the lash be peace. The surest way to prevent war is not to fear it. The idea that nothing on earth is so dreadful as war is inculcated too studiously among us. Disgrace is worse! Abandonment of essential rights is worse!

DEFENSE OF HOFER, THE TYROLESE
PATRIOT

ANDREAS HOFER

Andreas Hofer, an innkeeper of the Tyrol, headed a successful insurrection against the French in 1809. His enemies succeeded in capturing him by treachery, and he was shot by order of Napoleon at Mantua, Italy. He is said to have delivered the following speech just before his execution, February 20, 1810.

You ask what I have to say in my defense,—you, who glory in the name of France, who wander through the world to enrich and exalt the land of your birth,you demand how I could dare to arm myself against the invaders of my native rocks? Do you confine the love of home to yourselves? Do you punish in others the actions which you dignify and reward among yourselves? Those stars which glitter on your breasts, do they hang there as a recompense for patient servitude?

I see the smile of contempt which curls your lips. You say This brute, he is a ruffian, a beggar! That patched jacket, that ragged cap, that rusty belt : -shall barbarians such as he close the pass against us, shower rocks on our heads, and single out our leaders with unfailing aim, these groveling mountaineers,

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!"