Electoral Saxony and Mecklenburg have well-founded pretensions, even if Zweibrucken were not existing.

All these princes have addressed themselves to me, and requested me to represent them to the emperor and to the imperial government--to protect them in their injured rights.

I have first tried kindness and persuasion to bring back Austria from her desire of aggrandizement, but in Vienna they have repulsed every means of peaceable arbitration.

I, as one of the rulers of the empire (and as I have reaffirmed the Westphalian treaty through the Hubertsburger treaty), feel bound to preserve the privileges, the rights, the liberty of the German states.

I have therefore well reflected, and decided to draw the sword--that what the diplomats have failed to arrange with the pen should be settled with the sword.