Did he bring a great political revolution? No. His whole programme was, "To maintain order and liberty and push on the war."[49] Cremieux had called the Bonapartists "republicans going astray." Gambetta believed, or pretended to believe, in the patriotism of the reactionists. A few pontifical zouaves who offered themselves, the abject submission of the Bonapartist generals, the wheedling of a few bishops,[50] sufficed to delude him. He continued the tactics of his predecessors to conciliate everybody; he spared even the functionaries. In the department of Finance and Public Instruction, he and his colleagues forbade the dismissal of any official. The War Office for a long time remained under the supreme direction of a Bonapartist, and always carried on an underhand war against the defence. Gambetta maintained in some prefectures the same employes who had drawn up the proscription lists of the 2nd December, 1851. With the exception of a few justices of the peace and a small number of magistrates, nothing was changed in the political _personnel_, the whole subordinate administration remaining intact. Was he wanting in authority? His colleagues of the council did not even dare to raise their voices; the prefects knew only him; the generals put on the manner of school-boys in his presence. Was a _personnel_ wanting? The Leagues contained solid elements; the small bourgeoisie and proletariat might have given the _cadres_. Gambetta saw here only marplots, chaos, federalism, and roughly dismissed their delegates. Each department possessed groups of known, tried republicans, to whom the administration and the part of spurring the Defence under the direction of commissioners might have been intrusted. Gambetta refused almost everywhere to refer to them; the few whom he appointed he knew how to fetter closely. He vested all power in the prefects, most of them ruins of 1848, or his colleagues of the Conference Mole, nerveless, loquacious, timorous, anxious to have themselves well spoken of, and many anxious to feather themselves a nest in their department. The Defence in the provinces set out on these two crutches--the War Office and the prefects. On this absurd plan of conciliation the Government was conducted. Did the new delegate at least bring a powerful military conception? "No one in the Government, neither General Trochu nor General Leflo, no one had suggested a military operation of any kind."[51] Did he at least possess that quick penetration which makes up for want of experience? After twenty days in the provinces he comprehended the military situation no better than he had done at Paris. The capitulation of Metz drew from him indignant proclamations, but he understood no more than his colleagues of the Hotel-de-Ville that this was the very moment to make a supreme effort.