ossibility of restoring her
navy."

The peace was signed, however, not without ill humor on the part of
England, but with a secret feeling of relief; the burdens which weighed
upon the country had been increasing every year. In 1762, Lord Bute had
obtained from Parliament four hundred and fifty millions (eighteen
million pounds) to keep up the war. "I wanted the peace to be a serious
and a durable one," said the English minister in reply to Pitt's attacks;
"if we had increased our demands, it would have been neither the one nor
the other."

M. de Choiseul submitted in despair to the consequences of the
long-continued errors committed by the government of Louis XV. "Were I
master," said he, "we would be to the English what Spain was to the
Moors; if this course were taken, England would be destroyed in thirty
years from now." The king was a better judge of his weakness and of the
general exhaustion. "The peace we have just made is neither a good one
nor a glorious one; nobody sees that better than I," he said in his
private correspondence; "but, under such unhappy circumstances, it could
not be better, and I answer for it that if we had continued the war, we
should have made, a still worse one next year." All the patriotic
courage and zeal of the Duke of Choiseul, all the tardy impulse springing
from the nation's anxieties, could not suffice even to palliate the
consequences of so many years' ignorance, feebleness, and incapacity in
succession.

Prussia and Austria henceforth were left to confront one another, the
only actors really interested in the original struggle, the last to quit
the battle-field on to which they had dragged their allies. By an
unexpected turn of luck, Frederick II. had for a moment seen Russia
becoming his ally; a fresh blow came to wrest from him this powerful
support. The Czarina Catherine II., Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst and wife
of the Czar Peter III., being on bad terms with her husband and in dread
of his wrath, had managed to take advantage of the young czar's
imprudence in order to excite a mutiny amongst the soldiers; he had been
deposed, and died before long in prison. Catherine was proclaimed in his
place. With her accession to the throne there commenced for Russia a new
policy, equally bold and astute, having for its sole aim, unscrupulously
and shamelessly pursued, the aggrandizement and consolidation of the
imperial power; Russia became neutral in the strife between Prussi