Talk:.NzE.MjY1MzI

have deprived these misguided fanatics of the empire of saints, with the calendar of the Republic; remove them from the empire of priests by teaching them the French language.

       	In the departments of Haut & of Bas-Rhin, who called, in conjunction with the traitors, the Prussians and Austrians to our overrun borders? Is it not the resident of the countryside who speaks the same language as our enemies, & who thinks of himself much more as their brother & fellow citizen, than as the brother & fellow citizen of the French who speak a different language & who have other customs?
       	The power of the identity of language was so great that in the retreat of Germany, more than 20 thousand men from the Bas-Rhin countryside emigrated. The empire of language and intelligence that reigned between our German enemies & our fellow citizens of the Bas-Rhin department is so undeniable that they were not stopped in their emigration by any of those things which men hold most dear: the soil that was witness to their birth, their home gods & the ground they had fertilized. Differences in conditions and pride produced the first emigration which gave France billions; the difference in language, lack of education, and ignorance produced a second emigration that is leaving nearly an entire department without farmers. Thus the counter-revolution has been established on some borders by taking refuge in the strange or barbaric idioms that should have been eradicated.
       	In another corner of the Republic there is a new but antique people, shepherds & navigators, who never were either slaves or masters, whom Caesar could not conquer in the middle of his triumphant pursuit through the Gaul , whom Spain could not hurt in the midst of its revolutions, & that the despotism of our tyrants