victory which would bring forth a revolution, but a reverse which may preserve his throne. Let there, then, be no more doubt; it is absolutism and liberty, tyranny and democracy, which stand face to face. To be Russian or Democratic, this is the alternative; all the rest is but a pretence. In such a peril, Germans! what must you do? Free yourselves from your tyrants, who are the servants of Russia-that you may deliver yourselves from Russia. They would make you slaves of the foreigner; then bless the day which may enable you, in a sublime and terrible impulse, to conquer at once your independence as a nation and your rights as citizens. To be free, O Germans! you need but remember that you were the free. (the Franks.) 'Your fathers,' in the words of Tacitus, 'were invincible because of their union, all their battalions being all formed, as it were, of members of one great family.' Destroy as they did, all divisions. Have but one family, Democracy; have but one name, the German Republic. In all your valleys, and from hill to hill, let but one song be heard, the song of National Independence, the old German Burdit, and you also shall conquer. London, November, 13th, 1850. LEDRU-ROLLIN-JOSEPH MAZZINI-A, DARASZ-ARNOLD RUGE. THE CENTRAL EUROPEAN DEMOCRATIC COMMITTEE The following proclamation shall be addressed to the armies of the Holy Alliance of Kings, and translated, for that purpose, into all languages. Each of the National Committees shall be charged, so far as concerns it, with the execution of the present decree. Done, November 27th, 1850. LEDRU-ROLLIN-JOSEPH MAZZINI-A. DARASZ-ARNOLD RUGE. TO THE ARMIES OF THE HOLY ALLIANCE OF KINGS. Powerless to defend The tyrants who oppress you lift again the banner of their wars. their despotisms against the propagandism of ideas and of rights, they would once more appeal to the fratricidal policy of battles. Their pretexts,-yon know them; their object is this: They hope to drown in blood the spirit of freedom which now animates alike the serfs of the Ukraine and the pariahs of western civilization,—they hope, by awakening among you the murderous instincts of the fight, to long postpone the reign of human brotherhood. Soldiers! will you consent to this? Count yourselves, and count them! How many are they, emperors and kings, valets and accomplices? Scarcely some thousands. Your division alone makes their strength. Look at this monarch who, placing his will above eternal reason, thinks himself a God on earth, because he leads, like a vile flock, sixty millions of men, his equals before Humarity. What would become of the power of which he is so proud, if these men would recollect that they owe their blood, some of them to the resurrection of heroic Poland, the martyr-nation, others to the moral rehabilitation of their race, all of them to fraternity and independence? And the first of his vassals, this emperor of Austria, but yesterday a child, who has steeped his crown in blood, at Vienna as at Pesth, at Milan as at Venice and at Brescia,— would he reign a day, an hour, if every one of you, Poles, Italians, Hungarians, Austrians, should render yourselves to your own flag, the true flag of honour? They have been careful, we know, to take you to a distance from your hearths. It is Hungary which guards Italy; it is Austria which watches over disarmed Hungary; the Italians front the Germans; and Poland, that feeds the armies of its three oppessors, is cast away upon Siberia and Caucasus. They hope thus to remove you from the memories of your families, of your cradles; they mean thus to make use of your age-long rancours, your prejudices, which these despotisms have nourished, and, one by the other, to insure the subjugation of all. But as if an invisible hand compelled your tyrants to bring you together, you will soon be separated only by the fires of your bivouacs. You can, you ought then to frustrate their machiavelian combinations. Your Country and Humanity command this, for there is but one duty for men as for peoples, for soldiers as for citizens, whether they groan under foreign oppression or, oppressed themselves, become the instruments of oppression: that duty is to be free and to love one another. Be then as brothers, all you who bear, with the weight of military servitude, the remembrance of a captive country. Even if you are of races hereto enemies, through communicating together in a hatred for tyranny, in the love of freedom, you ought to unite yourselves against the common enemy. Let your hands be joined, your hearts respond to each other; from the detachment to the battalion, from the tent to the camp, let a mysterious and sympathetic net-work extend itself; and soon the army of despotism shall be the army of freedom. And if, the isolation, the pitiless rigours of discipline, thwarting your efforts,—you can not organize the revolution in the camp, nor revolt in broad day, then fearlessly desert, one by one, ten by ten,-What matters ?-But above all, desert not without your arms, for they will be needed for the conquest of independence. Do not be stayed by the disgrace which the doctrine of passive obedience attaches to those who break their military oath. Soldiers of your Country and of Humanity! know you when it is that you desert? It is when you chain your reason and your courage to the orders of an unjust thought. On the contrary, it is a return under the flag of honour, when you break these engagements imposed by force, and sanctioned by falsehood. If a general insurrection, if desertion in masses, are impossible for you, well then! instead of smiting those whom they call your enemies, but who are your brothers, die rather as martyrs. History will recollect your names and will honour your obscure devotion, equally with the most splendid actions. German Soldiers!-you who ought to have but one object-that of creating the great German Nation,-will you serve the cause of kings, to betray your common mother? Recollect that, conquerors or conquered, slavery awaits you. Shall it then be in vain that generous Germany has armed all her children? Oh! doubtless, those who, having long cowered under the military yoke, have forgotten their country and their home, to make themselves the janissaries of tyranny, will keep their hearts cold and their hands firm to deal death agreeably to a barbarous order. But now it is the whole nation which is aroused, with its masculine genius, with its invincible horror of slavery. There we meet once more that noble youth which, at Vienna, at Berlin, at Stuttgardt, at Baden, at Rastadt, fought for liberty. Can the homicidal traditions of the barracks prevail against the magnanimous inspirations of so many free and valiant hearts ? There too we meet again the glorious wrecks of the phalanxes of Hungary and of Poland, with the sons of unhappy Italy. Soldiers of Liberty! will you strike the martyrs ? Ah, rather organize, from camp to camp, the holy conspiracy which we preach to the soldiers assembled under the same flag. Mingle your ranks, and lift from out your hearts fraternally united one vast cry of enfrachisement. And you, soldiers of the Prussian landwehr! would you trust this king who has been ten times traitor to his oaths, after having knelt before the triumphant revolution, after having bareheaded saluted the corpses of the people fallen under the bullets of his satellites ? No! no! Sentence is pronounced against him and against his race; its execution may not be delayed. He and his, have they not always covenanted with the Russian despot, even as they are doing now? You hold in your hands the destinies of Germany. Do not then lay down your arms till the Republic shall be proclaimed. Do you Lastly, do you all, Soldiers of the Holy Alliance of kings, remember the sublime example lately given you by the Hessian army, in which there was not to be found one officer to put down the legitimate resistance of a people strong in its right. remember this: every one of them broke his sword in order that he might not fail in his duty as a citizen; and yet there has been no blood shed. Soldiers of the Holy Alliance! do not forget: your enemies are in the palaces of kings. Know you how to will, and the criminal projects of absolutism shall have served only to found the liberty of all peoples, the universal Republic! LEDRU-ROLLIN-JOSEPH MAZZINI-A. DARASZ-ARNOLD RUGE. The following document refers to the loan of £400,000, to furnish material for the renewal of the war of Italian independence. THE CENTRAL EUROPEAN DEMOCRATIC COMMITTEE, Having examined the documents relative to the loan of ten millions of francs, put forth by the Italian National Committee, Considering that 'The men of all countries are brothers, and that the several peoples ought to aid each other, according to their ability, even as citizens of the same state; "That whoever oppresses a single nation declares himself the enemy of all; 'That kings, aristocrats, tyrants, whatever they may be, are slaves in revolt against the sovereign of the earth, which is Mankind, and against the lawgiver of the universe, which is Nature; (ROBESPIERRE, Declaration of Rights.) Considering that Italy which has proclaimed and heroically defended her independence, is now attempting a supreme effort to reconquer it; peoples whose sovereignty is that it interests the universal That her cause is doubly holy,—that it interests all the already attempted or threatened by the coalition of kings, conscience, at which the papacy, that eternal instrument of despotism, has just thrown a new and audacious defiance; Decrees: ONE ONLY ARTICLE.-The Italian National Loan is placed under the safeguard of the European democracy. Until its reimbursement by the Roman Republic, it shall be acknowledged by all the peoples who recover their independence. In the name of that which is most sacred-Liberty, the men of all countries, who own a free soul, are invited to subscribe to it. Resolved, November 27th, 1850. For the Central European Democratic Committee, LEDRU-ROLLIN-JOSEPH MAZZINI-ALBERT DARASZ-ARNOLD RUGE. Under the head of Archives and correspondence of the 'Central European Democratic Committee,' in the Voice of the Proscribed (Voix du Proscrit) of December 8th, appears the following account of progress already made. "The Central Committee has already received numerous adhesions,―among which we may mention those of the Committee of Young Austria, the Centralizing Committee of Germany, the Polish Democratic Committee, and the Central Committee of the Democratic Association of Holland. It need hardly be said that the Italian Committee acts in perfect accord with the CENTRAL COMMITTEE. It will be seen that the Central Committee makes way, that its appeals find a potent echo in Young Europe. Our last document is the reply of the Committee to these Associations. TO THE ITALIAN, POLISH, GERMAN, AUSTRIAN AND Brothers! Events have justified your previsions, and ours: the despots understand each other. At the spirit which animated their armies, at the commotion which was manifest in their ranks, at the desertions already commencing, they have comprehended that at the first shock the ground would tremble beneath their feet, and that from its open depths would burst forth Liberty. But, you have said it, Brothers! terrified at the power which might suddenly explode in their hands, they renounce violence, to ask of craft the accomplishment of their liberticidal pact. In the phases of this new evolution, it is necessary, then, that the Democracy should be more than ever upon its guard, in order to seize the first propitious moment. It is, in fact, for the execution of the tyrants' projects against the bourgeoisie that we should wait; and everywhere already, that execution begins. To speak only of Prussia, is it not known that if the Berlin Assembly is not yet definitively dissolved, it is because they dread the explosion of popular feeling? To-day adjourned, it will a little later be completely driven out. Thus, in the States of Germany, all political compacts will be successively torn. An uniform silence, the silence of death, will overhang this vast land of thought; for it is not only beyond 1848 that the despots desire to retrograde,—it is beyond 1830, and 1815, the epochs of charters and transactions; it is even to the middle ages that they meditate carrying back the Peoples: under the imbecile domination of priests and kings. Brothers! you have also said, and with reason, the madness of their projects, the very enormity of their attempts, is the certain pledge of our victory: the Democracy,—that is to say all which tends to equality and which springs toward a better future,-the Democracy henceforth having no more to struggle alone. The tyrants, in their giddiness, have they not set foot upon the bourgeoisie itself, on that bourgeoisie which had attempted to shelter its egotism and its power under the fragile barriers of a powerless liberalism. They have known how to rally it to us by the imminence of a common peril; they have known how to strengthen our cause in oppressing all at once. Now then, there is on the one side but men, all brothers, combating for Liberty, and on the other tyrants resolved to annihilate it. Yes, brothers, even as you happily remark, in all parts our idea is propagated and increases. Let us rejoice at this great result, but let us not be dazzled by it. It presents a danger. In fact, seeing progress marching with the rapidity of lightning, how many men, assured of its triumph, slumber in an easy and culpable quietude, leaving everything to the future, as if nothing was done, so long as something remains to be done, as if we should only expect from our enemies the success of our holy cause. Ah, no doubt, it is not the idea which is wanting to day; it is virility. What is wanting is that which pushed our fathers into action, the manly courage which multiplies itself in proportion to the resistance, perseverance, and audacity. Our fathers were less talkers and more soldiers. They felt that the forehead becomes accustomed to bear patiently the yoke which a single effort could break. Brothers! do not forget: the hand which strikes the bourgeoisie,-that hand which opens the door of revolutions, already begins to weigh upon it. Yet a blow, it is the favourable occasion, it is the augury of deliverance; to-morrow, perhaps, we ought to be ready. In 1847 it was from an imperceptible point of the Mediterranean that the signal went forth. Then, however, all was calm and tranquil; whilst now, in all places, the Revolution boils. Who can point out the elected people among whom it shall first leap forth to open day. Happy, above all, that which shall be first visited by the Genius of Liberty! Is it for the North, or for the South, that this honour is reserved? The future alone knows ; but that which is in the power of every nation, brothers! is to render itself worthy of this signal fortune, by working, without intermission, for the common deliverance. LEDRU-ROLLIN-JOSEPH MAZZINI-ALBERT DARASZ-ARNOLD RUGE. THE GATHERING OF THE PEOPLE: A STORM-SONG. GATHER ye silently, Even as the snow Heapeth the avalanche: Gather ye so! Gather ye so, In the wide glare of day, Sternly and tranquilly; Melt not away! |