In the build-up to this past week's mass protests in Burkina Faso that ended Blaise Compaore's 27-year rule, statesmen from French President Francois Hollande to former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan sent him messages with increasing urgency.

The meaning was clear: step aside with reputation intact and a high-profile international job, or risk an undignified exit.

But Compaore stood firm. Even with hundreds of thousands protesting his plan to rejig the constitution to extend his rule, he still hoped to outmaneuver his rivals one more time.

The former soldier had survived many attempts to unseat him since he seized power in a 1987 coup that killed his former brother in arms Thomas Sankara, a leftwing hero.

In doing so, Compaore gradually reinvented himself from a notorious backer of rebel groups and ally of the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to a wily, regional peace-broker.

In the end, however, the man popularly known as 'Beautiful Blaise' spectacularly misjudged the people he had ruled with a mixture of democracy and repression for nearly three decades.

"He played for many years and he won. This was one game too many and he lost," Gilles Yabi, an independent West African political analyst, told Reuters. "He miscalculated and didn’t think there would be this level of protest."

Realizing his mistake too late, Compaore withdrew on Thursday his plan to change Burkina Faso's 1991 constitution so he could stand for re-election. But protests intensified and he had no choice but to flee the Kosyam presidential palace and seek haven in neighboring Ivory Coast, governed by his firm ally Alassane Ouattara.

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