Their
own ambassador tried to dissuade them, and in 1701 Count Schmettau,
ambassador of Prussia in Paris, wrote to his king:
"_We cannot take Alsace, because it is well known that her inhabitants
are more French than the Parisians_...."
Could anything answer better the affirmation that "Alsatians are of
German tendency?"
Lorraine became French in 1552, more than three centuries before the
war of 1870. Lorraine became French not after a war and as the result
of a conquest, but according to a treaty signed by all the Protestant
Princes of Germany, in which we find the following sentence, which is
really worthy of meditation: "_We find just that the King of France,
as promptly as possible, takes possession of the towns of Toul, Metz,
and Verdun, where the German language has never been used._" So that
the Germans themselves put on the same line the towns of Metz, Toul,
and Verdun, and recognized that the town of Metz was not German.
All this is extremely simple and clear. What happened several
centuries later is equally clear.
When, in 1871, on February 16th, the deputies of Alsace-Lorraine
learned that their provinces would be given up to Germany, they
assembled, and in an historical document which was signed by all of
them--there were thirty-six--they protested in the following terms:
Alsace and Lorraine cannot be alienated.
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