DEFENSE OF HOFER

43

who know not the joys and brilliance of life, creeping amidst eternal snows, and snatching with greedy hand their stinted ear of corn?

Yet, poor as we are, we never envied our neighbors their smiling sun, their gilded palaces; we never strayed from our peaceful huts to blast the happiness of those who had not injured us. The traveler who visited our valleys met every hand outstretched to welcome him; for him every hearth blazed; with delight we listened to his tale of distant lands. Too happy for ambition, we were not jealous of his wealth; we have even refused to partake of it.

Frenchmen! you have wives and children. When you return to your beautiful cities, amidst the roar of trumpets, the smiles of the lovely, and the multitudes shouting with triumph, they will ask, Where have you roamed? What have you achieved? What have you brought back to us? Those laughing babes who climb upon your knees, will you have the heart to tell them, We have pierced the barren crags, we have entered the naked cottage to level it to the ground; we found no treasures but honest hearts, and those we have broken because they throbbed with love for the wilderness around them? Clasp this old firelock in your little hands; it was snatched from a peasant of Tyrol, who died in the vain effort to stem our torrent! Seated by your firesides, will you boast to your generous and blooming wives, that you have extinguished the last ember which lightened our gloom?

Happy scenes! I shall never see you more! In those cold and stern eyes I read my fate. Think not

that your sentence can be terrible to me! but I have sons, daughters, and a wife who has shared all my labors; she has shared, too, my little pleasures, such pleasures as that humble roof can yield,-pleasures that you cannot understand.

My little ones! Should you live to bask in the sunshine of manhood, dream not of your father's doom. Should you live to know it, know, too, that the man who has served his God and country with all his heart can smile at the musket leveled to pierce it. What is death to me? I have not reveled in pleasures wrung from innocence or want; rough and discolored as are these hands, they are pure. My death is nothing. O that my country could live! O that ten thousand such deaths could make her immortal!

Do I despair, then? No; we have rushed to the sacrifice, and the offering has been vain for us; but our children shall burst these fetters; the blood of virtue was never shed in vain. Freedom can never die! I have heard that you killed your king once, because he enslaved you; yet now, again, you crouch before a single man who bids you trample on all who abjure his yoke, and shoots you if you have the courage to disobey. Do you think that, when I am buried, there shall breathe no other Hofers? Dream you that, if to-day you prostrate Hofer in the dust, to-morrow Hofer is no more?

In the distance I see the liberty which I shall not taste; behind, I look on my slaughtered countrymen, on my orphans, on my desolate fields; but a star rises before my aching sight, which points to justice, and it

NAPOLEON'S ADDRESS TO HIS ARMY 45

shall come.

Before the sun has sunk below yon mountains, I shall awake in a paradise which you, perhaps, may never reach.

NAPOLEON'S ADDRESS TO HIS ARMY

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

This address was delivered to the Army of Italy, May 15, 1796.

Soldiers! You have precipitated yourselves like a torrent from the Apennines. You have overwhelmed or swept before you all that opposed your march. Piedmont, delivered from Austrian oppression, has returned to her natural sentiments of peace

and friendship toward France. Milan is yours; and

over all Lombardy floats the flag of the Republic. To your generosity only do the Dukes of Parma and Modena now owe their political existence. The army which proudly threatened you finds no remaining barrier of defense against your courage. The Po, the Ticino, the Adda, could not stop you a single day. Those vaunted ramparts of Italy proved insufficient; you traversed them as rapidly as you did the Apennines. Successes so numerous and brilliant have carried joy to the heart of your country. Your representatives have decreed a festival to be celebrated in all the communes of the Republic, in honor of your victories. There will your fathers, mothers, wives, sisters, all who hold you dear, rejoice over your triumphs, and boast that you belong to them.

Yes, Soldiers, you have done much; but much

still remains for you to do. Shall it be said of us that we knew how to conquer, but not how to profit by victory? Shall posterity reproach us with having found a Capua in Lombardy? Nay, fellow-soldiers! I see you already eager to cry, "To arms!" Inaction fatigues you; and days lost to glory are to you days lost to happiness. Let us, then, begone! We have yet many forced marches to make; enemies to vanquish; laurels to gather; and injuries to avenge! Let those who have sharpened the poniards of civil war in France, who have pusillanimously assassinated our Ministers, who have burned our vessels at Toulon, -let them now tremble! The hour of vengeance has knolled!

But let not the People be disquieted. We are the friends of every people; and more especially of the descendants of the Brutuses, the Scipios, and other great men to whom we look as bright exemplars. To reëstablish the Capitol; to place there with honor the statues of the heroes who made it memorable; to rouse the Roman People, unnerved by many centuries of oppression,--such will be some of the fruits of our victories. They will constitute an epoch for posterity. To you, Soldiers, will belong the immortal honor of redeeming the fairest portion of Europe. The French People, free and respected by the whole world, shall give to Europe a glorious peace, which shall indemnify it for all the sacrifices which it has borne the last six years. Then, by your own firesides you shall repose; and your fellow-citizens, when they point out any one of you, shall say: "He belonged to the Army of Italy!"

ALPHONSE LAMARTINE

47

THE REIGN OF NAPOLEON

ALPHONSE LAMARTINE

66

This extract is taken from Lamartine's 'History of the Restoration," first published in 1852.

The reign of Napoleon may be defined as the old

world reconstructed by a new man.

with glory the threadbare centuries.

He covered over

He was the first

among soldiers, but not among statesmen.

He was

open to the past, but blind to the future. If this judgment be found too harsh, a mere glance will serve to convince one of its justice. Men are judged not by their fortune, but by their work. He had in his hand the greatest force Providence ever placed in the hand of a mortal to create a civilization or a nationality. What has he left? Nothing but a conquered country and an immortal name.

The world demanded a renovator. He made himFrance was looking forward to the genius of reform, and he gave her despotism, discipline,

self its conqueror.

Impiety covered Instead of seeking

and a uniform for each institution. all the official pomp of his creed. religion in liberty he was eight centuries out of the way in parodying the rôle of Charlemagne, without having either the strong faith or the heroic sincerity of this Constantine of Gaul and Germany. To the need of equality of rights, he replied with the creation of a military nobility; to the need of free thought, with the censure and monopoly of the press. Intelligence languished. Letters became degraded, the arts became