At Soor, Frederick gained a safe retreat to Silesia and a lesson to be careful in the future. But victory made him inattentive to the lesson. The behaviour of his men had been beyond all praise. They formed under fire; the cavalry charged up-hill and routed the enemy, and the infantry, though unsupported, attacked superior numbers and captured batteries. The King, not unnaturally, began to believe that there was nothing which he and his soldiers could not accomplish. The result, in a future as yet far distant, was great glory mingled with great disaster. During the winter months the Prussian rank and file gathered fresh laurels. Once more Frederick believed that he had tamed the Queen and once more he found himself mistaken. As in every previous year of the Silesian wars, Maria Theresa ordered an attack upon her enemy in the winter. This of 1745 was threefold and the goal was not Breslau but Berlin. Prince Charles’s army was to march from Bohemia into Saxony and to join with the Saxons in a march to Frankfurt-on-Oder, while 10,000 men detached by Traun crossed Germany and seized Berlin. Enough of this elaborate plan was blabbed to the Swedish ambassador by the Saxon Premier, Count Brühl, to put Frederick upon his guard. His own army had gone into winter quarters. A force under the Old Dessauer, which had been stationed for some time at Halle in readiness to spring at the throat of Saxony, was likewise laid up for the winter. Podewils and the Old Dessauer refused to credit a scheme at once so grandiose and so dangerous to the Saxons, who in case of failure would be left at the mercy of Prussia. The King, however, overruled them, rushed into Silesia, collected 35,000 men, marched for some days parallel with the unsuspecting Prince Charles, and on November 23, 1745, crushed his Saxon vanguard at Hennersdorf. At this blow the whole enterprise collapsed. The Austrians retired into Bohemia, followed by Augustus and Count Brühl, who stubbornly rejected the Prussian overtures for peace. Meanwhile the Old Dessauer, who had captured Leipzig, was making for Dresden under urgent orders to attack the Saxon force wherever he might find it. Four armies were at this time converging upon the capital. The Saxons under Count Rutowski, with whom were the Austrian contingent from the West, formed a force of 35,000 men and lay to the westward of the Elbe and of the city. The Old Dessauer, having secured Meissen, had provided a bridge across the river by which Frederick marching from the East could join him in case of need. But Prince Charles with 46,000 men was advancing towards Dresden from the side of Bohemia, and Frederick feverishly urged his veteran lieutenant to strike a speedy blow. If the allies were to join forces the war might be prolonged and it seemed likely that Russia would attack Prussia in the spring.