ruin: national prosperity would be destruction to their egotistical speculations; and our death would be their life. They are like those beasts of prey, who wait the issue of the battle that they may batten and feast on the corpses of the slain. (Loud applause.) "They know that the expenses of your preparations for defence are numerous; and they reckon upon the failure of the credit of the treasury, and the scarcity of specie; they reckon upon the weariness of those citizens who have abandoned their wives, their babes, to hasten to the frontiers, and who will abandon them, whilst millions, distributed at home, will arouse insurrections, in which the people, armed by madness, will themselves destroy their rights, whilst they imagine they are defending them; then the emperor will advance at the head of a powerful army to rivet your fetters. Such is the war that they make on you, and that they seek to make. (Loud applause.) "The people has sworn to maintain the constitution, because in that lies its honour and its liberty; but if you suffer it to remain in a state of troubled immobility, that weakens its force and exhausts all our resources, will not the day of this exhaustion be the last of the constitution? The state in which we are kept is one of annihilation that may lead us to disgrace or to death. (Applause.) To arms, citizens! to arms, freemen! defend your liberty! assure the hope of that liberty to the whole human race, or you will not deserve even pity in your misfortunes. (Applause.) We have no other allies than the eternal justice, whose rights we defend: but is it forbidden us to seek others, and to interest those powers who, like ourselves are threatened by the rupture of the equilibrium in Europe? No, doubtless, let us declare to the emperor, that from this moment all treaties are broken. (Vehement applause.) The emperor has himself violated them; and if he does not attack us, it is because he is not yet prepared; but he is unmasked; felicitate yourselves upon this. The eyes of Europe are fixed upon you, show them what is really the National Assembly of France. If you display the dignity that befits the representatives of a great nation, you will gain esteem, applause, and assistance. If you evince weakness, if you do not avail yourselves of the occasion offered you by Providence, of freeing yourselves from a situation that fetters you, dread the degradation that is prepared for you by the hatred of Europe, of France, of your own time and of posterity. (Applause.) Do more; demand that your flag be respected beyond the Rhine; demand that the _emigres_ be dispersed. I might demand that they be given up to the country they insult, and to punishment. But no. If they have been greedy for our blood, let us not show ourselves greedy for theirs; their crime is having wished to destroy their country; let them be vagrants and wanderers on the face of the earth, and let their punishment be never to find a country.