king, he was expelled from office. The subsidy came to an end, and Bute opened negotiations.
Frederic had resolved that he would not wear a diminished crown; that he would disappear from the scene if he could not preserve by treaty of peace the full integrity of the monarchy which he no longer hoped to preserve by war. But he stood alone. The change of reign, the fall of Pitt, the termination of the subsidy, the pacific disposition of Bute, somewhat exaggerated by those through whom he heard of it, weakened him so seriously that he allowed the struggle to languish while he sounded the courts, and especially sounded the Turk, as to his feelings towards his Austrian neighbour. Then, in an instant, the scene was entirely transformed. Elizabeth, the last of the children of Peter the Great, died in January 1762. She had been his bitter enemy throughout, personally as well as on grounds of pure policy, by which he was held to be the menacing obstruction to the expansion of Russia in Europe. Her heir was a German prince, married to a German princess, the famous Catharine, and they at once offered terms of peace.
Meanwhile Spain went to war with England, and the government began to treat apart from Frederic. Newcastle would have renewed the subsidy, but Bute refused, and Newcastle thereupon resigned, while Bute concluded peace. Frederic, quite unable to continue active operations, retained Silesia, but gave up his conquest, Saxony. Therefore, at the price of immense suffering to his people, he emerged from the unequal contest victorious and successful.
William III., Lewis XIV., Peter of Russia, had been great and able sovereigns; but none had left on the world such an impression of his genius. When Frederic appeared at the Te Deum at Charlottenburg in all his glory, he broke down utterly and burst into tears. He had been the victor, but it was England that carried away the prize. He had acquired in his campaigns immeasurable authority and renown, but his people had been decimated and impoverished, and he had gained no accession of territory.
