ened 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.

In the first years of peace that followed, it appeared that there was
a neighbouring country in which that deficiency might be repaired, and
the disappointing issue of the war might be made good by the art of
the statesman. The republic of Poland covered an enormous territory,
but was the most backward of the civilised nations. It was governed,
socially and politically, by the aristocratic class, and it was their
prerogative that any minority, or even a single noble, might exert the
right of veto on the proceedings of the Diet. The political
conditions were those of the eleventh century. The government was the
weakest in Europe. The Poles had been the earliest people to
establish religious toleration; but they had succumbed to the
Counter-Reformation, and they still refused liberty of conscience to
the Dissidents, mainly of the Greek Church. It was the plain policy
of