National Gazette

For the National Gazette.

Mr. FRENEAU,

FOR some time past I have had it in my mind to convey to the public, thro' the channel of your paper, an historical list of the persons who have been massacred by command of those European tigers, who have the assurance to call themselves the lords and fathers of their people. And this I do, in part, for the amusement of those in this country, who seem so highly enamoured of royalty, or to speak more properly, of despotism.

No sooner, however, had I fairly entered upon my task, than I was convinced, from the multiplicity of royal crimes, that whole volumes would be necessary to accomplish my purpose. It was originally my design to proceed regularly back from the age in which we live to those remote times when history mingles with fable; beginning with the Machiavellian king [Frederick II] who brought the military art to perfection; and ascending gradually to the times when flourished this fierce Nimrod, the Frederick of his age, [said to be the first who invented the infernal art of conducting men to slaughter, to the cadence of drums and fife]

Finding it impracticable fully to accomplish my purpose, I shall content myself with recapitulating two facts which are too recent to be called in question. The first is extracted from the works of the late king of Prussia. It appears from the modest calculation of this renowned military butcher, that a war of seven years, that is to say, a war from 1756 to 1763, cost Europe eight hundred and sixty six thousand men; and that during the long reign of Louis the 14th, no less than fifteen millions of men fell victims to royal ambition. It is as useless then as it is endless to follow these despotic barbarians thro' all their ambitious wars, with a view of justifying the French of the present age in crushing into the dust one of those monsters, of a race stained with human blood and carnage.

They find their thrones in a most tottering condition, and are exerting their last efforts to prevent the total fall of despotism. In vain will they heap victims upon victims—fall they must—and their destruction will be accelerated by the very resistance they make.

Let us then leave this monster, despotism, in that gulph of annihilation where she must soon forever remain, and unveil the murderous acts of fanaticism, that monster with Medusa's head, who has palsied all the human virtues, and transformed benevolent man into a ferocious monster; who has engendered ignorance, the most hideous plague of our species:—

Let us break that magic charm which has proved so fatal to the world, and which tho' perishing has still strength enough to afflict mankind. By exposing its baneful effects let us render it odious to those who may still be exposed to be led astray.

An enumeration of the crimes committed in the name of the God of peace has been not very difficult to make. History, for a long time back, is clear in this matter; whether it has been that religious wars have seemed more odious than others in the eyes of despots themselves, or that the proscribed and persecuted sects have been more assiduous in recording the history of their sufferings for the benefit of their posterity, I know not. It is likely however that by so circumstantially recording these bloody extravagances, they were not without hopes that their descendants would one day profit from the errors of the past, and avenge the blood of their ancestors.

I shall now proceed to particularize the
Courts, more strikingly destructive to the human race, since priests have had influence enough with the civil power to prevent a free toleration of religious opinion.

[To be continued in our next.]