208 ANNUAL REGISTER, 1794. 



tlie Germans, their husbandry, all 

 law, order, and property, subvert 

 with anarchic abominations, the 

 const itutionsofmore imperial states, 

 annihilate princes and nobles, erase 

 the temples of religion, and drive 

 from the hearts of Germans their 

 natural love of virtue and order, by 

 the aids of the seductive allurements 

 of licentiousness, and the precepts 

 of an unfeeling immorality. 



All these, and similar observa- 

 tions, so simple and so obvious as 

 they were, did, nevertheless, not 

 succeed in bringing the arrangement 

 for the subsistence of the army to a 

 just conclusion. This proposal was, 

 besides this, sufficiently connected 

 with another arrangement, which 

 his majesty had designed to offer the 

 confederate powers, but which it 

 did not seem good to his imperial 

 majesty to comply with, and which 

 also the other states did not approve. 



Moreover, this proposal gave rise 

 to an exception, which, after so 

 many and meritorious actions, such 

 unparalleled sacrifices which his 

 majesty had already made, he, in 

 truth, had no reason to expect, and 

 on which his majesty, not without 

 much sorrow, finds it his duty to 

 make some remarks. 



The summoning of the six cir- 

 cles, by the elector of Mentz, has 

 been represented as irregular, 

 though in fact it is strictly constitu- 

 tional. Measures there were pro- 

 posed precisely contradictory to the 

 negotiations for the subsistence, and 

 the universal arming of the peasants 

 was resolved on, though it is plain, 

 that such a measure is as inefficient 

 as dangerous, and completely ad- 

 verse to the object proposed — inef- 

 ficient against an enemy Vv'lio presses 

 forward in a rrass with an insanity 

 of fury, approved tactics, and a 



numerous artillery — dangerous, be- 

 cause, when the peasant is armed, 

 and brought away from his ordinary 

 mode of life, the enemy may easily 

 become his most dangerous seducer, 

 and finally adverse to the object pro- 

 posed, because such an armament is 

 wholly incompatible with the oper- 

 ations and subsistence of disciplined 

 armies. These reasons, which 

 flowed from the most sincere con- 

 viction of his majesty, have been 

 represented in the most odious 

 colours; and the most false and 

 scandalous motives have been attri- 

 buted to him for his dissent to this 

 measure ; and, in order to prevent 

 the arrangement of the subsistence, 

 projects of extending his dominions, 

 of secularizing ecclesiastical territo- 

 ries, and of oppressing the empire, 

 have been rumoured to have been 

 by him in contemplation ; and of 

 which his majesty's known patriot- 

 ism, and acknowledged virtues, will 

 form the best contradiction. 



After what is past, every hope of 

 the subsistence being acceded to 

 being now vanished, his majesty 

 does now renounce the same, and 

 also every resolution of the empire, 

 and of the circles relative thereto : 

 — his majesty has therefore taken 

 the resolution no longer to grant his 

 protection to the German empire; 

 but to order his army (excepting 

 twenty thousand auxiharies, accord- 

 ing- to different treaties) instant- 

 ly to return to his own dominions. 



At the same time that his majesty 

 finds himself compelled to withdraw 

 a porli(5n of his troops from the de- 

 fence of those states, for which they 

 have already combated with so much 

 glory, he expresses the most earnest 

 wishes, that those consequences he 

 has above alluded to may not take 

 place, but that the exertions of his 



imperial 



