He had not the genius to find a way out of the French entanglement or the skill to steer a constitutional monarchy between rival factions.
A conference attended by Kido, Okubo, Inouye, Ito, Itagaki and others entered into an agreement by which they pledged themselves to the principle of a constitutional monarchy and a legislative assembly.
It is, however, to be noticed that absolute monarchies are confined to the east of Europe and to Asia, Japan being the only established constitutional monarchy east of the Carpathians.
Her own preference for a moderate republic or a constitutional monarchy was quite sincere, and, even if it had not been so, her own character and Napoleon's were too much alike in some points to admit of their getting on together.
One of the earliest and most determined of the partisans of a constitutional monarchy under the duke of Orleans, he was deputy for Bayonne in July 1830, when his house in Paris became the headquarters of the revolutionary party.
