218 Prussia. 1761-62

At no period of the war had the situation of Prussia
looked so hopeless as at the close of this year. Probably
Hopeless t-'le king was the only man in all his army who
condition of did not despair of ultimate victory. The Rus-
thTend of sians after three ineffectual sieges had reduced
17611 by famine the Pomeranian seaport of Colberg,

and for the first time in the war took up winter-quarters
in Pomerania, and in the New Mark of Brandenburg.
The capture of Schweidnitz enabled the Austrians and
20,000 Russians, under Czernitcheff, to do the same in
Silesia and Glatz. The Prussian dominions were slipping
from the grasp of the king. Fully half were already
occupied by the enemy, and what remained were almost
entirely exhausted. Men, horses, supplies, and transport
were hardly to be procured. The Prussian army in the
field was reduced by the end of the campaign to 60,000
men, and the deterioration in quality was greater still.
The splendid well-disciplined troops which had com-
menced the war existed no longer, and deserters and vaga-
bonds of all kinds were swept into the ranks to fill their
places. The utmost severity failed to preserve discipline,
and the low moral tone prevailing in the inferior ranks
infected even the officers. Peculation was rife ; mutiny
and desertion constant.

Under these circumstances'-the loss of the moral and
material support of England must almost certainly have
turned the scale against Prussia, but for a sudden and
complete change in the policy of Russia. On January 5,
r% v c i. I?62, the Czarina died, and was succeeded by

Death of the ,, ,-. _ ' - rT . . ^ J

Czarina, her nephew Peter, Duke of Holstem-Gottorp, a
I^^AC- grandson on the mother's side of Peter the
cession of Great, a poor silly creature of coarse and

Peter III. . , . . _

brutal manners, capable of generous impulses,
but altogether wanting in judgment and discretion. The
foreign policy of Elizabeth had been largely influenced by