nd to create hesitancy. Count Stadion, the minister of state,
knew that diplomacy had reached the limit of its powers and could gain
at most only a few weeks. These he felt sure the enemy would use to
better advantage in strengthening himself than Austria in her poverty
could do. He was therefore urgent for prompt action. Charles, on the
other hand, hesitated to face the miraculous resources of Napoleon
without a finishing touch to some of his preparations which were still
incomplete. He therefore began in January to procrastinate, and
consequently it was not until February that Francis demanded an
advance. In this interval the whole plan of campaign was changed. The
main army, under Charles, was to be collected in Bohemia, ready for
action in any direction, so as to thwart whatever course Napoleon
might adopt. Hiller was to guard the line of the Inn, the Archduke
Ferdinand was to march against Warsaw, while the Archduke John was to
enter the Tyrol from Italy and excite the people to revolt. On April
ninth all these movements were well under way; Hiller had reached the
Inn, and Charles declared war.

Ostensibly this war was to be unlike any other so far waged. The
secret instructions given to the imperial Austrian envoy in London
clearly indicated that the Hapsburgs hoped by victory to restore their
influence both in Italy and Germany; for that was the meaning of
"restoration to rightful owners" and the "slight rectification of
their frontiers," or, in other words, the restoration of European
conditions to what they had been before Napoleon's advent. This was
the dynastic side; the national side was also to be used for the same
end. "The liberties of Europe have taken refuge under your banner,"
ran Charles's proclamation to the army; "your victories will break
their bonds, and your German brethren still in the enemy's ranks await
their redemption." To the German world he said, "Austria fights not
only for her own autonomy, but takes the sword for the independence
and national honor of Germany." Another manifesto, written by Gentz,
the ablest statesman in Vienna, declared that the war was to be waged
not against France, but against the persistent extension of her system
which had produced such universal disorder in Europe.

The tone and language of these papers have an audible Napoleonic echo
in them: if an upstart house, represented by a single life and without
direct descendants, could win success by appeals to the pe