In spite of this quick recovery, France for the next few years played an absolutely inactive and comparatively unimportant part in European affairs. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1876, for instance, the republic declared and maintained a strict neutrality. Internally, the republic continued to have to contend with many difficulties. Again and again strong opposition to the republican form of government showed itself, expressed at one time by the followers of the Bonapartist party, at another by those of the Royalist party. However, all of these dissensions had no actual result, and in spite of them the republic continued to progress and to flourish to such an extent that, only seven years after one of the most disastrous defeats that any European nation had ever suffered, France was able, in 1878, to invite the rest of the world to witness at Paris the most wonderful international exposition that had ever been staged in the history of mankind. Early in the following year President MacMahon resigned, having been practically forced to this step by public sentiment which disapproved of and feared his monarchistic leanings. M. Grevy was elected as his successor. The early summer of this year (1879) brought death to the only son of Napoleon III while he was fighting under the English flag during the campaign against the Zulus in South Africa, and this event practically ended all danger of a Napoleonic restoration, because the representatives of the Napoleonic family left were neither closely enough related to Napoleon III nor possessed the necessary ability to accomplish a change of government.