He had broken the "Compact of Bordeaux" and had shown his hand.

The Assembly now knew that he was a Republican.

Finally, he made a dignified speech to the Assembly, justifying his conduct in the past, appealing from the verdict of parties to the impartial tribunal of History, and prophesying that the welfare of France was bound up with the maintenance of the Conservative Republic.

The Assembly by a majority of fourteen decided on a course of action that he disapproved, and he therefore resigned (May 24, 1873).
It seems that History will justify his appeal to her tribunal.

Looking, not at the occasional shifts that he used in order to disunite his opponents, but rather at the underlying motives that prompted his resolve to maintain that form of government which least divided his countrymen, posterity has praised his conduct as evincing keen insight into the situation, a glowing love for France before which all his earliest predilections vanished, and a masterly skill in guiding her from the abyss of anarchy, civil war, and bankruptcy that had but recently yawned at her feet.