country fo populous, and on a nation formerly recognized as brave and warlike.

Given at our head-quarters, at
Tournay, 26th May, 1794.
To our reverend fathers, &c.

Thefe are the watchwords that will organize you; and your zeal and your courage will never deceive our hopes.

The last paper iffued by the Austrian government, exhorting the people of

the Auftrian Netherlands to rife in a mafs, was dated Bruffels, June 23, 1794, and concludes thus:

THE

HE emperor's armies are ftill intire: victory has often crowned their glorious efforts; but they are wearied by continual battles; and, perhaps, the inactivity of the Belgians may diminish their ardour, when they fee that it is not felt by the nation they are defending. A rapid march into the enemy's territory prefented profpects more brilliant; but glory was facrificed to your fafety. Powerful re-inforcements are expected; but the danger, though momentary, is urgent; you have no time to lofe. The general arming, to which we invite Belgium, implies neither a regular incorporating with the army, nor taking up arms for any length of time, nor even a difficult war; for difciplined and courageous armies. fupport you; and the auguft brother of our mafter, the accuftomed organ of his fentiments in your favour, will guide your efforts, and march at your head. Merely to arm, is at once to deftroy the audacity and the hopes of the enemy.

Religion, conftitution, property, the fovereign who wears you all in his heart, who came among you without guards, who trufted himfelf to your love, who eftcems you

bourg.

German brothers and friends,

OUR valourous armies have juf

quitted the fertile plains, in which they have fustained the most fevere combats, during three bloody campaigns, for the prefervation of your property, the repofe of your lives, the fecurity of your fields, the maintenance of your religion, the happiness of your children, the riches of your flourishing provinces, and to fave those provinces from ruin and complete annihilationplains in which they maintained, at the expence of their blood, which has flowed for three fucce five years, the glory of their arms, by the generous facrifice of their lives and of their means; while they facrificed thofe deareft ties, which attach men of diftant nations, not less than yourselves, to their homes, and to their country; and while they voluntarily renounced all the domeftic happiness they had a right to expect.

The inexhaustible resources of a nation in a ftate of furor, which fports with the life and happines of man, with religion, with the du ties, with the bands of civil focie ty; its innumerable cohorts which are led to daughter by their tyrants, and who, by lavishing their blood, purchase the fleeting fhadow of a imaginary liberty; the inactivity of a

blinded people, who would not liften to the approach of danger any more than to the paternal voice

of their good prince; the fecret practices, which we hardly know by what name to call, of feveral of their ambitious representatives, men in whom this very people fee, now too late, and abhor, the authors of their unbounded and unceasing mifery. All these caufes have forced our armies to retreat to your frontiers.

It is there that they are now pofted, weakened, but not vanquifhed; fatigued by an unequal conteft, but not humbled by difcouragement, nor fubdued by def pair. It is there that they form, as it were, an advanced wall of defence for the Germanic liberty; to act as a rampart for your religion, your laws, and your families, The Meufe is the line of feparation between the total lofs and the profervation, between the overthrow and the maintenance of all thefe; between mifery and happinefs. Rife then, German brothers and friends! On you will depend the making it pollible for your deliverers to live or die for your defence. I myself, a German prince, full of folicitude, not lefs for the fafety of my country, than the prefervation of my warriors, I call upon you, Procure us fubfiftence, bring us provifions from your magazines. Think that in forwarding to us thefe painful fuccours, you fecure at the fame time your approaching harveft. -Share with us your favings.-To obtain what we want, employ the treafures of your churches. Give your utenfils and vales of filver to the emperor, for the pay of your defenders, You will receive receipts for the payment in due form, and you will be paid intereft for the pecuniary aids you have thus procured. Replace the refources

of Belgium, which have been cut off from us, and now flow for our enemies. Nurfe and relieve, with a folicitude full of charity, our fick and wounded.

Rife, courageous inhabitants of the fair countries of the Rhine and the Mofelle! Arm yourselves, ye valourous men! Line your rivers and your defiles! Accompany our convoys! Watch over our magazines! Rife by thoufands, and fight with us for your altars, for your habitations, for your emperor, for your liberty! We will not icad you beyond the rivers of your country! We will not depopulate your provinces; but you will fecure the pofitions at our backs, and you will guard your own confines. Affuredly, German citizens, we are not deceived with refpect to you; we have repofed our confidence in the good fenfe of Germans; we trust to the hearts and the blood of the German nation. For three years your emperor has borne the heavy burden, and diftant nations have fought for your defence. You yourfelves muft fee, that your turn to take arms is now come. Then I, as commander-in-chief of a faithful, approved, and courageous army, promife, in the name of my troopsTo fpare you, we will obferve a rigorous difcipline; for your happinefs, we will fhed the laft drop of our blood; as we have fought for you, we will die for you; and never fhall the free, the happy Germany, bow down the head beneath the fteel of the guillotine.-Never fhall her peaceful habitations exchange their generous morals, their tranquil fimplicity, their guardian laws of property, their confoling religion, for the licentioufnefs, the calumniating fpirit, the legalized

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fyftem of fpoil, the incredulity impofed by force, of the French.

But if, on the other hand, you fhould be fo unfortunate, like thofe inhabitants of the Belgic provinces, who now groan in the bofom of calamity, deprived of their property, of their liberty, of their altars, as to fuffer yourfelves to be mifled by fecret feducers, we fhall find ourfelves obliged to pafs the Rhine, to leave you a prey to your encmies, and to withdraw from you, without ceremony, whatever the enemy might find among you for their fubfiftence.

Done at our head-quarters, at
Fouron-le-Compte, July 30,

1794.
(Signed) The PRINCE OF CO-
BOURG, Field-
marshal.

Note delivered, by the Auftrian envoy at the diet of Ratisbon, on the part the emperor, to demand the fenfe of the Germanic fates, refpecting the neceflity of arming all the inhabitants on the frontiers of Germany, and the furnishing of a triple contingent on the part of the faid flates,

Afold and juft grounds which LL Europe knows the manihave compelled the Germanic empire, united under its fupreme chief, to declare a general war, for the maintenance of the most binding covenants and the most facred treaties; for the prefervation of focial order, from a wild, deftructive, and moft anarchic tyranny, falfely called freedom; for the defence of an acknowledged religion from peftilential atheilm; for the fupport of the confiitution of the empire against

an arbitrary, horrible, and univerfal revolutionary power; for keeping up the Imperial honour; for the protection and future fecurity of the Imperial privileges and the frontiers, and for obtaining a fuitable and entire fatisfaction againft the common enemy of all public order, against the most wanton difturbers of all the beneficent ties of focial happinefs, and the moft cruel defpots and violators of the most facred rights of mankind.

Equally well known are the dif ferent fplendid victories, from the first day of the opening of the laft campaign, which were gained blow upon blow by the almoft incredi ble bravery of the German troops on the Rhine, the Ruhr, the Maas, the Mayne, the Mozelle, &c. which were happily followed by the deliverance of the united Netherlands, invaded in the moft lawless manner, and the emancipation of many other German diftricts and important countries, from the way of falfe French liberty; the capture of Condé, the re-capture of the city and important fortrefs of Men'z, the taking of Valenciennes, Quefnoy, &c.

But this campaign, fo glorious for bat les, fieges, and conquefts, could not bring back the French to a more equitable and more juft fenfe of reafon, principle, and action, towards the Germanic nation, offended to the highest degree.That faction, hoftile to the human race, which ftyles itfelf the national convention of France, ftrengthens daily her power of refiftance by the most terrible means, by numberlefs arbitrary confifcations, by the plundering of the churches and the rich, having already feized the property of the clergy, nobility,

and

and crown, and by the most defperate meafure of a general requifition of all fighting men, fupported by that most terrific inftrument, the guillotine.

The violent decrees, compelling the people to rife in a mafs, have given additional force and ftrength to the numerous hoftile armies now in the field, fo that they fucceeded at laft, after renovated, daily, and most violent attacks, notwithttanding the fteadieft countenance and moft gallant refiftance, on the part of the German warriors, to re-take by their fuperiority a part of the Conquefts; a lofs which, in all probability, would not have enfied, if the contingents of the empire had been properly fent.

This general requifition of all the fighting men effected a great fuperiority, and changed entirely the mode of making war, increated the dangers and difficulties of this coercive war, and feems in fome manner to neceffitate the rifing in a mafs of the inhabitants of the frontiers of the Netherlands, anterior Auftria, Brifgau, and other places, in order to procure fafety to the property of the loyal fubjects of the empire, against the ravages branded with the wildeft excelles, occafioned by an enemy driven to defpair, by the mifery which reigns in their own country, and emboldened by their recent fuccelles.

the dictature, in the diet of Ratijbon.

SINCE, the extraordinary manner which the French feem de

termined to carry on this war, namely, by violence and force, to oblige all the men of their nation, able to carry arms, to march against the combined armies, by which means they increate their hoftile forces to extraordinary numbers; and fince the danger to which the German empire is expofed from the invafions, which fuch innumerable hordes are induced to make, from motives of hunger and defire of plunder, meafures are required more than ever to ftrengthen the military forces of the empire: it is therefore advifcable, that the army of the empire fhould be reinforced by a regular and well-equipped army, procured by the means of fubfidies.

His Imperial majefty, therefore, propofes to the empire to enter into a treaty with his Pruffian majesty, in confideration of reasonable fubfidies, to furnish a certain fpecified corps of his troops for the fervice of the general caufe. His Pruflian majefty, from his charac ter of a generous and distinguished member of the Germanic empire, will undoubtedly oppofe no obftacle to fuch a treaty, particularly as there exifts already a corps of fuch brave troops (over and above the number of Prullian troops ferving as contingents in the army of the empire) on the very fpot where they might be ferviceable to the general caufe, and ready for action in a very fhort time. These fubfi, dies ought to be offered in ready money, and his Imperial majefty

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to be authorised to enter into a negotiation with the king of Pruffia for that purpose, in the name of the empire.

His Imperial majefty, for the reafon above ftated, requests that the contingent troops, ftill due from feveral of the ftates of the empire, fhould be fent into the field against the most cruel of all enemies, as foon as poffible.

Subftance of a decree of the Imperial court, dated Vienna, 13th Auguft, 1794, and prefented foon after wards to the diet at Ratisbon. INFORTUNATELY,fince the month of laft January, the neceffity of increafing the forces of the empire is become moft urgent.

UNFORTUNATELY,

The war, on the part of the enemy, from the violent measures taken by the ruling party in France, and from the formidable fuperiority of numbers of their armies, having taken the appearance of the moft obftinate offenfive war, renders even the defenfive operation of the combined powers not only painful and difficult, but requires an extraordinary exertion, combination, and union of power, to refift the deftructive enterprizes of enthufiaftic hordes, encouraged by various and alarming fucceffes. Which exertion and extraordinary efforts, on our fide, are the more preffing, and require the fpeedier to be put into execution, as there is no time to be loft, left the evil fhould rife to a degree, which would render the united forces of the empire infuffi: cient to stop its progrefs,

The country being in danger, ought to found the alarm bell

throughout the German empire.The measure of a quintuple con tingent cannot but be an afflicting effort for the paternal heart of your Imperial fovereign. His majesty, however, hopes that fuch a measure, confidering the prefent urgent cir cumftances, and the population of the German empire, will not be looked upon as extravagant. The emperor thinks it almost unneceflary farther to declare, that, on account of the facrifices made, during the three laft obftinate campaigns, in men and money. his majefty, without the co-operation of the states of the empire, is totally incapable by himself to continue the protec tion of the empire, his domeftic re fources being entirely exhaufted, by having already ftrained all the polítical nerves of his hereditary dominions, for the defence and protection of the empire,