CONCLUSION OF THE CAMPAIGN.

By this time the Russians had retired to winter-quarters in Poland; and the Swedes, after a fruitless excursion in the absence of Manteuffel, retreated to Stralsund and the isle of Rugen. This campaign, therefore, did not prove more decisive than the last. Abundance of lives were lost, and great part of Germany was exposed to rapine, murder, famine, desolation, and every species of misery that war could engender. In vain the confederating powers of Austria, Russia, and Sweden, united their efforts to crush the Prussian monarch. Though his army had been defeated, and he himself totally overthrown with great slaughter in the heart of his own dominions; though he appeared in a desperate situation, environed by hostile armies, and two considerable detached bodies of his troops were taken or destroyed; yet he kept all his adversaries at bay till the approach of winter, which proved his best auxiliary, and even maintained his footing in the electorate of Saxony, which seemed to be the prize contested between him and the Austrian general. Yet, long before the approach of winter, one would imagine he must have been crushed between the shock of so many adverse hosts, had they been intent upon closing him in, and heartily concurred for his destruction; but, instead of urging the war with accumulated force, they acted in separate bodies, and with jealous eye seemed to regard the progress of each other. It was not, therefore, to any compunction, or kind forbearance, in the court of Vienna, that the inactivity of Daun was owing. The resentment of the house of Austria seemed, on the contrary, to glow with redoubled indignation; and the majority of the Germanic body seemed to enter with warmth into her quarrel. 526 [See note 4 E, at the end of this Vol.]