Address to the Troops on Entering Vienna, May, 1809.
"In a month after the enemy passed the Inn, on the same day, at the same hour, we entered Vienna. Their militia, their levies en masse, their ramparts, created by the impotent rage of the princes of the House of Lorraine, have fallen at the first sight of you. The princes of that house have abandoned their capital, not like the soldiers of honor, who yield to circumstance and the reverses of war, but as perjurers haunted by the sense of their crime. In flying from Vienna, their adieus to its inhabitants have been murder and conflagration. Like Medea, they have with their own hands massacred their own offspring. Soldiers: The people of Vienna, according to the expression of a deputation of the suburbs, abandoned, widowed, shall be the object of your regards. I take its good citizens under my special protection. As to the wicked and turbulent, they shall meet with exemplary justice. Soldiers: Be kind to the poor peasants; to those worthy people who have so many claims upon your esteem. Let us not manifest any pride at our success. Let us see in it but a proof of that divine justice which punishes the ungrateful and the perjured."
