e will disappoint the unjust enterprises of his
enemies, and grant him his powerful assistance to enable him to make
head against them."

ARMY OF THE EMPIRE RAISED.

When the king of Prussia was put under the ban of the empire, the
several princes who compose that body were required, by the decree of
the Aulic council, as we observed before, to furnish their respective
contingents against him. Those who feared him looked upon this as a fair
opportunity of reducing him; and those who stood in awe of the house of
Austria were, through necessity, compelled to support that power which
they dreaded. Besides, they were accustomed to the influence of a family
in which the empire had, for a long time, been in a manner hereditary;
and were also intimidated by the appearance of a confederacy the most
formidable, perhaps, that the world had ever seen. Yet, notwithstanding
all this, the contingents, both of men and money, were collected slowly;
the troops were badly composed; and many of those, not only of the
protestant princes, but also of the catholics, showed the utmost
reluctance to act against his Prussian majesty, which, indeed, none of
them would have been able to do had it not been for the assistance of
the French under the prince de Soubise. The elector palatine lost above
a thousand men by desertion. Four thousand of the troops belonging to
the duke of Wirtemberg being delivered to the French commissary on the
twenty-fourth of June, were immediately reviewed; but the review was
scarcely finished, when they began to cry aloud that they were sold.
Next morning thirty of them deserted at once, and were soon followed
by parties of twenty and thirty each, who forced their way through the
detachments that guarded the gates of Stutgard, and in the evening the
mutiny became general. They fired upon the officers in their barracks,
and let their general know that if he did not immediately withdraw, they
would put him to death. Meanwhile, some of the officers having pursued
the deserters, brought back a part of them prisoners, when the rest of
the soldiers declared, that if they were not immediately released, they
would set fire to the stadthouse and barracks; upon which the prisoners
were set at liberty late in the evening. Next morning the soldiers
assembled, and having seized some of the officers, three or four hundred
of them marched out of the town at that time, with the music of the
regiments playing before them; and i