Christians betray and murder one another.
Perhaps unbelievers are better Christians than believers. We will
try them, at least. When all deserted me, they offered me the hand of
friendship. This is the first sunbeam which has greeted me. Perhaps
bright days may now follow the storms. May God grant it!" [Footnote: The
king was not deceived. The Empress Elizabeth died in the commencement of
the year 1762. Her successor Peter the Third, was a passionate admirer
of Frederick the Great, and he now became the ally of Prussia. The
Empress Catharine approved this change, and remained the ally of
Prussia. France now withdrew from the contest; and in the year 1763,
Austria, finding her treasury completely exhausted, was compelled to
make peace with Prussia. Prussia had no use for her new ally of Tartary,
and Krimgirai, who was already on the march, returned home with his
army.--See "Memoires du Baron de Tott sur les Turcs et les Tartares."]

BOOK VI.

CHAPTER I. THE KING'S RETURN.

Berlin was glittering in festal adornment! This was a great, a joyous
day; the first gleam of sunshine, after many long years of sorrow,
suffering, and absolute want. For the last seven years the king had been
absent from his capital-to-day he would return to Berlin.

After seven years of bloody strife, the powers at Hubertsburg had
declared peace. No nation had enlarged its boundaries by this war. Not
one of the cities or fortresses of the King of Prussia had been taken
from him, and he was forced to content himself with his former conquest.
There had been no successful results! Losses only were to be calculated.

During these seven years, Russia had lost one hundred and eighty
thousand men, the French two hundred thousand, the Prussians a hundred
and twenty thousand, the English and confederate Germans a hundred and
sixty thousand, and the Saxons ninety thousand--lastly, the Swedes and
the States sixty thousand. This seven years' war cost Europe nearly a
million of men. Their blood fertilized the German soil, and their bones
lay mouldering beneath her green sods.

Throughout all Europe, weeping mothers, wives, and children turned their
sorrowful faces toward the land which had robbed them of their dear
loved ones; they were even deprived the painfully sweet consolation of
weeping over these lonely and neglected graves.

Losses were not only to be counted in myriads of men, whose blood had
been shed in vain, but uncounted millions h