Public Address of the People of Metz to the Government of the Gallic Union

[CombatWombat]

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Estimés Seigneurs,

This address is in response to your public address to the people of Gallia and to dubious hoaxes and surreptitious calls on the network.

We, the people of Lorraine, have always been loyal to the government of New Paris. Following the call of the Crown, we shed our blood alongside the Royal Forces during the invasion of Sirius. Despite the defeat and the fall of the Monarchy, we stayed loyal to Gallia and stood stalwartly at the defense of our Great House when the treacherous Kusarians invaded our space. As the doorway to the heart of Gallia, Lorraine needed to hold, and so we held and died to protect the rest of Gallia, ex-royalist and republicans alike. Our vehement resistance broke the teeth of the Kusarian invasion force and repelled them back to the hole they crawled from, hopefully never to see them again. And we suffered the repercussions of our actions - the Metz planetary mirror array destroyed and vital terraforming project halted, leaving the populace with scarce food supplies and climate getting colder on a daily basis.

But we are the proud sons and daughters of Gallia. These ordeals did not scare or shaken us, they challenged us to prove once again our resilience, strength, and unity. And when the last of the Kusarians were kicked out of Gallia by mighty combined Armada of the Republic, the Duchy, the Minarchy, and the Enclave - we rejoiced at seeing the unity of Gallia for once and what greatness it can achieve. And naturally, we welcomed the establishment of the Gallic Union - to unite all the sons and daughters of Gallia under the common banner. The betrayal of Kusari and their invasion under the preposterous accusations of Gallia secretly hoarding weapons of mass destruction was indiscriminate to royalists and republicans alike. This was a sign for all the Gauls to unite should we want peace and stability for our children. And while it saddened us deeply to see the monarchy gone, we the people of Lorraine understand its dissolution as the necessary step and a compromise for the unification of the Gauls separated for so long by the figures of the King and his nobility.

It appears, however, that some elements within Gallia are still pointing their guns at their fellow countrymen. They do not see or refuse to see what threats fractured Gallia faces. Too obvious was that the Confederacy was still-born, not harmonizing the interests of the major stakeholders and appearing weak both on the inside and the outside, effectively luring Kusari to attack. These traitors of the Gallic nation covet fractioning even greater than that of the Confederacy and thus the weakening of Gallia is what they desire. They want more wars, more deaths of their fellow Gauls, and plunging the rest of us into servitude to foreign masters. Does it not render them traitors to their ancestors and all people of Gallia? Whether these traitors are slaves to their own delirious ideas or puppets to foreign masters, their incompetence will be their undoing. They are now calling for Lorraine to secede from the Gallic Union and seek our own destiny. But we, the people of Lorraine, see unity with the rest of Gallia as our destiny. We see these traitors for who they really are and will not succumb to their vile words. Perfectly well we know that the reason for the scarcity of food supplies and devastated infrastructure is the invasion of Kusari, encouraged by the fractioned and weakened Confederacy. They call our military leadership "war criminals" - we call them "heroes". They say the Union took our freedom by making us serve in the army for three years - but we have always taken pride serving in the army of the King and now the Union without any obligations for it is the duty of every Gaul to defend our Fatherland and be competent at it. They claim that they saved us from famine, but we know that the regular supplies from Ille-de-France averted the famine and the "help" of the traitors was but a drop in an ocean of endless food supplies run by the State. We, the people of Lorraine, know whom to trust and the esteemed Government can be certain that on Lorraine it has full support in their course of action.

Nevertheless, the existence of such traitors of their own people is a demonstration that not everyone can be loyal. To that end, the local authorities of Metz have enacted a decree organizing militias and neighborhood watches to patrol the cities day and night to prevent the spread of enemy propaganda and to catch filthy traitors. This said, we have only one request: if the responsible for these hoaxes are caught, we demand their trial be held on Metz so that the people they try to badmouth look them in the eyes and decide their fate. We assure you, they will get the righteous judgment they deserve.

May God bless our nation and our people.

On Behalf of the People Signed: Max Tijdens, praefect of Bellecroix de Metz
On 27/09/744

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