Experience will have disabused you of your error: return to the path of fidelity, and you will by that restore the happiness of your country. You know the clemency of our august sovereign: return to him. Weigh well the immense responsibility which you will take upon your heads by a criminal obstinacy. Join yourselves to your brothers in arms. Show that you are still worthy to be the commanders of the troops which your sovereign has entrusted to you. You will be received as brothers. An amnesty of the past is assured to you. The troops which I command will fulfil with loyalty the intentions of our sovereign, and the gratitude of your country, restored to tranquillity, will be a delightful reward for your return to your duty. But if there are found among you men hardened in crime, who cannot be persuaded to trust in magnanimity, because they know not the elevated sentiments in which it has its origin, let all the bonds of military fraternity between you and them be broken; the all-powerful hand of God, the protector of the good cause, will bring down upon their heads the punishment due to their crimes. (Signed) The Marshal Diebitsch Zabalkansky.] [Footnote 33: To the proclamations of general Diebitsch, one of our countrymen made a reply, in the form of a letter, which was published in the gazettes, and which, as far as my memory serves me, was in nearly the following terms: 'General, your proclamations, which breathe the spirit of injustice, arrogance, and cruelty--the menacing tone of which is backed by the colossal force you have led to the invasion of our territory, and which you are to wield as an instrument for establishing a new tyranny and inflicting new sufferings upon a country of freemen,--these proclamations, general, prove that the favorable opinion which Europe entertained of you was ill-grounded, and that you too, like the rest, are willing to lend yourself an easy and vile instrument in the hands of the oppressor. Diebitsch! Can it be you who so recently passed the Balkan, to deliver a nation from the yoke of barbarism,--an action which gained for you so great a name in history?