Proclamation issued by the Austrian government, exhorting people of the Austrian These are the watchwords that will organize you; and your zeal and your courage will never deceive our hopes. Exhortation of the Prince of Saxe Cobourg to the inhabitants of the country on the banks of the Rhine, and Moselle. German brothers and friends, in a mass. Brussels, June 23, 1794. HE are still ge which they have sustained the most severe combats, during three bloody campaigns, for the preservation of of your intire: victory has often crown- lives, the security of your fields, ed their glorious efforts; but they the maintenance of your religion, are wearied by continual battles: the happiness of your children, the and, perhaps, the inactivity of the riches of your flourishing provinces, Belgians may dininish their ardour, and to save those provinces from when they see that it is not felt by ruin and complete annihilationthe nation they are defending. Á plains in which they maintained, at A rapid march into the enemy's terri- the expence of their blood, which tory presented prospects more bril- has flowed for three successive years, liant; but glory was sacrificed to the glory of their arms, by the your safety. Powerful re-inforcenerous sacrifice of their lives and ments are expected: but the dan of their means; while they sacriger, though momentary, is urgent; ficed those dearest ties, which atyou have no time to lose. The ge- tach men of distant nations, not less neral arming, to which we invite than yourselves, to their homes, Belgium, implies neither a regular and to their country; and while incorporating with the army, nor they voluntarily renounced all the taking up arms for any length of domestic happiness they had a right time, nor even a difficult war; for to expect. disciplined and courageous armies support you; and the august brother of our master, the accustomed organ of his sentiments in your favour, will guide your efforts, and march at your head. Merely to arm, is at once to destroy the audacity and the hopes of the enemy. Religion, constitution, property, the sovereign who wears you all in his heart, who came among you without guards, who trusted himself to your love, who esteems you The inexhaustible resources of a nation in a state of furor, which sports with the life and happiness of man, with religion, with the du ties, with the bands of civil society; its innumerable cohorts which are led to slaughter by their tyrants, and who, by lavishing their blood, purchase the fleeting shadow of an imaginary liberty; the inactivity of a blinded people, who would not listen to the approach of danger, any more than to the paternal voice of of their good prince; the secret practices, which we hardly know by what name to call, of several of their ambitious representatives, men in whom this very people see, now too late, and abhor, the authors of their unbounded and unceasing misery. All these causes have forced our armies to retreat to your frontiers. It is there that they are now posted, weakened, but not vanquished; fatigued by an unequal contest, but not humbled by discouragement, nor subdued by despair. It is there that they form, as it were, an advanced wall o defence for the Germanic liberty; to act as a rampart for your religion, your laws, and your families. The Meuse is the line of separation between the total loss and the preservation, between the overthrow and the maintenance of all these; between misery and happiness. Rise then, German brothers and friends! On you will depend the making it possible for your deliverers to live or die for you defence. I myself, a German prince, full of solicitude, not less for the safety of my country, than the preservation of my warriors, I call upon you. Procure us subsistence, bring us provisions from your magazines. Think that in forwarding to us these painful succours, you secure at the sametime your approaching harvest. -Share with us your savings.-To obtain what we want, employ the treasures of your churches Give your utensils and vases of silver to the emperor, for the pay of your defenders. You will receive receipts for the payment in due form, and you will be paid interest for the pecuniary aids you have thus procured. Replace the resources of Belgium, which have been cut off from us, and now flow for our enemies. Nurse and relieve, with a solicitude full of charity, our sick and wounded. Rise, courageous inhabitants of the fair countries of the Rhine and the Moselle! Arm yourselves, ye valourous men! Line your rivers and your defiles! Accompany our convoys! Watch over our magazines! Rise by thousands and fight with us for your altars, for your habitations, for your emperor, for your liberty! We will not lead you beyond the rivers of your country! We will not depopulate your provinces; but you will secure the positions at our backs, and you will guard your own confines. Assuredly, German citizens, we are not deceived with respect to you; we have reposed our confidence in the good sense 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 distant nations have fought for your defence. You yourselves must see, that your turn to take arms is now come. Then I, as commander-in-chief of a faithful, approved, and courageous army, promise, in the name of my troopsTo spare you, we will observe a rigourous discipline; for your happiness, we will shed the last drop of our blood; as we have fought for you, we will die for you; and never shall the free, the happy Germany, bow down the head beneath the steel of the guillotine.-Never shall her peaceful habitations exchange their generous morals, their tranquil simplicity, their guardian laws of property, their consoling religion, for the licentiousness, the calumniating spirit, the legalized system of spoil, the incredulity imposed by force, of the French. But if, on the other hand, you should be so unfortunate, like those inhabitants of the Belgic provinces who now groan in the bosom of calamity, deprived of their property, of their liberty, of their altars, as to suffer yourselves to be misled by secret seducers, we shall find ourselves obliged to pass the Rhine, to leave you a prey to your enemies, and to withdraw from you, without ceremony, whatever the enemy might find among you for their sub sistence. an arbitrary, horrible, and universal revolutionary power; for keeping up the imperial honour; for the protection and future security of the imperial privileges and the frontiers, and for obtaining a suitable and entire satisfaction against the common enemy of all public order, against the most wanton disturbers of all the beneficent ties of social happiness, and the most cruel despots and violaters of the most sacred rights of mankind. Equally well known are the dif ferent splendid victories, from the first day of the opening of the last campaign, which were gained blow upon blow by the most incredible 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 most lawless manner, and the emancipation of many other German districts and important countries, from the sway of false French liberty; the capture of Condé, the re-capture of the city and important fortress of Mentz, the taking of Valenciennes, Quesnoy, &c. But this campaign, so glorious for battles, sieges, and conquests, could not bring back the French to a more equitable and more just sense of reason, principle and action, towards the Germanic nation offended to the highest degree.— That faction, hostile to the human race, which styles itself the national convention of France, strengthens daily her power of resistance by the most terrible means, by numberless arbitrary confiscations, by the plundering of the churches and the rich, having already seized the property of the clergy, nobility, and nd crown, and by the most despeate measure of a general requision of all fighting men, supported y that most terrific instrument the ¡uillotine. The violent decrees, compelling he people to rise in a mass, have given additional force and strength o the numerous hostile armies now the field, so that they succeeded it last, after renovated, daily, and nost violent attacks, notwithstand ng the steadiest countenance and most gallant resistance, on the part of the German warriors, to re-take by their superiority a part of their conquests; a loss which, in all probability, would not have ensued, if the contingents of the empire had been properly sent. This general requisition of all the fighting men affected a great superiority, and changed intirely the mode of making war, increased the dangers and difficulties of this coercive war, and seems in some manner to necessitate the rising in a mass of the inhabitants of the frontiers of the Netherlands, anterior Austria, Brisgau, and other places, in order to procure safety to the property of the loyal subjects of the empire, against the ravages branded with the wildest excesses, occasioned by an enemy driven to despair, by the misery which reigns in their own country, and emboldened by their recent succes ses. (Signed) COLLOREDO. February, 1794. Substance of an Imperial decree of ratification, dated Vienna, the 14th of June, 1794, and presented to the dictature, in the diet of Ratisbon. in INCE the extraordinary manner, which the French seem determined 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 increase their hostile forces to extraordinary numbers; and since the danger to which the German empire is exposed from the invasions which such innumerable hordes are induced to make, from motives of hunger and desire of plunder, measures are required more than ever to strengthen the military forces of the empire: it is therefore adviseable, that the army of the empire should be re-inforced by a regular and well-equipped army, procured by the means of subsidies. His imperial majesty, therefore, proposes to the empire to enter into a treaty with his Prussian majes ty, in consideration of reasonable subsidies, to furnish a certain spea cified corps of his troops for the service of the general cause. His Prussian majesty, from his charac ter of a generous and distinguished member of the Germanic empire, will undoubtedly oppose no obsta cle to such a treaty, particularly as there exists already a corps of such brave troops (over and above the number of Prussian troops serving as contingents in the army of the empire) on the very spot where they might be serviceable to the general cause, and ready for action, in a very short time. These subsidies ought to be offered in ready money, and his Imperial majesty P 4 to be authorized to enter into a negotiation with the king of Prussia, for that purpose, in the name of the empire. His Imperial majesty, for the reason above stated, requests that the contingent troops, still due from several of the states of the empire, should be sent into the field against the most cruel of all enemies, as soon as possible. Substanceof a decree of the Imperial court, dated Vienna, 13th August, 1794, and presented soon after wards to the diet at Ratisbon. NFORTUNATELY, since necessity of increasing the forces of the empire is become most urgent. The war, on the part of the enemy, from the violent measures taken by the ruling party in France, and from the formidable superiority of numbers of their armies, having taken the appearance of the most obstinate offensive war, renders even the defensive operation of the combined powers not only painful and difficult, but requires an extraordinary exertion, combination, and union of power, to resist the destructive enterprizes of enthusiastic hordes, encouraged by various and alarming successes. Which exertion and extraordinary efforts, on our side, are the more pressing, and require the speedier to be put into execution, as there is no time to be lost, lest the evil should rise to a degree, which would render the united forces of the empire insufficient to stop its progress. The country being in danger, ought to sound the alarm bell throughout the German empire.→ The measure of a quintuple contingent cannot but be an afflicting effort for the paternal heart of your Imperial sovereign. His majesty, however, hopes that such a measure considering the present urgent circumstances, and the population of the German empire, will not be looked upon as extravagant. The emperor thinksit almost unnecessary farther to declare, that, on account of the sacrifices made, during the three last obstinate campaigns, in men and money, his majesty, with out the co-operation of the states of the empire, is totally incapable, by himself, to continue the protection of the empire, his domestic resour ing already strained all the political nerves of his hereditary dominions, for the defence and protection of the empire. |