Mr. Motley to Mr.
Seward.
No. 188.]
Legation of the United States,
Vienna, June 19, 1866.
Sir: I send you herewith a careful translation
of the imperial manifesto published day before yesterday, regarded as a
declaration of motives and purposes by an emperor to his subjects when
entering upon what is likely to be one of the most eventful struggles of
modern history. The document will strike you, no doubt, as well worded,
dignified, and worthy of the solemn occasion.
It will have, of course, met your eye long before this despatch can reach
you; as I have, however, endeavored to keep you informed, to the best of
my ability, of the gradual steps towards the war, ever since, in my
despatch of March 20, I stated my inability to imagine how war could be
averted, I have thought it best to insert this important state paper in
our correspondence.
It sums up the case for Austria lucidly and energetically, and seems to
leave but little to be said on that side.
Since the date of my last despatch, the vote of the Bund, by nine to six,
to put [Page 668] the Bund army in motion
against Prussia, as the peace breakers, has been an pounced, and
Prussia, declaring that vote illegal, has formally seceded from the
Bund, has offered its alliance to Saxony, Electoral Hesse, and Hanover,
and on their refusal has invaded and occupied the territory of those
powers.
The telegraph this morning brings us the news of the occupation of
Leipzig and Dresden by the Prussian army of the Elbe. Its army of the
Oder, under the crown prince, defends Silesia. A battle is considered
imminent in Saxony.
I must, however, take this opportunity to state that it would be mere
affectation for me to attempt to send military intelligence.
The plans and movements of the Austrian commander-in-chief are kept
scrupulously secret. Permission to the foreign military attaches to go
to headquarters has been courteously refused, and the newspapers are
prevented at present from furnishing authentic military
intelligence.
I should say, as nearly as I can inform myself, that the Austrian army of
the north numbers 350,000 fighting men, and that it means to take the
offensive, and, if possible, capture Berlin.
On the other hand, I should guess the opposing army of Prussia to be
larger than that of the Austrian northern army, and that it means, if
possible, to hold the celebrated line of the river Main, thus occupying
those German states which lie between its own western and eastern
possessions, and to neutralize the contingents to the Bund army of those
powers.
The Kings of Hanover* and Saxony and the elector of
Hesse have already left their respective dominions, which for the time
are mainly in the power of Prussia, together with the coveted duchies of
Schleswig and Holstein.
The war thus opens with a considerable apparent advantage secured by
Prussia, through promptness and energy of action; on the other hand, it
cannot be doubted that Austria is preparing a great movement, combined
with the forces of the powers faithful to the Bund. The result of a
general battle in Saxony on a great scale might, if decidedly favorable
to Austria and the Bund, force the Prussians from Dresden, and even open
the road to Berlin But such speculations on my part are idle and
superfluous. I shall only add that the Bund has formally declared itself
indissoluble. This means, of course, its intention to coerce Prussia
back into the Bund.
But the difference between our own civil war and the opening civil war in
Germany strikes the eye at once.
The German Bund is a confederacy, a league of sovereigns, not an
incorporation. It never pretended to be a union. Its foundation is a
treaty between monarchs, not a law laid down by a sovereign people.
It was never disputed that those princes, emperors, kings, or dukes, who
have for centuries exercised all the attributes of sovereignty, coining
money, maintaining armies and navies, regulating foreign commerce and
holding diplomatic intercourse with foreign powers, were as sovereign as
it was possible to be. Their sovereignty is a fact, not a phrase. As
independent sovereigns they have bound themselves together by a league.
As they declared it perpetual, those faithful to the Bund have a legal
right to carry on war against those members who violate their faith to
it.
Prussia may be proceeded against, therefore, as a peace breaker, as a
violator of treaties, by those who consider her guilty of those
offences.
To speak of her as a rebel would be a mere abuse of language. It would be
to confound things essentially different, quite as much so as it was for
those States of America, some of which had never possessed the attribute
of sovereignty, while others had voluntarily divested themselves thereof
on accepting the constitution of 87, to claim sovereignty and
independence, which they could only achieve by successful rebellion
against legal authority.
[Page 669]
Whatever be the result of the war, we can hardly expect to witness the
return of Prussia to what has been, since 1815, called the Germanic
confederation. But these considerations are so obvious that I ought to
ask pardon for dwelling on them.
I have the honor to remain, sir, your obedient servant,
Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, Washington, D. C.
[Translation.]
IMPERIAL MANIFESTO.
To MY People: In the midst of the work of
peace that I undertook in order to lay the foundations of a
constitutional form, which should strengthen the unity and position
as a power of the whole empire, and secure to the separate provinces
and peoples their free interior development, my duty as ruler has
compelled me to call my whole army into the field.
On the frontiers of the realm in north and south stand the armies of
two allied armies, in the intention of shaking Austria in its
position as a European power. To neither of them has been given on
my part a motive for war.
To keep the blessings of peace for my peoples, I have always
regarded, the Omniscient God is my witness, as one of my first and
most holy duties as ruler, and have striven faithfully to fulfil
it.
One of the two hostile powers, however, requires no pretext; greedy
for the robbing of a part of my realm the first favorable
opportunity, is a sufficient cause for war.
Allied with the Prussian troops which now stand against us as
enemies, a portion of my brave and faithful army marched two years
ago to the shores of the North sea.
I entered into this armed alliance with Prussia in order to maintain
the rights of treaties, to protect a threatened German brother race,
to confine the misfortune of an inevitable war within its narrowest
limits, and in the most intimate connection of the two great powers
of central Europe, to whom especially the duty of maintaining
European peace is confided, to gain for the welfare of my empire, of
Germany and of Europe, such a lasting security for peace.
I sought no conquests; unselfish in the concluding of the alliance
with Prussia, I strove also at the peace of Vienna for no advantages
for myself. Austria has no responsibility for the dark series of
unhappy complications which, had Prussia been equally unselfish,
could never have arisen, which, had she been equally faithful to the
Bund, would have been arranged in one moment.
They were called forth by the desire to realize selfish purposes, and
were, therefore, insolvable by my government in a peaceful
manner.
Thus the gravity of the situation steadily increased.
Even when warlike preparations were manifestly going on in both the
hostile states, and an understanding between them, which could have
no other object than a combined attack upon my empire, became every
day clearer, I persisted in peace, conscious of my duty as ruler,
and ready for every concession that might be Compatible with honor,
and with the welfare of my peoples.
As I found that a further delay would endanger the effective defence
against hostile assaults, and, consequently, the security of the
monarchy, I was obliged to resolve upon the heavy sacrifices which
are inseparable from warlike armaments.
The assurances of my love of peace given to my peoples, the repeated
declarations of my readiness to simultaneous disarming on all sides,
were answered by Prussia with counter imputations, the acceptance of
which would have been the abandonment of the honor and safety of my
empire.
Prussia demanded the full previous disarming, not only against
herself, but also against the hostile power standing against me on
the border of my empire in Italy, for whose peaceful intentions no
guarantee was offered or could be offered.
All negotiation with Prussia regarding the questions of the duchies
has demonstrated the fact that a solution of this question such as
is demanded by the dignity of Austria, the law and interests of
Germany and of the duchies in understanding with Prussia, in its now
openly manifested policy of violence and conquest, is not to be
attained. The negotiations were broken off, the whole matter laid
before the Bund for its decision, and the legal representatives of
the Bund were at once summoned. The threatening appearances of war
caused the three powers, France, England, and Russia, to issue
invitations to my government for participation in common
deliberations, the object of which should be the maintenance of
peace. My government, in harmony with my intention to maintain peace
for my peoples, if it were possible, did not refuse its
participation, but annexed to its consent the precise assumption [Page 670] that public European law
and existing treaties should fix the point of departure for these
mediatory attempts, and that the participating powers should pursue
no special interests to the detriment of the European equilibrium,
and of the rights of Austria.
If the attempt of peace deliberations was at once wrecked on these
natural preliminary conditions, the proof is thus afforded that the
deliberations themselves could never have led to the maintenance and
confirmation of peace.
The latest events prove indisputably that Prussia now publicly places
might before right.
In the right and honor of Austria, in the right and honor of the
whole German nation, Prussia saw no longer a limit for its fatally
mounting ambition; Prussian troops marched into Holstein; the
assembly of the estates summoned by the imperial stadtholder was
forcibly prevented; the governmental power in Holstein, which the
peace of Vienna had conferred on Austria and Prussia jointly, was
claimed exclusively by Prussia, and the Austrian occupying force
compelled to yield to tenfold superior power.
When the German Bund, recognizing an arbitrary violation of treaties,
voted on motion of Austria the mobilization of the Bund troops,
Prussia, who so willingly vaunts itself the protector of German
interests, completed the ruinous course upon which she had begum
Tearing in pieces the national bond of the Germans, she declared her
secession from the Bund, demanded of the German governments the
acceptance of a so-called plan of reform which realized the division
of Germany, and proceeded with military violence against the
sovereigns faithful to the Bund.
Thus has the most woeful of all wars, of Germans against Germans,
become inevitable.
To answer for all the misery that it will bring upon individuals,
families, countries and provinces, I summon those who have brought
it on before the judgment seat of history, and of the Eternal
Almighty God.
I go forward to the conflict in the confidence that a just cause
gives, in the consciousness of might which lies in a great empire
where prince and people are filled with but one thought, the good
right of Austria, with fresh, full courage, at the sight of my brave
army all equipped for battle, and building the wall against which
the power of Austria’s enemies will break itself, at the sight of my
true peoples, who, resolved and united, are looking up, ready for
sacrifices, to me.
The pure flame of patriotic enthusiasm is glowing everywhere and
equally through the wide territories of my empire; joyfully have the
summoned warriors hastened into the ranks of the army; volunteers
are pressing forward for military service; the whole arms-bearing
population of the provinces most threatened is girding itself for
the contest, and the most noble spirit of self-devotion is hastening
to mitigate the sufferings and to supply the wants of the army.
But one feeling pervades the inhabitants of my kingdom and provinces,
the feeling of a common fellowship, the feeling of might in unity,
and the feeling of resentment at such unexampled violation of
laws.
Doubly does it pain me that the work of compromise and agreement upon
internal constitutional questions has not made such progress as to
enable me, in this earnest but inspiring moment, to summon the
representatives of my peoples around my throne.
Wanting this support of my throne now, my duty as ruler is the more
clear, my resolve the firmer to insure it for all future time for my
empire.
We shall not stand in this struggle alone.
Germany’s princes and peoples know the danger which threatens their
freedom and independence, on the part of a power whose conduct is
guided alone by the self-seeking plans of a reckless love of
aggrandizement; they know what a shield for their highest treasures,
what a support for the power and integrity of the whole German
fatherland, they find in Austria.
As we stand in arms for the most sacred possessions which peoples
have to defend, so do our German brothers of the Bund.
The arms have been forced into our hands. So be it! Now that we have
grasped them, we will not and cannot lay them down before a free
inner development is secured to my empire and to the German states
allied with it until their political position is once more
established—firm foundations.
Upon our unity, our strength, let not confidence and hope repose
alone. I place them upon a higher power, the almighty and just God,
whom my house, from its origin, has ever served; who does not
forsake those who in righteousness do not forsake Him.
To Him I will pray for support and for victory, and I summon my
peoples to do it with me.
Given at my residence, in the
capital city of my empire, Vienna, on
June 17th,
1866.
FRANCIS JOSEPH.
