The Emperor cedes to the King of France forever, _in perpetuum_, without any reserve, with full jurisdiction and sovereignty, all the Alsatian territory. The Austrian Emperor gives it to the King of France in such a way that no other Emperor, in the future, will ever have any power in any time to affirm any right on these territories.
When today one reads that treaty, one has the impression that more than two centuries ago the Austrian Emperor had already a sort of apprehension that later on another Emperor would interfere in the matter and create mischief!
Fifty-three years after that treaty, the Prussians, who dislike seeing anything in some one's else possession, tried to recover Alsace. 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the deputies of Alsace-Lorraine learned that their provinces would be given up to Germany, they assembled, and in an historical document which was signed by all of them--there were thirty-six--they protested in the following terms: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. Today, before the whole world, they proclaim that they want to remain French. Europe cannot allow or ratify the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine. Europe cannot allow a people to be seized like a flock of sheep. Europe cannot remain deaf to the protest of a whole population. Therefore, we declare in the name of our population, in the name of our children and of our descendants, that we are considering any treaty which gives us up to a foreign power as a treaty null and void, and we will eternally revindicate the right of disposing of ourselves and of remaining French.
