233 THE SEVEN YEARS WAR, 1756-63panies for the next campaign. Mollendorff wrote to a friend:
The soldier does not have the wherewithal to live, and he lacks
the most basic commodities. He resorts to robbery. Now a thief
is a man devoid of honour, and a man who lacks honour is a
coward. The consequence is the decay of discipline, which is
the basic and ultimate support of the army. The officers are in
the same condition. Things are so bad with them that they no
longer understand the meaning of the words 'honour' or
reputation'. (12 December 1761, in Volz, 1926-7, II, 95; see
also Frederick to Wied, 15 May 1762, in Wengen, 1890, 355;
Riesebeck, 1784, II, 137; Warnery, 1788, 441)Prussia entered the New Year of 1762 with her army approaching ruin
and her king resembling nothing so much as a demented scarecrow. It
is curious to reflect that if one lady had lived for a very few weeks
longer, historians would by now have analysed in the most convinc-
ing detail the reasons for a collapse as 'inevitable' as that which
overtook the Sweden of Charles XII.
The female in question was one of Frederick's most implacable
enemies, Empress Elizabeth of Russia, who died on 5 January 1762.
The first tidings reached Frederick on 19 January, by way of his envoy
in Warsaw. Frederick was too inured to disappointments to be able to
believe that such an event could work any dramatically favourable
revolution in his affairs. Much more heartening was a letter from
Finckenstein, who wrote to the king from Magdeburg on 27 January,
announcing that news had come that the new Russian Emperor Peter
III had commanded all his forces to cease hostilities and had ordered
General Chernyshev to withdraw his corps from the Austrian army in
Silesia. Frederick exulted: 'This is the very first ray of light. May
Heaven be thanked! Let us hope that the storms will give way to fine
weather, God willing!' (to Finckenstein, 21 January, PC 13439; the
king was strikingly given to pious exclamations at this period).
Frederick resorted to the grossest flattery in the hope of securing
the active friendship of Emperor Peter, an eccentric individual who
was known to be besotted with things Prussian. He sent the Order of
the Black Eagle to the pug-nosed monarch, he made him Chef of the
Berlin regiment of Syburg, and he awarded him high nominal rank in
the Prussian army. Indeed, 'Peter believed that he was more honoured
by the title of a Prussian general than by that of Emperor of Russia'
(Warnery, 1788, 495).
Frederick's personal envoy, the young Baron von der Goltz, was
able to conclude a treaty of peace and friendship on 5 May, by virtue
of which the Russians undertook to evacuate the Prussian territories.
The Swedes too came to terms, on 22 May. Finally on 1 June Goltz and