Page:The Royal Family of France (Henry).djvu/79

 St. Louis, Francis I., Henry IV., and Louis XIV., and the martyr-King, Louis XVI., who laid his innocent head on the scaffold, with hands bound behind, victim of his love for his people. And contemporary history relates how at Constantine, at the Smala, at St. John of Ulloa, at Patay, at Mans, these Princes were not unworthy of the parent stem, when their Royal Highnesses the Duke de Chartres and Prince de Joinville fought for their country in spite of the refusal of their proffered services by the National Committee of September 4th, 1870. This Royal Family is the Family of the French Princes lately in our midst and still near us; it is their own family, the family styled The House of France. (Read "Genealogical Tables," p. 14.)

Tell me, candid reader. Of the three Republics and of the two Empires, what have their men done with this Royal Family, their allies, their exchequer, their frontiers? They had full power; all that terror, military force, and gold could effect, was given into their hands, was it not?

The Royal Princes? They have slaughtered them, with their wives, their sisters, their children. The Duke d'Enghien: a lantern was tied to his breast to direct the aim of his executioners. The Duke de Berry: they despatched him with a dagger.

The people? They drowned them wholesale, and shot them down in columns. Maidens and youths they stripped and cast into the Loire; and when the graves at the Brotteaux were over-full with old men and children, these were sunk lower down with the points of swords. They killed thousands of people by the knife, and a million soldiers in senseless wars.

The allies of France? All Europe was armed against her, terrified as it was at her revolutionary doctrines and her covetousness. People and King have been trodden under foot; neither the Royal Arms nor the old national escutcheon found and still find favour in their eyes. They would have overthrown and levelled all things, even the tiara, the sign of France's greatness, and the Cross, the symbol of human liberty. They imprisoned and insulted the Holy Father; later they betrayed him after the fashion of Judas. They sowed hatred, they have reaped and are reaping of the same. Prussia in the north, Savoy in the south, Russia in the east, the United States in the Western Hemisphere,