27.12.1741 Prussian army occupied Olomouc

From December 1741 until April 1742, Friedrich II ruled Olomouc. It was at this time that things got under way. Maria Theresia lost Silesia and Olomouc became a border town.

Olomouc and the fortress, Olomouc and the army, these are mutually inseparable phenomena that have shaped the appearance of the city in an important way for centuries. Long before the fortress was established as an "institution" in the 17th century, much had been done in the military defence of the city. An important, directly crucial turning point came during the eighth occupation of Olomouc by the Swedes in the Thirty Years' War. The northerners not only carried out extensive repairs to the walls, but also extended them, especially again on the northern side.

Only four city gates remained functional then: the Rohelská, Střední, Blažejská and Hradská gates. Then, in 1650, when uninvited invaders sacked the ruined and dilapidated town, located in the ruins of theOlomouc was in trouble when the most important imperial general and military theorist Raimund Montecuccoli proposed to demolish the city.

"Fortunately, this did not happen and five years later, on 15 September 1655, Emperor Ferdinand III. Olomouc became a fortress, with Licatello de Locatelli as commander, whose task was also to supervise the construction of the fortress buildings. In 1658, Marshal Louis Raduit de Souches stepped in when he presented a plan to reinforce the existing fortifications and proposed the addition of pentagonal bastions," writes Tomáš Kryl in his book Walks through Olomouc.

The development went on, and so in the penultimate year of the 17th century. In the last half of the 17th century, a new design of the fortress according to Vauban's system appeared, which was followed by Louis De Rochetz with his fortification project in 1717.full system of bastions (a pentagonal part of the fortification extending beyond the wall itself, on which the archers and cannons are concentrated) around the entire city.

From December 1741 until April 1742, Friedrich II ruled Olomouc. It was at this time that things got underway. Maria Theresa lost Silesia, Olomouc became a border town and began to transform itself into a complete bastion fortress according to the plans of engineer Pierre Phillippe Bechade de Rochepine.

By 1757, a truly modern polygonal bastion fortress with a network of redoubts and outposts had been created: the crown wall or the fortifications of the Hradisko Monastery were not missing. However, even this did not deter the Prussian army from trying to reach Olomouc again in 1758.

Sources: www.pevnostolomouc.cz, Tomáš Kryl, Walks through Olomouc