that it is so; we are indebted for it to your zeal, your energy, and
your enthusiasm for the good cause, which is now no longer the cause
of Austria, but that of Germany. And this cause will not succumb;
God will not allow a great and noble people to be trampled under
foot by a foreign tyrant, who bids defiance to the most sacred
treaties and the law of nations, and who would like to overthrow all
thrones to convert the foreign kingdoms and empires into provinces
of his empire, blot out the history of the nations and dynasties,
and have all engulfed by his universal monarchy."

"God may not decree this, but He may perhaps allow it if the will of
the nations and the princes should not be strong enough to set
bounds to such mischief. When the feeling of liberty and
independence does not incite the nations to rise enthusiastically
and defend their rights, God sends them a tyrant as a scourge to
chastise them. And such, I am afraid, is our case. Germany has lost
faith in herself, in her honor; she lies exhausted at the feet of
the tyrant, and is ready to be trampled in the dust by him. Just
look around in our German fatherland. What do you see there? All the
sovereign princes have renounced their independence, and become
Napoleon's vassals; they obey his will, they submit to his orders,
and send their armies not against the enemy of Germany, but against
the enemies of France, no matter whether those enemies are their
German brethren or not. The German princes have formed the
Confederation of the Rhine, and the object of this confederation is
not to preserve the frontier of the Rhine to Germany, but to secure
the Rhine to France. The German princes are begging for honors and
territories at the court of Napoleon; they do not shrink from
manifesting their fealty to their master, the Emperor of the French,
by betraying the interests of Germany; they are playing here at