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Despite Montaigne's social declarations in favor of justice and equality, many of his contemporaries were quick to point out his failure as mayor of Bordeaux. He did not contradict his critics:

“They say also that my administration passed over without leaving any mark or trace. Good! They moreover accuse my cessation in a time when everybody almost was convicted of doing too much” (III, 10).

Indeed, Montaigne was perceived as a “centrist” at a time when extremes assumed power on both sides (Catholics and Protestants). He preferred negotiation and moderation in a time of coups de force and violence. But the result of a position perceived as indecisive and feeble-minded was isolation. Montaigne could have done more, but the political price would have been higher still.

His service in public life led him to make some negative judgments upon it in the Essays. If the Essays had first been conceived as a means to enter public life, it slowly became a means to remove himself from it. Politics is about winners and losers, and Montaigne never felt comfortable with decisions that would please one camp to the detriment of another. He was even accused of nonchalance and indolence by his detractors:

“All public actions are subject to uncertain and various interpretations; for too many heads judge of them. Some say of this civic employment of mine (and I am willing to say a word or two about it, not that it is worth so much, but to give an account of my manners in such things), that I have behaved myself in it as a man who is too supine and of a languid temperament; and they have some color for what they say. I endeavored to keep my mind and my thoughts in repose” (III, 10).

If Montaigne failed in politics, it was perhaps because he was “too human”. At least that is the way he liked to represent his political career after his two terms as mayor of Bordeaux. His unconditional confidence in men would have led him to be deceived. After all, he valued nobiliary values (honor and keeping his word, for example) and deplored bourgeois values (efficiency and utility). Likewise, his difficulty in thinking of people as aggregates or groups sharing the same ideology (corporatism, or the “orders” – clergy, nobility, others – of the Ancien Régime) turned out to be a disadvantage for someone who only felt comfortable in individual relationships. Montaigne was never a party man, and his personal judgment did not accommodate political platforms or positions supported by what he perceived as unnatural alliances.

Montaigne was ultimately a lone wolf in his political behavior. The Essays enabled him to reflect upon his experiences in public life, and he ultimately chose to highlight the positive side. But he wanted to move on. After 1588 (i.e. in the manuscript additions of a copy of the 1588 edition of his Essays), Montaigne started to emphasize the private aspect of his book and distanced himself from his former public life.