Address of French Generals to the Chamber of Representatives
Camp at Villette, 30th June.
Representatives of the People!
We are in presence of our Enemies. We swear before you and the world to defend, to our last breath, the cause of our independence and the national honour.
It is wished to impose the Bourbons upon us, but these Princes are rejected by the immense majority of Frenchmen. If their return could be agreed to, recollect. Representatives, that you would sign the annihilation of the Army; which for twenty years has been the Palladium of French honour. There are in War, especially when it has been long conducted, successes and reverses. In our successes, we have appeared great and generous. If it is wished to humble us in our reverses, we shall know how to die.
The Bourbons present no guarantee to the Nation. We received them with sentiments of the most generous confidence: we forgot all the calamities they had caused us in their rage to deprive us of our most sacred rights. Well! what return did they make for this confidence? They treated us as rebels and as vanquished. Representatives these reflections are terrible, because they are true. History will one day relate what the Bourbons have done to replace themselves on the Throne of France; it will also narrate the conduct of the Army; of that Army essentially national; and posterity will judge which best deserved the esteem of the World.
- The Marshal Prince of Eckmühl, Minister at War,
- Count Pajol, commanding the I Corps of Cavalry,
- Count d'Erlon, commanding the Right Wing,
- Count Vandamme, General in Chief.
- (And fifteen other Generals.)