Ah, they never trafficked in their blood, those two beloved provinces: it was their children whose breasts were the first to be pierced! Noble provin… - Léon Gambetta

As time goes on, the Republic, with its tendency to decentralisation, and its democratic prejudices pushed to extremes, will see its strength and its resources in soldiers melt away. Equality, for the army, means indiscipline and lack of cohesion; liberty means criticism pushed to the point of denigration and calumny against leaders...; fraternity is cosmopolitanism, humanitarianism, international stupidity; all these will doom us and, after a few years, they will throw us, an easy prey, under the feet of the Teutons, united with the Latins from across the Alps... We are slipping on to the slope of the South American republics... And what becomes of France in all this? That is the least concern of this degenerate race.

Go into your places of worship, believe, affirm, pray. What I demand is liberty, an equal liberty for you and for me, for my philosophy and for your religious beliefs. We are not the foes of religion; we want to see it set on a firm basis, free and inviolable.

On this day, seventy-eight years ago, our fathers founded the Republic, and—while the foreign invader was profaning the sacred soil of their country—vowed to live free or to die fighting. They kept their vow; they defeated the foreigner; and the Republic of 1792 lives in the memory of men as the symbol of heroism and national greatness... May the spirit of power that inspired our forefathers breathe into our own souls, and we, too, shall conquer!