Norfolk Gazette And Publick Ledger

Ghent, May 3.

DECLARATION.

Louis, by the grace of God, king of France and Navarre—To all our subjects greeting:

France, free and respected, was enjoying by our care, the peace and prosperity which had been restored to it, when the escape of Napoleon Bonaparte from the Island of Elba, and his appearance on the French territory, seduced to revolt the greatest part of the army. Supported by this illegal force, he has made usurpation and tyranny succeed to the equitable empire of the laws. The efforts and the indignation of our subjects, his majesty on the throne, and that of the national representation, have yielded to the violence of a mutinous soldiery, whom treacherous and perjured leaders have seduced by deceitful hopes.

This criminal success having excited in Europe just alarms, formidable armies have been put in march towards France, and all the powers have decreed the destruction of the tyrant. Our first care, as our first duty has been, to cause a just and necessary distinction to be recognized between the disturber of the peace, and the oppressed French nation.

Faithful to the principles which have always guided them, the sovereigns, our allies, have declared their intentions to respect the independence of France, and to guarantee the integrity of its territory. They have given us the most solemn assurances that they will not interfere in the internal government, and it is on these considerations we have resolved to accept their generous assistance. The usurper has in vain attempted to sow dissensions among them, and, by a feigned moderation, to disarm their just resentment. His whole life has forever deprived him of the power of imposing on good faith. Despairing of the success of his artifices, he seeks, for the second time to precipitate with himself into the abyss, the nation over which he causes terror to reign. He renews all the departments of administration, in order to fill them wholly with men sold to his tyrannical projects; he disorganizes the national guard, whose blood he intends to lavish in a sacrilegious war; he begins to abolish rights which have been long since abolished—he convokes a pretended Champ de Mai, to multiply the accomplices of his usurpation; he promises to proclaim there in the midst of bayonets, a derisory imitation of that constitution, which, after 25 years of disorders and calamities had for the first time, founded on a solid basis the liberty and the happiness of France; finally, he has consummated the greatest of all crimes towards our subjects, by attempting to separate them from their sovereign, to tear them away from our family, whose existence for so many ages has been identified with that of the nation itself, is still at this moment the only thing that can guarantee the stability of the legitimacy of the government, the rights and the liberties of the people, the mutual interests of France and of Europe.

In these circumstances we rely with entire confidence on the sentiments of our subjects, who cannot fail to perceive the dangers and the miseries to which they are exposed by a man whom assembled Europe has devoted to public vengeance. All the powers know the disposition of France—we are assured of their amicable views, and of their support.

Frenchmen! seize the means of deliverance which are offered to your courage. Rally round your king your father, the defender of all your rights—hasten to him, to assist him in saving you, to put an end to a revolt, the prolongation of which might become fatal to our country, and by the punishment of the wretch of so many evils to accelerate the era of a general reconciliation.

Given at Ghent the second day of the month of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and fifteen, and the twentieth year of our reign.

(Signed) LOUIS.

(Journal Universel, May 5.)