De Luchet then goes on to foretell precisely the events that were to take place three and four years later; he describes the position of a king who has to recognize masters above himself and to authorize their "abominable régime," to become the plaything of an ambitious and fanatical horde which has taken possession of his will. See him condemned to serve the passions of all that surround him ... to raise degraded men to power, to prostitute his judgement by choices that dishonour his prudence.... All this was exactly fulfilled during the reign of the Girondin ministry of 1792. The campaign of destruction carried out in the summer of 1793 is thus foretold: We do not mean to say that the country where the Illuminés reign will cease to exist, but it will fall into such a degree of humiliation that it will no longer count in politics, that the population will diminish, that the inhabitants who resist the inclination to pass into a foreign land will no longer enjoy the happiness of consideration, nor the charms of society, nor the gifts of commerce. And de Luchet ends with this despairing appeal to the powers of Europe: Masters of the world, cast your eyes on a desolated multitude, listen to their cries, their tears, their hopes. A mother asks you to restore her son, a wife her husband, your cities for the fine arts that have fled from them, the country for citizens, the fields for cultivators, religion for forms of worship, and Nature for beings of which she is worthy. Five years after these words were written the countryside of France was desolate, art and commerce were destroyed, and women following the tumbril that carried Fouquier-Tinville to the guillotine cried out: "Give me back my brother, my son, my husband!" So was this amazing prophecy fulfilled. Yet not one word has history to say on the subject! The warning of de Luchet has fallen on deaf ears amongst posterity as amongst the men of his own day.