226 THE SEVEN YEARS WAR, 1756-63
maintain a foothold in the electorate for the winter.
Beset by so many misfortunes close to home, Frederick was
perhaps less disturbed than he ought to have been by the news that
Prime Minister Pitt had resigned on 5 October. Only in 1762 did he
come to see that his successor Bute was 'a man who ought to be
broken alive on the wheel' (Marcus, 1927, 52).
Just when it seemed that the year could have no further blows in
store, Frederick received the terrible news that Colberg had fallen to
the Russian corps of Rumyantsev on 16 December, after a six-month
blockade and siege. The ownership of this little place, isolated on the
sandy coast of Pomerania, was an issue of some magnitude in the
history of the war. The Russians (who were denied the free use of
neutral Danzig) now at last had a port where they could land supplies
close to the theatre of operations. Moreover, with Colberg as flank
protection, the Russians were able to hold themselves for the winter
at the gates of Brandenburg, instead of retreating to Posen and beyond
as in previous years, and by establishing an effective cordon along the
border they cut off for the first time the cereals which Frederick had
been accustomed to draw from Poland.
There was at this period a touch of irrationality in Frederick's
thinking, engendered by the desperate condition of his affairs. In all
seriousness the king clung to the thought that the Prussian state
might yet be saved by Muslim intervention from the east. Henry was
surprised at the credit which Frederick gave to the reports of his envoy
Rexin, who was in Constantinople to arrange a commercial treaty, to
the effect that the Turks were preparing to open war against Russia
and Austria in the spring. Frederick exclaimed that he would do
anything to obtain a diversion from those folk. More outlandishly
still, Frederick was entranced by the appearance in his headquarters
of a representative from the Khan of the Crimea, and he began to spin
schemes for a joint Prusso-Tartar cavalry raid into Hungary and
eastern Austria.
Frederick got his favourite adjutant, Major Wilhelm Heinrich
von Anhalt, to work out a plan of campaign based on the happy
assumption that the allies would be so disconcerted by the irruption
of the Turks and Tartars that they would be unable to resist Prussian
invasions of Bohemia and Moravia. This interesting document (Pro-
ject zur kiinftigen Campagne, undated December 1761, PC 13368)
was sent to Henry, who reasonably asked what would happen if the
Turkish help did not materialise.
Frederick's reply was not of a kind to set his brother's mind at
rest. In that case, he wrote, he would combine all the Prussian forces
in a single mass and fall on one or another of his enemies. 'I can
already hear the kind of difficulties and objections you will offer. But