72 THE SILESIAN WARS, 1740-5been engaged, this was the most bitterly contested' (PC 2002). In the
principes Gtniraux of 1748 he classed Soor as one of the actions which
arrived unbidden, for it had compelled him to do battle to protect his
communications with Trautenau. 'I have never been in such a fix as
at Soor', he wrote to Fredersdorf, 'I was in the soup up to my ears'
(Frederick, 1926, 58); or, as he put it more elegantly to Valori, at
Hohenfriedeberg he had been fighting for Silesia, and at Soor for his
life.
Frederick admired the strategic surprise which had been accom-
plished by the Austrians, and he believed that he owed his victoiy not
to any superior combinations of his generalship, but to 'the most
brave, the most valiant army that has ever existed' (PC 2206).
Frederick's confidence in his troops was never to stand higher. He
maintained that they were fully capable of storming batteries from
the front, if it could be managed in the same way as the second assault
on the Graner-Koppe ('Principes G6n6raux', 1748, Oeuvres, XXVIII,
75), and in general terms he used the experience of the battle of Soor
to justify his claim that offensive action suited the genius of the
Prussians, and that they owned an inherent advantage even when
they faced superior numbers of the enemy (PC 2068, 8770).
Frederick's personal affairs had been thrown into disorder by a
minor episode of the battle, when General Nidisti and a corps of
Austrian hussars had discovered the convoy containing the royal
baggage. The Austrians made off with his tents, horses, money chests,
table silver, clothes and flutes, leaving him with just the shirt on his
back, and without so much as a spoon he could call his own. He asked
Fredersdorf to send him a service of light silver, and 'Quantz is to
make me some new flutfes of a highly extraordinary kind - one with a
powerful sound, and the other which must be easy to blow and have
soft high notes. He is to keep them for me until I return' (Frederick,
1926, 56). He feared, however, that nothing would be able to take the
place of his beloved whippet Biche, who was thought to have been
hacked to pieces by the hussars.
The army remained for five days in a camp to the south-west of
the battlefield, 'for the sake of honour', and resumed its leisurely
retreat on 6 October. The Prussians crossed the Silesian border on the
19th, and at the end of the month Frederick departed for Berlin. He
believed that the war was effectively over.
Frederick enjoyed his peace for little over a week before he learnt
from a Swedish diplomat that the Austrians and Saxons were making
ready to surprise him in a winter campaign. Unlike the invasion of
June, which had debouched into Silesia, Prince Charles's army of
20,000 Austrians and Saxons was going to advance from the Saxon