Worn down by the yoke of iron which presses on our heads, we never should have been able to succeed in relieving ourselves. Always courageous, and yet always debased, we have lived in expectation of the happy moment of your arrival. Oh! most delightful moment! The time is at length arrived. Here are Frenchmen, our brothers and our friends: in our arms, in our houses, they are willing cordially to partake of our joy, to ratify our vows, and to fly with us to the destruction of the infamous throne of our tyrant. The proclamation to the people and clergy of Piedmont and Lombardy, and to the Neapolitan and Piedmontese troops, prove to you our republican spirit, and the right which we have to a well-founded reliance on your generous protection. Citizen general, behold all Italy extending forth its arms to your embrace, and calling you its deliverer. In giving it the blessings of liberty, you grant to this beau. tiful part of Europe its greatest lustre; your name will be rendered glorious and immortal in its history. Our sons, and our latest posterity, will have it engraven in their hearts; and they will not have in their mouths a name more dear than that of general Buonaparte. Respect, health, and fraternity, (Signed) IGNACE BONAFOUX, Albe, JEAN ANTOINE, Ramen of Verseil, Deputed commissaries. Buonaparte to the Republic of Venice. Brescia, 10 Frairial (May 29). IT is to deliver the finest coun try in Europe from the iron yoke of the proud house of Austria, that the French army has braved obstacles the most difficult to surmount. Victory, in union with justice, has crowned its efforts. The wreck of the enemy's army has retired beyond the Mincio,, The French army, in order to follow them, passes over the territory of the republic of Venice; but it will never forget, that ancient friendship unites the two republics. Religion, government, customs, and property, shall be respected. That the people may be without apprehension, the most severe discipline shall be maintained. All that may be provided for the army shall be faithfully paid for in money. The general in chief engages the officers of the republic of Venice, the magistrates, and the priests, to make known these sentiments to the people, in order that confi. dence may cement that friendship which has so long united the two. nations faithful in the path of honour, as in that of victory. The French soldier is terrible only to the enemies of his liberty and his government. (Signed) BUONAPARTE, The general of division, chief of the etat-major of the army of Italy. ALEX. BERHTIER. (Signed) ternity the peaceable and tranquil inhabitants; but they will prove as terrible as the fire of heaven to the rebels, and the villages which protect them. ART. 1. In consequence, the commander in chief declares as rebels, all the villages which have not conformed to his order of the 6th Prairial. The generals shall march against such villages the forces necessary for subduing them; setting them on fire, and shooting all those taken with arms in their hands. All the priests and nobles who remain in the rebel communes, shall be arrested as hos. tages, and sent into France. 2. Every village where the toc. sin shall be sounded, shall be instantly destroyed. The generals are responsible for the execution of this order. 3. Every village on the territory of which any Frenchman shall be assassinated, shall be fined in a sum amounting to a third part of the contribution they pay annually to the archduke, unless they make known the assassin, arrest him, and send him to the French army. 4. Every man found with a mus. ket, and ammunition of war, shall be immediately shot by the order of the general commandant on duty. 5. Every field wherein shall be found concealed arms, shall be condemned to pay one-third more than its actual revenue, by way of amends. Every house in which shall be found a musket, shall be burnt, unless the proprietor de clares to whom such musket be. longs. All the nobles, or rich people, who shall be convicted of having stirred up the people to revolt, whether by dismissing their domestics, or by designs against the French, shall be arrested as hostages, sent into France, and the half of their estates confiscated. (Signed BUONAPARTE. 10 Prairial, (29th May.) Proclamation issued by the Municipality of Milan, for abolishing the No. bility. ART. 1. The order of nobility is abolished for ever. 2. No one shall bear any title of nobility, but shall be designed by the appellation of citizen, adding thereto the name of his employment or profession. 3. All the nobles shall, within the space of eight days, bring their patents of nobility to the commune, where they shall be burnt. 4. Every feudal authority, and all game laws are henceforth abo. lished. 5. All armorial bearings, liveries, and every distinction of nobility, shall likewise be suppressed within eight days. 6. Every corporation which exacts a proof of nobility as a quali. fication is abolished. 7. Those who shall contravene the present proclamation, will be regarded as convicted of aristocracy, and as enemies to the people. June 12. Buonaparte, Commander in Chief of the Army of Italy, to the Inhabitants of Tyrol. Head Quarters et Tortona, 26 Prai rial (June 14), 4th year. BRAVE Tyrolians, I am about to pass through your territory, to force the court of Vienna to a peace, as necessary to Europe, as it is to the subjects of the emperor. The cause I am about to defend is your own. You have been long vexed and fatigued by the horrors of a war, undertaken not for the in. terest of the people of Germany, but for that of a single family. The French army respects and loves all nations, more especially the simple and virtuous inhabitants of the mountains. Your religion, your customs will be every where respected. Our troops will main. tain a severe discipline; and nothing will be taken in the country without being paid for in money. You will receive us with hospitality, and we will treat you with fraternity and friendship. But should there be any so little acquainted with their true interests as to take up arms, and treat us as enemies, we will be as terrible as the fire from heaven: we will burn the houses, and lay waste the territories of the villages which shall take a part in a war which is fo. reign to them. Do not suffer yourselves to be led into an error by the agents of Austria. Secure your country, already harassed by five years of war, from new miseries. In a litsle time the court of Vienna, forced to a peace, will restore to the natives their privileges which it has usurped, and to Europe the tranquillity it has disturbed. The commander in chief, (Signed). BUONAPARIT, Buonaparte, Commander in Chief of the Army of Italy, to the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Head-quarters at Petojo, June 26. THE flag of the French repub. fic is constantly insulted in the port of Leghorn. The property of the French merchants is violated there; every day is marked by some attempt against France, as contrary to the interests of the republic as to the law of the nations. The executive directory have repeatedly preferred their complaints to the minister of your royal highness at Paris, who has been obliged to avow that it is impossible for your royal highness to repress the English, and to maintain a neutrality in the port of Leghorn. This confession immediately convinced the executive directory, that it was their duty to repel force by force, to make their commerce respected, and they ordered me to send a division of the army under my command to take possession of Leghorn. I have the honour to inform your royal highness, that on the 7th inst. (25th June) a division of the army entered Leghorn: their con duct there will be conformable to those principles of neutrality which they have been sent to maintain. The flag, the garrison, the property, and your royal highness and your people, shall be scrupulously respected. I am, moreover, instructed to as. sure your roval highness of the desire of the French government, to witness a continuation of the friendship which unites the two states, and of their conviction that your royal highness, conscious of the excesses daily committed by the English ships, which you cannot prevent, will applaud the just, useful, and necessary measures adopted by the executive directory. I am, With esteem and consideration, Your Royal highness's, &c. BUONAPARTEN inswor Answer to the above Letter., al highness against this governor, who, in his whole conduct, displays a decided hatred against the French. He yesterday endeavoured, at the moment of our arrival, to make the people rise up against us there is no kind of ill treatment that he did not make our advanced guard experience. I should, doubtless, have been justified in bringing him to trial before a military commission; but from respect for your royal highness, intimately convinc. HIS royal highness is conscious of having nothing to reproach him. self with relative to his frank, candid, and friendly conduct towards the French republic and its subjects. A sovereign in friendship with the republic cannot but regard, with the most extraordinary surprise, the orders given to your excellency from the directory. His royal highness will not resist the execution of them by force, but will preserve the good understand. ing with the republic, still flattered of the spirit of justice which di ing himself with the hope that your excellency will, on better information, revoke your present resolves. Should it not be in your excellency's power to delay the entrance of your troops into Leghorn till further orders, the governor of that place has full powers to agree with you upon terms. This I am ordered, by my sovereign's express com. mand, to communicate to you, with that respect in which I have the honour to remain, &c. (Signed) VITTORIO FOSSOM. FRONI. Florence, June 26, 1796. ROYAL HIGHNESS, I prefer a complaint to your roy. rects all your actions, I preferred sending him to Florence, where. I am persuaded, you will give or ders to have him punished severely. I must, at the same time, return my thanks to his royal highness, for his goodness in appointing ge neral Straraldo to supply the army with every thing that was necessary. He has acquitted himself with equal zeal and success. BUONAPARTE. Answer of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. GENERAL Spannochi arrested by your order has been brought hither. It is a point of delicacy to keep him in arrest, until the motives of this step, which I presume to be just, are known to me, in order to give you, as well as the French republic and all Europe, the greatest proof of equity, confor mably to the laws of my country, to which I have always made it my duty to submit myself. I send this letter by the marquis Manfredini, my major domo, whom I request you to inform in what Spannochi has been culpable. You may besides repose full confidence in him relative to all the objects R 3 interesting Paris, 13 Thermidor (July 31) 4th THE executive directory, who cannot but praise, citizen general, the indefatigable activity with which you combat the enemies of liberty; the executive directory, who participate with all the good citizens, with all the true friends of their country, with all the sin. cere republicans in the admiration which the great military talents you display inspire, and which give you a just claim to national grati. fude, see with indig, ation the cf. forts which libellers, under different masks, are daily making to mislead the public, and to second the enemies of our country, by rumours which can have no other end, than to disseminate dissention among the friends of order and peace. The directory see with indignation the perfidy with which those confederate libellers have dared to attack the loyalty, the constant fidelity of your services; and they owe to themselves the formal denial which they give to the absurd ca. lumnies which the necessity of fos. tering maliguity has made them hazard, by accounts which tended to prove a stimulus to the directory to read their productions. Some avowed royalists, flatly cir culate a falsehood; others, calling themselves prime patriots, but porsuing the same end, comment upon it, and eke it out in their o vn way, under the pretence of combating their pretended antagonist. Both parties are thus at work to stop the progress of order, which is establishing; both second the enemies of the revolution; both wish to sow discor, and to disorganise the ar mies; both wish this to sport with the good faith of their readers, of those who afford them subsist. ence, and indecently present to them, as facts, accounts which are nothing but the fruit of a disordercd imagination. No, citizen general, never have the friends of Austria been able to prepossess the directory against you, because the friends of Austria have neither access to, nor influence over the directory; because the directo. ry known your principles, and your inviolable attachment to the repub. lic. No, never has your recal been the question; never have any of the members wished to give a successor to him who so gioriously leads on our republicans to victory. The libeller, who would feign to be your defender, dares assert that he knows the intrigues hatched against you, and of which some money affair was only the pretence: who assuming a virtue not his own, dares add, that delicacy made him pass in silence events which would only have made our enemies laugh; such a man inposes apon, such a man deceives the public; and is evidently unworthy their confidence. If this well-informed man, who, like his fellow calumniators, wishes to give himself an air of importance, pretending to know all |