But the main point of all, that which assured and confirmed and strengthened his leadership under the most difficult and dangerous circumstances, was his resolute opposition to compromise. This was contrary to all the ideas of political strategy and tactics which then prevailed in France. "Men became Ministers solely on condition that they refused when in power to do that which they had promised when in opposition"--quite the English method, in fact. He himself never failed to denounce nominal Republicans who set themselves stubbornly against reform and progress in every shape, as mere reactionists in disguise. They were, in fact, the staunch buttresses of that bourgeois Republic of which Clemenceau not long afterwards said to me, "_La République, mon ami, c'est l'Empire républicanisé_." It was indeed a republicanised Empire which best suited the leading French politicians of that day. For at first bourgeois domination of the narrowest and meanest kind, leading, so the reactionaries hoped, to the restoration of the monarchy, had its will of Paris and all that Paris at its best stood for. As we look back upon that period of pettifoggery in high places, the wonder is that the Royalists were not successful. If they had had a king worth fighting for they might have been; for more than one President was certainly not unfavourable to the monarchy or empire. Prime Ministers were similarly tainted with reaction, and the army was none too loyal to the Republic. CHAPTER VI FROM GAMBETTA TO CLEMENCEAU Medici, Mazarin, Riquetti-Mirabeau, Buonaparte, Gambetta--these names recall the great influence which Italians have had upon French affairs. Few, if any, nations have allowed persons of foreign extraction to lead them as France permitted the five recorded above. Much, too, as these Italians were affected by their French surroundings, there is something in them all quite different from what we regard as distinctively French intelligence and general capacity. Possibly that gave them their power of control. They had that faculty of detachment, of looking at the situation from without, which is so invaluable to anyone who has to play a great part in the world. Some of them could so far survey, as well as enter into, the peculiarities of the French mind that they could play upon its weaknesses as well as call forth its strength. Yet, with all their genius, the four men named failed to accomplish what they set out to achieve, and none left behind him amid his own immediate followers those who were capable of carrying on his work.