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. whether by dismissing their domeftics, or by defigns against the French, shall be arrefted as hoftages, fent into France, and the half of their estates confifcated, BUONAPARTE. - (Signed) 10 Prairial, (29th May.) 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 thall march againft fuch villages the forces neceffary for fubduing them; fetting them on fire, and shooting all thofe taken with arms in their is abolished for ever. hands. All the priests and nobles who remain in the rebel communes, thall be arrested as hoftages, and fent into France. 2. Every village where the tocfin shall be founded, 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 affaffinated, shall be fined in a fum amounting to a third part of the contribution they pay annually to the archduke, unless they make known the assassin, arrest him, and fend him to the French army. 4. Every man found with a mufquet, 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 declares to whom such musket belongs. All the nobles, or rich people, who shall be convicted of having ftirred up the people to revolt, Proclamation issued by the Municipality of Milan, for abolishing the Nobility. ART. 1. THE order of nobility 2. No one shall bear any title of nobility, but shall be defigned by the appellation of citizen, adding thereto the name of his employment or profeffion. 3. All the nobles thall, 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 abolished. 5. All armorial bearings, liveries, and every diftinction of nobility, shall likewise be suppressed within eight days. 6. Every corporation which exacts a proof of nobility as a qualification 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 at I oriona, 26 Prairial, (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 fubjects 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 interest of the people of Germany, but for that of a single family. The French army respects and Joves all nations, more especially the fimple and virtuous inhabitants of the mountains. Your religion, your customs will be every where respected. Our troops will maintain a severe difcipline; 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 foreign to them. Do not fuffer 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 little time the court of Vienna, forced to a peace, will restore to the nations their privileges which it has ufurped, and to Europe the tranquillity it has disturbed. The commander in chief, of Leghorn. The property of the French merchants is violated there; every day is marked by fome attempt against France, as contrary to the interefts 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 impoffible for your royal highness to repress the English, and to maintain a neutrality in the port of Leghorn. This confeffion 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 poffeffion of Leghorn. I have the honour to inform your royal highness, that on the 7th inft. (25th June) a division of the army entered Leghorn: their conduct there will be conformable to those principles of neutrality which they have been fent to maintain. The flag, the garrifon, the property, and your royal highness and your people, shall be fcrupulously respected. I am, moreover, instructed to affure your royal highness of the defire of the French government, to witness a continuation of the friendship which unites the two states, and of their conviction that your royal highness, confcious of the excesses daily committed by the English ships, which you cannot prevent, will applaud the juft, useful, and necessary measures adopted by the executive directory. I am, With esteem and confideration, BUONAPARTE. Anfwer Anfwer to the above Letter. HIS royal highness is confcious of having nothing to reproach him self with relative to his frank, candid, and friendly conduct towards the French republic and its fubjects. A fovereign in friendship with the republic cannot but regard, with the most extraordinary furprise, the orders given to your excellency from the directory. His royal highness will not resist the execution of them by force, but will preferve the good understanding with the republic, still flattering himself with the hope that your excellency will, on better information, revoke your present refolves. 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 fovereign's express command, to communicate to you, with that respect in which I have the honour to remain, &c. (Signed) VITTORIO FOSSOM Florence, June 26, 1796. BRONI. Head-quarters at Leghorn, June 29. General Buonaparte to the Grand Duke of Tuscany. ROYAL HIGHNESS, AN hour before we entered Leghorn, an English frigate carried off two French ships, worth 500,000 livres. The governor fuffered them to be taken under the fire of his batteries, which was contrary to the intention of your royal highness, and the neutrality of the port of Leghorn. I prefer a complaint to your roy 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 commiffion; but from respect for your royal highness, intimately convinced of the fpirit of justice which directs all your actions, I preferred fending him to Florence, where I am perfuaded, you will give orders to have him punished severely. I muft, at the fame time, return my thanks to his royal highness, for his goodness in appointing general Straraldo to supply the army with every thing that was neceffary. He has acquitted himself with @qual zeal and success. BUONAPARTE. Anfwer of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. GENERAL, 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 prefume 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, conformably 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 befides repose full confidence in him relative to all the objects R3 interesting Paris, 13 Thermidor (July 31) 4th The Executive Directory to Citizen Busnaparte, Commander in Chief of the Army of Italy. 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 fincere republicans in the admiration which the great military talents you display infpire, and which give you a just claim to national gratitude, see with indignation the efforts which libellers, under different maiks, are daily making to miflead the public, and to second the enemies of our country, by rumours which can have no other end, than to disseminate diffention among the friends of order and peace, The directory fee with indignation the perfidy with which those confederate libellers have dared to attack the loyalty, the conftant fidelity of your services; and they owe to themselves the formal denial which they give to the abfurd calumnies which the neceffity of foftering malignity has made them hazard, by accounts which tended to prove a ftimulus to the directory to read their productions. Some avowed roy lifts, flatly circulate a falfehood; others, calling themselves prime patriots, but purfuing the fame end, comment upon it, and eke it out in their own way, under the pretence of combating their pretended antagonist. Loth parties are thus at work to ftop the progress of order, which is establishing; both fecond the enemies of the revolution; both with to fow difcord, and to disorganize the armies; both with thus to sport with the good faith of their readers, of those who afford them fubfift ence, and indecently present to them, as facts, accounts which are nothing but the fruit of a disordered imagination. No, citizen general, never have the friends of Auftria been able to prepoffefs the directory againft you, because the friends of Austria have neither access to, nor influence over the directory; because the directory know your principles, and your inviolable attachment to the republic. No, never has your recal been the question; never have any of the members wished to give a fucceffor to him who so glorioufly leads on our republicans to victory. The libeller, who would feign to be your defender, dares affert that he knows the intrigues hatched against you, and of which fome money affair was only the pretence: who affuming a virtue not his own, dares add, that delicacy made him pass in filence events which would only have made our enemies laugh; such'a man imposes upon, fuch a man deceives the public; and is evidently unworthy their confidence. If this well-informed man, who, like his fellow calumniators, withes to give himself an air of importance, pretending to know all all the secrets of state; if this man knows of an intrigue of fuch a nature as he states; let him difcover it; let him make it known to the Directory: it is important enough; it has, no doubt, sufficient interest for the public welfare. The march of our armies -for him who can bring it to light, not to dispense himself from denouncing it to those whom it is deftined to lead into error. But the filence of that man, his filence, which will be his condemnation, will open the eyes of the public respecting the confidence they ought forthwith to give to his infinuations. You possess, citizen general, the confidence of the Directory; the services you render every day entitle you to it; the confiderable sums which the republic owes to your victories, proves that you at once occupy yourself with the glory and the intereft of your country; all the good citizens agree on this point: you will not find it difficult to confign the boafts and calumnies of the reft to the contempt they from themselves merit, and still more from the spirit that dictates them. to take again into confideration a step so conformable to the good intelligence which subsists between the two countries, I beg you will permit me to make fome observations, which I submit to the Directory. The confidence which friendly and allied powers reciprocally owe each other, the respect which is its refult, has always been indifcriminately granted to the perfon chofen by his fovereign to reprefent him; it is even infeparable from it. Both have, however, been neglected in the perfon of M. de Rehaufen. His private fentiments can the less give umbrage to the government, as he would certainly facrifice them in the exercife of his functions, if they could be contrary to the inftructions he has received; and if in his conduct, or in his language, he could be wanting to the treaty which fubfifts between Sweden and France. And it is in this cafe only, if a mifunderstanding should take place between the two governments, that his recal would become neceffary. But fince this is not the cafe, his fentiments cannot be confidered as a valid motive of exclufion, and the refusal becomes confequently less an injury done to M. de Rehausen than a want of respect to his sovereign. I must likewife remark, that M. de Rehaufen being at Paris, has been appointed to attend ad interim to the affairs of Sweden, at a time when a rupture with Ruffia was every instant expected, and when the Swedish ambaffador at that court was on the eve of quitting his poft. His appointment could not, therefore, have been influenced by the Empress of Ruffia, to R4 whom |