Their blood cries out for
vengeance."
Beginning in a sullen mutter, the indignation that moved his hearers
swelled up to express itself in a roar of anger.
"Citizens of Nantes, the motherland is in peril. Let us march to
her defence. Let us proclaim it to the world that we recognize
that the measures to liberate the Third Estate from the slavery in
which for centuries it has groaned find only obstacles in those
orders whose phrenetic egotism sees in the tears and suffering of
the unfortunate an odious tribute which they would pass on to their
generations still unborn. Realizing from the barbarity of the means
employed by our enemies to perpetuate our oppression that we have
everything to fear from the aristocracy they would set up as a
constitutional principle for the governing of France, let us declare
ourselves at once enfranchised from it.
"The establishment of liberty and equality should be the aim of
every citizen member of the Third Estate; and to this end we should
stand indivisibly united, especially the young and vigorous,
especially those who have had the good fortune to be born late enough
to be able to gather for themselves the precious fruits of the
philosophy of this eighteenth century.
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