pendent nation; and, as such, they believed it to be their duty to defend themselves against encroachment upon their rights and territory, in short, against every foreign sway, endeavouring by all possible means to recover the immense losses they had lately sustained. Persuaded of this truth, and prompted more by zeal and despair than by prudence and reflection, they made their last effort. They took up arms, not as rebels who rise against a legitimate authority, but as a free nation, provoked by encroachments a thousand times repeated. They fell, and the great Sovereign, who knows how to value noble actions, far from treating with severity an innocent nation, and its defenders who are in her power, will not, I am confident, refuse them that compassion and interest which unfortunate virtue always excites in a magnanimous heart.
“It is the truth, Monsieur le Comte, that you require from me; I will therefore tell it, should it be even disagreeable to you. It is the invasion of Poland; it is the subversion of
