[p. 519]
|519| assembly had to seem all the more desirable, in order to be able to summon with united energy the means which so far-reaching an occurrence, seeming to threaten afresh the peace of Europe, required especially in the lands lying near France.
It has been only too often the pernicious, unpatriotic, indeed in a higher sense often criminal artifice of estates of the realm to want to use the pressure of political circumstances in which their government was placed, instead of openly making common cause with it to ward off the distress of the state, rather to wrest advantages for themselves from the government and at the same time, along with the external, to produce an embarrassment internally, whereby the strength of the government outwardly, instead of being increased, was weakened and, in essence and in deed, common cause was made with the enemy. – On 28 March a member, in full feeling of the importance of the circumstances, moved (II. Section, p. 41) that the assembly for its part should declare to the King that the last drop of blood, the last gift of its goods was ready for Him and the good cause, – how the assembly wanted to achieve this by a general arming, by a loan to be opened, how, however, it saw itself in a position to carry it out only in the old-constitutional way. – A part of the nobility recognised in an address to the estates (II. Section, p. 14) that the highest danger required the highest exertion, and asked, without adding conditions, that the assembly initiate steps so that the King might order a general arming of the land and drilling in arms. Addresses from many district offices came in in a similar sense. One from Esslingen on 29 March (II. Section, p. 48, the others have remained unprinted), given the provision already made by the King of setting up in each district a land battalion of 500 men, expressed the apprehension that too many sparing considerations were prescribed and that the defensive measures might thereby suffer
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