Yes! we have risen as one man against the Austrian government, to
become again a nation, to make common cause with our Italian brothers,
and the arms which we have assumed for so great an object we shall not
lay down till we have attained it. Assailed by a brutal executor of
brutal orders, we have combated in a just war; betrayed, a price
set on our heads, wounded in the most vital parts, we have not
transgressed the bounds of legitimate defence. The murders, the
depredations of the hostile band, irritated against us by most wicked
arts, have excited our horror, but never a reprisal. The soldier, his
arms once laid down, was for us only an unfortunate.

"But behold how the Austrian government provokes you against us, and
bids you come against us as a crusade! A crusade! The parody would be
ludicrous if it were not so cruel. A crusade against a people which,
in the name of Christ, under a banner blessed by the Vicar of Christ,
and revered by all the nations, fights to secure its indefeasible
rights.

"Oh! if you form against us this crusade,--we have already shown
the world what a people can do to reconquer its liberty, its
independence,--we will show, also, what it can do to preserve
them. If, almost unarmed, we have put to flight an army inured to
war,--surely, brothers, that army wanted faith in the cause for which
it fought,--can we fear that our courage will grow faint after our
triumph, and when aided by all our brothers of Italy? Let the Austrian
government send against us its threatened battalions, they will find
in our breasts a barrier more insuperable than the Alps. Everything
will be a weapon to us; from every villa, from every field, from every
hedge, will issue defenders of the national cause; women and children
will fight like men; men will centuple their strength, their courage;
and we will all perish amid the ruins of our city, before receiving
foreign rule into this land which at last we call ours.

"But this must not be. You, our brothers, must not permit it to be;
your honor, your interests, do not permit it. Will you fight in a
cause which you must feel to be absurd and wicked? You sink to the
condition of hirelings, and do you not believe that the Austrian
government, should it conquer us and Italy, would turn against you the
arms you had furnished for the conquest? Do you not believe it would
act as after the struggle with Napoleon? And are you not terrified by
the idea of finding yourself in co