The historical reputation of Napoleon III is far below that of his uncle, and had been heavily tarnished by the empire’s military failures in Mexico and against Prussia. Victor Hugo portrayed him as "Napoleon the Small" ("Napoléon le Petit"), a mere mediocrity, in contrast with Napoleon I "The Great", presented as a military and administrative genius. In France, such arch-opposition from the age's central literary figure, whose attacks on Napoleon III were obsessive and powerful, made it impossible for a very long time to assess his reign objectively. Karl Marx, in "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon", famously mocked Napoleon III by saying "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historical facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce." Napoleon III has often been seen as an authoritarian but ineffectual leader who brought France into dubious, and ultimately disastrous, foreign military adventures.