Miracle of the House of Brandenburg
Frederick the Great was saved from defeat in January 1762 by the death of an empress. His position at the end of 1761 was as bad as it could be. The Russians had taken Kolberg on the Baltic and Pomerania with it, the Austrians held Silesia's fortresses, his army was down to a fraction of its trained strength and was being filled with prisoners and conscripts, the treasury was empty, and the British subsidy had been cancelled when Pitt fell from office. He had written to his ministers about the impossibility of continuing and had been carrying a phial of poison for two years. Elizabeth of Russia died on 5 January 1762. Her nephew and successor Peter III was a Holstein prince who had grown up admiring Frederick to the point of caricature — he kept a portrait, called him his master, and had reportedly passed him information during the war. He made peace in May, restored every conquest without compensation, and then signed an alliance and sent a corps to fight alongside the Prussians against his own former allies. Sweden followed Russia out of the war within weeks. Peter was deposed by his wife in July and murdered days later, and Catherine cancelled the alliance and kept the peace. Austria could not continue alone. The peace of Hubertusburg in February 1763 left every frontier as it had been in 1756, and Prussia kept Silesia. The phrase is Frederick's own and he used it without irony. A state facing three empires was saved by an act of biology, which is the least satisfactory explanation available for a great power's survival and in this case the correct one.
- Year: 1762 CE
- Category: Political
