Britain threatens to withdraw its subsidies if Prussia does not consider offering concessions to secure peace.

As the Prussian armies have dwindled to just sixty thousand men and with Berlin itself about to come under siege, Frederick's survival is severely threatened, but at the death of the Russian Empress Elizabeth on January 5, 1762, her Prussophile successor, Peter III, at once ends the Russian occupation of East Prussia and Pomerania and mediates Frederick's truce with Sweden.

He also places a corps of his own troops under Frederick's command.

Frederick is now able to muster a larger army, of one hundred and twenty thousand men, and concentrate it against Austria.

He drives them from much of Saxony, while his brother Henry wins a victory in Silesia in the Battle of Freiberg (October 29, 1762).

At the same time, his Brunswick allies capture the key town of Göttingen and compound this by taking Cassel.