[p. 520]
|520| difficulties and delay; it wished for a general levy. An enclosed report of the village mayor Reinhard of Obereßlingen is likewise printed (II. Section, p. 50) as a “vigorous declaration”; it states: “The attempt to obtain volunteers as sergeants seems to be in vain among the discharged soldiers. The people have, like many or most of the people, too dull a feeling for love of the fatherland and for defence. Everyone who is sound should take up arms, from the 18th to the 40th year. If the Swabians are called out in mass, they go and strike with force, but if they have free will, nothing happens!!” – The assembly of estates surely did not mean to make to this village mayor, in that he speaks thus of his people, in the midst of whom he stands, the reproach of slandering the people – an expression which has become popular in our days – when it gave his report the distinction of having it printed and the title of a vigorous declaration.
The assembly of estates had now, however, for this as for its other concerns already laid fetters upon itself by assuming that motions and proposals which it made could be construed by it as an exercise of the right of petition conceded to it in the royal constitution and, as a consequence of this, as a factual recognition of this constitution. As if the assembling of the assembly of estates on the ground of this constitution had not already been a quite formal fact, and as if the representatives of a people who are assembled under such circumstances, under whatever title, form and authorisation it may be, did not have to banish all other considerations, in particular the fear of consequence-making, and to think and act vigorously for the rescue of their people alone!
At first the assembly had those addresses which had come in read out and put them ad acta. Of the general arming of the land it was remarked, rather untimely, as a merit
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