424 



ANNUAL REGISTER, 1813. 



necessarily lost in point of security. 

 By an union with the most ancient 

 imperial family in Ciiristendom, 

 the edifice of his greatness acquir- 

 ed in the eyes of the French nation, 

 and of the world, such an addition 

 of strength and perfection, that 

 any ulterior scheme of aggran- 

 disement must only weaken and 

 destroy its stability. What France, 

 what Europe, what so many op- 

 pressed and despairing nations ear- 

 nestly demanded of Heaven, a 

 sound policy prescribed to tiie 

 triumphant ruler as a law of seif- 

 preservation — and it was allowed to 

 hope that so many great and united 

 motives would prevail over the am- 

 bition of an individual. 



If these flattering prospects were 

 destroyed, it is not to be imputed 

 to Austria. After many years' 

 fruitless exertions, after boundless 

 sacrifices of every description, there 

 existed sufficient motives for the 

 attempt to procure a better order 

 of things by confidence and con- 

 cession, when streams of blood had 

 hitherto produced nothing but 

 misery and destruction ; nor can 

 his majesty ever regret that he has 

 been induced to attempt it. 



The year 1810 was not yet 

 closed — the war still raged in 

 Spain — the people in Germany 

 had scarce been allowed a suffi- 

 cient time to recover from the de- 

 vastations of the two former wars, 

 wlien, in an evil hour, the emperor 

 Napoleon resolved to unite a con- 

 siderable portion of the north of 

 Germany with the mass of coun- 

 tries which bore the name of the 

 French empire, and to rob the 

 ancient free commercial cities of 

 Hamburgh, Bremen, and Lubeck, 

 first of their political, and shortly 

 ^fier pf tl>eir cprnmercial existence, 



and, with that, of their means o' 

 subsistence. This violent step was 

 adopted without any even plau- 

 sible pretensions, in contempt of 

 every decent form, without any 

 previous declaration, or communi- 

 cation with any other cabinet, 

 under the arbitrary and futile pre- 

 text that the war with England 

 required it. 



This cruel system, which was 

 intended to destroy the commerce 

 of the world, at the expense of the 

 independence, the prosperity, the 

 rights and dignity, and in utter 

 ruin of the public and private pro- 

 perty of all the continental powers, 

 was pursued with unrelenting seve- 

 rity, in the vain expectation of 

 forcing a result, which, had it not 

 fortunately proved unattainable, 

 would have plunged Europe, for a 

 long time to come, into a state of 

 poverty, impotence, and barbarity. 



The decree by which a new 

 French dominion was established 

 on the German coasts, under the 

 title of a Thirty-second Military 

 Division, was in itself sufficiently 

 calculated to raise the suspicions of 

 the adjoining states ; and it was the 

 more alarming to them as the fore- 

 runner of future and greater dan- 

 gers. By this decree, it became 

 evident, that the system which had 

 been created in France (although 

 previously transgressed, yet still 

 proclaimed to be in existence) — 

 the system of the pretended natural 

 limits of the French empire — was, 

 without any farther justification or 

 explanation, overthrown, and even | 

 the emperor's arbitrary acts were * 

 in the same arbitrary manner anni- 

 hilated. Neither the princes of 

 the Rhenish confederacy, nor the 

 kingdom of Westphalia, no terri- 

 tory, great or small, was spared, in 



