The expectations of retribution were destined to be long unfulfilled. The manifestoes of the Allies acted with singular power and significance, producing combinations not at all expected. The royalists, the constitutionalists, who still remained in France, prepared to resist operations, the avowed object of which was the dismemberment of France itself, and not the restoration of a purified monarchy. They were willing to support even their mortal enemies within the land, in resisting the newly declared enemies of the whole land, who were advancing along two frontiers. The republicans were roused to the most powerful and successful exertions in order to repel a slow and cautious, but victorious enemy from their frontiers, and even the émigrés, who were scattered all along the banks of the Rhine, protested loudly against a scheme, which not only menaced the integrity of France as it then existed, but threatened to deprive the monarchy of some of its fairest provinces, if the legitimate line of their sovereigns should ever be restored. No contrivance could have been devised so well calculated to reunite the greatest possible number of Frenchmen in opposition to a counter-revolution, and to render all others indifferent to the progress of the allied arms, as the proclamation of the Prince of Coburg. Some few, indeed, thought with me, but mine were doubtless boyish thoughts: for I have ever remarked that it is experience, and the hard lessons of the world, which bring moderation. Father Bonneville seldom talked upon these subjects with me; for he had rightly no great opinion of my judgment in matters of which I could have had but a very vague knowledge, and he little knew how often and how deeply I thought upon such questions. The siege and capture of Mayence, however: the inactivity of Custine, and the retreat of the whole of the French armies within the frontier line, seemed to insure to us perfect security, for a long time to come, in our calm and pleasant retreat upon the banks of the Rhine: when suddenly burst forth that wild and vengeful spirit of reaction which armed all France, almost as one man, against attacks from without, and soon retrieved all she had lost under a weak government and inexperienced commander. Toward the end of the year, our situation became somewhat perilous. After a long period of successes, the fruits of which were all lost by indecision or procrastination, the allied armies found themselves the assailed rather than the assailers, the conquered rather than the conquerors; and the fierce spirit of the Frank, the most war-loving, if not the most warlike, of all the nations of the earth was soon ready to carry the flaming sword into all the neighboring lands.