Month after month passed away, during which the whole of Prussia presented the aspect of one wide field of battle.  Frederic fought with the energies of desperation.  Villages were everywhere blazing, squadrons charging, and the thunders of an incessant cannonade deafened the ear by night and by day.  On the whole the campaign terminated in favor of Frederic; the allies being thwarted in all their endeavors to crush him.  In one battle Maria Theresa lost twenty thousand men.

During the ensuing winter all the continental powers were again preparing for the resumption of hostilities in the spring, when the British people, weary of the enormous expenditures of the war, began to be clamorous for peace.  The French treasury was also utterly exhausted.  France made overtures to England for a cessation of hostilities; and these two powers, with peaceful overtures, addressed Maria Theresa.  The queen, though fully resolved to prosecute the war until she should attain her object, thought it not prudent to reject outright such proposals, but consented to the assembling of a congress at Augsburg.  Hostilities were not suspended during the meeting of the congress, and the Austrian queen was sanguine in the hope of being speedily able to crush her Prussian rival.  Every general in the field had experienced such terrible disasters, and the fortune of war seemed so fickle, now lighting upon one banner and now upon another, that all parties were wary, practicing the extreme of caution, and disposed rather to act upon the defensive.  Though not a single pitched battle was fought, the allies, outnumbering the Prussians, three to one, continually gained fortresses, intrenchments and positions, until the spirit even of Frederic was broken by calamities, and he yielded to despair.  He no longer hoped to be able to preserve his empire, but proudly resolved to bury himself beneath its ruins.  His despondency could not be concealed from his army, and his bravest troops declared that they could fight no longer.

Maria Theresa was elated beyond measure.  England was withdrawing from Prussia.  Frederic was utterly exhausted both as to money and men; one campaign more would finish the work, and Prussia would lie helpless at the feet of Maria Theresa, and her most sanguine anticipations would be realized.  But the deepest laid plans of man are often thwarted by apparently the most trivial events.  One single individual chanced to be taken sick and die.  That individual was Elizabeth, the Empress of Russia.  On the 5th of January, 1762, she was lying upon her bed an emaciate suffering woman, gasping in death.  The departure of her last breath changed the fate of Europe.