surprise on the Natzmer hussars.4
His memoir explains why he attacked: it was more glorious "to be crushed selling one's life dearly than to perish in a retreat that would surely have turned into shameful flight" (our translation).5
The great battery
The army wheeled to the right and marched across the front of the allied guns, under their fire, to outflank their left. Field Marshal von Buddenbrock, who according to the NDB commanded the Prussian right wing, opened the attack with his cuirassiers, who rode up the steep slope and threw the Austrian horse back into the ravines behind it.6
The infantry of the right then went for the great battery, which the General Staff places on the Graner Koppe, and Prince Albrecht of Brunswick, the brother of the Queen of Prussia, was killed in the attack. According to the General Staff history, the Austrian Colonel Beneda led five grenadier companies down the slope crying "Es lebe Maria Theresia!" (Long live Maria Theresa!; our translation) and drove the Prussians back. General von Blanckensee was mortally wounded and his son, his adjutant, was killed.7
Frederick's memoir says five reserve battalions came up, the repulsed battalions re-formed beside them, and "these ten battalions carried the battery" (our translation). The General Staff counts eleven battalions under the Hereditary Prince Leopold of Anhalt, attacking with the bayonet. The king's printed report says the battery fell only at the third attack.8
The wooded height
A second fight developed in the centre. Believing Austrian infantry was moving on Burkersdorf, the king had a battalion of the Kalckstein regiment occupy the village and set fire to its outlying houses. The General Staff history adds that the battalions behind, misreading the move, formed line beside it, so that the centre attacked before the right had won.9
There Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick led his Guards brigade up a wooded height held by the enemy and took it, capturing guns, according to the General Staff and Ferdinand's ADB biographer. Frederick writes that the height was defended by Ferdinand's own brother, Prince Louis; the General Staff lists Prince Ludwig Ernst of Brunswick, an Austrian lieutenant field marshal, among the seriously wounded. It dates the general allied retreat to about 11 in the morning.10
As the allies fled into the forest, Frederick halted the pursuit at the village of Soor, and the battle took its name from it. According to the Royal Collection Trust, the village is today Horní Žďár in the Czech Republic; ČTK calls the engagement the battle of Žďár.11
The camp plundered
While the armies fought, Nádasdy's hussars fell on the Prussian camp and baggage. The king lost all his baggage and his cabinet secretaries Eichel and Müller were taken, though, Frederick and the General Staff both say, papers were destroyed first. The printed report accuses Nádasdy of cruelties against eight or ten sick men and the army's women, whom it says villains roasted alive; the General Staff history says the few sick and the women in the camp were badly mistreated, some of them burned alive.12
Numbers and losses
Strengths differ by source and scope. The General Staff's return, from Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick's papers, counts 20,021 Prussians in the infantry, cavalry and artillery, and 22,562 with General von Schlichting's corps covering the rear. It gives the Austro-Saxon army 39,327 men, 12,706 of them cavalry, without the light troops, which it says took no part in the fighting. Frederick's figures vary: 18,000 against 35,000 in his printed report, 19,000 against 32,000 to 34,000 in a letter of 1 October, and 18,000 against more than 40,000 in his memoir. ČTK gives about 20,000 Prussians and about 40,000 Austrians and Saxons.13
Citing its casualty list, the General Staff history gives Prussian losses of 34 officers and 852 men killed, 108 officers and 2,613 men wounded, and 3 officers and 301 men missing or captured. For the allies it gives 214 officers and 7,230 men, including 36 officers and 3,072 men missing or captured. Frederick's report claimed 500 Prussians killed and 2,000 wounded and put the enemy's loss at six or perhaps seven thousand men. ČTK reports losses of almost 10,000 men on both sides together.14
In September 2025 ČTK reported a mass grave found on the route of the D11 motorway near Trutnov, which archaeologist Matouš Holas of the Museum of East Bohemia linked to the battle; preliminary findings suggested nine soldiers.15
The king's own words
On the day itself Frederick wrote a pencil note to his minister Podewils, headed (with the editors' additions in brackets) "Prausnitz, ce 30 [septembre 1745]": "We have totally beaten Prince Charles. Prince Albert is killed" (our translation). It ends: "Tout mon bagage est au diable, et Eichel pris" (All my baggage has gone to the devil, and Eichel is taken; our translation). Next day he wrote that of the four battles he had seen, this was the one fought with the most fury.16
His printed report praised the enemy: "It must be said in praise of the Austrian generals that no fault can be laid to their charge" (our translation). The memoir called the plan fine and well conceived but said the Austrians "lacked the talent of execution" (our translation). Charles admitted to Emperor Francis the same day, in a letter quoted by the General Staff, "nous avonts ete bien battues" (we have been well beaten; our translation).17
Later, in his Generalprincipia vom Kriege, quoted by the General Staff, Frederick blamed himself: "I would have deserved to be beaten at Soor, had not the skill of my generals and the bravery of my troops preserved me from such a misfortune" (our translation).18
He camped on the field for five days "par honneur" (for honour; our translation), his memoir says, then took the army to Trautenau. According to the NDB, peace came at Dresden on 25 December 1745, after the Old Dessauer's victory at Kesselsdorf, and Frederick kept Silesia. See the Battle of Kesselsdorf, 1745.19
Also on this day
Battle of Mełchów
30 September 1863 · 163 years ago
At Mełchów near Lelów, January Uprising insurgents under Zygmunt Chmieleński fought Russian infantry, dragoons and Cossacks backed by artillery. The fight swung back and forth with cavalry and bayonet counterattacks, and young Adam Chmielowski was among the wounded.
1949: the last flight of Operation Vittles, the US part of the Berlin Airlift, took off from Rhein-Main Air Base; the AlliiertenMuseum also dates the last US Air Force airlift flight to 30 September. Roger Miller writes that it was a C-54 carrying coal, flown by Capt. Harry D. Immel, who had made one of the first airlift flights into Berlin. The Soviet land blockade had been lifted on 12 May. Sources date the airlift's end differently: the USAFE summary gives its official termination as 1 October 1949, and the Military Airlift Command history says the allies announced on 30 July that it would officially end on 31 October. Miller writes that the RAF stopped official airlift missions on 31 August; the AlliiertenMuseum dates the last RAF airlift flight to 6 October.20
