the empress. A woman who
could plunge, into the wildest excesses of licentiousness, still had
sensibility enough to resent the taunts of the royal philosopher. In
1753, Elizabeth and Maria Theresa entered into an agreement to resist
_all further augmentation_ of the Prussian power. In the bloody Seven
Years' War between Frederic and Maria Theresa, the heart of Elizabeth
was always with the Austrian queen, and for five of those years their
armies fought side by side. In the year 1759, Elizabeth sent an army
of one hundred thousand men into Prussia. They committed every outrage
which fiends could perpetrate; and though victorious over the armies
of Frederic, they rendered the country so utterly desolate, that
through famine they were compelled to retreat. Burning villages and
mangled corpses marked their path.

The next year, 1758, another Russian army invaded Prussia, overran
nearly the whole kingdom, and captured Konigsburg. The victorious
Russians thinking that all of Prussia was to be annexed to their
dominions, began to treat the Prussians tenderly and as countrymen. An
order was read from the churches, that if any Prussian had cause of
complaint against any Russian, he should present it at the military
chancery at Konigsburg, where he would infallibly have redress. The
inhabitants of the conquered realm were all obliged to swear fealty to
the Empress of Russia. The Prussian army was at this time in Silesia,
struggling against the troops of Maria Theresa. The warlike Frederic
soon returned at the head of his indomitable hosts, and attacking the
Russians about six miles from Kustrin, defeated them in one of the
most bloody battles on record, and drove the shattered battalions,
humiliated and bleeding, out of the territory.

The summer of 1759 again found the Russian troops spread over the
Prussian territory. In great force the two hostile armies soon met on
the banks of the Oder. The Russians, posted upon a line of commanding
heights, numbered seventy thousand. Frederic fiercely assailed them
through the most formidable disadvantages, with but thirty thousand
men. The slaughter of the Prussians was fearful, and Frederic, after
losing nearly eight thousand of his best troops in killed and wounded
and prisoners, sullenly retired. The Russian troops were now
strengthened by a reinforcement of twelve thousand of the choicest of
the Austrian cavalry, and still presenting, notwithstanding their
losses, a solid front of n