[p. 521]
|521| of the town of Tübingen that it had already made the motion for it at a time when the circumstances in France were not yet known. If mere patriotism in an external danger can so easily hit upon the idea of a general arming of the people, then an assembly of estates was to be credited with a riper, better insight also into the military, but above all the political advisability of such a measure, – at a time when the new assembling of the estates itself occasioned the most manifold intrigues and inner tension. But in what light could the proposal of such an arming be placed if it appeared still earlier, before the event in France externally motivated such a measure! Moreover experience had taught that such a constitutional arming, in the many cases in the last 25 years in which Württemberg in particular was overrun with war, had shown not the least efficacy, indeed had not shown itself at all, as according to its whole intention and condition it could not well have been otherwise; in so far it may seem almost laughable even to recall such an arming of the land under the danger of the time. If the estates of the realm put forward a proposal of which they had to have the great probability that the King would give it no effect, then faith in their seriousness and good will became still more doubtful if they then omitted on their side to cooperate in the military measures which the King recognised as expedient and ordered.
Among the means belonged in particular the raising of the extraordinary war expenditure, concerning which the King had the estimate laid before the estates under 17 April. According to it, the costs of equipping and maintaining an army of 20,000 men, which the King had bound himself to his allies to place in the field, alone exceeded the peace establishment by 3 1/2 millions; to this were added the burdens of the marching through of the allied armies,
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