140 Jeanette Needham. 
name of one alone whom they constantly deceive to besmirch 
themselves by the murder in cold blood, of their parents, their 
brothers, their friends, their allies, finally, of themselves.” 
Continuing, he made this stirring appeal: ‘French officers 
and soldiers, let us join against this culpable aristocracy, against 
this cowardly ministry, the impure source of the misfortunes 
of France. It is this monster that must be pursued to the 
last abyss; it is its members, constantly being renewed, that 
must be scattered at last; it is against these alone that our 
weapons must be turned; it is upon their trunk, mahgled and 
bloody, that we must charge without pity; it is upon it that we 
must wreak our just fury, then rear the edifice of liberty.”’ 
The same day an ‘“‘ancien camarade de régiment des gardes 
frangaises’’ wrote an Avis aux grenadiers et soldats du tiers- 
état,®° urging them to rise and share in the universal denunciation 
of aristocratic tyranny and participate in the regeneration of 
French society. He arraigned most bitterly the ‘military 
despotism”’ under which “for too long a time, a barbarous 
aristocracy has held our minds and bodies in an odious bondage.”’ 
‘““They have dared to establish as a law the most absurd injustice. 
They have had signed by the king, by a king who loves his sub- 
jects like children, the absolute prohibition of receiving into the 
officers’ rank any man who does not possess three degrees of 
nobility. They have pushed their extravagance to the point of 
refusing the insignia of valor to the soldier who has done prodigies 
of valor; had he the soul of a Brutus and the courage of an 
Alexander, he has been condemned to an eternal mediocrity 
because he made the mistake of being descended from Jean rather 
than from Pierre. ... In short, we say that the officer gains 
all without doing anything, while the soldier does all without 
gaining anything. The latter alone keeps watch, marches, acts, 
fights; he alone: truly employs in the service of the state all 
the moments of his unhappy life. And what, nevertheless, are 
the fruits of his long service? What rewards are reserved for 
so much perseverance and virtue? What aid is offered the dis- 
abled soldier? What asylums are open to the mutilated and 
66 Avis aux grenadiers et soldats du tiers-état. Par un ancien comarade du 
régiment des gardes frangaises. This pamphlet contains 16 pages. 
254 
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