M. Thiers, the great leader, did not find his rule uncontested. Brought into power as the indispensable man to guide the nation out of war, his conceit was somewhat tickled and he wanted to remain necessary. Though over seventy he had shown the energy and endurance of a man in his prime joined to the wisdom and experience of a life spent in public service and the study of history. Elected by an anti-Republican Assembly and himself originally a Royalist, the formulator also of the Bordeaux Compact, he began to feel, nevertheless, in all sincerity that a conservative republic would be the best government, and his vanity made him think himself its best leader. This conviction was intensified for a while by his successful tactics in threatening to resign, when thwarted, and thus bringing the Assembly to terms. But he tried the scheme once too often. The majority in the Assembly was not, in fact, anxious to give free rein to Thiers, and it had wanted to avoid committing itself definitely to a republic. It wanted also to insure its own continuation as long as possible, contrary to the wishes of advanced Republicans like Gambetta, who declared that the National Assembly no longer stood for the expression of the popular will and should give way to a real constituent assembly to organize a permanent republic. The first endeavor of the Royalists was to bring about a restoration of the monarchy. The princes of the Orléanist branch were readmitted to France and restored to their privileges. A fusion between the two branches of the house of Bourbon was absolutely necessary to accomplish anything. The members of the younger or constitutionalist Orléans line, and notably its leader, the comte de Paris, were disposed to yield to the representative of the legitimist branch, the comte de Chambord. He was an honorable and upright man, yet one who in statesmanship and religion was unable to understand anything since the Revolution. He had not been in France for over forty years, he was permeated with a religious mystical belief not only in the divinity of royalty, but in his own position as God-given (_Dieudonné_ was one of his names) and the only saviour of France. Moreover, he could not forgive his cousins the fact that their great-grandfather had voted for the execution of Louis XVI. So he treated their advances haughtily, declined to receive the comte de Paris, and issued a manifesto to the country proclaiming his unwillingness to give up the white flag for the tricolor. Henry V could not let anybody tear from his hand the white standard of Henry IV, of Francis I, and of Jeanne d'Arc.