At one time Frederick had thought that he saw all Germany rallying round him; now, beaten and cantoned in Saxony, with the Austrians in front of him, during the winter of 1760, he was everywhere seeking alliances and finding himself everywhere rejected.
"I have but two allies left," he would say, "valor and perseverance." Repeated victories, gained at the sword's point, by dint of boldness and in the extremity of peril, could not even protect Berlin.

The capital of Prussia found itself constrained to open its gates to the enemy, on the sole condition that the regiments of Cossacks should not pass the line of enclosure.

When the regular troops withdrew, the generals had not been able to prevent the city from being pillaged.

The heroic efforts of the King of Prussia ended merely in preserving to him a foothold in Saxony.
The Russians occupied Poland.
Marshal Broglie, on becoming general-in-chief of the French army, had succeeded in holding his own in Hesse; he frequently made Hanover anxious.

To turn his attention elsewhither and in hopes of deciding the French to quit Germany, the hereditary Prince of Brunswick attempted a diversion on the Lower Rhine; he laid siege to Wesel, whilst the English were preparing for a descent at Antwerp.