But had the restoration of Louis XVI. taken place by the armed hand of the emigrants and the allies, the final event of the war must still have been distant. Almost the whole body of the kingdom was diametrically opposed to the restoration of the absolute monarchy, with all its evils; and yet it must have been the object of the emigrants, in case of success, again to establish, not only royalty in its utmost prerogative, but all the oppressive privileges and feudal subjections which the Revolution had swept away. Much was to have been dreaded too, from the avidity of the strangers, whose arms had assisted the imprisoned Louis, and much more from what has since been aptly termed the Reaction, which must have taken place upon a counter-revolution. It was greatly to be apprehended, that the emigrants, always deeming too lightly of the ranks beneath them, incensed by the murder of their friends, and stung by their own private wrongs and insults, would, if successful, have treated the Revolution not as an exertion of the public will of France to free the country from public grievances, but as a _Jacquerie_, (which in some of its scenes it too much resembled,) a domestic treason of the vassals against their liege lords. It was the will of Providence, that the experience of twenty years and upwards should make manifest, that in the hour of victory itself, concessions to the defeated, as far as justice demands them, is the only mode of deriving permanent and secure peace. [Sidenote: EMIGRANT REGIMENTS DISBANDED.] The retreat of the Prussians was executed in the best possible order, and in the most leisurely manner. But if to them it was a measure of disgrace, it was to the unfortunate emigrants who had joined their standard, the signal of utter despair and ruin. These corps were composed of gentlemen, who, called suddenly and unprovided from their families and homes, had only brought with them such moderate sums of money as could be raised in an emergency, which they had fondly conceived would be of very brief duration. They had expended most of their funds in providing themselves with horses, arms, and equipments--some part must have been laid out in their necessary subsistence, for they served chiefly at their own expense--and perhaps, as might have been expected among high-spirited and high-born youths, their slender funds had not been managed with an economical view of the possibility of the reverses which had taken place. In the confusion and disorder of the retreat, their baggage was plundered by their auxiliaries, that is to say, by the disorderly Prussian soldiers, who had shaken loose all discipline; and they were in most cases reduced for instant maintenance to sell their horses at such paltry prices as they could obtain. To end the history of such of this devoted army as had been engaged in the Duke of Brunswick's campaign, they were disbanded at Juliers, in November 1792.