Address to the Army of the North, on the Anniversary of the Death of the King of France, 21st. of Jan. 1795: Soldiers of tbe French Republic! TO-DAY is the festival of republicans; it was on this day, that for the example of all people, and the terror of kings, Capet expiated his crimes on the scaffold: in taking this vigorous resolution, the convention were not ignorant of the danger: Holland, England, Spain, ditposed themselves to join. the coalition of Pruffia, armed against France, and seconded by counter-revolutionists in the interior; but ftrong in its own energy, and in the confidence of the French people, the convention was certain of punishing them for their audacity: they counted also, foldiers, upon your courage, your hatred of thers delivered from their oppreffors! Soldiers, complete your triumphs, by giving an example of refpect for property, and of fubmiffion to the laws: you have broken down your enemies in arms, confounded also their calumnies, by continuing to thew yourselves worthy of the cause you defend-nations will proclaim you as their deliverers to punish tyrants is your glory! your recompence thall be the bleflings of your contemporaries and of pofterity. In conformity to the decree of the national assembly, there will be a festival in the armies for the anniversary of the death of the tyrant. (Signed) GILLET, LA COSTE, tyranny, your hope of liberty: they Speech of Boissy D'Anglas, on conceived great hopes-you- have realized them all: strong places have been no obstacle to your burning ardour; the conquered hordes of the enemy have been annihilated; their ammunition, their artillery, have fallen into your power : you have turned to the profits of liberty the rigour of the season confecrated by nature to repose. It is with the most lively fatisfaction, that the representatives of the people bear folemn witness this day to your conftancy; they rejoice to felicitate you on the theatre of your glory. May your victory be heard from this point in all parts of the globe, to make known to all people their rights: these ports, these ships, have been conquered at the expence of your sweat, and of your blood: hear the grateful accents of the acknowledgment of your bro the policy of the French Republic, with respect to Foreign Nations, adopted by the Convention, as a Declaration of the Principles of the French People, January 30, 1795. IN a former discourse I recapitulated the principles of juftice and candour upon which the government of France now rests. I shewed in what manner that government, at once republican and revolutionary, had laid among us the foundation of a real public credit, and created in the face of all Europe a power in fome fort new. I shewed in what manner the French people, starting from the fleep of flavery, had resumed their place among nations, from the number of which it was attempted to blot them out; had begun to repair their immense losses, and had prepared all the feeds of their future profperity. I am now going to take a view of the external fituation of this vast empire-of the relations of | France with other nations, and of their interests with respect to her. I will tell you how the happiness of the world muft neceffarily result from the establishment of the liberty of France, and the peace of the universe, from the peace you are going to negociate with your neighbours. I will advertise the greater part of those who make war upon us, of the dangers to which they expose themselves by declaring against us; which dangers are of fuch a nature, that fuccess itself, if fuccess were poffible, would serve only to render them more imminent. I will repel the atrocious calumnies of those orators in the pay of tyrants, who, having no longer any hope of enflaving us by arms, would ftill excite against us as many enemies as there are governments in Europe, and deprive us of that national credit which accrues to a great nation, from its respect for other nations and its public morality. It is time that the formulas of an ancient and ill-advised policy give place to the frank and fincere expreffions of freemen; it is time that truth, in the tribune of the legiflator, refume that influence which the ought never to have loft. The language I thall hold, will form a remarkable contraft to the infidious words with which the fittings of another foi-difant representative assembly refound at this moment; an affembly which, in its counterfeit debates, its quixotic rodomondates, and fawning addresses, denies your fucceffes, difsembles your victories, outrages your principles, and dares still to threaten a liberty which three-years of fruitless attack ought at length to compel the world to refpect. When the most exasperate pafsions are every where forging arms to divide us, to destroy or enflave us, animated by the moft noble paffions, enflamed by the love of liberty and our country, we mnst oppose imperturbable juftice their violent fury, and republican constancy to their rafh impetuofity. to Almost all the thrones of the earth have put themselves in motion to fall upon us; their minifters have leagued together; their armies have conglomerated; their thunders have flashed to destroy our infant liberty. But their ravaging cohorts, overthrown by our patriot battalions, have been diffipated like those thick clouds which seem to announce a tempeft, and which a falutary wind difperfes and annibilates. While we had to combat only the hatred of coalefced kings, and the fury of their foldiers, the burning valour of the French, their inexhauftible courage, the conftant facrifices of all the citizens, fufficed to prove to the universe, how worthy we are of liberty, and how chimerical the hope of those who would wrett it from us. But now, citizens, that our triumphs have carried dismay into the bosom of the countries which pretended to give chains to France, we have another kind of attack to fuftain, and other efforts to repulfe. They cannot conquer the French-they endeavour to calumniate them : All the nations of the world admire our courage; they all lament feeing their blood and their treafures exhaufted to tear from us our liberty. Attempts are made to destroy us in their opinion, and to impute to us alone the innumerable calamities which this long and terrible war has poured out upon them. Neither the fury of the coalefced kings, nor the efforts of their foldiers have we any cause to dread, but we will always respect the opinion of the people of other states, whatever may be their government, their force, their weaknefs, their good or ill-fortune. We will not seek, as we have been often charged with doing, to trouble their internal organization, and to make them adopt our laws; but we will not fuffer our principles to be poifoned in their eyes, their esteem to be taken from us; and the ambitious authors of a ruinous war to charge us with the melancholy fruits of their own vanity, crimes, and ambition. For three years, humanity has groaned and fuffered for three years, Europe has been inundated with blood, and the people weighed down with taxes. This infenfate defire to partition or enflave France is evidently the cause or the pretext of all these evils; and when a part of our enemies, discouraged by our fuccess, or enlightened by experience, seem willing to let the earth refpire-when the people, indignant at the calamities with which they are overwhelmed, seem every where commanding their governments to put an end to the horrors of war, some cruel and crafty politicians would perfuade them, that we alone are insensible to these cries of fuffering huma nity, that we alone thirst for their blood; that no peace with us can be fafe or honourable; that the continuation of the war is advantageous to them; and, finally, this absurd contradiction, that on the one hand, our pride and our ambition are too formidable for us to be treated with, and, on the other, that our efforts have too much exhausted us not to afford hopes of certain fuccess, by continuing the conteft. We ought, citizens, out of respect to humanity, to expose thele contradictions, reply to these calumnies, hold up the light to every eye, and unmask those Machiavelian governments which, fporting with the blood of men and the fortune of the people, aim at rearing a coloffal greatness on the ruin of the principal powers in Europe. We ought to convince all virtuous men that we deteft war without fearing it; that we are always ready to put a stop to its horrors, when a peace shall be offered to us consistent with our dignity, and 'capable of guaranteeing our fafety. we ought, at the fame time, to advertise the people of all nations that, ready to negociate with frankness, we will not fuffer our arms to be paralized, or our triumphs to be suspended by negociations, false or futile. Our armies who brave the feafons, mafter the elements, and turn to their advantage all the obstacles which nature and art feem to oppose to them; our armies who, rushing over the frozen inundations of Holland, have completed the conquest of it in less time than was formerly neceffary to make the tour, will charge themselves with demonstrating to our enemies that, far far from being exhausted by three years of war, we have only augmented our resources, and added to the experience of our generals, to the difcipline of our foldiers, to that republican ardour which has never ceased to inflame their fouls. But we ought, above all, to prove to the universe that the ambition of the English government, the interested policy of the House of Auftria, and the pride of Ruffia, are the fole causes of the misfortunes of the world. and Pruffia had become a power, Powers of Europe! open your eyes, contemplate your true dangers; diftinguish at last your true enemies; confider with affright the abyss into which they are dragging you, by fometimes making France a bugbear to terrify, and fometimes representing it as a prey caly to be divided. Suffering people, deluded monarchs, envied republics, follow connections with France, the with me the courts of Vienna, of French did not fecond its views, it Peterburg, and, above all, of London, through the dark labyrinth of their crafty policy! the torch of evidence will conduct you, and you will then fee what are the projects you ought to fear, the enemies you ought to combat, the friends you ought to embrace. Twice fince that period it has been on the point of poffeffing Bavaria; first by force of arms, and next by an exchange: finally, feeing that, notwithstanding its wished perfidioufly to destroy its ally; and profiting of the shocks of our revolution, it favoured our internal enemies, formed plots in the very bofom of our government, and leagued all Europe against us, under the haughty pretext of maintaining the cause of kings, but with the real defign of taking from us Alface, Lorrain, and a part of Flanders; and of ridding itself for ever of the obfervation of a people whose glory always excited its envy, and whose force always repreffed its audacity. The event has deceived its expectation. It has already loft the Pays Bas, its fortreffes, its cannon, its treafures; The politics of the cabinet of Vienna have been long unveiled. Constant in their ambitious projects, princes have fucceeded one another on that throne for feveral ages, preferving always the same fpirit, pursuing inceffantly the fame system. The object is always invariable; but the means of accomplishing it continually changing. The house of Auftria, its armies have disappeared befor its aggrandizement, has, by fore our's, the reputation of its turns, employed treaties, ruptures, generals is vanished, and every marriages, intrigues, and arms. thing announces that upon the Before Ruffia had civilized herself, cabinet of Vienna the day of juftice justice is arrived. It now exhibits nothing but the spectacle of difappointed ambition and impotent wrath. It fears peace, but it cannot continue the war; and there is not a power of Europe which does not see that its policy is to engage other powers to ruin themselves to fight for its interests, and to recover for it what it has loft. Pruffia mutt now know on what fide was artifice, and on what fide fincerity. Every thing must make Frederic William regret having listened to the councils of his natural enemy, in preference to the pacific envoys of a free nation, which thewed him the truth, and offered him a useful amity; he muft regret having been the dupe of fome crowned intriguers, of fome dexterous negociators, who led him into the only course that could ruin him. Spain, the Empire, Sardinia, must experience the fame regret. These powers must shudder at seeing the abyss into which it has been attempted to plunge them. They have only the melancholy profpect of sharing the fate of Holland, or of being annihilated under the yoke of the two courts that have seduced them. Ah! what we ought above all to shew to these deluded powers, for the interest of Europe, is the danger which they are menaced by with two Coloffusses they fup. port, which will conclude by fubjugating them, if our facrifices and our courage do not stop them in their progrefs. England and Ruffia, these are the two enemies we ought to denounce to the universe; these are the tyrants we ought to denounce to the world; these are the wide-wafting torrents whose irruption we must stop. More dex, terous, better situated, less unfortunate than Austria, they alone have hitherto profited of the ge. neral calamities and errors of the coalition. Rouse from your fleep, states of the empire, king of Pruffia, and all ye maritime powers!-your fleets, your forces, your cultivators, your finances, your blood, all you have been made to sacrifice, to give to Russia the empire of the land, and that of the seas to proud Albion. Do you forget that the inhabitants of the north destroyed the Roman empire, more united, more formidable than you? Muft you be reminded of those irruptions of the Goths and Vandals, inundating all Europe, to destroy all the empires of it? Must you be reminded that for 60 years Ruffia, introducing a gross civilization among her barbarous people, preserving a savage force, even while enriching herself with arts and modern tactics, has already humbled the Chinese, and planted colonies on the coast of America; that the has passed the Caucafus, fubjected Georgia, imposed laws, upon a part of Perfia, fubjugated the Cossacks, destroyed the Tartars, conquered the Crimea, partitioned Poland, dismayed the Ottoman empire, raised insurrection in Greece, and menaced Conftantinople? Muft we open wounds not yet entirely healed, and mention the numerous battalions entering Berlin itself, which, but for the unforeseen caprice of Peter III. would have annihilated the very name of the Pruffian power? Do you not fee that the ambitious Catharine, by holding out vain promises to the emigrants, by inflaming the rage of the German princes againft French |