Your princes were compelled to fly from you, and the events in Spain have furnished an irrefragable proof of the absolute necessity of that measure .-- You were ordered not to defend yourselves, and you did not defend yourselves.

Junot offered to make you happy, and your happiness has consisted in being treated with greater cruelty than the most ferocious conquerors inflict on the people whom they have subdued by force of arms and after the most obstinate resistance.

You have been despoiled of your princes, your laws, your usages, your customs, your property, your liberty, even your lives, and your holy religion, which your enemies never have respected, however they may, according to their custom, have promised to protect it, and however they may affect and pretend to have any sense of it themselves.
Your nobility has been annihilated,--its property confiscated in punishment of its fidelity and loyalty.

You have been basely dragged to foreign countries, and compelled to prostrate yourselves at the feet of the man who is the author of all your calamities, and who, by the most horrible perfidy, has usurped your government, and rules you with a sceptre of iron.

Even now your troops have left your borders, and are travelling in chains to die in the defence of him who has oppressed you; by which means his deep malignity may accomplish his purpose,--by destroying those who should constitute your strength, and by rendering their lives subservient to his triumphs, and to the savage glory to which he aspires .-- Spain beheld your slavery, and the horrible evils which followed it, with mingled sensations of grief and despair.