Thus ended the militia." The compression that his spirit had endured was shown by the rapid energy with which he sought a change of scene and oblivion of his woes.

Within little more than a month after the scene just described, Gibbon was in Paris beginning the grand tour.
With that keen sense of the value of time which marked him, Gibbon with great impartiality cast up and estimated the profit and loss of his "bloodless campaigns." Both have been alluded to already.

He summed up with great fairness in the entry that he made in his journal on the evening of the day on which he recovered his liberty.

"I am glad that the militia has been, and glad that it is no more." This judgment he confirmed thirty years afterwards, when he composed his Memoirs.

"My principal obligation to the militia was the making me an Englishman and a soldier.