Charles Louis, the opera Douffe duke of Lucca, who had coquetted with Liberalism in the past, now refused to make any concessions to his subjects, and in Ferdinand III.
In Modena Duke Francis, ambitious of enlarging his territories, coquetted with the Carbonari of Paris, and opened indirect negotiations with Menotti, the revolutionary leader in his state, believing that he might assist him in his plans.
The attitude of several of his colleagues was more equivocal, but though they coquetted with French financiers in the hope of obtaining the support of the Paris Bourse for Italian securities, the precipitate renewal of the alliance destroyed all probability of a close understanding with France.
Bismarck coquetted with him as the representative of a force that might help him to combat the Prussian liberals; in 1878, in a speech before the Reichstag, he spoke of him with deep respect, as a man of the greatest amiability and ability from whom much could be learned.
King James I., who had coquetted twenty years previously with Clement VIII., and then had avenged the Gunpowder Plot (1605) by the most stringent regulation of his Roman Catholic subjects, was now dazzled by the project of the Spanish marriage.