Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, Washington.
A.
Extract from
the General Correspondez and copied into the
Vienna Gazette (official)
of
December 15,
1865.
[Translation.]
We have already taken occasion long ago to contradict in the most
decisive manner the reports, apparently spread with design, in
regard to pretended agreements for the sending of troops to
Mexico on the part of Austria and the arrangements thereto
appertaining.
Similar reports are once more willingly spread, and may have
originated in an article of the Patrie, which paper pretended to
know that movements of imperial royal Austrian troops and
subaltern officers to Mexico were impending, a fact which
undoubtedly would have the character of a sending of Austrian
auxiliary troops.
The manner in which this news has lately, and particularly by the
Paris correspondent of the Cologne Gazette, been made use of
against Austria, prompts us once more to refer to this affair,
and to affirm in the most positive manner that these reports are
nothing but inventions made for a purpose.
The truth in the whole question is limited to this, that it is
proposed to permit such persons as have already fulfilled their
military duty to Austria, but only such, to enlist in the
Mexican service, in the same manner and with the same conditions
as was the case when the last year’s first enlistments for the
Austrian-Mexican volunteer corps took place. The object of these
newly permitted enlistments, as has already been explicitly
stated, would only be to provide substitutes for the numerous
vacancies in the Austrian volunteer corps serving in Mexico. The
newly enlisted, like those who entered the volunteer corps in
the year 1864, take the military oath to the emperor of Mexico,
and pledge themselves to him for a six years’ service. Their
flag is not the Austrian, but the Mexican, and the power of
Austria is in nowise engaged through them or for them. Also, it
is entirely false when the Patrie puts the number of those
volunteers at 10,000 men; the latest enlistments in Austria for
Mexico, concerning the permission for which negotiations are now
in progress, would in any event not exceed yearly the total
number of 2,000 men.
Whilst we are endeavoring to give a true and correct statement of
this affair, we have to remark that no binding resolves have
been taken in regard to this affair, but that, on the contrary,
the negotiations on the subject have only just begun. But these
may, however, very probably lead to the conclusion of a
supplemental convention to the agreement entered into last year,
of which the chief object was to place as securely as possible
the rights of those enlisting, who, after all, remain at the
same time Austrian subjects.
