their allegiance to their sovereign,
enjoined them to abandon their posts, their colours, and the service in
which they were embarked, on pain of being punished in body, honour, and
estate: and that the king of England himself was threatened with the ban
of the empire. He took notice, that, in quality of elector, he had been
accused of refusing to concur with the resolutions of the diet taken in
the preceding year; of entering into alliance with the king of Prussia;
joining his troops to the armies of that prince; employing auxiliaries
belonging to the states of the empire; sending English forces into
Germany, where they had taken possession of Embden; and exacting
contributions in different parts of Germany. In answer to these
imputations, he alleged that he could not, consistent with his own
safety or the dictates of common sense, concur with a majority in
joining his troops, which were immediately necessary for his own
defence, to those which, from the arbitrary views of the court of
Vienna, were led against his friend and ally the king of Prussia, by a
prince who did not belong to the generality of the empire, and on whom
the command had been conferred without a previous conclusion of the
Germanic body; that, with respect to his alliance with the king of
Prussia, he had a right, when deserted by his former allies, to seek
assistance wheresoever it could be procured; and surely no just ground
of complaint could be offered against that which his Prussian majesty
lent, to deliver the electoral states of Brunswick, as well as those of
Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel, Hesse, and Ruckebourg, from the oppressions of
their common enemy. Posterity, he said, would hardly believe, that at
a time when the troops of Austria, the Palatinate, and Wirtemberg, were
engaged to invade the countries of the empire, other members of the
Germanic body, who employed auxiliaries in their defence, should be
threatened with outlawry and sequestration. He owned, that, in
quality of king, he had sent over English troops to Germany, and taken
possession of Embden; steps for which he was accountable to no power
upon earth, although the constitutions of the empire permit the
co-estates to make use of foreign troops, not indeed for the purpose of
invasion or conquest in Germany, but for their defence and preservation.
He also acknowledged that he had resented the conduct, and chastised the
injustice, of those co-estates who had assisted his enemies, and helpe