By this time the renown of Paoli had filled all Europe. As a statesman he had skilfully used the European entanglements both of the Bourbon-Hapsburg alliance made in 1756, and of the alliances consequent to the Seven Years' War, for whatever possible advantage might be secured to his people and their cause. As a general he had found profit even in defeat, and had organized his little forces to the highest possible efficiency, displaying prudence, fortitude, and capacity. His personal character was blameless, and could be fearlessly set up as a model. He was a convincing orator and a wise legislator. Full of sympathy for his backward compatriots, he knew their weaknesses, and could avoid the consequences, while he recognized at the same time their virtues, and made the fullest use of them. Above all, he had the wide horizon of a philosopher, understanding fully the proportions and relations to each other of epochs and peoples, not striving to uplift Corsica merely in her own interest, but seeking to find in her regeneration a leverage to raise the world to higher things. So gracious, so influential, so far-seeing, so all-embracing was his nature, that Voltaire called him "the lawgiver and the glory of his people," while Frederick the Great dedicated to him a dagger with the inscription, "Libertas, Patria." The shadows in his character were that he was imperious and arbitrary; so overmastering that he trained the Corsicans to seek guidance and protection, thus preventing them from acquiring either personal independence or self-reliance. Awaiting at every step an impulse from their adored leader, growing timid in the moment when decision was imperative, they did not prove equal to their task. Without his people Paoli was still a philosopher; without him they became in succeeding years a byword, and fell supinely into the arms of a less noble subjection. In this regard the comparison between him and Washington, so often instituted, utterly breaks down.