If you do not serve your country, you will be forced away to perish in the North. We lose nothing; for, even should we fall, we shall have freed ourselves, by a glorious death, from the intolerable burden of a foreign yoke. What worse atrocities would the worst savages have perpetrated, than those which the ruffians of this tyrant have committed? They have profaned our temples, they have massacred our brethren, they have assailed our wives; more than 2000 of the people of Madrid, of that city where they had been so hospitably received, they have murdered in cold blood, for no other cause than for having defended their families and themselves. To arms! to arms!... Will you bend your necks to the yoke? Will you allow yourselves to be insulted by injuries the most perfidious, the most wicked, the most disgraceful, committed in the face of the whole world? Will you submit to the humiliating slavery which is prepared for you? To arms! to arms! ... not like the monster who oppresses you, for the indulgence of an insatiable ambition; not, like him, to violate the law of nations and the rights of humanity, ... not to render yourselves odious to mankind; ... but to assist your countrymen, to rescue your King from captivity; to restore to your government liberty, energy, and vigour; to preserve your own lives, and those of your children; to maintain the uncontrolled right of enjoying and disposing of your property; and to assert the independence of Spain.... The time is come; the nation has resumed the sovereign authority, which, under such circumstances, devolves upon it. Let us be worthy of ourselves! Let us perpetuate the renown of our fathers! A whole people is more powerful than disciplined armies. Spain will inevitably conquer in a cause the most just that ever raised the deadly weapons of war; she fights, not for the concerns of a day, but for the security and happiness of ages; ... not for an insulated privilege, but for all the rights of human nature; ... not for temporal blessings, but for eternal happiness; ... not for the benefit of one nation, but for all mankind, and even for France itself. Humanity does not always shudder at the sound of war, ... the slow and interminable evils of slavery are a thousand times more to be abhorred; ... there is a kind of peace more fatal than the field of battle, drenched with blood, and strewn with the bodies of the slain. Such is the peace in which the metropolis of Spain is held by the enemy. The most respectable citizen there is exposed to the insolence of the basest French ruffian; at every step he has to endure at least the insult of being eyed with the disdain of the conqueror towards the conquered. The inhabitants of Madrid, strangers, as it were, and by sufferance in their own houses, cannot enjoy one moment’s tranquillity. The public festivals, established by immemorial custom, the attendance on religious ordinances, are considered as pretexts for insurrection,