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[TALLEYRAND
A BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY]

TALLEYRAND

A Biographical Study
By
JOSEPH McCABE
Author of “Peter Abélard,” “Saint Augustine,” &c.
WITH 25 PORTRAITS
INCLUDING A PHOTOGRAVURE FRONTISPIECE
London
Hutchinson & Co.
Paternoster Row
1906

PREFACE

Sainte-Beuve, after an attempt that one cannot describe as successful, declared that “it is hardly possible to write the life of M. de Talleyrand.” Frédéric Masson noticed the figure of the great diplomatist as he passed with a disdainful “ce Sphinx.” Carlyle forgot his dogmatism for a moment, and pronounced Talleyrand “one of the strangest things ever seen or like to be seen, an enigma for future ages.” Even a woman of penetration, Mme. de Staël, who had known him well, assures us that he was “the most impenetrable and most inexplicable of men.”

There were a few who thought that the long-sealed “Memoirs” of the Prince, which were published only a few years ago, would reveal every secret. They forgot that these were the work of the man who held (improving on Voltaire) that “speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts”—the man who conducted his exit from the world with all the art he had used at the Congress of Vienna. Yet, if the “Memoirs” have thrown no light, or only a deceptive light, on some of the obscurer passages in Talleyrand’s career, they have at least filled in our picture of his personality, so that the tradition of its inscrutability must be surrendered. There has been a prolonged and microscopic research into the age or ages of Talleyrand,—the Old Regime, the Revolution, the Consulate, the Restoration, and the second Revolution. The memoirs of nearly all his contemporaries have seen the light, and official records everywhere have been examined. I have made a careful use of all this research up to date, and find it possible to present a consistent and intelligible personality.

Lady Blennerhassett included the material of the “Memoirs” in the biography of Talleyrand that she wrote ten years ago. But a good deal of light has since been thrown on the earlier part of his career, and in this regard I gratefully avail myself of the investigations of M. de Lacombe. Moreover, Lady Blennerhassett is chiefly occupied with the Prince’s diplomatic action. His personality does not stand out very clearly from her very crowded canvas. That is an inherent disadvantage in writing the life of a great diplomatist. However, in spite of the alluring character of the stretch of history across which the thread of Talleyrand’s life passes, I have tried to keep it in its place as a background, and to bring out into the fullest light the elusive figure of the man who made and unmade a dozen oaths of loyalty.

J. M.

London, June, 1906.

CONTENTS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

This Study is chiefly based on the following Works:

1. Talleyrand’s “Mémoires” (edit, de Broglie, 5 volumes); Official Correspondence from London in 1792, during the Directoire, during the Vienna Congress, and from London in 1830-4 (edit. Pallain); Letters to Napoleon, Mme. Adélaide, D’Hauterive, Choiseul-Gouffier, the Duchess of Courland, Bacourt, Royer-Collard, Guizot, and others; and his separately published Speeches and other Documents.

2. “Procès-verbal Historique des Actes du Clergé;” “Procès-verbal de l’Assemblée Nationale;” “Histoire Parlementaire” (Bouchez et Roux); and the Memoirs or Letters of Arnault, Barante, Carnot, Consalvi, von Gagern, Mme. de Genlis, Guizot, Lauzun, Las Cases, Macdonald, Meneval, Miot de Melito, Morellet, Napoleon, Pasquier, Mme. de Rémusat, Savary, Senfft, and Stapfer.

3. Of Biographies or Biographical Sketches of Talleyrand the chief are those by Lady Blennerhassett (the first authority on his diplomatic career), Brougham, Castellane, Castille, Lacombe (the best authority on his ecclesiastical career), Sir H. Bulwer Lytton (a very generous but imperfectly informed study), Mignet, Montarlot, and Place et Florens. The following writers are too imaginative or too prejudiced to be of much value: Bastide, Colmache, Marcade, Michaud, Pichot, Sainte-Beuve, Sallé, Stewartson, Touchard-Lafosse, Vars, and Villemarest.

4. Subsidiary information has been derived chiefly from “Aus dem Eheleben eines Bischofs” (anon.); Abt’s “Lebensende des F. Talleyrand;” Aulard’s “Histoire Politique de la Révolution Française;” Caro’s “La Fin du XVIII Siècle;” Crétineau-Joly’s “Bonaparte et le Concordat;” Darcy’s “L’ambassade de Talleyrand à Londres;” Demaria’s “Benevento sotto il Principe Talleyrand;” Gazier’s “Etude sur l’Histoire Réligieuse de la Révolution Française;” Goncourt’s “Histoire de la Société Française Pendant la Révolution;” Louandre’s “La Noblesse Française sous l’ancienne Monarchie;” Mongras’ “La fin d’une Société;” Michelet’s “Histoire de la Révolution;” Rambaud et Levisse’s “Histoire Générale;” Rose’s “Life of Napoleon I.;” Sloane’s “Life of Napoleon;” Taine’s “Les Origines de la France Contemporaine;” Thier’s “Révolution,” “Consulat,” and “Empire.”

ILLUSTRATIONS

CHAPTER I

THE TRAINING OF A DIPLOMATIST

The life-story of Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, as I propose to write it, begins when, in his third or fourth year, he falls off a chest of drawers and permanently injures his foot. That wrench of muscles and tendons, making him limp for life, led to a perverse action on the part of his educators that did equal violence to an excellent natural disposition. They say now that the education of a child begins a hundred years before he is born. In the case of Talleyrand you may just as well say a thousand. On his father’s side he came of one of the oldest noble families in France, and his mother was a daughter of the Marquis d’Antigny. But these hereditary influences only shape the general contour of his character—give the refinement, the instinct to rise (Talleyrand, or Tailleran—as Napoleon always pronounced it—is said to be from “tailler les rangs”), the “sensibility” and “spirituality” (as people spoke then), the self-possession. When you wish to trace the growth of the peculiar traits of Prince Talleyrand, you find the beginning in that fateful fall and dislocation of the foot.

The boy was born in 1754, in the Rue Garancière, at Paris.[1] The week that followed was the only week he ever spent under the same roof with his mother, though she lived for fifty years afterwards, and he never quarrelled with his family. There was no tender rearing, no loving study and direction of the young life in those days. Rousseau had not yet persuaded France that a mother’s duty did not end with an impatient and querulous parturition. Talleyrand’s father and mother were both in the service of the Court. It was an age when a king could not go to bed without two or three nobles to hand him his night-dress; and when, on the other hand, nobles could not live without sharing the king’s purse to the extent of some forty million livres. Estates had been mortgaged and starved; Court life had become ever more luxurious and exacting. The system only held together by a frail structure of privileges, sinecures and commissions, that bound the nobility closer and closer to Versailles and left a yawning gulf between them and the people.

That gulf was not to be seen for thirty years yet, and meantime the life of the idle was swift and strenuous. In such a life the arrival of children was an accident, a complication. They must at once be put away to nurse, then to school, and finally be placed in the system. Lieutenant-General de Talleyrand-Périgord was better than most of his class, but a busy, and not a wealthy, man. Charles Maurice was immediately put to nurse in the suburbs, and so successfully forgotten that when, in his fourth year, it was decided to remove him, he was found to be lamed for life owing to the unskilful treatment of the injury to his foot. Through the death of his elder brother he should have been entitled to the right of primogeniture—the right to the one good position in the army that could be demanded of the King. But the thought of a Colonel Talleyrand limping along the galleries at Versailles or exhibiting an ill-shaped foot on parade was insufferable. He was destined to the service of the Church. Talleyrand himself pondered at a later date over the long-drawn consequences of his accident. When Royalist agents sought his powerful influence for the restoration of the King, he observed that but for that early mishap he would probably be with them amongst the émigrés and royal ambassadors.

At the time it fell out his horizon was bounded by the cabbages and gooseberry bushes of a suburban garden, but in his fourth year he was transferred to a larger sphere. For seventeen days his wondering eyes saw the great world unfold before them, as the coach went from Paris to Bordeaux. A few days later he was in a stately chateau with a very stately princess caring for him. Little by little he would learn the idea of lordship. The Princess de Chalais was his great-grandmother, the representative of a family that had ruled the district for eight centuries. He saw the homage of her little court, the group of elderly gentlemen who were no longer needed at brilliant Versailles. He saw a broad country-side, where not a steeple or monument could catch his eye but he was told his ancestors had reared it. On Sundays he saw her courtiers carry her prayer-book in the red velvet bag, and he knelt on his chair near her prie-dieu, and felt the admiring glances of the peasantry. After mass he saw—he has described it all so tenderly in his memoirs—the sick and needy of the estate trail after them to the chateau, where the old lady sat in her velvet chair in the “dispensary,” and the huge pots of ointment (of which the recipes were kept in the family) were opened, and two Sisters of Charity interrogated the applicants, and the Princess cut up the lint and linen with her own hands, and directed her courtiers to deal out the syrups and ointments. He saw the old regime at its best.

The four years that the boy spent at Chalais had a deep influence for good on him. The Princess loved him: she was almost the only one to awaken his finer feelings in those years of formation, and we shall find them, recalling those kindly days, long after the terrible ordeal that was to follow, in the blood-spattered streets of Paris and on the reeking battle-fields of Napoleon. As he grew up he must have wondered at times why, through those eight long years he never felt the kiss of a mother or heard the cheering voice of his distinguished father. Then he would learn of Paris and Versailles, and how the splendour of Chalais was only a distant reflection of the life that streamed out from the capital. At last he was to return to Paris, to see his parents, to ask by what path he was to enter into that life. He was eight years old, a sharp, observant, sensitive and ambitious boy.

Then the trial began, and the de-formation of his better instincts. While his young mind was nervously tracing its large ambition a family-council was disposing of his body and soul, without a glance at anything but his foot. A valet met him at the coach-office at Paris and took him straight to school. Where were his parents? Where was Versailles? The little lips contracted. He found himself in the dull, stuffy atmosphere of one of the oldest schools in Paris, the Collège d’Harcourt (now the Lycée St. Louis). It lay just off the present Boulevard Michel, its grounds touching those of the Cordeliers. It was a recognised school for children of good families; in fact, his father left him to pay in later years for his own education. At dinner on the first day he sat next to a future ambassador, a nephew of the great Choiseul. He shared the room and tutor of a cousin. But the teachers were poor (except his teacher of philosophy), and were chiefly expert in the “Almanach de la Cour.” In the course of his four years there Talleyrand picked up a fair acquaintance with the subjects taught at the time—French history and letters, logic (greatly esteemed at Paris, and of very obvious influence on his papers afterwards), rhetoric, Latin, philosophy, and a little mathematics. He was industrious and an assiduous reader.

Long afterwards his experience of the Collège d’Harcourt was to lend colour to his denunciation of pre-Revolutionary education. But the poorness of his intellectual training was the smallest sin committed against him in those days. The neglect of his character, his personality, was fatal. An affectionate interest on the part of his parents might have prepared him for the coming disappointment, but it was wholly denied. In his memoirs he speaks with a singular respect of them; at one time he even ventures to suggest that they probably kept away from him lest, in their great love, they should lose the courage to carry out the resolution to commit him to the Church! His father lived until 1788 and his mother until 1809, yet he never spent a week under the same roof with them. On Sundays one of the teachers would take him to dine with them, and after a formal hour or two his father would pat his head and tell him to “be good and obey Monsieur l’Abbé.” His finer qualities were irreparably neglected. His school-fellows were good comrades, but the eternal dulness of the place and the restraint of his parents depressed him. It was not an uncommon experience in this regard. You find much the same complaint about their school-days in the memoirs of most of his contemporaries. The particular difficulty in Talleyrand’s case was the absence of any encouraging words about the future. By this time he had begun to think about it. Gradually, he understood hints that it was not the fine halls of Versailles or the adventures of the camp, but the sombre world of the Church, to which he was destined. In his twelfth year, about the end of his college days, he caught the small-pox, and was hurried off to the house of a strange nurse in the Rue Saint-Jacques. Somehow he survived the deadly treatment usual at that time—great fires and hermetically-sealed windows—and escaped marking. But in his convalescence he pondered again on the absence of his mother.

The time had now come for an open statement about his future. It seems probable that he was sent then, in 1766, to visit his uncle, who had just become coadjutor to the Archbishop of Rheims. It is likely enough that his parents would try to seduce him from military ambition by a sight of the archbishop-count’s brilliant ecclesiastical court, and Talleyrand affirms in his memoirs that he was taken from the college to Rheims. However, it was probably some time later that he spent a year with his uncle, as he talks of being in his fifteenth year. Mme. de Genlis says that she saw him at Rheims in his “eleventh or twelfth” year, but she describes him as wearing a soutane, so that she also probably refers to a later date. Whether or no he then visited Rheims, it is clear that in his twelfth or thirteenth year he was sent to Saint Sulpice, and shrank to find himself in the soutane.

It is hardly necessary to recall that this was a common practice in the eighteenth century in France, and in many other times and places. Bossuet and Fénélon had protested religiously against the custom, but it continued to the full, almost without a single complaint, in Talleyrand’s day. The effect on the Church itself was disastrous. Scores of younger or illegitimate sons of the nobility were forced into it against their inclination, and they adopted within it the Voltairean scepticism and the looseness of morals which the Army or the Court would have sanctioned. Just at the crisis of its fortunes the Church found at its head such men as the Cardinal de Rohan (the patron of Cagliostro—in exile anent the famous necklace), Loménie de Brienne and Dillon. It had not spoken a syllable of protest when they were presented to it for ordination, for the sole purpose of securing the revenues, and neglecting the duties, of its rich abbeys and bishoprics. Loménie de Brienne, in fact, had deliberately chosen the Church as the best path for his ambition, and resigned the secular primogeniture. During the years of preparation for the Church he was designing the plan of his archi-episcopal chateau and dreaming of the political leadership of the country. Most of them, like Talleyrand, were put into the Church so as to relieve the strain on the king’s coffers at its expense. It had been decided, and was afterwards formally decreed, that no commission in the army should be given to any but a noble, and still the supply was excessive; though the King’s personal service cost forty million livres a year, and that of the Queen a further five millions. Then they turned to the Church, with its income of 150,000,000 livres a year, as a field for younger sons. Wealthy bishoprics were appropriated to the nobility, and wealthy abbeys—the income of the Abbot of Saint Germain at Paris was 130,000 a year—were handed over to them as abbés commendataires, which might be translated “absentee landlords.”

But I will return presently to the character of the clergy on the eve of the Revolution. Though wealth and prestige and political power were to be had in the clerical profession, the young Talleyrand bitterly resented his situation. By a healthy instinct he felt that, as later experience showed, he was totally unfitted for the Church. Hence he quickly developed a habit of silent and cynical observation, of disregard for authority and conventional ideals, and of unhealthy isolation and self-possession. Many years afterwards an emigrant bishop, who had been a schoolfellow of his at Saint Sulpice, recalled how he used to say to his one or two close friends: “They want to make a priest of me, but they will have an unpleasant time of it.” He himself says that he hardly spoke a word during the first three years at the seminary. His recreation hours were spent in its splendid library, where he sought especially the lives of statesmen “and moralists,” works of travel and adventure, and books that described all kinds of violent movements and upheavals in Nature and the social order. He had not the temperament of a revolutionary; his experience and reading led rather to a complete atrophy of his power of devotion to an idea or an institution. In his theology he would read how the service of religion demanded perfect ministers—“victims without blemish,” in the words of the Church; yet his superiors blandly accepted those who were rejected by army or Court. He saw injustice and hypocrisy on every side, and concluded that loyalty and devotion were masks. So, as time went on, he retreated more and more within himself, made his own interest the measure of his acquiescence, and learned the essential qualities of a diplomatist. In later years he saw advantages in the training. It was well to have been thus “dipped in the waters of the Styx.” He never spoke or wrote a harsh word of his parents,[2] or of Saint Sulpice, or of the Church. “Well, God keep his soul, but I like him,” said Pius VII of Talleyrand, after his first struggle with Napoleon.

After two or three years at Saint Sulpice he was sent on a long visit to his uncle at Rheims. Archbishop Talleyrand (he was then Archbishop in partibus) was a conscientious and high-minded prelate, who suffered much in after years from the conduct of his favourite nephew. He tried to reconcile the boy with his profession. The Archbishop of Rheims, the Count de la Roche-Aymon, was a prelate of dignity and intellect, and an imposing figure at archi-episcopal functions. With his episcopal income and the Abbey of Saint-Germain-aux-Près (a total annual income of 180,000 livres), besides private means, he was not one of the wealthiest prelates, but his see was of great importance, and his splendour would have dazzled a youth with any disposition to the clerical career. But the encouragement of the two prelates and all the glory of their functions were quite lost on young Talleyrand. He says in his memoirs that all this prestige did not seem to him “worth the sacrifice of his sincerity.” That is obviously an after-thought. It was an instinctive consciousness of his unfitness for the celibate state and for religious ministry that moved him. Madame de Genlis saw him at Sillery with his uncle, and noticed the pale, silent boy, with the observant eyes, in soutane and skull cap. He probably noticed Madame de Genlis in return, if he did not hear something about that charming compound of philosophic virtue and plebeian vice. A few such acquaintances and a few small ecclesiastical dignities were all he ever acquired at Rheims.

He says that his uncle put in his way the lives of Richelieu and Ximenes and Hincmar, and the memoirs of Retz, to show that the ecclesiastical life had possibilities. He would hardly need assistance in discovering those helpful books. Now that the Church must be embraced he formed his own view of it. It should serve as a back-door to the pleasant world from which they would exclude him. He would rejoin young Choiseul and Madame de Genlis by-and-by. It is a rather curious commentary on his training at this time that a shrewd adventuress, who saw a good deal of him under the Directorate, described him as a mixture of Richelieu’s firmness, Mazarin’s finesse, de Retz’s versatility, and a little of de Rohan’s gallantry. He may have heard, too, of that questionable ancestor of his in the fourteenth century, the Cardinal Hélie de Périgord, in whose titular Church at Rome an inscription recorded that “he was weak in religion but assiduous in worldly things.” Cardinal Hélie, a friend of Petrarch, had become an influential politician, had made a large fortune in commerce, and had spent it pleasantly in the patronage of art and luxury.

These ideas would take shape in time, as he resigned himself to the ecclesiastical condition. In the circumstances such a resignation could only take one form. Month by month the restless youth, with the whole adventurous history of the Périgords in his veins, would contrast the dullness of his surroundings with the dream of his boyhood. Had there been a profound and general religious sentiment in the place, his earlier vision might have been obliterated; but Voltaireanism was in even the atmosphere of Saint Sulpice. There were good and sincere priests in the French Church then, as ever, but some of its most prominent representatives were known sceptics, and Hume and Voltaire were read in the seminaries. In through the windows of his prison, too, would come the laughter of Paris, the sound of the bugle, the flash of the passing nobility. A youth devoid of any natural religious disposition, with a horror of ascetic plainness and heavy religious formalism, with a quick, inborn faculty of irony, with a sensuous element just beginning to stir in his blood, and a temperamental craving for woman’s society, could never serve the Church. The Church must serve him. He did not discuss his moods with anyone. To most of his companions he was morose and taciturn. To his superiors he was a problem. One of his school-fellows used to tell in later years[3] how on one occasion he was reading in the refectory, and he came to a passage: “And when the Chateau Tropette.” The superior corrected him, and said “Trompette.” Talleyrand coolly repeated the passage, and was again corrected. He read it a third time, and quickly ran on before the superior could speak, “the Chateau Tropette, which the ignorant have hitherto called the Chateau Trompette.” We can well imagine that a discreet contempt of authority and disdain of zeal were growing in him.

After a time he found the inevitable (and not unusual) means to enliven the dulness of Saint Sulpice. He was leaving the church one rainy morning when he noticed a pretty girl without an umbrella. He offered a share of his, escorted her home, and they saw each other nearly every day for a long time. They were both rebels. She had been sent on the stage against her wish. This is the only irregularity Talleyrand confesses to at that time, and there is no serious ground for entertaining the wild stories of gambling and liaisons. The soundness of them may be judged from the circumstance that they suppose his father to have died some time before (alleging that an uncle shuts him in the Bastille), whereas the father lived for seventeen years afterwards. The seminary authorities were not unwilling to purchase a brighter disposition in their pupil at the price. Talleyrand hints, too, that their liberality had some regard for his connections and prospects.

This episode belongs to his eighteenth year. It is the only authentic detail we have about his life after his stay at Rheims in 1769 until 1774. In that year we find him (in the records consulted by M. de Lacombe) competing for what we should call a fellowship at the Sorbonne. The thesis he sustained there on September 22nd was very edifying and successful. “What science is most fitted for the lips of the priest?” was the question he undertook to answer, and the published discourse was piously dedicated to the Blessed Virgin. It was his first essay in diplomacy. For priestly ideals he cared not a tittle. But the world seemed to make it a curious condition of success to do this sort of thing, a polite recognition of the particular ante-chamber to public life in which you found yourself. The maxims of Richelieu and De Retz had taken root. The conditions of advancement were repugnant to him, but they were not chosen by him. As a young man of culture in a philosophic age, he could not be expected to take religion seriously. He had read much more of Hume and Locke, of Montaigne and Voltaire, than of Suarez. He became a bachelor of theology, and drew near to the end of his dreary residence in the seminary.

CHAPTER II

THE ABBÉ MALGRÉ LUI

It will hardly be thought that up to this point there is any mystery about the person of Talleyrand. Many types of character were produced by this enforcement of the ecclesiastical profession. A few youths were touched by the better influences of their surroundings, and nobly turned to the great models of Bossuet and Fénélon. A large number drifted impatiently through the seminary, enlivened it with frequent dips into the stream of Parisian life, and emerged as the philosophic abbés and bishops we shall meet presently, ecclesiastical only in title and purse. Many worked silently and steadily through the years of study with a more or less clear political ideal always in mind, using the general education of the priest and the specific training of a systematised theology for their ulterior purposes. Such were Sieyès, Talleyrand, Fouché, Louis, Montesquiou, Daunou, Reinhard, La Besnardière. It might have been predicted at an early stage that Talleyrand would fall in the third class. Then the peculiarly painful circumstances of his exclusion from the more natural career, which he so much desired, would make him independent, self-centred, calculating, lightly cynical. Add a reasoned disbelief in religious teaching (though it is impossible to say when this began), and we can surely understand Talleyrand in his twentieth year, gravely discussing priestly qualities from the Sorbonne pulpit, while his heart is at Versailles. But we are a long way advanced in the work of interpreting our “Sphinx.”

About the close of Talleyrand’s course of study at the seminary, Louis XVI was to be crowned at Rheims, and Talleyrand’s parents invited him to assist at the ceremony. His father was to have a function in the proceedings, and his uncle would anoint the sovereign if, as was feared, the aged Cardinal de la Roche-Aymon was unable to do so. But this effort of Talleyrand’s parents to interest him in his vocation only shows once more how far they were from understanding his character. Looking back on that splendid spectacle of the coronation through the ghastly fires of the Revolution, Talleyrand said that “never did so brilliant a spring presage so stormy an autumn, so dire a winter.” No doubt there were statesmen present who tried to look up the darkening avenue, and wondered how the honest young king and his beautiful queen would meet the dangers that were gathering over the impoverished country. To Sub-Deacon Talleyrand[4] the spectacle must have held another element of tragedy. At the time it probably only afforded him a tantalising vision of the gay world from which they would exclude him. Such prestige as the priest had, with his golden cope and sacramental oil and theatrical asceticism, was the last kind he would think of seeking. No doubt he was aware that it was an age of compromise. He would see archbishops (such as Dillon and De Brienne), and bishops and abbés without number, who had their belles amies and boxes at the opera. The sight of them made the Church less intolerable. He made their acquaintance, was introduced to some of the great ladies of Paris—the Duchess de Luynes, the Duchess de Fitz-James, the Viscountess de Laval, and others. His conversation seems to have shown already some of the sparkle which made it so much sought later. He pleased. Some of the most fashionable salons were open to him, as soon as the Church should provide him with an income.

The income was on its way. The story usually runs that Talleyrand was one day in the salon of Mme. du Barry with a lively group of young nobles. She noticed his silence, and asked what he was thinking of. “Alas! madame,” he is reported to have said, “I was thinking how much easier it is to get an amie than an abbaye at Paris.” The story concludes that he was at once rewarded with the abbey of St. Denis, at Rheims, with a revenue of 18,000 livres.[5] As a fact, Talleyrand did not see the inside of Versailles until two or three years after the death of Louis XV, and the disappearance of Mme. du Barry. He did not become abbé until more than a year later, and was not ordained priest until much later still. M. de Lacombe has patiently traced his early movements in the ecclesiastical records at Rheims and Paris, and we are able to set aside most of the legends of his precocious gaiety. However, he had already begun to climb the ladder of ecclesiastical preferment. In January he had been made (while yet in minor orders) chaplain of the lady-chapel in the parish church at Rheims. He then received the sub-deaconate, and immediately after the coronation he was chosen by the clergy of Rheims to represent them at the General Assembly of the clergy. This was a singular distinction for one of his age, barely in sacred orders (though one other sub-deacon figures in the list of deputies), and it compels us to suppose that he had won some attention. A General Assembly of the Clergy met at Paris, as a rule, every five years, to discuss the more important affairs of the French Church. Each ecclesiastical province sent four delegates, two of the order of prelates and two of the lower clergy, and they sat from four to six months, discussing their financial and political relation to the State, as well as questions of discipline and religion.

For those who would understand the conduct of Talleyrand in later years, especially his “betrayal” of the Church, it is necessary to see these scenes of his earlier clerical days as he saw them. In the seminary he had learned the stately Catholic ideal of the priest, but had noted with even keener eye how ready the Church was to compromise with it. At Rheims he had seen clearly enough the relations of prelates and duchesses, the price by which the Church retained its prestige in a Voltairean world. At Paris the comedy—rapidly dissolving into tragedy—would continue. In the convent of the Grands-Augustins the thirty-two prelates, in rich surplices, sit in their thirty-two fauteuils; behind each prelate sits, on a “chair with a back,” the corresponding delegate of the lower clergy in black mantle and square bonnet. The first great question is: How much is the King going to ask of us? For years jurists and politicians, and latterly philosophers, had murmured at the exemption of the clergy from taxation. The Church had only retained its privilege by paying a few millions at each assembly in the form of a “gratuitous gift.” But the amount of the gift was fixed by the King, and it would fare ill with the clergy if they refused it. In the increasing financial distress the “gifts” grew larger and more frequent. At this particular Assembly in July, 1775, the King’s messengers announce that he asks sixteen millions[6] of his devoted clergy. Cardinal de la Roche-Aymon, the president, informs them that they lay the sum at his feet—reminding him, however, of his promise at the last Assembly to moderate his demands—and the messengers withdraw.

Then the founts of clerical rhetoric are opened. Talleyrand observes in his memoirs that “the intervention of conscience in these money matters gave the speeches a kind of eloquence that is peculiarly at the command of the clergy.” The Archbishop of Auch (with 120,000 a year from his bishopric alone) is deputed to express the common feeling. They are personally most eager to help their country, but the resources they control belong to the service of God and the altar. Is not the King confusing their goods with the monies of “profane commerce”? They sink under “immense burdens,” and are “exhausted” with gratuitous gifts. [The Church has an income of 150,000,000 livres a year.] Cardinal de la Roche-Aymon (with one religious sinecure alone worth 130,000 a year) nods acquiescence. Archbishop Dillon (160,000 a year and odd sinecures), Archbishop de Brienne (only 90,000 as yet—he is not yet Prime Minister), Archbishop de la Rochefoucauld (100,000), and the other prelates agree. Hardly a delegate but is abbé commendataire of some place or other. The abbacy of St. Bernard’s historic monastery, where the monks once ate the leaves of the forest, is worth 400,000 a year. The Benedictines of Saint-Maur (1,672 in number) have a revenue of 8,000,000 livres. Cardinal Prince de Rohan has a total income of 2,500,000 a year, and is heavily in debt. So is Dillon, who spends six months of each year in hunting, and a great deal of the rest in less healthy occupation. However, they will contrive to find sixteen millions this time—and trust the King will return it in other ways. The Abbé de Périgord,[7] pale, silent, in black mantle and square bonnet, observes it all, and makes (internally) reflections on venerable institutions and “zeal.”

In the course of the sittings several other questions came on that were not without irony. Chief amongst these were the decay of the monastic orders and the growth of infidelity and Protestantism. Some of the most powerful prelates in the Assembly, as well as many deputies of the second order, were Voltairean in opinion and less than Voltairean in practice. All joined in the appeals to King and Pope to reform or suppress the corrupt and decaying monastic bodies, to stem the flood of philosophic literature, and to arrest the growth of Protestantism. They were honest at least in their attack on monasticism. It was one of the ideas of the philosophers, and was rapidly spreading amongst the people. Hardly a day passed now without an attack on them, and Talleyrand says that not a pen was lifted in their defence during the twenty years preceding the Revolution. At the States-General in 1789 one peasant deputy arrived with instructions to work for the suppression of pheasants, rabbits, and monks. Besides the usual struggle to disavow the feudal obligations, which the Court lawyers were constantly trying to fix on the clergy, the other matters discussed were mainly disciplinary.

Such was Talleyrand’s initiation to the inner life of the Church. Those who regret that, when he found himself forced even involuntarily into the ecclesiastical career, he did not endeavour to take a religious and self-sacrificing view of it, will do well to ponder these spectacles. Talleyrand’s course was natural. He used the influence of the president, who had a strong liking for him, to enter the gayer group of prelates. Dillon and de Brienne opened a few more of the Parisian salons to him. In the course of the sittings he had been made “promoteur” (a kind of sub-secretary, usually given a fair gratuity at the close), and was appointed to an unimportant committee on the voting counters and a very important one on religion and jurisdiction. He claims that he won some distinction in this Assembly, and was already marked for the high position of Agent-General of the Clergy. In September (1775—or eighteen months after Mme. du Barry has quitted the scene) we find a notice in the Gazette that he has been appointed abbé commendataire of the abbey of St. Denis at Rheims, which brought him an income of 18,000 livres a year. The diplomatic career thus began. The Pope confirmed the election of the sub-deacon abbé, and the prior took possession in Talleyrand’s name in December. As Chamfort put it, the ecclesiastical bachelor naturally looked to a wedding with some rich abbey to pay his debts. Bishops, Pope, and King acquiesced in the system without a murmur. All the bishops had sinecures of the sort, and the Court contrived to keep a few vacant at times and pocket the revenues. Talleyrand had not voluntarily entered the ecclesiastical world, and he was determined to make it serve his own ideal as far as possible. But one of his first acts was to pay off the debt his parents still owed to the Collège d’Harcourt.

Before going to Rheims he had applied for admission into the Society of the Sorbonne and been accepted (after formal proof of his moral and intellectual qualities). He took up residence there after the close of the Assembly. With his abbatial income (more than £700 a year) and the prospect of scraps of political and administrative work, he could have at once begun an independent residence in Paris. But that would have left him in the ambiguous position of a cleric and celibate, cut off from the higher clerical distinctions and possibilities. He must now complete his ecclesiastical education in the usual way, and proceed by way of the Agency-General (to come in 1780) to the episcopate.

However, the Sorbonne had not an intimidating repute for austerity. The Abbé Morellet, who had lived there with Turgot and de Brienne, describes in his memoirs the condition of the Sorbonne, and the details of what we may call its “fellowships,” in the eighteenth century. Its library supplied him with Locke, Bayle, and Clarke, as well as with Bellarmine and Aquinas. He read Voltaire, and associated with Diderot and d’Alembert. Theological studies of the old type were pretty well out of fashion. His companions were very generally imbued with the ideas of the philosophers. This relaxation of the older discipline continued down to the Revolution, and Talleyrand did not find residence there irksome. He stayed there two years, wrote the customary theses, and took a licentiate in theology on March 2nd, 1778. He never tried for the doctorate. But we may well believe that, as he says, he was “taken up with quite other things than theology.” The success of 1775 had stimulated him, and he spent many an hour in the darkened chapel before the tomb of Richelieu. He hints, too, that pleasure was his chief preoccupation, though this is limited by a later statement that he was unable to look up young Choiseul and find secular friends until he had left the Sorbonne. About the beginning of 1778 he completed his theological training and plunged in the gaieties of Parisian life.[8]

So much has been written on the social life of the wealthy and noble classes in France on the eve of the Revolution, that I need say little more than that the Abbé de Périgord, as he was now commonly styled, was found in every brilliant salon and circle at Paris during the next ten years. “You do not know what it is to live,” he would say indulgently to the new generation in their restored gaiety after 1815. In some few respects the pace of life had been moderated since the days of Louis XIV, but in others it had increased. There were no longer Pompadours and Du Barrys at Versailles, but the King’s propriety was less noticeable than his vulgarity[9]—courtiers telling daily of his prodigious breakfasts and dinners and indigestions, his antics when they were putting him to bed, and so on—and was quite undone by his weakness. The cynical memoirs of Lauzun show how little change there was in the character of the Court. The imprudence and frivolity of the beautiful young Queen, leaving Versailles to mix with the masked crowd at the Opera when the King had gone to bed (and being locked out by her tactless consort at six in the morning), or gambling heavily with her ladies until day-break, or giving far too substantial ground for charges of gallantry, encouraged the rising generation of nobles in their giddy dance in the crater of a rumbling volcano. She was largely responsible for the passion for heavy gambling that broke out. At Marly her ladies had to change their dresses after playing—soiled with the masses of gold wrung from an almost bankrupt country. A vulgar American adventurer could get the entrée of Versailles by letting it be known that he had a large sum of money to lose; he won in a short time 1,500,000 livres from his royal shearers. Another man won 1,800,000 livres in one evening. The thoughtless Count d’Artois, the King’s brother, bet the Queen 100,000 livres that he would build a palace in the Bois in six weeks; he won it—and the 900 men he had employed scattered over Paris with the story. Whoever could invent or import a new sensation was sure of the Queen’s support. Racing was introduced from England, and she flew to Sablons to lay bets on the horses of her favourite, the too notorious Lauzun. Then chariot races (some chariots costing ten thousand crowns) varied the programme; and a society was formed at Paris for the construction of a bull-ring. Grave parliamentary lawyers and financial ministers frowned, and were dismissed.

From an engraving.

TALLEYRAND
(A portrait taken in early life).

In dress, furniture and banquets the fashion was equally luxurious and criminal. The age of Henri Quatre took the fancy of the younger nobles, and they tried to revive the splendid costumes of that time, but the King interfered. Whole fortunes were spent on fantastic head-dresses. Ladies drove among the impoverished people and before bankrupt tradesmen with structures two or three feet high on their heads, landscapes, symbolic designs—the American Independence hat, the racing hat, the vaccination hat, and so on. Orders of chivalry were set up by this nobility that was squeezing the blood out of the veins of the peasantry. There was an Order of Perseverance, with statutes by Mme. de Genlis, meetings in a gorgeous tent in Lauzun’s garden, and costumes of white and grey and silver; in this edifying company the initiate had to answer a riddle, reply to a “moral question,” make a speech in eulogy of some virtue, and—vow to redress injustice and succour the poor and distressed! Clotho and Lachesis must have smiled for once. There were rival Orders of Patience and Felicity and what not. Then Anglo-mania crept into their idle brains, and long evenings were spent in discussing the excellence of popular representation over tea and bread and butter, and the geometrical gardens were Anglicised at great expense, and Gobelins tapestry gave place to wall-paper. And, in fine, we get a real novelty in the shape of Cagliostro with his toad that had received all the Sacraments, his innocent young girl, and his devils at command. Cardinal-Prince de Rohan, with the two-and-a-half millions a year and heavy debts, with the alb worth 100,000 livres, with the twenty-five valets de chambre and fourteen maitres d’hotel, had set him up in his palace at Paris; and dashing colonels and elderly countesses and philosophic abbés went to see Beelzebub in the flesh. And the Fourth Estate was coming rapidly to birth.

Into this giddy stream the Abbé de Périgord gladly plunged. He was in his twenty-fourth year, still pale of face, but with the familiar Talleyrand features fully developed: the quiet blue-grey eyes, so very observant, under bushy eye-brows, the nose pointed and slightly turned up, the lower lip protruding a little, a faint smile hovering about the mouth, and a fine crop of long, wavy hair framing the attractive face. He had taken a small house in the district of Bellechasse (near the Invalides), collected an excellent library of good books in good bindings, and at once renewed his acquaintance with Choiseul, Count Louis de Narbonne, and the Abbé de Périgord. They were collective owners of a stable of racers, and were the nucleus of a group of diners and talkers that nearly every ambitious woman must entertain. Talleyrand soon completed his education. He became a famous whist-player (his chief amusement through life), and added a good deal to his income at the tables.

He had in the Rue Saint-Dominique an interesting and useful neighbour in the Countess de Genlis. After a very romantic career she was then in charge of the children of the Duc de Chartres. In 1779 she had retired from the gaiety (and orgies) of the Palais Royal to train, on the best moral and philosophical principles, the twin daughters of the Duchess. The Convent of the Sisters of the Holy Sepulchre at Bellechasse was a favourite spot for “retreats” amongst the wealthy Parisians, and a house was built in its grounds in which the retired countess could carry out her work. Over its street door—a grilled, very religious-looking door—was written, in gold characters, Addison’s excellent saying: “True happiness is of a retired nature and an enemy to pomp and noise.” Two of the nuns guarded the door, which was firmly closed at ten every night, and the key was taken into the convent. Inside, beyond the simple furniture (she had left her seven hundred pounds’ worth of mirrors in her salon at the Palais), all was calmly educative. Busts of great and good men, maps, historical tablets, &c., abounded. So Mme. de Genlis in her memoirs. She was just such a neighbour as Talleyrand would appreciate at that time. With the same ever-flowing pen she would write a most edifying book on moral education, a Jacobin speech for the Duke, and an erotic novel. Her moral writings testified, as E. de Goncourt says, to “the ease with which her imagination could find a substitute for experience.” All Paris descended on the model teacher’s dwelling in the Rue Saint-Dominique. There being a royal princess (the infant) in the house men could enter the enclosure; and, says Talleyrand, in one of his caustic moments, she “always yielded at once so as to avoid the scandal of coquetry.” Heavy gambling went on under the Addisonian maxim. One youth lost 13,000 louis there. Talleyrand was a very frequent visitor, and an assiduous observer. “When you see much of men,” said his cynical friend, Chamfort, “your heart must break or bronze.” Talleyrand was not afflicted with a tender heart. His own house at Bellechasse soon became the centre of a brilliant circle of talkers. Though he rarely went to bed before three or four he was up early, and was joined by his friends over a cup of chocolate. He had a peculiarity in the heart-beat, to which he attributed his power of dispensing with sleep. He ate little—a cup of chocolate or a biscuit and glass of Madeira during the day, and a choice dinner in the evening. But his wine, his coffee, and his cook were carefully chosen, his toilet elaborately neat. One of the most cultured groups in the city used to gather at his house in the morning. Choiseul was the best of the group, and it is gratifying to find Talleyrand speaking of him in the later days with real affection. He was an animated talker and a good scholar, but he departed presently for the Embassy at Constantinople. Few of the others are spared in the terrible memoirs. He might have said with Chamfort, if he had deigned to borrow a phrase: “I have friends who love me, friends who don’t care a pin about me, and friends who detest me.” But their daily talks were one of the events of Parisian life. Most of them were, or became, Academicians. There was the boisterous young colonel, Count Louis de Narbonne, the third of the trinity, a hard military student, but jovial in company beyond the limit of taste. There was Colonel Lauzun (later Duc de Biron), who had begun his gallant adventures at seventeen, and contracted a debt of a million and a half by his thirty-fourth year; who often shot with the King, and boasted of the affection of the Queen. Later (when he came out of his third prison) there was young Mirabeau, “the tribune of the people,” with the huge, pock-marked face, and the sonorous denunciation of the social order that persecuted him. Of older men, there were the Abbé Delille, the chief poet of the time, friend of Voltaire, an abbé commendataire (30,000 livres) with “the face of an infant,” the pen of a libertine, and the ideas of a philosopher: Chamfort, of the “electric head” (it bristled so with ideas), living now with the widow of Helvétius, pouring out vitriolic doses on humanity in all its aspects, but secretly writing Mirabeau’s and Talleyrand’s elevated democratic speeches—“How many fools does it take to make a public?” he used to ask: Count Lauraguais, very cultured and a generous patron of science and letters: Panchaud, the Swiss banker, greatly esteemed by Talleyrand, “the only man in France who could make the goose with the golden eggs lay without cutting its guts out,” said Mirabeau: Barthez, the doctor-philosopher, editor of the Encyclopædia: Ruehière, the young historian of Russia: Dupont de Nemours, the famous young economist.

From an engraving, after a picture by Retsch.

MADAME DE GENLIS.

Conversation would not lack variety or brilliance amongst such a group. Talleyrand’s assemblies began to be talked about. He was invited “more or less everywhere,” and went. He was already sufficiently detached from the idea of partisanship to find his way about amongst the conflicting salons. The houses of twenty noble dames were the centre for as many parties—of the King, of the Queen, of d’Artois, of the Duc d’Orléans, of Turgot, and Choiseul, and Necker, and de Rohan, and de Brienne, and so on. Talleyrand overlooked their political differences, except for a tactical opposition to Necker, and enjoyed their graceful friendship and influence. He went to the Palais Royal, where the Duc de Chartres (later d’Orléans, and finally Egalité) was wearing out his useless life—“his vices,” says Talleyrand, in one of those phrases that were gaining him respect, or at least neutrality, “his vices knew no bounds but the limit of his imagination and that of those about him.” Those about him had not infertile imaginations. Talleyrand was taken by Archbishops Dillon, de Brienne, and Cicé, to the house of Mme. de Montesson (secretly married to the Duc d’Orléans), and was granted a seat in the box reserved for “more or less dissipated clerics” (his own phrase) in the private opera-house where Madame and the Duke and other noble amateurs performed. He found her house “at the furthest limit of decency, but very pleasant.” It is the only place at which he speaks of meeting his spiritual leaders. Loménie de Brienne had been proposed to the King for the archbishopric of Paris. “But surely,” said Louis, “the archbishop of Paris should be a man who believes in God.” It did not seem to matter at Toulouse. He went also to the Hotel de Rohan, where the adventurer, Cagliostro, with the olive complexion and brilliant eyes, was exhibiting the devil to people who did not believe in God. At Mme. de Montesson’s he one early day made a feeble joke to the Duchess de Gramont, the sister of Choiseul, and several doors were immediately opened to him. Once a week he took his own brilliant group to dinner at the house of Mme. d’Héricourt. The Swedish minister instituted another day for them, but the dinner was killed by forcing the talkers to listen to long readings—the craze of the hour. Another house he visited, at Auteuil, was that of the Countess de Boufflers-Rouvrel; and at the house of her next-door neighbour, Mme. Helvétius, he would find Chamfort at home, with the Abbé Sieyès, the later constitution maker, and Cabanis, the materialist.

The only house which he visited with any particular freedom, besides that of his mother and that of Mme. de Genlis, was that of the Countess de Flahaut, at the Louvre. Governor Morris, the American Envoy, affirms that he found Talleyrand helping to give her a foot-bath there one morning. Her son, born in 1785, was pretty generally accredited to Talleyrand, but in an age of myths and scandals exact determination is as difficult as it is superfluous.

He shared the celebrated dinners of Mme. de Reynière, saw the deistic Abbé Delille dine with the Queen at Mme. de Polignac’s, and went to “learned and tiresome concerts” at Mme. Lebrun’s (the artist), M. d’Albaret’s, and the Count de la Rochechouart’s.

It must not be supposed that he was merely tolerated in these circles. He was sought and esteemed. It is said that he was generally one of the last to enter a salon, limping slightly, faultlessly dressed in blue coat and white vest and chamois breeches (unless it were advisable to remember the soutane), and there was an appreciable movement towards him. His biting wit and quick repartee soon forced people to reckon with him. One never knew when his deep, deliberate voice would break in with effect. “I don’t know why people don’t like me,” one man was saying; “I have only done one wrong thing in my life.” “When will it be over?” asked Talleyrand. “Sieyès is deep,” said another to him. “You mean hollow,” he at once replied. A lady once asked him, in a period of difficulty, how his affairs were going. One version has it that she asked how his legs were. “As you see, madame,” he suavely answered. The lady squinted. His liberal ideas were, of course, an advantage. “He dresses like a fop, thinks like a deist, and preaches like an angel,” said someone; though we have no trace whatever of his ever delivering sermons. But it was the age of the philosophers. Talleyrand disliked the more consistent and more advanced of them, such as Condillac, Hélvetius, d’Holbach, and the Abbé Raynal, because they not only destroyed superstition, but “broke the links of the moral and social order”—such as it was. But this was written twenty years afterwards. He was never caught by the charlatanry of Jean-Jacques. He greatly esteemed Voltaire, and took care to be presented to him when he came to Paris and was fêted to death in 1778. The myth-makers of later years describe how he went on his knees for the aged philosopher’s blessing.

I will only add, to complete Talleyrand’s environment about this time, that he had relations also with most of the retired statesmen of the day, Maurepas, Malesherbes, Choiseul and Turgot, and with the chief scientific workers, La Place, Condorcet, Lagrange, Monge, &c. Of this I will say more presently. Enough has been said to elucidate the progress of Talleyrand’s character up to the time of the Revolution. The work which I have to describe in the next chapter will prevent one from thinking that his time was wholly spent in pleasure or devoted to the task of social advancement. From 1780 onwards he was a most assiduous worker, and must have been an industrious student before that time. But he tasted, at least, every part of the life of Paris in those ten years at Bellechasse. I do not mean that he devoured all that it offered. He was an essentially temperate and refined man. He played for heavy stakes, as most people did; there were some 4,000 gambling houses at Paris when the Revolution began, to say nothing of salons, from that of the Queen at Marly downwards. But this is the only irregularity he admits; though, of course, the “Memoirs” are not “Confessions.” The Baron de Vars has compiled a work on Les femmes de Talleyrand. There is only one on the list, Mme. de Flahaut, besides the pretty actress of Saint-Sulpice and the lady he eventually married, with whom his name is connected by any show of evidence. At the same time it would be absurd to claim for him any prohibitive principles in such matters. He took a mind almost swept of ideals into a world where, one social writer says, you could count the families that were not stained with incest: where, at all events, almost every man, from princes and cardinals down to butchers and abbés, had a mistress. He was no hypocrite. The Church and the world alike expected too little of him for that.

CHAPTER III

Priest and Bishop

Talleyrand had already spent two years of this kind of life when he was ordained priest. In a biographical inquiry it is only necessary to point out that the priesthood was required for his purpose. Possibly he thought of his parents, as some biographers suggest. However regrettable his life, he was a noble, and must not remain a minor cleric. In any case, he would see that the only entrance to the higher political world, along the path into which he had been forced, was the episcopate. He could not be expected to foresee the upheaval of 1789, which would make possible the rise of such men as Sieyès. In 1780 the General Assembly of the Clergy would meet again, and he had ground to believe that he would be appointed Agent-General. From this important position one usually passed to the episcopate. After such an experience as his had been he would very well leave it to the Church to settle its own credit in the matter.

In September (1779) he asked his uncle, in a letter which is extant, to receive him into the Rheims clergy. The Archbishop of Paris was a conscientious prelate, where it was still possible to consult conscience. Archbishop Talleyrand (he had succeeded Roche-Aymon in 1777) consented and obtained his transfer from Paris. He, too, was one of the better prelates of the time, but he doubtless thought he could influence his gay nephew. He was transferred on September 17th and ordained deacon. Three months later (December 18th) he was ordained priest in the chapel of the archbishopric.[10] Choiseul was with him, and made a strong appeal to him to desist. He said it was impossible. All that we shall learn of Talleyrand in the chapters to come justifies us in thinking—nay, compels us to think—that he took the step, not with a cynical levity, but with great reluctance. The qualities of refinement and humanity he never surrendered.

On May 10th, 1780, he was nominated by the clergy of Tours (where he now had a second chaplaincy) Agent-General for the next five years. This was a position of the first political importance in the French Church. The Agent-General was the connecting link between the two powers, secular and ecclesiastical, and by the end of the eighteenth century he needed some competence in diplomacy, as well as a fair administrative faculty for domestic matters, especially of finance. Two were appointed by the various provinces in rotation before each General Assembly, and they held office and guarded the interests of the Church until the next ordinary Assembly. If Talleyrand had, as promoteur at the last Assembly, left the chief share of the work to his colleague, the case was very different now. His fellow-agent was the Abbé de Boisgelin, cousin of the Archbishop of Aix, and Vicar-General of that diocese, an indolent, incompetent, and disreputable priest. He shared the fruits and prestige of Talleyrand’s labours, but not the work itself. In fact Talleyrand says that a scandal supervened immediately, and made it advisable to keep him in the background.

These General Assemblies did not vary much in their chief features, so that little need be said of that of 1780. Only two deputies (one of each order) were sent from each of the provinces, and the Cardinal-Archbishop of Rouen took the chair. The King now asked thirty millions, and Talleyrand was directed to wait on him at Versailles and say that his faithful clergy, though “exhausted by its gifts,” would find the money; he was to add a hint (with an eye to the increasing attacks on the Church’s property) that the King would doubtless see the wisdom of not killing the goose. Talleyrand would not lose his opportunity at Versailles. There were the usual indignant discussions of the claim of the Crown lawyers to exact feudal service from the clergy, and violent attacks on Voltaire and the “formidable deluge” of improper literature that was poured over the whole country. The Assembly sat from May to October. Talleyrand was now so secure in his position that he even claims that this “lent some prestige to his Agency.”

Two years later he had to summon the clergy to an Extraordinary Assembly at the Grands-Augustins. The King’s letter which he had to submit to his colleagues must have appealed to his diplomatic sense. Louis XVI declared that, though there had been unforeseen losses in connection with the help given to America, he had no actual need to appeal to the country. But the fact was that every class seemed so eager to contribute towards covering these losses, and he could not think of excluding his devoted clergy from a share. He therefore graciously permitted them to assemble in extraordinary session in 1782. Talleyrand was charged to explain to the Assembly why the King had altered his mind, and not kept the solemn promise that he would ask no more money until 1785. The fifteen millions were granted as usual, and the clergy added a million to be applied to the relief of the poor families who had suffered by the war. Talleyrand went further, and pressed one of the prelates to urge the granting permission to re-marry to the Breton women whose husbands had disappeared without any definite proof of death. He says that the prelate saw no advantage to himself in making a motion, and so the matter was not brought before the Assembly. Bad books occupied more attention than ever. A complete edition of Voltaire was being printed at Kehl, and was expected at Paris with the most open rejoicing. The deputies drew the King’s attention to its “monstrous obscenities,” and petitioned him to prevent its circulation. Talleyrand had not to sign this petition, but he saw Loménie de Brienne and many another Voltairean pastor do so.

In this Assembly Talleyrand himself made two proposals of an interesting character. The first was that the clergy should buy up the royal lottery, by making the King a “gratuitous gift” every year to cover the profits missed. His colleagues were not sufficiently moved by his eloquent denunciation of public gambling to make the sacrifice. Some of them, who knew the Abbé de Périgord’s own habits, may have even smiled. But Talleyrand’s aim was good, if not virtuous. He saw that the clergy were rapidly losing ground, and he felt that a sacrifice like this, in such a cause, would do much to redeem their degradation. The memoir to present to the King (and, of course, publish afterwards) “might have been superb,” he observes with a chuckle; he would have been very glad to write it. The other proposal he made was to raise the salaries of the lower clergy. On these fell the real work of maintaining religion in the country, yet the curé had only 700 livres (less than thirty pounds) a year and his vicaire the miserable sum of 350 livres. The episcopate was, like the army commissions, a preserve of the nobles, and a great gulf yawned between the two Orders. I calculate that the 140 bishops of France then drew about 8,000,000 francs a year from ecclesiastical sources alone; and as all were nobles, many of them had in addition huge private incomes and some State emoluments. Dillon had 160,000 a year from the Queen’s private purse for his amiability. They drove about Paris in gilded coaches, contributed to the opera, had opulent hotels and country palaces and hunting seats, and so on. The starving peasantry were beginning to rebel. At the Assembly of Notables the Archbishop of Aix spoke of tithe as “that voluntary offering from the piety of the faithful”; “as to which,” broke in the Duke de la Rochefoucauld, “there are now 40,000 cases on in the Courts.” The lower clergy, too, were forming associations for the betterment of their condition. The prelates heard this with pained surprise, but resisted Talleyrand’s motion. His earliest political efforts, as he said afterwards, failed because his proposals were too bold for his colleagues. But there can be no question as to the wisdom of his counsels. No one could at that time have had even the dimmest prevision of the events of 1789-1790—and so we may at once reject Pozzo di Borgo’s suggestion (afterwards) that Talleyrand from the first took the side of the weak and poor on subtle calculation—but Talleyrand’s view of the situation of the Church was singularly wise and shrewd, and his suggestions were, as we now very clearly see, wholly to its advantage. Nor can we with justice ignore the clear strain of humanity that is seen in the young abbé’s proposals in favour of the Breton widows (whom he had seen in their native home) and the lower clergy. In the latter instance he was even endangering his interest with the prelates.

Talleyrand’s labours as Agent-General had the effect that he desired. If the Church would not listen to wise advice it must go its way. For him its work was an instrument, and he used it with success. His various reports on their labours to the Conseil du Roi brought him in contact with his real fellows. Before his Agency was over he had won the notice and esteem of the first minister. But I will conclude this account of his clerical work before tracing his earliest political action. The clergy greatly appreciated his ability. At the Assembly of 1785 he was elected secretary, with the Abbé de Dillon, and one day the president rose, after a speech from Talleyrand, to exhibit him to his colleagues as a model of zeal! The report of their Agency which he and Boisgelin sent in was received with enthusiasm, and described as taking “a distinguished place amongst the reports which adorn our annals.” Talleyrand neglected nothing in those early years. His work was sound and thorough, and at the same time presented with a rare literary effect. The mythopæic biographers of a later date[11] had private knowledge that he was too lazy and too incompetent to write a single letter, and that everything was done for him by his associates. We know that from 1780 onwards he attracted to his help a number of capable men, M. Mannay, Count Bourlier, M. Duvoisin (these three reaching their reward in bishoprics), and especially the young Abbé des Renaudes. He could not have done his work so well single-handed, and, as a fact, he quite early learned from Choiseul the rule to utilise subordinates to the fullest extent. It was good statesmanship. But it is quite clear that he must have worked hard. Thirty years afterwards, long after he has exchanged financial politics for diplomacy, he writes with the pleasure and ease of an expert on the financial questions of 1780-1790. There is no doubt that he thoroughly understood them, and discussed them on equal terms with Panchaud, Foulon, or Dupont de Nemours. And the memoirs themselves show that he could write; he was often seen to sit writing them until four in the morning. Sainte-Beuve himself admits (p. 44) that Talleyrand could do some “fine writing” when he cared.

The report he submitted in 1785 was to be his last plea for a bishopric. It was the custom to find a benefice as a reward for the Agent-General when his term was over. Talleyrand, therefore, wrote it with great care and with plenty of that flattery which his colleagues appreciated. How he felt when he spoke of “the honour of being associated with the labours of the first body in the kingdom, the happy necessity of communicating with the chief members of this illustrious body, and of maintaining with them relations which their virtues and their intelligence have made so precious,” we can very well imagine. One only wonders if he caught the eye of his friends of the Palais Royal when he referred to the Archbishop-President, Dillon, as a man “to whom all offices have been but fresh occasions to display the nobleness of his character and the vigour of his patriotic genius.” Dillon is the prelate who, he tells us elsewhere, spent six months every year in hunting, though he had done some good work. In return the archbishop urgently recommended the ex-agents to the favour of the King and of Mgr. Marbœuf (who held the feuille des bénéfices, or list of vacant bishoprics). The assembly then voted, as was usual, a gift of 24,000 livres to each ex-agent, and further sums of 4,000 and 3,000 for having discharged the functions of promoter and secretary. But the recommendation for a bishopric fell very flat, to Talleyrand’s extreme annoyance. The most brilliant Agent-General of recent times was made to wait three years for his reward, and saw one bishopric after another fall to others. It is said that the king was resolutely opposed to the consecration of so equivocal a candidate, but we have no real evidence of this. Talleyrand complained, in a letter to young Choiseul, of malice on the part of Marbœuf, but it is possible that the circumstance of Marbœuf being a religious man with some firmness may afford explanation enough. Talleyrand’s name was persistently connected with that of Madame de Flahaut, and at one time with that of the daughter-in-law of Buffon. There was a good deal of joking about the prospect of his consecration. Chamfort and a group of amiable ladies were marked out as ready to accompany him to his seat. It is not impossible that Versailles drew the line—when it felt strong enough.

From an engraving, after the painting by Chappel.

MARIE ANTOINETTE.

Another feature of the situation was that he had incurred the hostility of the Queen, and she robbed him of a cardinal’s hat in that very year; though the hat might have been very much in the way in 1791. The Countess de Brionne persuaded the King of Sweden to ask the Pope for a hat for the Abbé de Périgord. The Pope, who at that time was friendly with the Protestant prince, agreed, and the matter was nearly arranged when the diamond-necklace affair happened. Mme. de Brionnne sided with de Rohan, and Talleyrand followed. The Queen took a small revenge by getting the Austrian Ambassador to protest against another hat being sent to France, and Talleyrand was disappointed. Later, when the archbishopric of Bourges fell vacant, and he was passed over, Talleyrand complained bitterly to his friend Choiseul. It was not until the end of 1788, that he became Bishop of Autun.

In the meantime Talleyrand had opened his political career on other than ecclesiastical questions. I have already said that, whilst he lived at Bellechasse, he visited not only fashionable ladies, savants and artists, but also some of the great statesmen of the last generation. He met Maurepas, a typical representative of the decaying order, Malesherbes, the great parliamentarian and liberal reformer, and Turgot. As Maurepas and Turgot died in 1781, he must have given serious attention to political matters as soon as, or even before, he left the Sorbonne. With the elder Choiseul in his retirement he would be more closely connected through his intimacy with the nephew. The outbreak of the American war and the departure of a number of young French nobles, had done even more than the prospect of national bankruptcy to arouse political interest. Franklin’s house at Passy was besieged by fair enthusiasts, eager to embrace him; his fur cap was copied by every dandy in Paris, and constitutional problems were discussed by young ladies in the intervals of a dance. “The zeal for America is simply sublime,” says Michelet; while Alison has opined that “the American war was the great change which blew into a flame the embers of innovation.” The philosophical party certainly tried to give it that character. When Lafayette and his nobles returned with an account of the glorious new constitution and democracy, the concrete instance led to a more general discussion, which was boldly, though in a limited extent (for there were no republicans yet to speak of) applied to France. Talleyrand was not carried away in the flood. He did fit out a privateer with his friend Choiseul, begging a few guns from the Ministry of Marine; but he ridiculed the general enthusiasm. The next fashion was Anglo-mania, and this in turn raised constitutional questions of interest to France.[12]

It is clear that, from an early stage of his attention to the questions raised in the salons and circles by these episodes, Talleyrand was prepared for popular representation, and was disposed to favour the English model. His manifesto, issued on the eve of the States-General, will show us that he did not wait for the logic of events to make him embrace democracy, but there are earlier indications. During the Assembly of the Notables in 1787 he complained to Choiseul that “Paris was taking its cue from the Assembly instead of an instructed Paris impressing its opinion on the Assembly;” and in the same letter he observed with satisfaction that “the people were going to count for something,” and that “the granting of provincial administration [local self-government] and the abolition of privileges would prove a source of great gain.” The tragic incompetency of the King and Queen to master the situation of their country impressed him. Mere “goodness of heart” was fatal. “Too great a familiarity in sovereigns,” he says in his memoirs, “inspires love rather than respect, and at the first mishap affection goes.” It was the opinion of a man in whom (to turn his own words upon himself) “philosophic ideas had replaced sentiments,” but it expresses the facts here. The network of noble and ecclesiastical privileges made aristocracy impossible in an impoverished country. The choice was between a strong autocrat (whom the gods gave when they willed) and a monarchy limited by an educated democracy. With Montesquieu he leaned to the latter; the satirical description of France as “an autocracy tempered with lampoons” is attributed to him. With Turgot he felt that the people must be educated up to self-government. He pleaded strongly for more efficient and more comprehensive education. A contemporary gives this as his fad. He travelled in privileged provinces like Brittany, and noted the good result of local administration. He would hardly admit moral feeling in the matter, but as a practical politician he was for gradual and constitutional, but thorough, reform.

But the central question of French politics to every thoughtful man was that of finance. He saw nobles coquetting with democracy who were not prepared to surrender a tithe of those pecuniary privileges which were strangling the actual order. He saw constitutionalists working out their “theory of irregular verbs” without even a moderate grasp of the crucial need. He immediately set himself to master the science of finance and the fiscal disorders of his country. His archiepiscopal friends were well acquainted with the one, and such friends as Panchaud and Dupont de Nemours would help him with both. His first open political expression was a vehement attack on Necker after his assumption of power in 1776. There was a good deal of parti pris in his first attack. He ridiculed the person, the features, the dress, the speech, and everything about Necker, as well as his financial operations. But he did oppose on conviction the tactics of the Genevese banker. He thought them too slow, too timid, too small-minded to rescue France from the precipice. At last he made an opportunity for a constructive effort. The funds of the clergy were interested in the bank founded by Turgot, and when anxiety arose about this in 1784 he forced his position as Agent-General (so he himself says), and drew up a memoir in which he proposed a reconstruction of the bank. The memoir attracted much attention. One elderly banker listened to it almost with tears—at the pretty way in which he put banking common-places, Talleyrand says. A number of experts became acquainted with him—Foulon, Sainte-Foy, Daudé, &c. Presently he was introduced to Calonne, the new Minister of Finance, a man of great ability but fitful and unscrupulous.

Calonne’s failure is a matter of general history, but during the three years of his ministry Talleyrand was usefully associated with him. The stormy Mirabeau also appears on the scene, and alternately embraces and quarrels with Talleyrand. His dispatches from Berlin, where he acted as a kind of secret agent, were nearly all edited by Talleyrand before being submitted to the King. He addresses Talleyrand from Berlin as his “dear master,” but has a violent quarrel with him, and calls him “a wretched, mean, greedy, intriguing creature,” when he returns to Paris, on account of some offensive allusion to his mistress. Talleyrand overlooked his violence and vulgarity, and intervened for him when he published one of his spirited attacks on Calonne. But Talleyrand’s next important act was to help in preparing a scheme for the redemption of the debt of the clergy. Calonne had thought of parrying the growing demand for the convocation of the States-General by summoning an Assembly of Notables. Talleyrand speaks of his scheme as “a vast plan,” but without base, as the Notables had no power whatever to raise the necessary supplies. However, it afforded him an opportunity to do helpful work. The Assembly was to meet on February 22nd (1787), and on the 14th Calonne invited Talleyrand,[13] Dupont de Nemours, and several others to come to assist him in preparing the papers to be submitted. They found a chaos of material, and none of the work done. They divided the work, Talleyrand undertaking to write the memoir and law on the new grain-proposals. He also helped M. de Saint-Genis to draw up a scheme for the redemption of the debt of the clergy. This was to be part of Calonne’s plan of a general land-tax and the abolition of all pecuniary privileges.

Calonne’s expedient, as is known, only brought about his own downfall. Talleyrand, in Paris, met these angry notables as they filled the salons during the Easter recess, and heard their comments on the impertinence of the subvention territoriale, by which they, the nobles and clergy, were to be mulcted. Loménie de Brienne fostered the opposition amongst the clergy. Calonne was dismissed, and, after an interval of nonentities, the Archbishop of Toulouse secured the long-coveted honour, chiefly through the influence of the Queen. Talleyrand would expect few favours from de Brienne (of whom he writes in the memoirs with disdain and dislike) and the Queen’s party. He felt that the near future would smooth out their intrigue. “The passion of the hour was the curtailment of the royal authority,” he says. The King was pitied and the Queen regarded with cold suspicion. The enormous deficit dismayed thoughtful men, whilst frivolous nobles called airily for a declaration of national bankruptcy as a means of salvation they had themselves tried with success. The letters which Talleyrand then wrote to his friend at Constantinople show that his observations in the memoirs faithfully convey the ideas he had at the time. Certain technical improvements in finance would do something, but it was clear that the situation of the nobility and clergy must change. The life-blood of France was being sucked for the support of a parasitic growth. Financial privileges must be curtailed or abolished. Who would cut away the exhausting growth of commissions, sinecures, benefices, and gifts? Clearly, neither the nobles themselves nor the King. The country must be prepared for popular representation on the English model—as seen through the merciful mists of the Channel. Talleyrand proceeded with interest to the Provincial Assembly at Chalons, to which he was deputed as abbé of St. Denis at Rheims.

The Provincial Assembly was a compromise with the new idea of popular representation. Six members of the clerical order and six of the nobility were pitted against twelve of the Third Estate; equal representation for the sansculottist twenty millions against the privileged two hundred thousand. And the president was to be chosen from the first two orders. These twenty-five nominated twenty-four other members, and one-fourth of the Assembly was to retire every year. At the elections to replace them everyone who paid ten livres in taxes was entitled to vote. Archbishop Talleyrand presided at Chalons, and must have gratified his nephew and the Third Estate at least by his outspoken denunciation of “greed” and his welcome of the promised reform of taxation. The work of these Assemblies was presently transferred to Versailles, in the opening of the States-General, and it need not be dwelt on. Talleyrand is believed to be the author of two long memoranda, submitted to the Chalons Assembly, on points relating to taxation. He was confirmed in his opinion of the value of these schools of popular training, for we find him urging the reopening of them in the National Assembly in 1789.

From an engraving, after a miniature by M. Gratis.

LOUIS XVI.

But his entry into political life was now properly regulated by his nomination to a bishopric. He had gone to Rheims as Vicar-General to his uncle, when Mgr. Marbœuf, who is believed to have so long opposed his promotion, was transferred from the See of Autun, and it was offered to Talleyrand. There are legends enough to explain how the King suddenly acquired his conviction of the “piety” of the Abbé de Périgord. The most probable story is that Talleyrand’s father, who died in 1788, begged Louis to confer the lingering bishopric on his son. Lieutenant-General Talleyrand had been an attendant on the King in his early years, and was a useful officer and a religious man. He would regard the long delay in finding a benefice for his son as a disgrace to one of the oldest houses in France. At all events, on November 2nd, the King signed the nomination, informing an amused Paris that he was “properly assured as to the good life, the morals, the piety, the competence, and all the other virtuous and commendable qualities of the Abbé de Périgord.” Paris remembered that a former Bishop of Autun had been the original of Tartuffe. “Ah, if Molière had only known his successor,” said one wag at the time. There were many religious and high-minded prelates amongst the French hierarchy, and they commanded a priesthood of considerable self-sacrifice and devotion. But Talleyrand’s opinions and habits would not cause a grave shock to a body that included Cardinal de Rohan, Archbishops Dillon, De Brienne and Cicé, and a considerable body of bishops and abbé’s of the type of de Grimaldi, Morellet, Arnaud, Bertrand, Delille, de Bourbon, de Dillon, Raynal, Maury, Sabatier, &c.

CHAPTER IV

AT THE STATES-GENERAL

Talleyrand was consecrated in the seminary-chapel at Issy, a house of retreat belonging to Saint-Sulpice, on January 16th, 1788. He had observed, in that age of forms, the form of making a preliminary retreat at Issy. His delighted friends from Paris took care that the “solitude,” as the place was called, should not depress him. The ceremony was performed by the Bishop-Count of Noyon, Mgr. de Grimaldi, a Voltairean prelate. There are two legendary versions of Talleyrand’s bearing during the service. Renan was told by an aged priest who had been present that he was so scandalised at the jauntiness of the new prelate as to feel compelled to charge himself with disrespectful thoughts at his next confession. Another version affirms that Talleyrand fainted from some emotion or other during the morning. It is more likely that Talleyrand bore himself with perfect propriety and indifference. Liberal nobles and prelates rarely ridiculed religion even in private conversation. “I have always moved in good society,” said one at a later date, when asked if he had ever scoffed at sacred things. Talleyrand would regard his share in the ceremony as a regrettable necessity of his political career. It deceived nobody. In the evening he returned to Paris, and received the pallium (a privilege of the Autun bishopric) from the archbishop.

With the sonorous title of “Bishop of Autun, First Suffragan of the Archbishop of Lyons, Administrator of of the Temporalities and Spiritualities of the said Archbishopric, sede vacante, Perpetual President of the States of Burgundy, Count of Sanlien, Baron of Issy-l’Evéque, Lucenay, Grosme, Touillon, &c.,” he was now somewhat better equipped for political work. The See of Autun was one of the most ancient in France, though its income was relatively very small—22,000 livres a year. It was, however, regarded as having next claim to the Archbishopric of Lyons, and the King had already bestowed a second abbey (of Celles, with 9,500 livres a year) on Talleyrand, and I find assigned to him in a list published at Paris in 1790, the rich Abbey of Bec. He was able to resume his pleasant ways at Paris, with an income of about 100,000 livres, and the credit of a rising prelate. It is probably to this period that the story of his adventure with the coach builder belongs. Receiving no answer to his applications for payment for the new episcopal carriage, the maker presented himself, hat in hand, at Talleyrand’s door when Monseigneur come out. After a few days of this Talleyrand blandly asked him what he wanted. “Oh, you will be paid,” he affably replied to the man. “But when, Monseigneur?” “Oh, you are very inquisitive,” said the prelate with an appearance of astonishment, as he drove away. It was the golden age of debtors. The King once ventured to tell Archbishop Dillon that he had heard he was greatly in debt. “I will consult my steward and report to your Majesty,” said the prelate.

On the other hand Talleyrand found that he must at length resort to actual duplicity to strengthen his position at Autun. The diocese of Mgr. Marbœuf was likely to hear of the new appointment with some misgiving. But already there were rumours of States-General, and it was necessary to secure real influence at Autun. Within a fortnight Talleyrand issued—let us hope he did not write—a letter to his flock, which closed the mouths of the pious grumblers. It was full of Scripture and redolent of a quiet, unmistakeable fervour and simplicity. “God is my witness,” it says, in the words of St. Paul, “that I am mindful of you without interruption.” He praises the zeal of his clergy, alludes to those unhappy people who “only seek in offices the miserable gratification of their vanity,” and urgently asks their prayers for his comfort. It was read to tearful congregations in all the churches of his diocese the next Sunday—Talleyrand being detained in Paris. A few weeks later his useful secretary, the Abbé des Renandes, was offered the Vicar-Generalship by the canons. He would not fail to follow up the effect of the letter he had (probably) written. On January 27th Talleyrand took possession of his cathedral, by representative. Important events were preparing at Paris and Versailles. A great arena for political adventure was being opened. About the middle of March he was free to follow the impulse of his heart and visit his beloved sheep; he had in his pocket the order to convoke the preliminary assembly of the clergy which was to send him to the States-General at Versailles.

This is really the most unpleasant page in Talleyrand’s life. I am glad the writing of it is over. But there is—perhaps unhappily—no mystery about it. He was carrying to logical conclusions the cynical estimate of the ecclesiastical order which his experiences had forced on him.

On Sunday, March 15th, he took solemn possession of his cathedral, and was honoured with a great fête. He took the oath, so often recalled by his enemies afterwards, to defend all the rights and privileges and the property of his church. He remained a month at Autun and captivated everybody. Were there rumours of Voltairean opinions and loose practices? He said his breviary daily in the garden—as anyone could see—attended to every function of his office, presided at the episcopal council, was a model bishop. Meantime his young abbé-assistants from Paris were circulating in the diocese, their conversation always ending with politics. There was open table at the episcopal palace for the poor curés, and the reputation of some of his Lenten dishes flew from parish to parish. The townspeople were badly supplied with fish, and a word to friends at Versailles got the post to stop at Autun and drop a load of fresh fish daily for the public market. The religious congregations were amiably cultivated, and became zealous for Monseigneur’s candidature. Soon there are 209 ecclesiastical electors assembled at Autun, many of them rough, hard-working curés, who distrust this descendant of all the Périgords. Monseigneur is tactful, candid, democratic; quietly leads their meetings as honorary president. He finds that the only serious rivals are Radical curés, with cries of “Down with the aristocrats in Church and State,” and better salaries for the “working clergy.” Then he issues his manifesto.

Sainte-Beuve was forced to say after reading it that Talleyrand “showed from the first day that he was one of the most enlightened and most penetrating minds of the time.” It met every serious grievance on which his rivals depended, and it was perfectly sincere. Talleyrand was not embittered against his order, like Mirabeau, by his experiences, nor did he lean to democratic principles on the lines of the Duc d’Orléans. He formed a sober and consistent judgment on the social and political situation, and it does no less credit to his humanity than his sagacity. He would claim at the States-General that that body should not be arbitrarily interfered with or prematurely dispersed. He would press for the making of a constitution as its first achievement; and, for all Carlyle’s raillery, this was the first political need of France. In this new constitution the rights of the people must be recognised as well as those of the king. The new political structure must have its first elements in the parish, and so up through Provincial Assemblies to a permanent States-General. All elections shall be free. The sanctity of private or corporate property shall be respected, but only after claims have been judicially examined and unsound claims rejected; in this he is clearly foreshadowing his attitude towards Church property. The administration of justice shall be simplified and purified; the criminal law reformed, lotteries suppressed, privileges abolished. The press shall be free, and the post shall not be interfered with. Feudal servitude shall be abolished. There shall be a strict inquiry into the financial situation, a reduction of expenditure, and the abolition of pecuniary privileges.

I repeat that this was not a rhetorical and insincere document, written for the purpose of catching votes. There is, in the first place, no rhetoric about it. It is a plain and sober statement of remedies for the national malady. Then, it is quite in accord with the few previous expressions of Talleyrand’s mind; and it is a faithful presentment of the measures he proposed or supported unequivocally afterwards at the National Assembly. To appreciate it fully, we must, as Mr. Belloc strongly pleads, beware of reading the ideas of ’91 and ’92 into ’89. Camille Desmoulins said there were not ten Republicans in France at that time. There were demands for reform on every point that Talleyrand takes up. I do not claim originality in the details, but the manifesto, as a whole, is an unanswerable refutation of those who would see nothing but frivolity, selfishness and cynicism in its author. His experiences had made him almost incapable of a zeal for an abstract ideal of justice, but his sympathy and humanity, as well as his political sagacity, gave a serious strain to his work. He was elected deputy by a large majority, and his address, with a few additions, was adopted by his clergy as their cahier or book of instructions to their representative.

But from the moment of his election he ceased to be an ecclesiastic, as far as possible. He left for Paris on Easter Sunday, not waiting to officiate at the services or to follow the retreat of the clergy which was commencing. His parishioners never saw him again; except that, thirteen years afterwards, his carriage broke down at Autun, as he passed through on the way to Lyons, and he is said to have been rather roughly noticed.

The next fortnight was spent in feverish debate at Paris on the forthcoming meeting. At the Thirty Club, where cultured Radicals foregathered, and where Talleyrand and Mirabeau had met the boldest politicians of their class during the last year or two, the interest was deep. Lafayette, Roederer, the Dukes de Luynes and Larochefoucauld, Sabatier, and other Liberals belonged to it, as well as some of Talleyrand’s earlier friends. A new salon that he frequented, and that rang with political controversy, was that of Mme. de Staël. Necker’s daughter had married the Swedish Minister in 1786, and she succeeded in drawing Talleyrand into her social circle. In such a circle the dangers and possibilities of the coming meeting were properly appreciated. These men, resolutely bent on anticipating instead of waiting for events, like the bulk of the nobles and the King’s party, saw clearly enough that the great question was: Will the voting be by orders separately or in common? The country had been agitated over the question what proportion of delegates should be allowed to the Third Estate. The King had granted them a representation equal to that of the first two orders together, or 600 members. But the effect of this was inappreciable until the procedure of voting had been settled; and this had been left undecided. No one, indeed, approached the date with the feeling of solemnity with which we now look back on it through the smoke of the revolutionary fires. But the situation was serious for men who, like Talleyrand, were bent on making the national parliament a reality. If the orders were to vote separately, the machine would produce nothing; if together, the Third Estate would be supported by the democratic curés and would rule the Assembly.

And were the people prepared for this power? Talleyrand must have stopped many a time in the gardens of the Palais Royal, now the agora of Paris, and listened to the barrel-oratory before the cafés. Men who had been seen washing their only shirt in the Seine a few months ago are leading crowds. Pamphlets are poured out by the thousand. The Duc d’Orléans is fanning the flames that break out here and there. Mirabeau is thundering. Sieyès is giving substance to the quips of Chamfort. Grim, gaunt, ragged crowds flood the street at the slightest provocation, sack merchants’ houses, and attack the troops. Talleyrand goes to Versailles in thoughtful mood. Popular representation on the English plan, with a second house, is the only hope.

Arnault describes in his Souvenirs how he saw Talleyrand at Versailles at that time. He would have us believe that he did not know the bishop, but was struck by this “angel’s face through which broke the spirit of a devil.” He would have thought it the face of a fast-living officer, but for the cassock and pectoral cross. The portrait given in the Galerie des États-Généraux, of Choderlos de Laclos, is of greater value, because it was drawn at the time. It gives the estimate in which he was held by his shrewder contemporaries. Intelligence, it is said, is his distinctive gift. Moderation, tact, and restraint are well cultivated. He is mild to a possible fault. He “yields to circumstances, to reason, and thinks he can make concessions for the sake of peace, without deserting the principles which he has made the ground of his morality and conduct.” His future depends on himself. If he is influenced by esprit de corps he will do nothing; if he acts independently he may do anything. We are justified in thinking that Talleyrand had made up his mind to act independently, though he had no dream of leading. He was for a limited monarchy and a second chamber representing culture and wealth.[14] Beyond this he was for Talleyrand, for France, and for humanity.

On the very eve of the opening of the States-General he received another proof of the foolishness of the order to which he now belonged. A few days before the 4th the leaders of the clergy met at the Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld’s house at Versailles to discuss the situation. All were agreed, to Talleyrand’s disgust, that this was a favourable opportunity for asking the nation to extinguish their debt. One of their number was deputed to introduce the proposal, and for a long time they clung to it. Clearly, one must not sacrifice much for clerical esprit-de-corps.

Then the 4th of May arrives. Chaos settles into order at Versailles. Talleyrand notes the petty devices by which royalism mitigates its concession of popular representation. On the previous day the King had received the deputies: first the Clergy and Nobles, then, with less ceremony, the Commons. He notes, too, how the leaders of the Commons are beginning to emphasize the distinction. “Three orders? No: three nations,” says Sieyès, constitution-maker for the next ten years. Now they march to the Salle des menus, all Paris lining the route or hanging out of the windows. Talleyrand sees the 550 popular deputies greeted with a roar of applause; mostly lawyers, with set faces under their “slouch-hats.” He sees the plumed and embroidered nobles, “the illustrious obscure,” tread daintily between silent hedges of soldiers and people. He marks the same silence as he and his forty colleagues in violet cassock and lace surplice step out, followed, with a convenient band between, by 260 curés. He hears the shouts of Vive le Roi in the rear: the Queen is ignored. Even in the intoxication of the spectacle and its symbolism the people discriminate conspicuously. The next day he is interested to hear the King express his pleasure that the privileged “are going to renounce their privileges” and Necker rub in the lesson. And he notices that first innovation in the history of France, when commoners put their hats on before the King has got out of the room. It is the first shot. On the third day the Third Estate finds itself alone in the great hall. The clergy and the nobility are meeting separately, as of old, to verify their papers. The commoners see that this means separate votes and impotence, and the historic battle begins.

History has described the fortunes of the Commons. I must follow Talleyrand into the obscurer meeting-place of the First Estate. The Nobles, pampered and encouraged by the unfortunate Queen, were violently opposed to union with the Commons. The Clergy knew they were fatally divided, being themselves composed of two orders, and their leaders were for a policy of drifting or compromise. Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld was president, and he contrived to bring the Clergy together for three hours a day for six weeks without doing anything. Some of the curés spoke at once in favour of joining the Commons, but they were silenced by an agreement to verify their papers “provisionally” where they were: the delegates from Paris, and several others, had not yet arrived. The Commons break in on their provisional action the next day by inviting them to come into the large hall—into which their own hall opens—and the struggle begins. The prelates name commissioners to discuss the matter with their colleagues of the other orders. The Commons, after a grumble, assent: the Nobles assent, but practically say their decision is taken. The cardinal suspends sittings, but there is mutiny amongst the curés, who are going to appoint a new president, and he hastily retracts. A week is taken up in “provisional” verification, voting commissioners, being polite to each other (except when a deputation comes from Dauphiné to disown the Archbishop of Vienne as improperly elected), and hair-splitting. On the 13th they send deputies to inform the Commons they have appointed commissioners: the deputies announce on their return that they were “not so well received as they had expected.” Fourteen days more are spent in discussing their cahiers (instructions), disputes about titles and costumes, abandonment of privileges (which is carried in general form, but disputed in detail), homage to the King, and indignation that pamphlets are in circulation accusing them of slowness. On the 27th they are “examining their cahiers” when “a numerous deputation” of grim, business-like lawyers from the Third break in, and implore them “in the name of the God of Peace and the interest of the nation” to stop quibbling and join the Commons. The deputies are bowed out, and a discussion follows, which is interrupted by M. Target and his companions once more with the same message. They are assured that the Clergy are going to “occupy themselves seriously” with the matter.

Talleyrand knew (as all his colleagues did) that these men of business had been sitting in the next room day after day in the most painful idleness. They would not open a letter or do a single act that could be construed as an admission that they were a separate body. They were “a meeting of citizens,” waiting to be joined by other citizens to do the business of the State. It was now clear that their resolution was unshakeable, and Talleyrand and the moderates cursed Necker very freely. The situation was becoming serious. Citizens from Paris (who had now sent their deputies) keep running down to see how business is proceeding. The curés are getting restless. One of them is interrupted by a Vicar-General, and he says: “Hold your tongue, monsieur.” Prelates leap to their feet in horror. Then some of the curés induce a secretary to begin at the bottom of his list when he is calling the names. One of the bishops rushes at him and snatches the list from his hand. That night (the 27th) 60 or 70 curés meet and decide to press matters. The next day there is a warm debate, when the cardinal produces a letter from the King, who is painfully surprised to hear there is some hitch or other; the commissioners will meet to-morrow in presence of his keeper of the seals. Another fortnight goes in meetings of commissioners, &c. The Nobles have sent to say they are determined to remain a separate order, and the shifty cardinal has betrayed himself: “Your fathers built and defended our churches: you will be to-day the saviours of your country.” They have tried, too, to tempt the Commons into action by inviting them to discuss the pitiful condition of the country; just what we are waiting for you to come and discuss, reply the Commons. Now (the 10th) Sieyès, the cool, hard-headed ex-theologian, is urging the Commons to “cut the cable.” On the 12th a deputation of ten offers a dignified but unmistakeable invitation to the clergy; they get a promise of “serious consideration.” The next morning it appears that three curés have joined the Third; three more go during the discussion: five the next day. On the 17th they hear that the Commons have constituted themselves the National Assembly. On the 19th they put the question of union to a formal vote. The cardinal says that separation is maintained by 135 votes against 127. The archbishops of Vienne and Bordeaux, the leaders of the unionists, cry that the list has been manipulated, and keep their party in the hall; they turn out to number 149 (against 115). Talleyrand marches out with the separatists, who are hooted by the great crowd at the door; the Archbishop of Vienne and his colleagues are carried in triumph. Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld and the Archbishop of Paris fly to the King.

The rest of this story of the disruption of the First Order and the consequent recognition of the National Assembly (the Revolution) is well known. Talleyrand was opposed to union. He looked with anxiety to the formation, in a totally uneducated country with a wide franchise, of a single elective chamber. We know now how just his concern was. He and the moderate reformers pressed the King (through M. d’Artois) to dissolve the States-General at whatever cost, and make a fresh appeal on a stricter franchise. He was told that it was too late (and in this the King was probably right), and had then to witness the miserable devices by which the royal party insinuated a power they dare not assert. The halls were closed to prepare for a royal sitting, and the famous oath in the tennis-court was the result. That night (June 20-21st) or the following Talleyrand probably made his last effort to stem the tide of the Revolution. He has told us in the memoirs how he and one or two other Liberal nobles went to Marly by night to see and advise the King.[15] The King would not see them, and his brother told them that their proposals—namely, that the King should disperse the present Assembly and proclaim a fresh election—could not be considered. Talleyrand then said that the Prince could not hold them responsible if in the course of events they felt compelled to throw in their lot with the popular party, and M. d’Artois replied that he could not blame them. Talleyrand thereupon returned to Versailles with a deep resentment of the folly of the King’s advisers and a feeling of independence. “Under pain of folly,” he writes, “it was time to think of oneself.” He, of course, held to his ideal of a limited monarchy, but it was clear that this might have to be attained in spite of the Court party. He proposed to watch the development closely and act as circumstances would direct.

On the Monday the tennis-court was closed—reserved for the Princes to play—and the deputies, after wandering about Versailles in sight of an angry crowd, met in the church of St. Louis. There 151 clerical deputies, with two archbishops at their head, join them amidst the wildest excitement. The royal sitting takes place on the Tuesday. The King promises considerable reforms and then affects authority, and orders them to separate into their respective rooms. Talleyrand saw, on the one hand, the delighted nobles crowding about the Queen, in the belief that all danger was over; and, on the other, the sullen Commons send Brézé to tell the King they will only yield to bayonets, and King Louis abdicate, as he says, “Let them stay”; and 6,000 people invade the chateau with cries for Necker. The Archbishop of Paris has to fly for his life. Soldiers refuse to fire on the crowd. On the next day (24th) the clergy find the door walled up that leads to the Assembly, and the minority continues its separate sitting, but its members melt away. On the 26th Talleyrand and the Bishop of Orange quietly take seats in the National Assembly; they are presently followed by the Archbishop of Paris. On the 27th the King enjoins the rest of the Clergy and the Nobles to unite with the National Assembly. Talleyrand sees the crowds frantically cheer the King and Queen, but he knows it is the royal submission, not the royal authority, they are greeting.

It is from this date, and during the next three years, that Talleyrand is especially found enigmatic, and I must trace his course with care, avoiding the temptation to linger over the stirring scenes of the time. Talleyrand’s opposition to the union of the three orders is clear enough; he wanted a second chamber as a check on undisciplined passion. When it became imperative he went into the Assembly to do what good he should find possible. He was becoming seriously concerned for the nation. He knew well the leaders of the democratic party. Desmoulins was living with his friend Mirabeau at Versailles, and Sieyès was often there. Sieyès ridiculed the English model. Desmoulins was a Republican.

CAMILLE DESMOULINS.

On July 7th Talleyrand spoke for the first time in the Assembly, and made a great impression. The question had been raised whether the deputies should still consider themselves bound by the instructions given them by the electors. Talleyrand, Sieyès and Mirabeau urged the abandonment of these cahiers, and carried it by a huge majority. Lytton defends Talleyrand’s action, and it is intelligible enough. The chief point of his subtle and rather formal speech is that the new Assembly is deliberative, and that therefore “imperative” instructions would only hamper its usefulness. Meantime the situation outside grows serious. Necker is dismissed, Paris is breaking prisons, troops are gathering thick round the capital and Versailles. Talleyrand marks the ascendancy of the violent Mirabeau. On the 13th the Assembly, receiving an unsatisfactory reply from the King, formally demands the withdrawal of the troops, censures the King’s advisers, decrees the consolidation of the national debt, and declares its sitting permanent. After a short adjournment during the night they meet with grave looks at five on the Tuesday morning, and settle down to the work of forming a committee to prepare the constitution.[16] Deputies and spectators run in and out all the morning—the Queen and nobles are mixing with the soldiers in the orangery, the Parisians are arming, the air is thick with plots and rebellion. The Prince de Lambesc gallops past for Paris. Deputies fancy they hear the sound of cannon. At last the heroic nerve of the Assembly fails, and Mirabeau proposes that they send a deputation to the King. Then the Vicomte de Noailles and others from Paris are announced, and walk up the great hall amidst a strained silence. The streets of Paris are red with blood; the people are storming the Bastille, the symbol of the old order. About midnight they hear that the Bastille has fallen. They separate about two, but reassemble early in the morning, and send deputation after deputation to the distracted monarch, who has been awakened from his sleep to be told there is “a revolution.” As the fifth delegation is going, with a ferocious message from Mirabeau, King Louis is announced, and is received with chilling silence. But he makes a fine speech, and promises everything—to disband the troops, recall Necker, and so on.

A feeling akin to that of intoxication is growing epidemic, but Talleyrand coolly watches the strange scenes with the keen, blue-grey eyes under the bushy eye-brows. He sees these prim lawyers crowding like schoolboys about the King as he returns to the chateau, covered with sweat and dust, and the royal family again on the balcony and the great crowds wild with rejoicing. Then he returns to the hall, and is deputed to set out at once with ninety-nine other members to inform Paris and allay its panic. Through long lines of drawn and excited faces—Paris has not been to bed for three days and nights—they drive up the Rue Saint Honoré to the sound of trumpets. At the Hotel de Ville they tell their news, and heaven and earth seem to melt in confusion. Lally-Tollendal is crowned with a wreath, but he passes it on to the archbishop, and the sedate prelate is dragged to the window where thousands of Bastille stormers cheer him. Then they march to Notre Dame to sing a Te Deum. Talleyrand sees the archbishop arm-in-arm with the black, ragged Abbé Lefèvre, who has been chief powder-distributor; and the placid, learned Bailly arm-in-arm with Hullin, the chief Bastille stormer, with four fusiliers as guard of honour. On they go through lanes of patriots—many of them monks and priests—with bloody pikes and axes and scythes, and faces unwashed for a week, and scraps of valuable old armour from the museums over tattered costumes. What a Paris compared with that he had left only three months before.

The following morning the deputies gave an account to the Assembly, and crowned the confusion by proposing to erect a statue of the King on the site of the Bastille. That night M. d’Artois and the Court nobles fled from France. It is probable enough that Talleyrand saw him, though the account in the memoirs is very inaccurate; he states explicitly that he was invited to fly with the Prince, but refused. In the morning the King went to Paris—driving between 200,000 silent men with pikes, sabres, scythes, axes, and lances—and renewed his promises. But as the news of the fall of the Bastille spread through the provinces it lit up the same conflagration over the country. About sixty monasteries and nunneries were burned in Talleyrand’s diocese. His uncle’s chateau was burned down during the night of July 29th. The Assembly appointed a committee to enquire into the disorders whilst it discussed the advisability of prefixing a declaration of the Rights of Man to the new Constitution. Fifty deputies demanded speech on the subject, and the flow of oratory began on August 1st. Meantime addresses and deputations poured in on the Assembly from all parts: thirty-one on July 24th, thirty-eight on the 28th, and so on.

By August 4th the deputies seem to have been wrought to a curious pitch of nervousness by the oratory and the addresses. In the morning a letter from the King is read, from which they learn that their Archbishop of Bordeaux has been made Keeper of the Seals, and the Archbishop of Vienne has been given the feuille des bénéfices. There is great rejoicing and acclamation of the King. In the afternoon the Vicomte de Noailles mounts the tribune and proposes that, in “this age of light, when sound philosophy has regained its sway,” the nobles shall lay at the feet of the nation every one of their privileges. The Duc d’Aiguillon supports the proposal. A marquis, another viscount, and a bishop (a colleague quarrelling for priority) follow with the same story. Michelet is unfair when he says the Clergy were the last and the least willing to join. Soon the steps of the tribune are crowded with men eager to renounce age-old privileges, and a scene unique in the history of the world is witnessed. Nobles abdicate their feudal rights, bishops abandon their benefices, the Clergy rise in a body to renounce tithe, starving curés forswear their miserable incomes (without a smile), barons part with their baronies, towns and provinces give up their proudest privileges. Time after time business—if this ought to be called business—is suspended till emotions can subside a little. At two in the morning they conclude with the ordering of a special medal and a Te Deum.

We do not distinguish Talleyrand in the crowd of enthusiasts, but he soon appears when it comes to the sober and detailed execution of the promise. On the 6th he proposed to distinguish between feudal rights that could be forthwith extinguished and rights that should be compensated. On the 11th he becomes more prominent. It was understood on the 4th that tithe would be redeemed, but, some of the Clergy haggling a little, the philosophic Marquis Lacoste proposed on the 10th that they abolish it outright, and Chasset made a formal motion to that effect. The Clergy resisted at first, and Sieyès supported them; but on the 11th the Archbishop of Paris declared with great solemnity that the Clergy surrendered its tithe to the nation, and trusted to its honour for a proper provision for worship and religion. There was a loud outburst of applause, and the Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld and several bishops rose to support their leader. Then the deep, slow, suave voice of Talleyrand broke through the uproar, and, to the astonishment of all, he drily demanded that it be entered in the minutes that Chasset’s motion of the previous day had been passed unanimously. This meant nearly all the difference between an enforced and a voluntary surrender. It was the beginning of Talleyrand’s secession from the clerical body. It is usually thought that he wanted to conciliate the Radicals by having the result cast in the form of a victory for them. It is probable enough that this was in his mind, but it is probable too that he distrusted sentimental promises and thought it advisable to have a formal motion passed.

The remainder of August was taken up with the discussion of the form in which the Rights of Man should be declared. Talleyrand intervened once or twice with effect. It was he, supported by Mirabeau, who induced the Assembly to cut out the two Articles relating to religion and morals. He has been censured for this, but his speech is a quite honest plea for a purely secular and political declaration, without any antagonism to religion. Long afterwards we shall find him pleading eloquently for moral instruction and for lessons in religion in the schools. On the 18th he was appointed Secretary, and on the 27th spoke with great effect in support of a proposed loan. In the long and stormy debates of September on the subject of the royal Veto, in the course of which the distinction of Right and Left became fully pronounced, Talleyrand took no part. The life of the people’s Assembly must have jarred on his taste. A hundred deputies at once would spring to their feet and out-bawl each other, only the roar of a Mirabeau or a Maury being heard through the din. Gallery also joined in—encouraging, threatening, whistling and singing. How Talleyrand must have longed for his Upper House—and a seat in it! Through this chaotic period it was almost useless to have a constructive policy. His one preoccupation was, as Aimée de Coigny afterwards said, to assist in allaying violence and to see that as little blood as possible be shed. His moderate colleagues on the Constitution-Committee resigned, but he and Sieyès were appointed on the new committee, and he continued his effort to frame a constitutional check for the daily increasing violence.

CHAPTER V

THE BREACH WITH THE CHURCH

When, in later years, Talleyrand looked back on the many oaths of allegiance he had successively sworn, he affirmed that he had never deserted any cause until it had abandoned itself. This is most certainly true of his desertion of the Royalist cause. His political ideal essentially and to the end included the element of limited monarchy; and his whole temper and taste would make him reluctant to turn from Versailles to the Paris of the end of 1789. A chaos, of which the issue was quite inconceivable, had succeeded to the older order. But the King and Queen had surrounded themselves with evil councillors from the first, and the throne was tottering. Talleyrand took no part in the long debates on the King’s Veto. The fact that the Assembly was discussing it at all meant, as he must have seen clearly, that a greater power than the King now ruled in France. He only can give or withhold an authority who possesses it.

Moreover, the royal party seemed to learn nothing from experience to the end. The King, indeed, was recognizing the permanence of the Revolution to some extent; nor was he without humane consciousness that it had been merited. With a wistful glance back at the golden days that were gone, he was clumsily learning his part as “Restorer of French Liberty” and loser of French autocracy. But “the Austrian” was far from reconciled, and what was left of the light-headed Court was frenzied with mortification. The debates on the Veto were answered by the military banquet in the Chateau on October 1st, by the huge white cockades at Versailles and black cockades at Paris. In the afternoon of the 5th the sitting of the Assembly is disturbed by whispers of Paris marching on Versailles. Presently the trickling stream of oratory is stopped by the sound of an approaching army, irregular and noisy. A deputation from Paris is announced, and fifteen indescribable females enter. With an implied disdain of constitution-making, they have come for mere vulgar bread. Talleyrand and his colleagues pour out and gaze with bewilderment on one more unique scene in the human drama—five thousand muddy, draggled, hungry, dangerous women of every type and complexion. The rest is familiar. Talleyrand saw the strange army surge and beat and roar about the gates of the Chateau, until the inevitable shot was fired, and the tide poured in and for a moment seemed likely to settle a good deal of the Constitution. Then it was rolled back upon Paris—but taking the King, now sunk to office of “chief baker” with it. Monarchy was over in France. There was no question of deserting it.

But what shall we say of his desertion of the Church, whose rights, privileges and properties he had sworn to defend on that gala-day at Autun seven months ago? When we go back to his election address, endorsed by the electors as their cahier of instructions, we are reminded that Talleyrand hinted long ago that titles to property must be scrutinised. It is almost certain that he was thinking of Church property. However that may be, the country had in October to face an appalling scarcity of bread and money. The loans could not be raised: the silver of the churches had been melted down: patriotic gifts had poured fruitlessly into the insatiable caisse: respectable ladies had sent their jewellery and other ladies had offered their earnings: monks had tendered their monasteries. The whole nation had caught the fever of August 4th. But the deficit remained, and very many eyes were turned towards the property of the Church, estimated to be worth 2,100,000,000 livres. The idea of appropriating this to national purposes had been broached in the Assembly early in August, and had been supported by several speakers. In the national emergency the proposal was certain to be voted sooner or later—probably sooner. Talleyrand put his name down for a speech on the subject, and it was delivered on October 10th. In it he urged the nation to assume the ownership of all the Church property in France.

It is impossible to read his speech without feeling that a sincere national interest inspires it. He points out that, in its distress, the nation has hitherto left one class of property untouched, and that, nevertheless, the clergy are probably expecting some change in their position, now that tithe has been suppressed. The clergy are not proprietors in the ordinary sense of the word. Estates are not so much left to them, as left for the performance of certain functions. A nation which has felt justified in dealing with tithe may go on to appropriate estates. In this a great saving can be made without injustice. The actual revenue of the Church is (to strike the average of estimates) 150,000,000. But religion can be fully provided for by the State out of a revenue of 100,000,000, and this may be gradually reduced to 80 or 85 millions. Sinecures will be abolished. Useless religious communities will be dispersed and compensated. At the same time the income of the curé will be raised to 1,200 livres a year and a house; and the clergy must have the first claim on the national revenue, and be paid in advance. He then shows how the sale of Church property may be made to yield 2,100,000,000 livres, and concludes with an attractive sketch of the expenditure of the profit.

The style of the speech is plain, except in the peroration, but it is solid and convincing. We can well believe that the speaker was interrupted over and over again with loud applause. Here was a financial expert, and a bishop, putting in impressive form the vague dream of so many of them. From the Right, naturally, came a flood of rhetoric. The Abbé Maury bitterly assailed Talleyrand, while Mirabeau vigorously defended the proposal.[17] But Talleyrand took no further share in the debate. He wished to speak again on November 2nd, the day the law was passed, but the closure had to be voted, and he was content to publish his speech (which was written, as was customary in the Assembly). The second speech adds little to the first, which had now, by order of the Assembly, been printed and distributed throughout the country. That he strengthened his position with the Radicals need not be stated. The Moniteur spoke of him as “the youngest, most intrepid, and most enlightened prelate in the ecclesiastical college.” The pamphleteers of the Right denounced him as “the limping devil,” “Judas,” “the disgrace and scandal of the Clergy, the shame of the nobility, the basest and vilest of gamblers.” The last phrase was suggested by the Abbé Maury’s declaration that Talleyrand was acting in concert with Jewish speculators. We may remember that, as Castellane points out, Talleyrand’s proposal would have the effect of reducing his own income to the most slender proportions. We must admit, too, that the appropriation of Church property was only a matter of time; and we must allow the probability of M. de Lacombe’s suggestion that Talleyrand feared the confiscation would be carried with the rough injustice and ignorance now so often exhibited in the Assembly, and he resolved to secure a just and rational settlement by his action. When we have admitted all this, there is little reason for us to seek further and dishonourable motives. We shall find him later boldly reminding the Assembly of their engagement to stoop to no injustice in the matter.

Not so leniently can we pass over a letter to his diocese, bearing the date of October 12th, which must have been written while he was preparing his speech. It enjoins the prayers of the Quarant Ore in accordance with the King’s instructions, but it is painfully religious. “The religion of Our Lord,” it begins, “is the firmest support of thrones, the most solid ground for the prosperity of States. In vain does the pride of man spend itself in brilliant speculations on the alleged force of reason and nature in systems of government that are independent of religion.” The work was most probably entrusted to Des Renaudes. Talleyrand’s clergy had been somewhat shaken when they heard of his voting for the abolition of tithe. After his speech of October 10th they wrote a strong letter of protest. Talleyrand replied with vague and mild excuses, and they retorted with some warmth; but he took no further notice, and the quarrel was suspended.

Meantime the Assembly had followed the King to Paris, and was meeting temporarily at the Archbishop’s palace, now deserted by the emigrant prelate. It would be difficult to imagine the feelings of even the staid Talleyrand after this transfer into the very crater of the national volcano. A glance at the Minutes of the Assembly shows a kind of panic amongst the Deputies. On October 9th the President was asked to grant 200 passports to members of the Assembly. Disease spread amongst them with appalling effect as the date approached for going to Paris. Even presidents complained of “extinction of the voice” when awkward debates came on; and one needed some voice in an Assembly where three orators would occupy the tribune at once, to the accompaniment of a hundred others and several hundred spectators. It must have been hopelessly bewildering to moderate politicians and refined people like Talleyrand. Moreover, one beacon that had more or less guided him so far was extinguished. He had looked forward to a place in the Ministry. Mirabeau had included him in his scheme of a Ministry, when the patriots got wind of it, and, at the beginning of November, passed a law that no member of the Assembly should accept any office or commission for two years after leaving it. The pay of an ordinary Deputy was 18 francs a day. Calculation was now of little use. Talleyrand must either emigrate, and leave France to the violent and ignorant, or remain an observant member of the Assembly, and cultivate faith and hope.

One better feature of the time was that the powerful Mirabeau was becoming alarmed. When he had whispered to the President of the Assembly on October 5th that “Paris is marching on us,” he had been told that it was “so much the better; we shall get a Republic all the sooner.” Talleyrand and he and other constitutionalists met at the “Society of Friends of the Constitution,” the successor of the Breton Club, meeting now in the library of the Jacobin convent in the Rue Saint-Honoré. Its debates were then quiet and orderly, the general public not being admitted. Most of the abler moderates met there—Duport, Barnave, Lameth (the well-known triumvirate—“triumscroundrelate,” Mirabeau said later), Sieyès, Chapelier, the Duc d’Aiguillon, &c. Many non-deputies, especially writers, were admitted after the transfer to Paris, and the club became a lively centre of journalism and pamphleteering. Gradually it became infected with the general violence of the time, and Talleyrand and the moderates left it in May to found the more respectable club of the Feuillants, with La Fayette, Bailly, Sieyès, Chamfort, and Marmontel. But Paris was being rapidly denuded of all that appealed to Talleyrand. By the middle of October there were 60,000 émigrés in Switzerland alone. The society that replaced them must have tried Talleyrand’s infinite restraint. One of Napoleon’s rough marshals said of him that “you could attack him thirty times in the rear (coups de derrière) before any indication appeared on his face.” He needed that quality most of all in the days of the Revolution.

During the remainder of 1789 he confined himself to practical work and moderation. On November 7th he appeared in the tribune to appeal for the proper protection of the confiscated estates. Towards the close of the month he was appointed on the bank committee, and he delivered its report on December 4th—a very able, technical discourse on the bank question, directed to be published by the Assembly. In December he helped to carry the abolition of the royal lottery, and in January he still further embittered his former friends of the Right by securing the enfranchisement of the Jews in the south. We have also speeches of his pleading for a uniform standard of weights and measures in the country (of which he afterwards sent a copy to Sir J. R. Miller, who was urging the cause in England), and on registration fees and the coinage of small money.

But his most important achievement about this time was the eloquent defence of the Assembly which he delivered on February 10th. Carlyle’s disparagement of that body’s labours is a faithful, if not very judicious, reproduction of what the crowds and the pamphleteers were saying. The plague of pamphlets was now at its height. E. de Goncourt says that 6,000 men were engaged in distributing them daily. The Cordeliers district had taken under its august protection any scribblers in its area, because the liberty of the press followed from the liberty of man. As a result the Assembly was constantly attacked, in the “theory-of-irregular-verbs” spirit. It was still too full of “aristocrocs” or “aristocranes”: it was a mere talking-shop. “Dames of the market” had been in it themselves, and knew. The Assembly directed its constitution-committee to inform France what it had done. The committee entrusted the work to Talleyrand, and he gave them a pyrotechnic display which brought on again that “species of intoxication” which was growing familiar to chroniclers. The Moniteur reporter (Is there a parallel to this in the history of reporting?) was too overcome with emotion even to remember its chief points; but he excuses himself with the plea that no patriot could have done otherwise. It evoked, he said, “applause without example.” But it was read again the next day and published, and then scattered lovingly over France at the expense of the Assembly. It is certainly a fine piece of rhetoric, with some notable phrases. “The King desires to guard his people from the flatterers he has driven away from his throne.” “Patience! It is for liberty. You have given so many centuries to despotism!” Talleyrand won a great deal of popularity by the speech. Ten days afterwards he was elected President of the Assembly (for the customary fortnight), in opposition to Sieyès, by 323 votes to 125. He was often cheered in the street, and once Mirabeau and he were called to the window by an admiring crowd during a banquet at the Palais Royal.

His diocese, as we can imagine, did not regard this new kind of distinction with satisfaction. At the beginning of the year he had sent them his greeting, and they had responded. But during the stormy debates of February, on the suppression of the monastic orders and the civil constitution of the clergy, they looked in vain for the name of their Bishop. Talleyrand took no part in the struggle. He saw the suppression of monasteries decreed on February 13th—and Capuchin monks rush to be shaved as soon as the report came, while others rushed to less respectable establishments without waiting to cast off their habits. He gave no assistance to the religious speakers of April 12-13th who tried to induce the Assembly to make a formal declaration that the Catholic Church was the Church of the nation, and he refused to sign their subsequent protest. Then his clergy reminded him of his office. No doubt, they said, with some irony, he had only abstained in the idea of making a more solemn protest at the head of his clergy. They had signed a protest and forwarded it to him to head the list of signatures and present to the Assembly. He sent a conciliatory reply, pointing out that it was unwise to ask a political body to meddle with religion: the Catholic faith was the religion of the nation. His people were divided on the receipt of this letter, but one of his Vicars-General made a vehement attack on him, and the local pamphleteers entertained each other for a time. Talleyrand’s policy was really clear enough. He believed that religion was wholly necessary for the people, and had no thought of impairing its action. But he knew that there were grave abuses to be suppressed, and he was content to watch, in the interest of the nation and of justice, while the State took over control of the Church. Twice he intervened with dignity and courage for justice to the clergy; once on June 13th, when he reminded the Assembly of its promise to treat the despoiled clergy as the first creditors of the State, and again on September 24th. Dillon afterwards claimed that he and the majority of his colleagues acted “as true gentlemen,” but would hardly claim religious motives. Talleyrand could say as much.

His popularity with the Left and the bitterness of the Right were doubled when he said Mass for the last time on July 14th—the famous Mass of the Champ de Mars. Much has been written, in the way of sneers, on that famous ceremony, and Talleyrand’s share in it; much of it is clearly unjust. It must be remembered that the demonstration in the Champ de Mars was not a piece of ritual arbitrarily devised to satisfy the sooty citizens who had taken the Bastille. Before the end of the preceding year this collective demonstration and oath-taking had started in provincial towns. As the months of 1790 advanced Paris was piqued to hear that town after town was solemnly swearing loyalty to King and constitution—or constitution and King—without any lead from itself. In May Lyons sent word that it had conducted a most enthusiastic ceremony of the kind. Paris must conclude and crown the series. The anniversary of the taking of the Bastille was divinely appointed for it, and the Champ de Mars provided. The municipality decreed it, and invited delegations from all parts of France. Clearly there were great moral possibilities in such an event. A banner could be raised there under which all parties could gather, except the extreme Right; and that banner might be—with embroideries and fringes—the banner of constitutionalism. As July 14th drew near everything pointed to the realisation of these hopes. Talleyrand was nominated by the King to preside episcopally at the function. He saw the theatre of the demonstration growing into shape during that marvellous fortnight: saw boys and girls, and university professors and curés, and prostitutes and countesses (among them his old friend, Mme. de Genlis, with a “mahogany barrow,” and a little model of the Bastille at her neck), and butchers and brigands and lawyers, decked with tricolours and cockades, digging and singing and wheeling barrows. It was a new “species of intoxication,” but most certainly it might mean a rally to a constitutional ideal, burned in by a blazing pageantry.

I believe myself it was with these thoughts that Talleyrand faced his great audience from the high altar on July 14th. Imagine oneself looking out on that living amphitheatre of 300,000 incandescent souls, all, or nearly all, in transfigured earnest, swearing loyalty to King and law and nation; and think what type of man would be like to mock at it. Surely not one who felt, if ever he felt anything, that a serious rally to a national idea was the pressing need of France. The statement that Talleyrand whispered mocking words to Lafayette as he mounted the steps rests on the thinnest of rumours, too eagerly welcomed by Sainte-Beuve. Lafayette does not confirm it; he would, in fact, be the last man to whom Talleyrand would say them, if he had them on his lips, for he would surely see the symbolic power of the moment. And the supposed letter to Mme. de Flahaut, in which Talleyrand is made to sneer at the ceremony, is not worth considering. For most of Talleyrand’s actions during these two years we have to construct ourselves the inner mood. The memoirs are almost silent. In this case it is difficult to believe that Talleyrand missed the real potency of the occasion, and we have no evidence to make us think so. The suspicion arises from a twofold mistake. It is too readily assumed that Talleyrand had no serious interests, but was ever in the mood of Goethe’s Mephistopheles. This is false. His affection began at home, if you will, but his public and political action constantly shows that it did not end there. In the second place, the theological element of the demonstration is taken too literally and too narrowly. The fact that Talleyrand and his deacon and sub-deacon (Louis and des Renaudes) were rationalists is no impediment whatever to their being thoroughly serious. Like many priests before and since they took their service symbolically, and looked to the effect on the audience. The ceremony was religious on quite other grounds from those on which the theologian examines it. I respect his technical objection, but the religion remains.

For my part I cannot conceive a man so sensible as Talleyrand was of the needs of France, and the possibilities of such a ceremony, looking with even indifference from those altar-steps. Would the fire of their enthusiasm burn on? Would this idea of allegiance to law and an orderly constitution work deeper into them? If so, it were well for France; but even if not, it was worth attempting. It was a great political experiment.

Talleyrand’s diocesans would be represented on the benches of provincial delegates, but we do not find them quarrelling with him again until he accepts the civil constitution of the clergy. In the discussions of religious and ecclesiastical affairs that continued through the whole year he took no part, except, as I said, to intervene twice when there seemed danger of injustice to the clergy. On the financial side of the proceedings he spoke several times. In their ignorance of the elements of political economy, the majority wished to treat the confiscated estates as so much wealth actually added to the country’s resources, or to dispose of them at a ruinous loss. Talleyrand firmly pointed out the fallacies of their view, and pleaded for a wise and business-like procedure in turning the estates into available money. The flooding of the country with paper-money—“robbery by violence” Mirabeau called it—was a serious addition to the financial confusion of the times. But in spite of Talleyrand’s clear and earnest warning, supported by all the financiers, the temptation to issue the paper-currency on the strength of the new estates was too great, and Talleyrand had again to bemoan in private the immature democracy that had assumed power. He retained his popularity, however, and was mentioned for the Archbishopric of Paris in September. He wrote a curious letter to the Moniteur on the 8th of September, disclaiming any ambition for the post, but at the same time replying to the personal charges which the rumour had caused the Right to circulate. He denied that he was addicted to heavy gambling, but admitted that he had won 30,000 francs at the Chess Club. With a rather hollow show of penitence, he allowed that he had no excuse to make for his gaming, and said that the State ought to interfere and protect citizens from themselves in the matter.

But the determination of the Constituent Assembly to control the Church and force it into the political unity of the State was gradually nearing its climax, and was to close Talleyrand’s clerical career. It is hardly surprising that he did not take part in the debates. The issue was never really doubtful, and on the whole would not displease Talleyrand. His abstinence should be construed in his favour; no one could seriously expect him to stand for the autonomy of the Church. The priest was, in his opinion, a moral functionary (for the masses) or nothing, and his work was part of the nation’s life. His experience and his knowledge of history would tell him the danger of leaving the clergy “a State within a State.” He would regard with satisfaction the suppression (on the just conditions he had himself laid down) of the monastic orders and the redistribution of income. He would hardly resent the rearrangement of ecclesiastical divisions, the exclusion of the Pope, and the elective character of the new hierarchy. Certainly he must have foreseen the disturbances that interference in these matters would cause, but that was a concern of the executive. With the Archbishop of Sens (de Brienne), the Bishop of Orleans, the Bishop of Vivières, three bishops in partibus, and 66 curés, he took the oath and accepted the civil constitution of the clergy. Archbishop Dillon and 130 prelates refused to submit—the majority of them doing so, Dillon said, as gentlemen, not as theologians. The distinction is unfortunate, though necessary. They had plunged the country in a civil war which only a strict regard for their theology could have justified.

Talleyrand had no more respect for theology than Dillon (and “most of his colleagues,” to use Dillon’s words), but he professed to regard the new State control as purely disciplinary, and wrote to invite his clergy to follow his example. They sent him a fiery reply, promising him “infamy in this world and eternal reprobation in the next,” and declining to “follow him into the abyss.” After the passing of the civil constitution the municipal authorities of Autun had notified Talleyrand’s chapter of the cessation of their functions, and sealed the door of the chapter-house. They continued to meet, however, in private and discuss the morals of their bishop. In the rearrangement of ecclesiastical areas the authorities had contrived to leave Autun an episcopal centre, but on January 21st Talleyrand resigned his See. He had, he politely explained, been elected a member of the Department of Paris, and must in future reside constantly in the capital! Lytton’s statement that Talleyrand remained throughout life very sensitive to any reference to his bishopric, and that a lady once greatly disturbed him by dropping the word “lawn,” is not to be taken seriously. His friends continued to call him “the bishop” for years after (witness the correspondence in 1792 of Narbonne and Lauzun). There is as little plausibility in the story of the Prince of Condé once asking him “what had become of some precious relative of his who used to be Bishop of Autun.” No one not gifted with the skin of an elephant would venture to say such things to Talleyrand. I may add that Talleyrand, under the Directorate, more than once sent help to emigrant members of his old clergy who had censured him.

One more episcopal act must be mentioned before Monseigneur becomes plain Citizen Talleyrand. The administration appointed two new bishops, but had retained sufficient respect for the apostolic succession to require their proper consecration. Several of the rallied prelates refused, and Talleyrand promised to officiate, with the assistance of two of the bishops in partibus, Gobel and Mirondot. The latter withdrew at the last moment. Talleyrand saw him, and is said to have worked on his feelings by toying with the handle of a pistol and talking of suicide. The three bishops and the candidates conducted this ceremony on the following day in a curious environment. The chapel was strongly guarded by soldiers, and a military band supplied the music. Saint-Sulpice sent its master of ceremonies to keep the eye of a ritualist expert on Talleyrand, but was disappointed in its search for an essential flaw. The American envoy, Morris, tells that Talleyrand’s dread of violence from the orthodox occasioned a good deal of grief to his friend, Mme. de Flahaut. The night before the ceremony she received an envelope containing his will, and sent in search of him. He did not return to his house that night, and she feared a catastrophe. The truth was that, conceiving an attack to be possible, he had slept away from home, and had directed his will to be sent to her only in case of anything happening.

Lytton, a very careful if not generous judge of Talleyrand’s career, looks upon this ordination as one of his “unpardonable” acts. It is one of those acts as to which one’s judgment is almost inevitably swayed by one’s religious views. Talleyrand explains in his memoirs that he did it to save the Gallican Church from falling into Presbyterianism from sheer lack of bishops. The paragraph is ingenious, but not very convincing. Nearer to the point seems to be an answer he gave in later years, according to a letter of the Duchess de Dino to Dupanloup. When asked to explain some action or other, he answered that it was impossible to explain many things done at the time of the Revolution; the disorder was so great that people hardly knew what they were doing. If we could succeed in putting ourselves in the frame of mind of a man who had lived through the bewilderingly rapid changes of 1789 and 1790, we should be in a position to pass moral judgment on him. To do it in the light of our calm standards, in our placid days, is absurd. However, my purpose is only to have Talleyrand understood, and there is in this ordination nothing inconsistent with the ideas and policy he has hitherto followed.

But Rome now found itself obliged to interfere and clip the wings of this dangerous bishop at large. On May 1st the Moniteur published the announcement from the Vatican that Talleyrand was suspended, and would incur excommunication if he “did not return to penance within the space of forty days.” The romantic biographers say that the only notice Talleyrand took of it was to invite Lauzun to supper to console him, adding that “as he was now denied fire and water they would have to be content with wine and iced foods.” Unfortunately, the story had been told before, and Talleyrand did not plagiarise. The censure would not distress him. We can, in fact, imagine that he would close his clerical career with some relief. It had imposed not a little duplicity on him. In justice to him we must remember that he had been forced into the clerical estate, had been unchecked in his irregular ideas and habits, had been promoted from order to order by those who were fully acquainted with them, and, in fine, found a position like his sanctioned by almost his whole social class. Yet this chapter alone of his career will prevent one from ever calling him “great,” except in the qualified sense of a great diplomatist.

CHAPTER VI

CITIZEN TALLEYRAND

Talleyrand explains in the Memoirs that, after resigning his bishopric, he “put himself at the disposal of events.” “Provided I remained a Frenchman” he says, “I was prepared for anything.” The outlook must have been blank and perplexing. His ecclesiastical income was entirely stopped, and he was prevented by the vote of the Assembly from accepting a place in the Ministry, or any paid office under Government, for two years. He had, however, been appointed member of the newly-formed and important Department of Paris on January 18th. He retained this municipal office for eighteen months, and there and on the Assembly did some good work during the course of the year 1791. Sieyès and Mirabeau were elected with him: Danton followed on January 31st. Within six months two events of great importance occurred—the death of Mirabeau and the flight of the King. Each event left the outlook darker for constitutionalists like Talleyrand.

Mirabeau had realised at length that France was travelling downwards, and had secretly rallied to the Court. Talleyrand was accused later of having done the same; but he denied it, and there was no solid proof, as we shall see. It is by no means unlikely that Mirabeau would tell the King of Talleyrand’s disposition as a monarchist and constitutionalist. On the extreme left in the Assembly a menacing group was forming, and was gaining favour in Paris and the provinces. It was also dominating the club at the Jacobins and extending its influence over France through the affiliated clubs. Mirabeau roared down the violent suggestions of these Marats and Robespierres for a time, but his constitution was shattered[18] by excess and work. He died on April 2nd, taking with him, he said, “the doom of monarchy.” Talleyrand was with him for a couple of hours before he died, and the interview is generally described as the bequeathing of Mirabeau’s plans to him. Lamartine says he left Talleyrand “all his grand views in his grand speech;” another writer says he left him his idea of an alliance between England and France. Talleyrand read Mirabeau’s last words at the Assembly. The notion of a bequeathing and inheriting of views is exaggerated. Talleyrand had been friendly with Mirabeau in the intervals of their numerous quarrels, but he was not likely to be influenced by him—if by anybody. Mirabeau’s violence and intemperance imposed restraint on him. Their views largely coincided, and, just as Talleyrand’s few and wise proposals in the Assembly had almost always had Mirabeau’s support, so, now that Mirabeau was gone, Talleyrand seemed to be continuing his views in the Assembly. The idea of drawing towards England had been expressed by him twelve months before, in his letter to Sir J. R. Miller. As Talleyrand was nominated to the place left vacant by Mirabeau on the diplomatic committee he would naturally begin to give greater prominence to this idea.

MIRABEAU.

A week later Talleyrand gave a proof of the moderation and splendid balance of his character. At Paris the priests who would not take the oath according to the new civil constitution of the clergy were being roughly handled by the “patriots.” Talleyrand induced the Department to pass a measure for their protection. Six weeks earlier his life had been threatened by these “Nonconformists,” as he called them. Now he endangered his popularity in securing for them complete liberty to follow their cult in their own way, in churches specially assigned to them. It is not scholarship, but partisanship, to ignore the traits of character—the unchanging concern for justice, humanity and moderation—which inspire these interventions on behalf of his bitter enemies, and in antagonism to the dominant feeling, and then pronounce Talleyrand a “sphinx.” A little later (May 7th) he repeated his plea to the Assembly. He had to report the discussion of the constitution-committee on a decree of the Department of Paris in reference to deserted religious edifices. He upheld the right of the municipality to dispose of these, and went on to plead again for liberty for the “Nonconformists.” “Let us not speak of tolerance,” he finely says; “such a domineering expression is an insult, and should no longer be found in the language of a free and enlightened people.” The king himself, “the first functionary of the nation,” shall be free “like other functionaries” to worship as a Nonconformist if he wishes: only not in his character of State-official. On the other hand, these Nonconformists must drop their ridiculous talk of “schism.” A nation cannot be schismatic until it declares itself in rebellion against the Church. He politely invites the Pope to mind his own business. I repeat that there is nothing mysterious about these actions except to men whose personal experience disables them from understanding a passionless moral and intellectual consistency.

The reference to the King reminds us of the other great event of 1791 that prepared the way for the Terror. With religious conscientiousness, but political folly, the King had tried to leave the Tuileries for the purpose of making his Pâques at Saint-Cloud. Lafayette was willing; but the Jacobins saw, in long perspective, a flight over the frontier and an Austrian invasion. There was another fatal conflict of mob and authority, and victory for the mob. On the following day the Department of Paris sent a letter of censure to the King for his impolitic attempt. M. Belloc says the letter has been imputed to Danton, but was really written by Talleyrand. He is quite right, as Talleyrand says in his letter to the Convention from London (December 12th, 1792), that he “redacted this famous address of the Department,” and, in fact, took it himself to the King: not impossibly using the opportunity to gild the pill. But the brain of Louis XVI was not likely to be the only one to remain unintoxicated in such times. Indeed, calm political wisdom, looking back now from placid studies, is at a loss to determine the move he ought to have taken. A royalist plot, an unguarded door, and he was off on the night of June 20th for Metz.[19] On the evening of the 26th Talleyrand saw the sad return again through the lane of some hundred thousand faces, not now cheering, not frigidly silent, but surly and menacing. For a time the increased danger rallied the constitutionalists. They had left the Jacobin club, and met at the Feuillants, where all that was left of moderation and constitutionalism now gathered. But the ancient homes of the Dominicans (Jacobins) and the Franciscans (Cordeliers) had become furnaces, heating Paris. The party on the extreme Left had found a “new fact” to proceed on. Talleyrand’s speech of May 7th had been loudly applauded and placarded[20] over Paris and the provinces. Evidently the situation was then far from hopeless. But this pardonable madness—unpardonable only in its stupid details and blunders—of the King had wrought terrible mischief. Paris rose, and Lafayette crushed it, and made it a more bitter enemy than ever of constitutionalism, more accessible to the new Dominicans and Franciscans—Danton, Marat, Desmoulins, Pétion, Robespierre, and the rest.

One other day does Talleyrand fill the Salle de Manège with ringing applause before the Constituent Assembly breaks up. We rarely catch sight of him in these long and angry debates that fill whole sessions, when the victory is to the strong-lunged. But nearly on every single occasion when his low-pitched, deliberate voice is heard, putting judicious views in temperate, lucid, convincing language, he obtains his point. On September 10th he has his last declaration to make in the name of the constitution-committee, a report of their views on education. It is, of course, disputed whether Talleyrand wrote the speech. Some attribute it to Chamfort, others to Condorcet, others to des Renaudes. Talleyrand distinctly claims it, acknowledging his debt to the chief savants of the time—Lagrange, Lavoisier, Laplace, Monge, Condorcet, Vicq d’Azir, la Harpe, and others. It is, in fact, a most remarkable presentation of the best opinions of the time, united in a brilliant scheme of national education. We know that Talleyrand had a habit of writing a heap of scrappy notes and leaving it to his secretary to unite them: just as M. de Bacourt has done with the memoirs. In this sense the finished manuscript is possibly the work of des Renaudes, but the vast and striking scheme is a construction of Talleyrand’s. Long before, Morris had said that education was “the bee in Talleyrand’s bonnet.”

He begins with a ruthless account of the pre-Revolutionary education, and makes an appeal to the Assembly to complete its work with a worthy system of national instruction. Education must be universal, free, the same for both sexes (this he modifies presently), and must regard adults as well as children. It must include lessons on religion, but its lessons in morality and civism must be completely separated from these, and purely humanitarian. Thinkers must be invited to draw up manuals for this most important section of the code. The organisation must correspond to the civic organisation. The primary schools must be under the control of the elementary political division. Secondary schools must be set up by the District, technical schools by the Department, and there must be a great central Institute at Paris. The State must provide all primary education, and it must found and assist higher schools, but in these the pupil must contribute; though the State will see that poverty does not exclude able youths. Girls will have equal instruction with boys in the primary schools, and a few higher schools will be provided for them, but the home must be their chief school (this is put in rather awkwardly towards the close). The construction of the scheme must proceed slowly and cautiously. No children under seven shall attend school. The work of the technical or special schools is very fully discussed. First amongst them he puts “schools of theology,” and in these the subtleties of the older theology shall be avoided, and a solid, rational Christian doctrine expounded. There is not a shade of offence to old ideas or colleagues in the phrasing. The work of the medical, legal, and military schools is similarly analysed. The Institute, for which he makes a stirring appeal, is to have the first professors in France and the best laboratories and equipment; it shall have branches all over the country. Public libraries must be built in connection with all higher schools. The French language is to be purified and strengthened. National fêtes shall be designed by artists and scientists, and form part of the great scheme of uplifting the people.

Jules Simon has described this speech as “at once a law and a book,” and Renan says it is “the most remarkable theory of public instruction that has ever been propounded in France.” It is certainly a wonderful vision, in its general outline, of the education of the future. No doubt thinkers and reformers of all schools were working for a reform of education. The clergy themselves were prepared on the eve of the States-General to respond to the demand for progress. But only a few in France were fully acquainted with the views of the expert thinkers, and Talleyrand did a fine piece of work in thus presenting them. Unfortunately, a firework of applause was all that he could obtain. The subject was deferred—for ten years, as it turned out. The sadly imperfect education of the earlier regime was succeeded by the complete absence of it during the Revolution. Talleyrand had to wait for the genius of Napoleon to make a beginning with his scheme. It is growing near to realization in the twentieth century.

On the 30th of September the Constituent Assembly broke up. It had at length completed the constitution. Those who think lightly of its work, who see only its constitution-committee, and that on its vulnerable side, may be asked to conceive France without it during those two years and a half; as well try to conceive Paris in some order without Lafayette and his National Guard. But what it did, and what its constitution was worth, and how anarchy had grown too strong before it was given—all these things are told in the larger story of the Revolution. One thing it did that affected Talleyrand. It bound its members to refrain from taking office or commission or gift or pension for two years. “Greenish” Robespierre had proposed this. As a consequence the nation was deprived of the service of its most trained and expert governors and administrators. A special gallery was appointed from which they might witness the proceedings of the new Legislative Assembly, and be able to afford friendly hints in private; but a vast amount of talent was wasted at a critical period. So slow and delicate had been the transfer of executive power, so dazzling the new ideal of liberty to the emancipated, so strong and daring the self-assertion of mobs, so skilled the art of the demagogue, that the air was thick with dangers. It would need all the sound heads and steady arms in France to launch that new Constitution safely on such waters; and they began by turning the majority of the soundest and steadiest away.

Talleyrand, with ever mistier prospect in front, did what he could in the next three months. The Girondists had quickly come to power in the new Assembly, decreed death and confiscation against emigrants, and pronounced expulsion against all priests who would not take the oath. They then asked the Department of Paris to furnish a list of suspected priests, but it refused to do so. Talleyrand and several other of its members even went on to beg the King not to sanction the decree of November 29th against the non-swearing priests. The sections at Paris unsuccessfully demanded their impeachment for the letter. Later, in December, we find him prevailing upon the Department to pay the salaries of the non-juring priests. It is his last official act before he leaves France. But the significance of these two acts should not be neglected. At a time when the more violent are seizing power, our excommunicated bishop—our “Judas,” and all the rest—with no position, exerts himself to rescue from them his most bitter opponents.

But Talleyrand had now completed the first part of his career, and was about to enter the path of diplomacy. Paris became less attractive every month. He began to think of foreign embassies. No doubt these also were forbidden by the September decree, but in regard to these at least it was possible to evade the measure. Moreover, war had at length been decided on, and Talleyrand would be of use in keeping England neutral. Early in December we find an active correspondence going on between Talleyrand, Narbonne (now Minister of War) and de Biron (formally Lauzun). Talleyrand, in the capital, is evidently in close touch with the new Ministry, and not without influence over de Lessart. De Biron is pressed to take up military command; he in turn suggests that an ambassador should be sent to London. Talleyrand proposes De Biron himself, who knows London well. De Biron cannot be spared from the army, and suggests Talleyrand. De Lessart, the Minister, presses him to accept, and in January he starts for England, with an informal diplomatic mission.

Talleyrand left his country, but not Paris, with reluctance. The Paris he had so much enjoyed up to 1789 was changed, desecrated, beyond endurance. Closed now were most of the fine salons where he had played and talked. Hardly could a Mme. de Staël and a few survivors restore some faint gleam of the faded brilliance. Even her, with all her devotion to him and her great helpfulness, he never loved. “I believe we are both in it, disguised as women,” he said, with piercing cruelty, of the novel in which she afterwards depicted their relations.[21] Apart from one or two houses, Paris was getting insufferable. Ugliness, vulgarity, strident pedantry of the ignorant sort, followed one everywhere. Your servant, sweeping the salon while you spoke to your visitor, could join in the conversation. “Who? Montmorin? He’s a scoundrel,” interrupted one, while his mistress and visitor were discussing the late minister. The drawing-rooms of new Paris were hung with blatant caricatures. Ladies wore the tricolour even in the shape of boots. Jewellery had been replaced by bits of Bastille stone. Some wore red dresses, of the shade “Foulon’s blood.” The graceful furniture of the preceding generation was replaced by pseudo-classic of the crudest sort.

Abroad there was no chance of eluding the growing coarseness without hearing the word “aristocroc,” if not “lanterne.” Old titles had been abolished, as well as armorial bearings. Now “thou” and “thee” were being thought patriotic; the fashion would presently be enforced by law. Patriots of the more thorough kind were discovering that it was beneath the dignity of a man to raise his hat, or bow, or be polite in the old fashion. From equality they were passing on to that idea of fraternity which Chamfort—who was venting lurid phrases in the middle of it all—described as: “Be my brother, or I’ll kill thee.” Solicitation on the streets or at the Palais became disgusting. Coureur des filles had been a term of reproach in the day of liaisons. Now 60,000 of them, most of them about 14 or 15 years old, calculated to be making an income of 143,000,000 a year, held the city. Caricatures and pamphlets became grosser every week, the press more strident and hysterical. Every wall was covered with gaudy placards. Even classic dramas were altered to suit the patriotic taste.

From such a picture the refined noble, to whom the supreme virtue was taste, turned wearily away. At the same time it did seem probable that he could be very useful at London. Pitt’s bias for peace was known, as well as the sympathy of Fox and the Opposition. But the emigrants were employing every fair and foul means in their power to alarm and alienate England. For France its neutrality, at least, was supremely important in face of the inevitable war on the continent. Pitt, Grenville and Dundas, were known to be favourable; but Camden, Thurlow, and especially the King, were very unfavourably disposed. So, urging de Lessart to fix up the fleet—“one must talk to the northern powers with an army, and to England with a fleet”—Talleyrand departed for London, which he reached on January 24th.

His difficulties began before he arrived. He was delayed at the coast for a day, and so did not reach London at the appointed time. But the London press had announced his arrival, all the same, and added that he had been badly received by Pitt. It was the opening of the subterranean campaign of his former friends, now needy and embittered emigrants, at London. Pitt, as a matter of fact, received him with the utmost politeness, but nothing more. He reminded Talleyrand of their earlier meeting at Rheims, and declared his satisfaction at being able to discuss the situation in France with one so well informed, but said that Talleyrand’s unofficial character prevented him from going any further. Talleyrand was, of course, really holding an official and salaried appointment, but no action could be taken that might expose this to the keen scent of the patriots at home. He had to pursue his task with double diplomacy, and he succeeded very well until the Terror made England recoil. He saw the King on February 1st, and was received with frigid correctness; the Queen would not speak to him. He then saw Lord Grenville. For three-quarters of an hour he held Grenville listening to an explanation of the situation, politely suppressing all his attempts to speak, and postponing his answer. But Grenville could only follow Pitt’s example. He intimated plainly enough to Citizen Talleyrand in his private capacity that England strongly desired peace, but he could make no official communication to him. Beyond this Talleyrand could do nothing with the Government. It seemed to have a surprising respect for the decree of the Constituent Assembly which said that Talleyrand must be a private individual. Talleyrand did not appreciate such virtue. However, he really did a good deal with Grenville in the way of arranging the details of the understanding between the two countries.

On the other hand Talleyrand neglected no opportunity of cultivating English society. When we find him in 1802 instructing the French representative at London to accept all invitations and make frequent attendance at the Exchange (“there is nearly always a Minister about”) we can see his own conduct of 1792. He became very friendly with Lord Lansdowne, and was, naturally, warmly welcomed by Fox, Sheridan, and their party. His chief first impression of England was its slowness; it is more curious to find that this was the chief impression he himself made on his hosts. This was owing to the reputation of his gay life in the eighties, which had preceded him, and partly to the ineradicable English idea of the French character. No doubt there was some excuse for it in those days. England had listened with open mouth to the news of the grand pyrotechnic displays of French emotion in 1790 and 1791. The reports had not lost colour in crossing the Channel. Journalism and caricature and Burke-oratory had effectively conveyed them to the British imagination. Emigrant conduct during the same period would doubtless confirm the idea that the Frenchman was a bundle of doubly-charged nerves. To these stolid fathers of ours with such an expectation the person of Talleyrand was a mystery. One of the gayest figures of pre-Revolutionary days, with a reputation for keenest wit and brilliant mots, and now hot from the crater of the volcano, he was expected to dance and gesticulate and emit electric phrases. Instead they were introduced to a pale, sedate, stolid-looking man, who hardly opened his mouth after the first quiet and brief courtesies were over. With closer friends Talleyrand enjoyed himself in the old way. But he wore a diplomatic sedateness on ordinary occasions; and his puffy, rounded face and full figure, his perfect ease and quietness of bearing, and his deep, slow, sententious speech, disconcerted people.

In his letters to de Lessart he shows that his feelings were lively enough beneath this exterior. What with provincial risings and foreign threats and Jacobin violence, poor de Lessart was too distracted to pay adequate attention to Talleyrand’s mission, and the letters to him are impatient. “Kill each other or embrace,” urged Talleyrand, when he heard of the quarrels at Paris. Moreover, his companion in London had gravely compromised him. Narbonne had given de Biron a commission to buy horses in England for the army, and he accompanied Talleyrand in January. His real purpose was to introduce Talleyrand in London society, with which he was familiar—unfortunately, too familiar; he was arrested for debt shortly after they landed. De Biron swears the bills were forged, and others talk of emigrant plots. The truth seems to be that he gambled very heavily at the London clubs. At these places the stewards obliged the players with loans, at a good discount. De Biron, dreaming of easy-going Paris, where there were no debtors’ prisons, was a good customer. Between former visits and the present one he owed about £16,000. Some of his creditors closed, and the Colonel found himself in the King’s Bench. French visitors often failed to realise the new conditions. The Count d’Artois had only escaped imprisonment by seeking sanctuary at Holyrood. Talleyrand, greatly annoyed, employed Erskine to dispute the bills or raise the plea of “privilege,” but he failed on both counts. Lauzun was eventually bought out by Lord Rawdon and a French admirer, and retired in a violent passion to France. The episode was not lost on the emigrants and French libellists, whose spicy contributions to the London press were appreciated. A further source of annoyance was that the Times made a violent attack on Talleyrand, on the ground of his constant intercourse with the Opposition and, it alleged, with such men as Tooke and Paine. There is a letter from one of their secret agents to the French Government which says that the English Ministers were annoyed at Talleyrand’s relations with the Opposition, but it adds that his culture and dignity have made a good impression in England.

Talleyrand now thought it would be better to have a nominal ambassador at the Court, through whom he could act with greater effect, and he crossed over to Paris in March to persuade de Lessart. That Minister had disappeared when he arrived (March 10th), but he convinced his successor, Dumouriez, of the importance of the matter, and returned to London (April 29th) with three companions (besides des Renaudes, who had been with him all along). Talleyrand had asked for the young Marquis de Chauvelin as ambassador. Duroveray, who knew England, was appointed in much the same position as Talleyrand, and Reinhard was secretary. The long instructions which were given them, directing them to press for an alliance, or at least for perfect neutrality, and to negotiate a loan with England’s credit, and in return for the island of Tobago, were either written by Talleyrand or from his notes. He intended to leave very little to his prête-nom; who, unfortunately, intended to do very much. The idea had been to appoint a competent nonentity. Chauvelin proved both incompetent and self-assertive enough to harass Talleyrand. His luggage was opened at the custom-house and found to contain contraband goods. The hostile press was not impressed by the new embassy. Tory shops in Piccadilly exhibited strong caricatures of Talleyrand. But such insinuations as this were grossly misplaced. Talleyrand had, as a member of the diplomatic committee at Paris, fought successfully against the demand for a revolutionary propaganda abroad, and he censured very severely the conduct of one or two ambassadors who obtruded their republicanism at Foreign Courts. But, besides the incompetence of Chauvelin—who was once sharply pulled up by Lord Grenville for his language, when he had boldly acted without Talleyrand—a great deal of mischief was done by the press on both sides. This letter of Lord Grenville’s was published in the emigrant papers, and the King’s private letter to George III was published almost before it was delivered. The Parisian journals, on the other hand, were full of tactless and irritating announcements of an impending revolution in England, and attacks on the King and his Ministers. Few but members of the Opposition would now entertain the French envoys. On one occasion, when they went in a body to Ranelagh, they were most ostentatiously shunned by the whole crowd. English spies were constantly at their heels. Exaggerated reports of events in France were circulated, and Talleyrand was left without any official information. He complained bitterly to Dumouriez of their “painful and embarrassing situation.”[22]

But, in spite of all the difficulties, Talleyrand succeeded very well. If an alliance was concluded with England, Austria would reflect a little longer before interfering in French affairs; hence the desperate intrigues of the royalists to prevent such alliance. On the other hand, the continental coalition against France was strengthening the anti-French elements in England. At the beginning of May Prussia made overtures to England. Pitt rejected them, and stood firm for neutrality. On May 25th he was induced to have a public declaration made of neutrality, and Talleyrand scored his first diplomatic triumph. He does not forget to tell Dumouriez that it would be well if his (Talleyrand’s) name were mentioned in the Paris journals. But Dumouriez was exacting. He pressed for an alliance, and for explicit statements as to England’s position if the war in Belgium led to a conflict with Holland. Talleyrand kept his position skilfully between the two Governments, each now impelled by a heated nation, but, in June the French Ministry was again broken up and Dumouriez dismissed. A few days later came the news of the invasion of the Tuileries. A private letter from the Duke de la Rochefoucauld warned Talleyrand of the grave development in Paris, and appealed to him to come over and strengthen the Department of Paris, of which he was still a member.

On July 5th Talleyrand again set out for Paris. He had immediately (June 22nd) applied to the Foreign Minister for leave of absence for a fortnight, in order to come and confer with him at Paris. His real purpose was to study the latest development of the situation. The King was now a mere puppet in the hands of the people; and, without army, France had declared war on Europe. Talleyrand, with a sigh, went over to study this latest phase, and wonder what the abyss would produce next. It proved to be the close of his first diplomatic mission.

CHAPTER VII

EXILE

Talleyrand arrived at Paris just in time to witness the last weak struggle of order against anarchy. Lafayette had flown back to Paris, had fruitlessly appealed to the Legislative Assembly against the Jacobins, had just as fruitlessly appealed to lawless order against lawless disorder, and had retired in despair to his army. However, the Department of Paris, which still represented the orderly and stable elements of the city, had suspended the Mayor, Pétion, the day after Talleyrand left London. The forest of pikes glistened in the streets once more, and the Legislative Assembly was forced to restore Pétion to office and abandon the Department. Talleyrand, la Rochefoucauld, and other moderates, then resigned their positions, and awaited the next step of the mob and the Jacobins. The following day was the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, and though it passed quietly Talleyrand would observe the fiercer attitude of the crowd and its emblems. He and la Rochefoucauld were passing under the balcony of the Tuileries that evening when the Queen nodded to them. Talleyrand must have made his own reflections on this; also on the unpleasant spirit it at once provoked in the crowd.

Talleyrand lingered beyond his fortnight. The atmosphere was sultry, electric. Something would happen soon—something graver than all the grave rest. Provincial petitions began to trickle in praying for the deposition of the King. On August 3rd Mayor Pétion comes openly, at the head of the municipal officers in their tricolour scarves, to demand it of the Assembly. The fiery Marseillais have arrived; fiery troops are pouring in from all parts of France. The official declaration that “the country is in danger” has strengthened the Jacobins. On the 8th of August the Assembly refuse to condemn Lafayette, and its refusing majority is hunted by the crowd. On the 9th it must discuss the question of the deposition of the King. It can come to no resolution, and sits wavering between the pale ghost of loyalty and the city of pikes. That night the insurrection becomes fully conscious of its power. At sunrise the grim flood surges again about the walls and flows over the terraces and through the outer gates of the Tuileries. The Swiss guards are provoked into firing, and within a few hours nearly 2,000 lie dead. Paris has tasted blood now with fearful effect. It has 1,200 patriots to avenge. The King is “suspended”; a National Convention is summoned, with no restriction whatever on electors or candidates.

DANTON.

What Talleyrand thought at this time we do not know, but we can confidently assume. The last particle of his constitutional ideal was disappearing. Still he clung to France for a few days. Danton, now all-powerful as Minister of Justice, had been his colleague in the Department, and seems to have been not indifferent to him. Something might yet be done. They induced him to write a defence of the events of the 10th to pacify England. This document—which must be admitted to come from Talleyrand’s pen—has been gravely censured. It is certainly a desperate appeal, but, save for an odd phrase that is diplomatically exaggerated, is not indefensible. We can well imagine what the French papers in London were making of the 10th. Talleyrand, in the name of the new executive (bound to defend its supporters), put the other side of the matter. He strongly, but justly, criticises the conduct of the royal family, as being seriously provocative. The only downright injustice is when he speaks of the Swiss guards as the “cowardly satellites” of the monarchy. Lady Blennerhassett thinks this unpardonable. It is certainly a harsh phrase to write over men who died a brave and noble death, but the truth is that many of them were encouraging the crowd to advance when the others (unknown to them very probably) began their deadly fire.

Lady Blennerhassett sees a grave inconsistency, inspired by a base motive, in Talleyrand’s protesting against the affair of June 20th, and then condoning the worse attack of August 10th and siding with the Jacobins. We must remember that many things had happened since July 13th. Hostile armies hung threateningly on the frontier; one must take desperate measures now to secure the continued neutrality of England. Further, on July 13th it was not at all certain that the Jacobins could not be checked; it was now clear that one must work with them or through them, or desert the country to its fate, for no human judgment, not patriotically intoxicated, could see how Prussia, Austria and Brunswick were to be held off. It is a sheer perversion of history to say that Talleyrand deserted the King after August 10th. He had deserted his cause long ago; his person, his life and liberty, Talleyrand never willingly saw endangered; nor did he ever cease to be a partisan of limited monarchy. It is, indeed, a question if the events of August 10th did not put the royalist cause in a more hopeful plight. Certainly the royalists thought so. These events doubled the pace of the armies that were heading towards Paris. Finally, it is quite impossible to see that Talleyrand expected any advantage out of the new administration.

Briefly, then, Talleyrand was perfectly consistent in writing the official “explanation” of August 10th. One would imagine from some of the references to it that it was a blatantly patriotic boast of the affair; one need only recollect that it was written by an astute diplomatist to a well-informed country, and for a strictly conciliatory purpose. It merely pointed out the extenuating features of the “terrible events” with diplomatic casuistry. We must not judge Talleyrand as if he had ever believed in the divine right of Kings. Nor had he any particular grounds of personal loyalty to King or Queen; nor can he be accused of untruth in laying on the royalist cause the burden of the Austrian and Prussian invasions.

But Lady Blennerhassett is herself unpardonable when she says Talleyrand’s destiny “dragged him deeper still, into the bloody torrent of the September massacres.” This is a most unhappy way of expressing the fact that Talleyrand was a disgusted spectator of those awful scenes, and that he fled the country as soon as they happened. We lose sight of him from August 18th, when he penned the diplomatic defence of Danton, until September 14th. On that day Barrère finds him leaving Danton’s room in travelling dress with a passport for London.[23] Danton had sent his friend Noel to London to supersede Chauvelin and keep England neutral. At the beginning of September Noel had written to say that negotiations seemed possible (August 10th had evidently not been regarded as inexcusable at London), and Danton had thought the conditions suggested were not inacceptable. Meantime, the hostile forces were converging successfully on Paris. On August 29th comes terrible news of Prussians, Austrians and Brunswick, and of the rising in La Vendée. There are not weapons, when even women offer to bear them. Danton gets an order for a visitation of suspected houses and incarceration of suspects. Royalists are leading every invading army. Paris is in the last stage of the new “intoxication.” The awful story of the first week of September has been told often enough. By Thursday evening Talleyrand would hear that more than a thousand men and women, mostly innocent, had been savagely murdered. The next day he obtained from Danton a passport: “Leave to pass to Citizen Talleyrand, going to London by our order.”

The last phase of the movement he had followed since May 6th, 1789, was too repulsive. He could say no longer that “provided he remained French, he was prepared for anything.” He was not prepared for murder. His one thought was to leave France. On the pretext of a mission to persuade England to adopt the metrical system he received permission to leave. Research in the archives of the Foreign Office has brought to light (says M. Pallain) a letter in which Talleyrand asks permission to return and continue his work in London before the end of August, when the guillotine had already begun its work. He did not, therefore wait until there was personal danger before he fled. He did not cling to ruling powers until their long lists were drawn up. However, he would probably have less difficulty than is supposed in securing permission to leave from Danton. It was more than ever imperative to have an able man in London. The British Ambassador, like all others, had fled from Paris. Noel had to face a storm of indignation in England. Danton would, one imagines, see no more useful man in the emergency than Talleyrand. However that may be, he left Paris on September 14th, not to return until the long story of the reign of violence was over. His “real aim” was, he says, to get away from France; but he applied for a passport so as not to close the door behind him in the event of his wishing to return.

He arrived in England on the 23rd, only to find, as he expected, his whole diplomatic work in sad danger. He announced his arrival to the Foreign Office, denying that he had any mission, but expressing his readiness to give information. He was not invited to give any. A good deal has been written on the question whether he had a mission or no, but the solution is hardly obscure when all the evidence is read. While denying in England (and even in a letter to Danton) that he had any mission, he told several correspondents that he had, and in his later petition from America he claimed that he was enjoined to prevent a rupture between England and France. The conflict of evidence is easily reconciled if we suppose he had an informal, secret understanding to that effect with Danton. It is the most likely thing to happen in the circumstances. In any case he had not long to continue his delicate task. The Opposition in England was prepared to support him to very great lengths, even after the triumphant Jacobins at Paris had decreed a war of revolutionary propaganda. Talleyrand always regarded this as a fatal step, and he even now wrote to Paris to counteract the feeling. The very able memorandum “On the actual relations of France to the other States of Europe,” which he forwarded to Lebrun, now Chief Minister, and to several members of the Convention, has been published by Pallain. It is a finely-written and sober political document. To the new idea of French dominance he replies that “the only useful and reasonable dominance, the only one that becomes free and enlightened men, is to be master of one’s self, and never to make the ridiculous pretention to domineer over others.” It is time that a mature France had done with illusions. An understanding with free nations, for peaceful, commercial purposes, should be the ideal. Wars of aggrandisement should be condemned. It is a very sincere and admirable political gospel.

By a curious chance it must have reached Paris[24] just before the Convention began to discuss the question of putting its author on the list of emigrants, forbidden to return under pain of death. A letter had been found amongst the King’s papers, in which Laporte, the King’s steward, had reported (in April, 1791) that Talleyrand was anxious to serve him. On the strength of this letter condemnation was passed on December 5th, and Talleyrand was made an exile. A letter, signed D. (probably from des Renaudes, but possibly Danton), was inserted in the Moniteur in defence of Talleyrand. It appealed to the minister Lebrun, and others to whom Talleyrand had sent his patriotic memorandum a few days before, to produce this proof of his loyalty. Talleyrand himself wrote a letter to the Gazette in which he flatly denied that he had any relations whatever with the King or Laporte. He claimed that the only particle of truth on which one could make such a statement was that he had written a report in defence of freedom of worship (which we have considered, dated May 7th, 1791), in which he upheld the King’s right to the ministration of a non-juring priest. Laporte, he said, must have seen this memorandum as it circulated privately—as so many speeches did—before May 7th, and interpreted it to mean that Talleyrand favoured the King. It is likely enough, and at all events we have no further evidence. But the defence was of no avail. Talleyrand remained on the proscribed list for three years.

It is not probable that Talleyrand would have ventured again to live at Paris during those years. He was an aristocrat, even if he clothed himself from head to foot in tricolour. He was a man of refined and humane temper, and could not possibly have co-operated further with the sanguinary parties that now came to power. At the most he would wish to retain a distant connection in the event of an improvement in the condition of Paris. A few days after reaching London, in accepting an invitation to Bowood, he wrote to Lord Lansdowne that “when one has passed the last two months at Paris one needs to come and refresh oneself with the conversation of superior people.” Then came news of the impeachment and trial of the King. London listened with growing horror and disgust to the details of the “trial.” On January 21st Louis was guillotined. On January 24th the late French ambassador, Chauvelin, the only official-looking Frenchman the Government could find, was swept out of England. On February 1st the Convention declared war against England and Holland (the one entanglement that endangered England’s neutrality). Talleyrand found the door which he had so cleverly contrived to leave open violently slammed upon him.

He says in the memoirs that he did not intend to stay long in England. In fact, we know now that he applied about this time for permission to settle in Tuscany, but the Grand Duke had to refuse on the ground of his neutrality. The position must have been trying for a man of Talleyrand’s taste and ambition. If we may trust his later observations, his mind wandered unsteadily from one country to another and one occupation to another. He settled down, however, to the life of an emigrant in London, and managed to spend a year not unpleasantly. His library had been transferred to London,[25] and he spent his mornings in writing. He does not tell us the subject, but says that when he had returned to France a huge mass of his notes and memoranda came over from London. He would have us believe that they proved of little use for the writing of his memoirs, but the chapter on the Duc d’Orléans is so ample and circumstantial that it seems to have been written at an early date, and was not improbably written in 1793. It affords a thorough reply to the rumours, for which no documentary ground has ever been discovered by his most bitter enemies, that he was secretly working with the Orleanist group. He did not frequent the Palais Royal in a political capacity.

But in spite of emigrant hatred and the general British hostility to France, he found a sufficiently large social circle in London. Mme. de Genlis had come to England with her niece. Talleyrand offered her a little money out of his small fund, and actually did assist other compatriots. Many of them were, as is known, living in bitter poverty. Mme. de Staël came over in January and remained until the summer. She took a house near Richmond, and Talleyrand spent a good deal of his time there. In Kensington the Countess de la Châtre kept a house, where many of Talleyrand’s old friends met. Narbonne had with difficulty got away—with the assistance of Mme. de Staël and Talleyrand—at the beginning of September. Rivarol and Lalley-Tollendal and many other constitutionalists were there. Fox and Sheridan and their friends afforded a fairly large circle of English acquaintances. Lord Lansdowne continued friendly long after he left England. At his house Talleyrand speaks of frequently meeting Hastings, Price, Priestley, Romilly, and Jeremy Bentham. His reputation for culture and conversation opened many doors. Sydney Smith was brought in contact with him somewhere, and says that he found him unequal to his reputation; but one imagines that Sydney Smith would not be unbiassed, and he admits he could not understand his French. The German physician, Bollmann, found him so charming that he “could listen to him for years.” On the whole, Talleyrand fared better than most of his indigent companions, though the enforced idleness annoyed him. “Patience and sleep,” he told Mme. de Staël, was his programme for the present. In another letter he described his chief occupations as “fishing and correcting proofs” (of Mme. de Flahaut’s novel).

It is from the letters he wrote to Mme. de Staël after her return to France that we find he is still watching the situation in that country without despair. In one letter he sketches a plan. The southern provinces, which still show some attachment to the constitution, should unite, and invite the members of the old Constituent Assembly to meet at Toulon. He believes that the nation is still attached to the constitution, and that it is really in the supposed defence of this that they have risen against King and invaders. When he hears of the execution of the Queen he has to modify his view. “It is all over with the house of Bourbon in France,” he says; but he never believed that France would remain permanently republican. His wistful speculations, which were equally resented by republicans in France and royalists out of it (who charged the constitutionalists with bringing all his misfortunes on the King), were cut short at the beginning of 1794 by a peremptory order to quit England within five days (in another place Talleyrand says twenty-four hours).

From an engraving, after the picture by F. Gérard.

MADAME DE STAËL.

The order was inexcusable, but no influence that Talleyrand could command had any effect on it. A law had been passed twelve months before empowering the Government to expel undesirable aliens, and it had been applied to Noel and Chauvelin. Talleyrand may have feared its extension to him at first, when he applied for residence in Tuscany, but he was not prepared for this cruel application after twelve months of peaceful life in London. He pressed his most influential friends to obtain some explanation, at least, of the order, but none was given. In the end, he attributed it to intrigues of his emigrant enemies, and one can see no other reason for it. He was the only distinguished Frenchman of moderate views to incur the order. Sainte-Beuve says it “proves he was not in the odour of virtue.” It, at all events, proved, if this needed proof, that he had enemies. He protested to Pitt and to the King, but it was no use, and he took ship for America on February 3rd. His letters to Lord Lansdowne and Mme. de Staël show a very natural bitterness of feeling, but even at this time he hardly blamed England. But when the ship was detained at Greenwich he refused an invitation from Dundas to spend the time at his house, saying that he could not set foot on English soil again after receiving such an order.

The romantic biographers have enlivened his voyage with adventures. They tell how the Dutch vessel in which he sailed was stopped and searched by an English frigate, and Talleyrand dressed himself in the cook’s clothes to pass the scrutiny. M. Michaud, as usual, does not deign to mention his authority. Talleyrand only says that the ship was beaten back by heavy storms, and seemed at one time in danger of being driven on the French coast. It did put in at Falmouth for repairs, and Talleyrand landed there, so that his objection to English soil was relaxing. He was told that an American general was staying at an inn in the town, and he found that it was General Arnold, who would hardly give him an attractive picture of his future home. Whether it was from this conversation, or from a real weariness of spirit (or, in fine, a freak of memory in later years), he says that he did not want to leave ship when they reached Philadelphia. Another ship was sailing out as they reached the mouth of the Delaware, and he sent a boat to learn its destination. It was going to Calcutta, and he wanted, he says, to take a berth in it, but could not get one. He landed at Philadelphia with his companions, M. de Beaumetz and des Renaudes, towards the end of March.

A number of acquaintances had preceded him to America. When the emigration began people recollected the lively stories brought back by Lafayette and his companions, and many who either had wealth or wanted to make it sailed to the States. At Philadelphia, Talleyrand found a Dutchman named Casenove, whom he had known at Paris, and who now proved useful to him. There were half-a-dozen emigrants in Philadelphia, and they met at nights over gay but frugal suppers, at the house of Moreau-Saint-Méry, who had opened a book-store there. Michaud says Talleyrand opened a store for the sale of night-caps; the legend probably grew out of a curious custom of Talleyrand’s of wearing several of these at night. But Talleyrand was evidently very restless and irritated. Washington declined to grant him a formal interview, and Talleyrand refused, as he says, to go to see him by the back door. The only man whose friendship relieved the depression of that time was Colonel Alexander Hamilton, whom Talleyrand describes as the ablest statesman then living, not excepting Pitt and Fox. They had long conversations on political and economic subjects, and were happily agreed on most matters; though Hamilton was a moderate Protectionist and Talleyrand a strong Free-trader.

Talleyrand sought some relief by a voyage into the interior with Beaumetz and a Dutch friend, Heydecooper. He was not insensible to the natural beauty of the forests and prairies, which he describes with unusual literary care, but he was chiefly impressed with the vast possibilities of these leagues of uncultivated territory. Within a few miles of every sea-coast town you plunged into virgin forests, and from the hill-tops you looked over illimitable oceans of wild growth. A thoughtful traveller like Talleyrand could not but speculate on the future of the country. Convinced as he was of the primary importance of agriculture, the future of America had a peculiar interest for him. But as he wandered from town to town, and saw more of the people, he felt some disappointment in them. The idealist fervour which he expected to find still glowing, within a few years of the declaration of independence, seemed to be wholly extinct. In fact, if Talleyrand had been able to anticipate that elegant phrase, he would have said “making their pile” was the chief preoccupation of the Americans of 1794. Without bitterness, but with something like sadness, he tells a number of stories about his experience. He met a fairly rich man in one town who had never been to Philadelphia. He would like to see Washington, the man assented to Talleyrand’s inquiry, but he would very much rather see Bingham, who was reported to be very wealthy. At another place he noticed that his host put his hat—a hat that a Parisian stable-boy would not wear, he says—on a beautiful table of Sèvres porcelain brought from the Trianon. When Talleyrand speaks impatiently of America as “a country without a past,” he is thinking of these incongruities; there had not yet been time in the history of America for the fixing of inviolable canons. In some other respects the features of life in this new country were amusing. In a log cabin on the Ohio they found some good bronzes and a fine piano. When Beaumetz opened it, however, the owner had to ask him to spare them; the nearest tuner lived a hundred miles away, and had not called that year.

Talleyrand makes it clear that he understands how these features of American life are inseparable from its newness and its pioneering character, but he feels the discord too keenly to enjoy it on its adventurous and picturesque sides. “If I have to stay here another year I shall die,” he wrote to Mme. de Staël. He appreciates the sincerity of their religious life after that of pre-Revolutionary Paris, but a country of thirty-two religions and only one sauce does not suit him. He wrote a long letter to Lord Lansdowne (February 1st, 1795), with the view of bringing about a better understanding between England and America. The independence of the States is settled for ever, he says; there is no question whatever of a reversion to the status of a British colony. Nevertheless, though feeling is at present averted from England and turning towards France, the link between the two nations is strong and natural. All the institutions of America and all its economic features (which he discusses at great length) compel it to look in friendly interest to England. In June and July he sent other brief notes to Lord Lansdowne. In June, moreover, he heard of the rout of the Jacobins at Paris. In the memoirs he affirms (and the most indulgent admiration fails to ascribe this to a freak of memory) that the National Convention rescinded the decree against him “without any request on my part.” We have a copy of the petition he wrote to the Convention on June 16th, pressing for the removal of his name from the proscribed list. He urges that the reasons for putting him on the list were frivolous, but he had not been able to return to Paris to contest them, because “under the tyranny of Robespierre” the prisons were violated, and he would be executed without trial. It is probably about the same time that he wrote to Mme. de Staël, who quotes his words in a later letter to him.

Whether Talleyrand despaired of obtaining permission to return he does not say, but he tells us that in the autumn of 1795 he and his friend Beaumetz invested their small capital in stocking a ship for the East Indies. They had seen the first American adventurers return from India in 1794 with rich spoils, and seem to have caught the Indian fever that then broke out in America. They were joined by a number of Philadelphia firms, and their ship was about to start when the Fates intervened. How the biography of Talleyrand would have run if this adventure had been permitted it is difficult to conjecture. In fact, the whole story has a most undeniable odour of legend about it, but, apart from a few details (such as that of Beaumetz attempting to murder him in New York) which the romanticists add on their own authority, it is Talleyrand himself who tells it, in the memoirs. I am not quite sure that this puts it beyond dispute, but probably we should admit it, and see in it a proof of the most unusually restless and irritated temper he had fallen into in America. However, his petition had succeeded at Paris. Mme. de Staël, who was sincerely devoted to him, induced Legendre and Boissy d’Anglas to favour the petition. It was presented to the Convention on September 4th, and supported by M. J. Chénier and the ex-Oratorian, Daunou. Talleyrand’s name was erased from the list of émigrés, and he was described as an unappreciated patriot. He had struck the right note in alluding to “the tyranny of Robespierre.” The various sections of the Terrorists had annihilated each other in mutual distrust; and more peaceful, if not quite more admirable, elements had come to power. In the summer of 1795 the Jacobin Club was closed, and the once terrible name was now laughingly hurled at one as “Jacoquin.” Sanculottist Paris had risen in insurrection twice, and had twice been chased back into its slums. Chénier had only to describe Talleyrand as a victim of the persecutions of Marat and Robespierre, and “the perfidy of Pitt,” and one whose “noble conduct as a priest and man had greatly promoted the Revolution,” and his name was struck off the black list. He let Beaumetz sail alone for India, bade farewell to Hamilton and la for Rochefoucauld and his many friends in the States, and sailed for Europe in a Danish vessel in November. He had not been thirty (as he says), but twenty, months in America. It had seemed longer.[26]

CHAPTER VIII

THE REGENERATED PARIS

The ship in which Talleyrand had sailed from America was bound for Hamburg, which it reached in January, 1796. The prudent diplomatist wanted to take a nearer look at the regenerated capital of his country before re-entering it. His discretion was timely. In October the mob had risen for a third time against the new authority, and Citizen Buonaparte had swept it back definitively into powerlessness in the space of two hours. But the new rulers had a strong family resemblance to the old. The five Directors had to be regicides; Sieyès, who had voted for “death without any fuss” on poor Louis, had made this new constitution. In the two new Chambers, the Council of the Five Hundred and the Council of Ancients, a two-thirds majority was to be taken over from the dissolving Convention. One-third had to be elected by the country, now returning to sobriety; but until the old majority should be broken by the retirement and re-election of a fresh third in May the situation was not reassuring. There remained a good deal of bitterness against emigrant aristocrats and their friends. Mme. de Staël was herself attacked with some virulence, and had to leave the country. Talleyrand decided to remain for the present at Hamburg.

There was a lively and interesting company at that time at Hamburg, and Talleyrand met many old friends. He tells us in the memoirs, with that tinge of malice that at times borders on ill-nature, that Madame de Flahaut, who was there, sent out a note to the ship before he landed, asking him to return to America. Her husband, Count Flahaut, had been guillotined during the Revolution, and his widow had met at Hamburg, and was about to marry, the Portuguese Minister, the Marquis de Souza. She felt that the presence of Talleyrand might lead to embarrassment. But Talleyrand was not heroic enough to face the ocean and America again in her matrimonial service. Another interesting friend he found at Hamburg was Mme. de Genlis. He found so little change in her that, unconscious of its application to others, he is tempted to pen an aphorism: “The fixity of compound natures is due to their suppleness.” His former Secretary of Embassy at London, and later friend and colleague, Reinhard, was there, and they increased their attachment during those months of waiting. His former chief, General Dumouriez, had fled there. Besides the French emigrants of all parties, there was also a group of Irish rebels, led by Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Apart from the anxiety and inactivity, the time would pass pleasantly.

In May the elections for the Chambers strengthened the moderate element at Paris, and it became once more habitable. But Talleyrand took his time in returning. From Hamburg he went in the summer to Amsterdam, and in a fortnight passed on to Brussels, where he remained for a month or two. The story of his going to Berlin for three months on a secret mission seems to be apocryphal. In September he re-entered Paris.

We are left to imagine the feelings with which he contemplated the regenerated capital of the Republic. He had last lived there in 1792, when equality and fraternity were expressing themselves with such ungraceful logic. The Revolution was now spent. Equality and fraternity were forgotten; liberty was construed in a sense that made even the liberal shudder. The Paris that had issued from the womb of the Revolution, with such fangs as of a giant offspring, was a grotesque abortion. The poor were as poor as ever, as despised as ever, as much preyed on by parasites as ever. But the new class that filled the theatres and the larger houses was insufferable. An epidemic of speculation had set in. Brokers and bankers met you at every corner, and shrill females assailed you in the streets with bundles of notes. The paper-money of the successive authorities and the confiscation of ecclesiastical and emigrant property had led to these spectacles. Some won the prizes, and, if they succeeded in carrying their money beyond the “camp of Tartars” at the Palais Egalité, bought emigrant hotels and entered “Society”—a society such as the world has rarely seen. The frequent mention of freedom during the last few years had led to a study of the life of the “free peoples of antiquity,” which rested on slavery. Sonorous Greek and Latin names decorated the new generation. Greek and Roman garments hung about their slim Parisian persons. The men got the idea that the hetairæ were the chief feature of classic life: and the women thought it was the use of transparent dress—though it is gratifying to learn that some of them were hooted when they attempted to walk the Bois in this costume. Wealthy brokers built Roman homes, not forgetting the fish ponds, for their amies. The journals announced as many divorces as marriages. What with war and guillotine and pike the multiplication of patriots had become urgently necessary, and the only qualification for fraternity was patriotism; they had long before anticipated Mr. G. Bernard Shaw, and proposed to supply such as the Abbé Fauchet with a harem of twenty healthy citoyennes. Actresses and adventuresses and ex-nuns were fought for by men who had made fortunes on flour or paper-money, or emigrant property, and clothed with the wardrobes of dead princesses, and reopened the salons of the old regime; the furniture, decorations, and social forms not a little confused. At table they ate and drank much, and talked little. Balls, especially fancy dress balls, were held daily, transparent trousers and the light costume of heathen goddesses not being prohibited in an age of liberty. Churches and convents had been turned into restaurants and dancing-rooms for the most part.

When Chateaubriand returned to Paris a few years later (and it had improved a little), he said that he felt as if he was going into the mouth of hell. On different grounds Talleyrand may have said much the same. His moral ideal was taste. License without refinement he felt to be immoral. He had, too, a deep sense of humour and of humanity. The one was inflamed at every turn; the other was afflicted at the spectacle of this pitiful issue of all the sacrifices of the last six years. As usual, he looked about for stray consolations, and awaited developments. At the “Constitutional Club” he met whatever liberal, decent men there were left in Paris. He was, indeed, welcomed by the new queens of the salons, as Lytton assures us. In the revenge of time a “grand seigneur” of the old regime had come to be regarded as a superior being once more. A few with titles and empty purses in their pockets, were still living at, or had returned to Paris; they made excellent maitres d’hotel. Talleyrand, with his high reputation for wit, culture and laxity, was regarded as a ci-devant worth cultivating. Only occasionally, if reports may be trusted, did he express himself. One story goes that a lady of the transparent trousers order once invited him to her house, and donned her classic garments for the occasion. On the following day, when she had a numerous company, a box arrived from Talleyrand, containing “a costume for Madame.” She opened it before her jealous friends with great eagerness. It contained a fig-leaf. On the other hand Talleyrand was made a member of the Institut, the founding of which he had advocated in 1791. He read two papers there with his usual success. The first dealt with the commercial relations of England with the United States; the second pointed out the advantages to be derived from the new colonies. Talleyrand believed in the virtue of colonial work for the regeneration of an enfeebled or overcrowded nation. He was, he says, preparing a third paper on the influence of society in France, but was dissuaded from giving it. He would hardly venture to touch such a subject at that time, but it is a pity he has not left us the paper.

With that disregard for mere truthfulness in small matters which we notice throughout the memoirs (when there is a motive), he tells us that he kept aloof from politics, and only yielded after some refusals to the solicitations of Mme. de Staël. We know perfectly well that he was at the end of his purse, and was, if for no other reason, compelled to seek public service. He wrote to Mme. de Staël that he had only the means of subsistence for another month, and he would “blow his brains out if she did not find him a place.” He had then been in Paris more than six months, and saw no opening. Michaud says that he had left what little money remained to him (50,000 francs) in a bank at Hamburg. Castellane tells a curious story of his having left his silver in charge of a number of market-women when he left France, and says that he collected every bit of it when he returned in 1796. But he had now an establishment to keep up. The diplomatist had been smitten at last by an unexpected type of woman. When Madame Grand first met him, or first lived with him, it is quite impossible to determine. The more plausible authorities are contradictory, and the lady’s career has been as thickly encrusted with romance as that of Talleyrand. Her nationality is doubtful. Her father is generally believed to have been an Englishman, though some speak of him as a Dutch sailor, and others as a Breton. She was born in India, and her mother is said to have been a native. She was married, when young, to a Swiss, M. Grand, but he had divorced her when she had captivated no less a person than Sir Philip Francis. When Sir Philip returned to England, she came to Paris, and for some years we trace her indistinctly flitting between Paris, London and Hamburg. It may have been at Hamburg, but her German biographer thinks it was more probably at Paris, in 1797, that she met and captured Talleyrand.

Three points about her are clearly established. She was very beautiful—“the beauty of two centuries,” one enthusiast says—not at all cultured, and very far from puritanical. Her lithe, graceful figure, pure white forehead, wide-opened, tender blue eyes, with long, dark lashes, and especially her long, soft, golden-brown hair —“the most wonderful hair in Europe”—are described by contemporaries with some warmth. The obvious strain of Indian blood in her complexion and bearing increased the charm, and her intellectual deficiency was not accentuated by any attempt to conceal it. She seems to have been devoted to her distinguished protector, and although she later admitted a Spanish prince to a share in her affection, she always spoke of him with great admiration. Talleyrand must have loved her in return. It is true that he only married her under compulsion from Napoleon, but most of his biographers quite wrongly suppose that he was, from the ecclesiastical point of view, ever free to marry. They lived together, affectionately and faithfully, as far as one can tell, until—twelve years later—the Princess Talleyrand was infatuated by the Prince of Spain. Talleyrand explains his choice of a woman without culture on the ground that “a woman of intelligence often compromises her husband; without it, she can only compromise herself.” The truth seems to be that there was no calculation whatever in the match. The plain phrase, he fell in love with her, accurately describes what happened. A man of exceptional mental power often finds the ablest of his female contemporaries, with their strain and effort to reach his level, impossible companions; moreover, Talleyrand was a deeply amorous and uxorious man. When friends had pointed out to him that his actress-friend at Saint Sulpice was without mental gifts, he said he had not noticed it. Mme. de Flahaut—for whom, however, one can only admit a qualified attachment—had kept almost the only non-political house in Paris before the Revolution.

From an engraving, after a picture by F. Gérard.

MADAME TALLEYRAND.

It was now more needful than ever to secure an appointment.[27] Mme. de Staël lent Talleyrand 24,000 francs, and promised to use her influence on the Directorate. Lytton connects Talleyrand’s appointment with the reading of his papers at the Institut. Two of the Directors, Rewbell and Reveillère belonged to it, and possibly heard his second paper on July 13th. These were the most decent members of the group of five which then ruled France, and it is natural that they should appreciate Talleyrand’s worth to the country. But Mme. de Staël won over the most important of the five, Barras, and induced him to invite Talleyrand to dine at his house at Suresnes. The other four lived with their families in a modest and respectable fashion under the eyes of the people at the Luxembourg. Barras, an aristocrat by birth, but coarse, violent, and sensual, made a good deal of money by secret commissions, and kept a lively establishment at Suresnes, besides the apartments at the Luxembourg where Mme. Tallien presided. An accident afforded a good opportunity to Talleyrand. Whilst he waited at Barras’ house the latter’s aide-de-camp, a youth to whom he was greatly attached, was drowned in the river, and it fell to Talleyrand to console the very distressed Director. He made a useful impression on Barras; in fact that functionary some time later paid him the awkward compliment of saying that his ways “would sweeten a dung-hill.” There was a change in the Ministry soon afterwards, and Barras warmly presented Talleyrand for foreign affairs. Rewbell and Reveillère supported him. Carnot opposed everything that Barras proposed, and Barthélemy followed Carnot. But the three carried the nomination. That night at ten o’clock Talleyrand was called out of the Salon des Étrangers by a gens-d’arme. He brought an official notification signed by Carnot. Talleyrand foolishly wastes a paragraph or two in explaining several reasons why he felt bound to accept. One would like him better it he had devoted them to a grateful acknowledgment of the help given him by Mme. de Staël. But she seems to have bored him a good deal, and in any case they had separated before these pages were written. “She has only one defect,” he once said: “She is insufferable.”

Thus did Talleyrand enter upon the second stage of his diplomatic career. From his professional point of view the situation was superb. France was still at war with the world, but the success of Napoleon was gradually bringing matters to the point where diplomacy begins. There was the prospect of a long series of treaties. Talleyrand was, as ever, ardently desirous of peace; he wrote to Madame de Staël with that assurance.[28] Unfortunately, his chiefs were very meddlesome, very quarrelsome, and not very competent. They “had been chosen in anger, and had not transcendent ability,” says Mme. de Staël. Barras, a violent ex-soldier, with a good judgment and some penetration, was a Dantonist, and of loose and luxurious life. Carnot, the second strong man, detested Barras on both counts. He was a Robespierrean, a man of strict conduct, shrewd but narrow. Rewbell, a moderate, a lawyer of ability and integrity, but rather gruff, detested both Carnot and Barras and their traditions. Reveillère, honest and peaceful, tried to mediate. Barthélemy, ex-abbé, supported Carnot. Their deliberations were lively. At the first meeting of the Directorate that Talleyrand attended Carnot, raising his hand, swore that some accusation of Barras’ was untrue. “Don’t raise your hand,” shouted Barras; “it would drip with blood.” “These are the men,” says Talleyrand, “with whom I was to work to reintroduce France into European society.” He would not even see the good points of his colleagues of the Institut. Reveillère was a supporter of the new “Theophilanthropists”—“a gang of thieves,” says Talleyrand, with bitter levity. The Theophilanthropists correspond to what are now called “Ethical Societies.” They hired halls, in which they had moral discourses and lectures on philosophy, with singing of undogmatic hymns.

With the very few churches left active in Paris, they formed the only sobering influence. But Talleyrand had, by the time he wrote his memoirs, lost all admiration of the philosophic morality he had so much appreciated in his speech on education.

Moreover, the Directors left their Ministers no initiative. Talleyrand says he had little to do except sign documents drawn up by them and give passports. On one occasion Rewbell compelled him to re-write the instructions he was sending to envoys. The romantic biographers describe another occasion when, they say, Barras threw an ink-pot at him. Representatives abroad complained that France had no policy. The Directors were too slavishly influenced by their emissaries, and each of them had his own plan. There was, too, the eternal scarcity of money. At the Department the salaries of most of the officials were in arrears. At his official residence he would have us believe that the servants were dining off Sèvres dishes because they could not afford to buy earthenware.

The difficulty increased rapidly. There was still great distress in the country, and plots against the Directory were continual; one writer says there was an average of one per day. Six weeks after Talleyrand’s nomination a crisis occurred, and his conduct during it has been severely censured. The relaxation of the more violent measures had encouraged the royalists and other malcontents to act more vigorously. Evidence reached the Directors (partly from Napoleon) of a powerful and far-reaching conspiracy against them. At the head of it was the royalist General Pichegru, who was believed to have a following of 180 deputies. The Clichy Club at Paris had become a notorious rallying-place for malcontents, and Director Carnot was patronising it in a very compromising way. On the other hand, the Constitutional Club—with Talleyrand and Constant and Mme. de Staël—could naturally be relied on to oppose a counter-revolution, little as it respected the Directorate. Napoleon, too, made it clear that his assistance could be had.

It is, however, in complete opposition to the evidence, that Lytton accuses Talleyrand of taking the initiative; and still worse is Michaud’s reckless statement that Talleyrand “arranged everything.” A sober inquiry into the coup d’état of Fructidor only discovers that Talleyrand supported it in advance, but was not implicated in the violent manner of its execution, which, indeed, he used his influence to moderate. On the information supplied to the Directors no legal action could be taken. Reveillère, whose life was threatened, then conceived the idea of acting by force, though without unnecessary severity. He approached Rewbell, who consented, and the two easily induced Barras to join. It is absurd to suppose that these officials, who hampered Talleyrand in his own department and kept him in habitual ignorance of other affairs, should do more than secure his support as a Constitutionalist. Napoleon was requested to send troops, and to these he added as general the excitable and meddlesome Augereau, who soon had his men quartered within striking distance. The Clichy Clubbites meantime grew more audacious, and on September 3rd they warmly cheered a proposal in the Chamber to destroy the executive. That night the streets of Paris rang with the unfamiliar tread of an army, a token to all that an unconstitutional act was afoot. The next morning the two Councils found themselves surrounded by 10,000 troops. Pichegru and 42 of his followers in the Five Hundred, Barbé-Mabois and eleven of the Ancients, and 148 other alleged conspirators, especially journalists, were arrested. The Directors had warned Carnot and Barthélemy, whom they had no wish to injure personally. Carnot, who had long toyed with the Opposition, and had resisted every friendly overture, now fled. Barthélemy was arrested. Merlin de Douai, a lawyer, and Francois de Neufchateau, a literary man, took the places of Carnot and Barthélemy. The new Directorate obtained extensive powers from the newly-constituted Councils, revived the old stringent decrees against emigrants and priests, and initiated a long series of deportations. They sent 65 of the worst conspirators to Guiana—the guillotine would have been more merciful—and the rest to the Isle of Oléron. In all some 10,000 Nonconformist priests and returned royalists were prescribed, but only a proportion of these were actually banished. There was another general flight to the frontier.

CARNOT.

As I said, it is absurd to ascribe to Talleyrand a very active share in these proceedings. The charge seems to rest chiefly on the authority of Miot de Melito and Pasquier; both are deeply prejudiced against Talleyrand (Miot de Melito had just been deposed from his embassy at Turin by the Foreign Minister), and both were hundreds of miles away from Paris at the time. It is a good instance of the levity with which the case against Talleyrand is conducted. Talleyrand was at Barras’ house the night before the coup d’état; so were Constant and Mme. de Staël, who, Pasquier admits, “wished the day but not the morrow.” It is admitted, moreover, that Talleyrand used every effort to moderate the execution of the laws, and saved several individuals from banishment. As to the defence of the proceedings in his letter to Napoleon and his circular letter to the government agents abroad, no one will be so foolish as to seek in these an expression of his judgment. Officially he had to present the case in optimistic language or resign. The only ground for a censure is, in fact, that he did not resign; and it would be to ascribe to Talleyrand a quite heroic degree of sensitiveness to expect him to resign on account of a procedure which Thiers soberly regards as having “prevented civil war, and substituted in its stead a stroke of policy executed with energy, but with all the calmness and moderation possible in times of revolution.”

Probably one of the clearest proofs that the Directors were not much indebted to Talleyrand for their successful extinction of the conspiracy lies in the fact that his relations with them became more strained than ever. In October the Prussian envoy wrote to his Government that Talleyrand could only retain his position “by a miracle of intelligence and conduct.” Four of the Directors would not speak to him, and he was reduced almost to the position of a clerk in his department. It suits Michaud to imagine that Talleyrand took the initiative in important matters like the revolutionising of Switzerland, where there was money to be had. It is certain, however, that Talleyrand had no responsible part in forming the Roman and Helvetian Republics. In his Éclaircissements (July, 1799) he says he was not even present at a single discussion on the matter. On the other hand, he must have felt some satisfaction when he saw how Napoleon was ignoring the Directors. In October Napoleon concluded the treaty of Campo Formio with Austria, in complete opposition to the instructions Talleyrand had been sending him to the end of September. Talleyrand wrote him a letter of warm congratulation, which I give later. He secured the nomination of Napoleon as plenipotentiary at the subsequent Congress of Rastadt, but the instructions sent to him were always drawn up by the Directors. Talleyrand had been similarly slighted in the negotiations for peace with England. He had come into office at the time when Lord Malmesbury was conferring with the French envoys at Lille. Malmesbury was sincerely anxious to effect peace, though Talleyrand believes Pitt had merely sent him as a blind. Talleyrand wrote a memorandum on the situation soon after his appointment, in which he pleaded for a real effort to secure peace, and suggested a tactical procedure in view of the embarrassed position of the English Government. He was called “an ass” for his pains, and was directed to replace Maret by two new envoys with inflated statements of the position and claim of France. On September 18th Malmesbury sadly recognised that peace was impossible, and returned to London. The truth was that the Directors now relied on the operations of Napoleon to fill their empty coffers and sustain their prestige.

In October of the same year (1797) occurred an event which Talleyrand’s critics contemplate in a perfect luxury of moral indignation. Vice, venality, and treachery are said to be the capital offences of his career. The first charge we have considered; the third can be appreciated only at a later stage; the second now calls for examination. Let me indicate at once my reply to it. Talleyrand was not “venal” in the more offensive sense of the word. He never sold the interest of his country, or any humane cause. He did endeavour to make as much money as possible out of the Governments and princes which benefitted, or escaped injury, by his diplomatic arrangements; but these were always in the interest of France. Further, whatever be said of diplomatic arrangements in our time, the secret transfer of money was a common association of them in Talleyrand’s day; and the transaction, being secret, was commonly exaggerated. At the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1815, Metternich and Nesselrode were accused of taking a million each from Louis XVIII. M. de Bacourt, who was in a position to know, says they “only took the usual diplomatic present” (boxes worth 18,000 francs each). Hangwitz is accused of being still more venal. Mirabeau and Danton had been in the secret pay of the Court. Mirabeau is even said to have taken a thousand louis d’or from Spain for his diplomatic recommendation in 1790. Sieyès took 400,000 francs from Napoleon for his share in making him First Consul—when, in fact, Napoleon distributed a respectable fortune. Barras was notoriously corrupt. Rewbell was implicated. Roger Ducos was bought. Pitt had been quite willing to make the Directors a secret present of ten and a half million francs (while loftily refusing to pay two million sterling) during the negotiations, and Malmesbury had on his own account tried to buy the vote of one of the Directors. Fifty blacks do not make one white. I am only pointing out that Talleyrand’s conduct was not distinctive. He had far more opportunities than any other man of his time; and the actual charges against him are generally frivolous. The American “scandal” is one of the most authentic.

Adams had sent envoys to Paris in 1797 to settle the differences outstanding between the United States and France. Instead of being invited at once to meet Talleyrand, they were visited by secret agents who hinted that they came from the Foreign Minister, and said the Directors were too angry to negotiate, but might be induced to do so. The means they indicated were, firstly, a private payment of 1,200,000 livres (£50,000) “to the Directors,” and secondly, a loan from America to France[29] of 32,000,000 on Dutch securities that were only worth half that sum. After a number of interviews the envoys were recalled by their President, and a full account of the negotiations (without the names of the agents) was published by the United States. Talleyrand disowned his agents, but there can be no reasonable doubt that they acted on his instructions. His action provoked a widespread and deserved censure, but certain features of the transaction need to be emphasised. Talleyrand was certainly acting for Barras, though he would assuredly share the spoil. Further, the American envoys never professed the least moral resentment of the suggestion of a commission until all was over. During the negotiations they wrote home of it as being “according to diplomatic usage,” and said they “might not so much regard a little money, such as he stated to be useful.” No stress whatever is laid on it, “that being completely understood on all sides to be required for the officers of Government, and therefore needing no further explanation.” Their objection was solely raised against the loan, which they regarded as a kind of tribute wrung from the States. It was also this second proposal that led to the dangerous outbreak of anger and war-like preparations in the States, as the Cambridge text-book shows. It is quite clear that the suggestion of a commission alone would have done no harm, and would not have been considered unusual, except in amount, which was possibly determined by Barras.

Thus an examination of the documents published by the American Government greatly reduces the gravity of the matter. Had there been no suggestion of a loan we should never have heard of it; and even in France the cry of “scandal” was very much confused with a perception of the very evil result of pressing the loan, which was an honest, if impolitic, attempt to trade in the interest of the nation. Sieyès wrote from Berlin to reproach Talleyrand with “trafficking in his honour.” There are so many who make amends to the moral ideal by their generosity in condemning others. Mme. de Staël implored Talleyrand to exculpate himself, but he smiled. His habitual critics were, of course, delighted at so well authenticated an exposure, and to the Michauds and Sainte-Beuves of a later date this one exact documentary proof has seemed providential. So little serious notice was taken of it (apart from the loan) by sober men at the time that, when Talleyrand resigns on other grounds, in the following year, and writes the only apologia of his life, he dismisses this in two lines.[30]

This American affair, of which we have such accurate information, affords a firm footing in the controversy about Talleyrand’s “venality.” The rest is mainly hear-say and wild conjecture, resting largely on the authority of discarded subordinates (like Miot de Melito), political opponents (like Pasquier), foreign rivals (like Roux, or Palmerston), or other people with grievances (like Napoleon in his later years). It is not usual to take such evidence at its face value. Sainte-Beuve makes a most bitter attack on Talleyrand under this head, but has little to say in detail beyond a vague statement that Talleyrand at some time or other calculated he had made sixty millions by commissions. Sainte-Beuve’s reputation for scholarship and discrimination happily does not rest on his “Talleyrand.” Bastide makes a more honest attempt to support his own statement that Talleyrand gained thirty millions during three years. He can, however, only swell his list of gains in detail to 14,650,000 livres, and many of the larger items are quite out of place, or wholly ridiculous.[31]

He solemnly tells us he thinks it is a sufficient guarantee for the accuracy of his items that they are found in publications of the time, and were not contradicted by Talleyrand! The biographer who takes literally every charge he finds in the pamphlets of 1789-1799, or expects to find them seriously met by men like Talleyrand, has a curious idea of his work. And the historians of our day who rely on such biographers deserve little sympathy. Michaud is more reckless than Bastide. Lady Blennerhassett has taken up his specific allegation that Talleyrand defrauded Spain of 24,000,000 livres (by concealing the reduction of its subsidy and pocketing the difference), and shown it to be impossible. The treaty with Portugal is said by some writers to have yielded Talleyrand 3,000,000; Bastide puts his profit at 1,200,000; and Michaud merely “feels sure” Talleyrand made something out of it. Roux declares he made 5,000,000 out of the treaty with Switzerland, and Napoleon was very liberal in his later estimates of Talleyrand’s greed.

Quite certainly Talleyrand’s commissions have been grossly exaggerated. The flimsiest charges and the wildest conjectures have been eagerly used against him. But he did probably make a large sum in this way whilst he was Foreign Minister. He let it be known amongst the foreign ambassadors that he expected money. Mme. Grand occasionally facilitated an understanding in this sense; Napoleon accused her of operations on her own account at times. Talleyrand despised his chiefs, and saw a very misty prospect for the future. He resolved to use his position to make some provision. However, he never sold the interest of his country, and he was, as Senfft says, “never induced to favour plans which he regarded as dangerous to the peace of Europe.” Senfft tells how, on a later occasion, the Poles put 4,000,000 florins in the hands of his agent, but Talleyrand returned them when he found it impossible to do what they desired. I am not trying to show that his conduct was consistent with a strong and high character, but rebutting the exaggerated charges which lead sober historians to say, as Sloane does, that “there was never greed more dishonest than his.”

This is almost the sole aspect of Talleyrand’s diplomatic work under the Directory that we need consider. His splendid gifts were never utilised, the Directors employing him as little more than chief clerk of the Foreign Office. In July, 1798, he presented to them a long and very able memorandum on the situation abroad, and about that time there was some talk of his entrance into the Directorate. The Prussian ambassador wrote home that such an event would almost put an end to the convulsions of Europe. But the Directors were fixed in their fine contempt for his views, and they made diplomacy impossible. Talleyrand suffered himself to remain the organ of their absurd conceptions until the middle of 1799. A man of his temper could tolerate the position at such a price. Meantime he lived pleasantly at the Hotel Galiffet. The authoress of the Mémoires d’une Contemporaine describes how he spent hours in idle talk with her at the office, and curled her hair with thousand-franc notes. But one eye was fixed all the time on a strenuous figure that was leading the armies in the south—the figure of Napoleon Buonaparte. In that direction lay the only hope for the restoration of France and of diplomacy.

CHAPTER IX

ENTER NAPOLEON

Talleyrand had written at once in 1797 to inform the commander of the army of Italy of his nomination to the Foreign Ministry. “Justly apprehensive,” he said, “of functions of which I feel the fateful importance, I need to reassure myself by the consciousness of how much the negotiations will be facilitated by your glory. The very name of Buonaparte is an auxiliary that will remove all difficulties.” He had already a dim prevision of the day when the princes of Europe would gather timidly about the dreaded figure of the Corsican and his Foreign Minister. He says that Napoleon had written to him first. This is probably untrue; but Napoleon at once replied, and the two men immediately appreciated each other. Within a few weeks Napoleon sent him a long and curious letter containing his views on constitutional questions and popular representation. About the same time he spoke to Miot de Melito about Talleyrand in terms of high appreciation. When Napoleon closed the Austrian campaign and signed the Treaty of Campo Formio, in opposition to the instructions from Paris, Talleyrand wrote him a private letter of extravagant congratulation. “So we have peace made—and peace à la Buonaparte. Accept my hearty compliments, General. Words could not convey all I feel just now. The Directors are satisfied, the public delighted. All is for the best. There may be some muttering from Italy, but it does not matter. Good-bye, peace-making General. Friendship, admiration, respect, gratitude—one does not know where to end.” The feeling was sincere, and Talleyrand had a way of conveying high compliments without incongruity. These early letters, Sainte-Beuve says, remind one of Voltaire’s honeymoon with Frederic.

In December Napoleon arrived at Paris, and the two men met for the first time. Each, of course, now says that the other sought the interview. Napoleon had changed his route as he approached Paris, and was at his house in the Rue Chantereine before his arrival was known. He says that Talleyrand called at once; but as even Josephine found his door barred and Napoleon mad with angry suspicion of her, he could not be seen that night. On the following morning Talleyrand and Mme. de Staël and a few friends waited in the Hotel Galiffet, when Napoleon, quietly dressed, pale, very silent, entered the salon. He took Talleyrand into his private room, and had a long conversation with him, and then Talleyrand introduced him to the Directors at the Luxembourg. Napoleon puzzled in a charming way the citizens of Paris. He dressed with ostentatious plainness, spoke little, and avoided public meetings and demonstrations. At the Luxembourg a splendid reception ceremony had been prepared. The Directors sat on a dais in the court in their stagey satin clothes, lawyers and parliamentarians filled the amphitheatre, and a great orchestra and choir rendered an ode written for the occasion. Talleyrand said in his introductory speech: “When I observe all that he does to cover his glory, this classic taste for simplicity that distinguishes him, his love of abstract science, his favourite books, that sublime Ossian which seems to detach him from earth; when I see his disdain for show, for luxury, for pomp, those petty ambitions of common souls—then, far from dreading what some would call his ambition, I feel that some day you may have to drag him forth from his studious retreat.” Napoleon probably thanked him for keeping up the show, but may have feared he was overdoing it. They understood each other, yet really liked each other.

Talleyrand gave a magnificent festival in honour of the conqueror; though he confesses some difficulty in finding ladies amongst the women of Paris! As it was, the wife of one of the Directors openly observed to him: “What a lot it must have cost you, citizen-minister!” He also induced Napoleon, though with great difficulty, to attend the anniversary of the King’s execution. Napoleon did not wait long to abolish that suggestive commemoration. But the jealousy and uneasiness of the Directors made Napoleon’s position uncomfortable. He began immediately to look for another field for military action. The Directors thought of Ireland as a sufficiently remote locality, but Napoleon was better informed as to the possibility of a direct attack on England. He then unfolded to Talleyrand the plan for an invasion of Egypt, and it was laid before the Directors. The idea had occurred to one or two earlier dreamers in France, but, in spite of what Napoleon afterwards said, it is incredible that Talleyrand should have really approved it. It was certainly Talleyrand’s idea that France should extend along the whole shore of the Mediterranean, and leave the high seas to England, but a leap from Marseilles to Alexandria was a different matter. However, he lent Napoleon the collection of Egyptian documents in the Foreign Office, and clearly did not oppose his plan. Miot de Melito, who was in close communication with Napoleon, and who would not lose an opportunity of blaming Talleyrand, says that Napoleon acted entirely on his own view and dragged everybody with him. Within twelve months we find Talleyrand (in his Éclaircissements) openly denying that he had approved the expedition.

However, the Directors yielded, and the famous fleet of 500 vessels sailed from Toulon on May 19th, 1798. Talleyrand had apparently promised to follow within twenty-four hours, to arrange matters with the Sultan at Constantinople. He was, however, ill at the time, and it is doubtful whether he ever intended to do so. If we may trust the memoirs, he saw only a personal design in the expedition at the time. Napoleon had spoken to him of founding a rich colony in Egypt, and going on to attack England in India, but he had dropped a word about returning by way of Constantinople. That was “not the way to India,” nor would he be likely to leave the Sultan’s throne standing, or set up a Turkish Republic, says Talleyrand. In other words he professes that he thought Napoleon wanted to found an empire in the East. All this was written, we must remember, after Napoleon’s imagination had fully revealed its possibilities. The most probable reading of the situation is that Talleyrand felt, like Napoleon, that “the pear was not ripe yet;” that Napoleon had better keep out of the way for a year or two; and that something might come of this imposing military and scientific expedition.

BARRAS.

In the twelve months that followed the pear ripened fast. To the chronic financial malady and political discontent was now added the news of the civil war in La Vendée and of the disastrous opening of the war against the second coalition. This was far more formidable than the first. Austria was encouraged by the absence of its conqueror, and the support of both Russia and Turkey. England was fired by the announcement of Nelson’s victory at Aboukir and the apparent isolation of Napoleon. Portugal and Naples were drawn in. The first battles went badly for the French, and the Directors and Talleyrand were furiously assailed. Talleyrand thought it wise to withdraw from the Directors, and they accepted his resignation on July 20th, with some show of regret. How far he was then informed of Napoleon’s position and plans it is impossible to determine; but it is believed that the Bonapartes at Paris succeeded in communicating with Egypt. However, Talleyrand, in September, handed over his portefeuille to his friend, Reinhard. For the first and only time in his career (if we except his brief letter in 1791 to the Moniteur) he answered his critics. His “Explanations to his fellow citizens” fully destroy the frivolous charges brought against him as a minister and republican, especially by his interested predecessor, Lacroix, and the members of the Société du Manège—whom Napoleon describes as “a gang of bloodthirsty ruffians.” In the end Talleyrand turns on his opponents with some dignity. “What have I done,” he asks, “that such suspicions should fall on me? Is there anything in my whole life to justify such a supposition? Have I ever persecuted or been vindictive? Can any one reproach me with a single act of severity in the whole course of my ministry? Have I ever injured anyone, even by accident?” It was a just rebuke and just defence. Few of the hands raised against him were free from blood. It is also notable that the charge of corruption is not pressed. He then retired to his country house at Auteuil, to resume his familiar attitude of awaiting events.

“Those who did not live in those times,” says de Broglie, “can have no idea how deep was the despondency prevailing in France between the 18th Fructidor (September 4th, 1797) and the 18th Brumaire (November 9th, 1799).” The Directory had proved wholly unfitted to govern France. The only question in the summer of 1799 was: What shall be the next page in the constitutional history of the country? In May, Rewbell had had to retire from the Directorate, and the victorious Jacobins had replaced him by Sieyès, to whom all now turned for a lead. Sieyès found his colleagues in the way, and three of them were at once replaced by two mediocrities, Gohier and Moulin, and an active supporter, Roger-Ducos. Barras alone remained of the whole group, and he was now compromised by dallying with royalist agents. It was clear to Sieyès that the reins of Government must be put in the strong hands of a soldier, and he thought of one general after another. He was not well disposed to Napoleon, but Talleyrand made it his task to effect a reconciliation. The Buonaparte family was also very busy at Paris, preparing a reception for the General who, they said, had been sent by the Directors on this hopeless campaign in Egypt. On the 8th of October the agitation was doubled when a message was received, telling that Napoleon had landed at Frejus. He had left his army and his difficulties in charge of Kléber, had evaded the British vessels, and landed with a few of his generals on the south coast. On October 18th he arrived at Paris.

The menace of the second coalition had by this time been arrested by the victories of Masséna and the withdrawal of the Russians, but the Directorate was thoroughly discredited, and its enemies were alert and vigorous. All parties now turned towards Napoleon with intense interest. Royalists hoped he would make himself the instrument of a restoration. The Jacobins, who had become strong again, watched such a possibility with concern. The moderates felt that it would lead to civil war. Every malcontent in Paris knew that Napoleon held the key of the situation. The only one who seemed to be unconscious of his importance was Napoleon himself. After the inevitable round of fêtes was over—and it was remarked how he drank his wine from a private bottle at the public dinner—he seemed to forget that he was a soldier. He spent most of his time at the Institut, discussing questions of science and philosophy; and when visitors to Paris sought the great general, they had pointed out to them a quiet, pale little man in the dress of a scholar of the Institut. But his little house in the Rue de Victoire soon became the political centre of Paris. Talleyrand and Bruix (the Ex-Minister of Marine) were daily bringing members of the Councils to visit him. Presently Talleyrand reconciled him with Sieyès to a practicable extent—“you have to fill this priest to the neck with money to get anything out of him,” Napoleon said afterwards—and the definite intrigue began. Napoleon would accept Sieyès’ new constitution. The five Directors were to be replaced by three Consuls elected for ten years—but if he thinks I am going to be a “fatted pig” he is mistaken, said Napoleon. The Councils would be suspended for three months, and then replaced by a Senate (with life-membership), and an elective Chamber of Deputies.

The next point was to determine the date and manner of the Revolution. The generals whom Napoleon had brought were winning over the officers, but they felt some anxiety about the soldiers, who were apprehensive of reactionary change. Talleyrand had rallied the moderates, such as Regnault de Saint-Jean d’Angély, Roederer, Constant, Cambacérès, Daunou, and Sémonville.[32] They could count on a majority in the Ancients, and Lucien Buonaparte was President of the Five Hundred. Fouché, the accommodating Minister of Police, carefully abstained from reporting to the Directors what he saw. Barras had, in fact, completely compromised himself by openly suggesting a royalist plot to Napoleon. Roger-Ducos was with Sieyès. Gohier and Moulin stupidly refused to see anything until the very last moment. The only difficulty was with the Five Hundred and the soldiers, and Napoleon could be trusted to win the latter and so crush the Council. Still it was a time of great anxiety. Talleyrand tells how Napoleon and he were discussing plans in his house in the Rue Taitbout at one o’clock in the morning, when suddenly they heard a company of cavalry gallop down the street, and halt opposite Tallyrand’s door. They put out the light in some concern, and crept on to the balcony to observe. It was the carriage of the manager of one of the gaming houses, returning home with the profits and an escort of gens d’armes, and it had met with an accident just before Talleyrand’s door.

On the morning of November 9th (18th Brumaire) Paris awoke once more to find a revolution afoot. Great masses of troops were distributed about the streets, and a crowd of officers was gathered, by invitation, before Napoleon’s house—Napoleon telling them from the balcony he was going to save the Republic. The Ancients were to meet at seven o’clock, the Five Hundred at eleven, and in fact a number of the notices to patriotic members of the latter Council had prudently gone astray in the post. Under the plea of some vague conspiracy being abroad the complaisant Ancients decreed that the legislative bodies be transferred to Saint Cloud (which was in form constitutional), that Napoleon be given command of all the troops at Paris, and that three Consuls be appointed. Napoleon and his generals (who were going to “pitch the lawyers in the river,” as some of them said) at one proceeded to the Chamber and took the oath. The alarmed patriots of the Five Hundred now met, but were immediately closured by Lucien on the ground that they had been constitutionally removed to Saint Cloud. Meantime Barras was in the hands of Talleyrand, who very soon extorted his resignation. Sieyès and Ducos resigned. Gohier and Moulin were shut up in the Luxembourg. Fouché suspended the municipalities—it being a time of trouble. Napoleon established himself at the Tuileries. His careful and elaborate plan had so far succeeded.

SIEYÈS.

On the morrow the Councils were to appoint the Consuls at Saint Cloud, and meantime a strong opposition was forming. Three of the generals were not in the plot, and one of them, Bernadotte, was an active member of the Jacobin Société du Manège, which at once attempted to organise a counter-revolution. The 19th Brumaire opened with not a little anxiety. Sieyès and Ducos had a coach and six at one of the gates of Saint-Cloud. Talleyrand and a few other “amateurs” (as he says) had taken a house at Saint Cloud—with two alternatives: a dinner was ordered for the evening, but a coach waited at the door. Napoleon did in fact make a terrible muddle when it came to his turn to speak. In the hall where the Ancients met he made a violent, disjointed, most imprudent speech, answering questions with the most clumsy fabrications, until Bourrienne had to drag him away with the remark: “You don’t know what you are saying.” The Ancients, however, gave the required vote. But no sooner did Napoleon enter the hall of the Five Hundred than the deputies raged about him in crowds. He nearly fainted and had to be carried out. But his military instinct at once revived. Mounting his horse he complained to the troops that his life had been attempted; and when Lucien came out with the news that they were outlawing him, and Sieyès had drily answered: “Well, as they are putting you out of the law, put them out of the room,” he cast off all hesitation. On the previous day when he had attempted to explain matters to Sebastiani’s dragoons, who formed his escort, they curtly replied: “We don’t want any explanations: black or white, we’re with you.” And every musket was loaded with ball. Napoleon now turned to the captain of the grenadiers and told him to “go and disperse this assembly of busy-bodies.” The drums beat the charge, the grenadiers swept up the grand staircase at the double, turned into the orangery on the left with bayonets levelled, and the patriotic Five Hundred fled by the other doors, or dropped from the windows into the garden. Talleyrand and his fellow amateurs went to dinner.

That night Lucien gathered together a score or so of the more reliable elements of the Council, and passed the new Constitution. Lucien harangued his little group on the great theme of liberty and the splendid example of Rome. They declared the Directorate extinct, and borrowing again from “the free peoples of antiquity,” appointed a provisional Consulate, consisting of Napoleon Bonaparte (the Italian “u” had disappeared by this time), Sieyès, and the faithful Roger-Ducos. They also proscribed 57 obnoxious deputies, and voted the thanks of the country to Napoleon for his action. So ended the French Revolution. An act of despotism, rendered possible by widespread intrigue and corruption, rang down the curtain on the ten-year drama of blind, bloody, Titanic struggles. Yet it was the best thing for France.

CHAPTER X

WAR AND DIPLOMACY

On the morning of December 11th, 1799, Napoleon installed himself at the Luxembourg, and began at once the stupendous activity with which he was to raise France to the position of first Power in Europe. Within a fortnight Talleyrand was back at the Foreign Office, with a prospect at last of using in his correspondence that “noble language” which the Revolution and Directorate had disdained to use. Of the civilians in France, two men alone were necessary to Napoleon—Fouché and Talleyrand. Fouché was useful. Talleyrand had the additional advantage of making Napoleon bow in secret to his superior culture and finesse. In the work of the next seven years, which was to raise France higher than she had ever been in the course of her history, the soldier and the diplomatist were intimately joined. For some years it is often impossible, apart from military operations, to distinguish the action of the one from that of the other.

In the earlier years of the nineteenth century, in which the glory of Napoleon and the greatness of France generally coincide, Talleyrand had an unmistakeable regard and affection for his chief. No one more fully appreciated the genius of Napoleon, in peace or war, and no one appraised more highly its advantage to France. He had, too, a sufficient sense of amiable cynicism to think lightly of the irony with which Napoleon brushed aside the pretentious forms of liberty and fraternity, and set up a solid but despotic system of government. With a smile he saw the country accept with an overwhelming majority the new scheme of universal suffrage. The voters of each district were to choose ten of their number; these tens were to unite in each Department and choose ten “Notabilities of the Department;” these were in turn to choose their tens; and then the governing powers would select the members of the legislative bodies and the chief officials of the State. The Council (chosen by the executive) would initiate measures; the Tribunate, the really popular and able body, could discuss them (within limits), but not vote on them; the Legislative Body could vote, but not discuss them; and the ornate and equally silent Senate had a right of Veto. Talleyrand gave no support to Benjamin Constant when he opposed, in the name of liberty, the almost immediate introduction of the closure in the Tribunate. Like most of his friends, he at once deserted Mme. de Staël’s salon, because she impelled Constant to this course. Nor did he demur when Bonaparte very quickly reduced the number of journals from 73 to 13, observing (among other things) that they were making remarks that insulted “the sovereignty of the people.” They had been unable to restrain their wit over the new democracy. Talleyrand had never been a “polygarchist,” to use a word which he himself calls barbarous but inevitable. In his opinion the people had proved their incompetence to rule. It was not time-serving, but real conviction, that made him encourage Napoleon’s monarchical tendency.

So he passed with good spirit through the few ironic months before Napoleon departed for Italy. He was present at the first meeting of Sieyès and Napoleon. Sieyès saw clearly enough the direction of Napoleon’s policy; Napoleon told him his “Grand Elector” was a roi fainéant, and “the time of do-nothing kings was past.” They quarrelled violently and parted. At the second meeting Sieyès was more amiable. “The pike is making short work of the other fishes,” said a shrewd lady to Mme. Bonaparte. By February the constitutional difficulty was over. Sieyès had disappeared, with a rich sinecure and a large estate. Ducos was submerged in the Senate. The “Grand Elector” had become “First Consul,” with almost unlimited power over the military, naval, civic and foreign administration. The amiable Second and Third Consuls, Cambacérès and Lebrun, were willing to act as little more than background to Napoleon. The more heated Jacobins were banished (Talleyrand striking one of his bitterest enemies, Jarry, off the list of the proscribed). The more serious members of the old legislation were distributed over Europe in foreign embassies and consulships. The Senate was installed at the Luxembourg; the virtuous Tribunate at the Palais Egalité (a hotbed of prostitutes and gamblers); and the Consuls (though Cambacérès prudently declined the honour) at the Tuileries. Napoleon issued a proclamation to the nation, which ended: “Citizens, the Revolution is now sealed with the principles that first set it afoot. It is over.” On the last day of the national mourning he had directed on account of the death of Washington, Napoleon and his colleagues drove in royal state, in a splendid carriage drawn by six white horses, to the Tuileries. They had to pass under a gate over which still lingered the inscription: “Royalty is abolished for ever in France.” Talleyrand drove under it with the other ministers in advance of Napoleon. On the following day Napoleon went over his new home with his friends. “Well, Bourrienne,” he said, “here we are at the Tuileries. The next thing is to see that we stop here.” But he had it immediately decorated with the statues or busts of great generals and great democrats of all nations. Demosthenes, Scipio, Brutus and Mirabeau smiled or frowned on the visitor amidst a crowd of warriors and kings.

Talleyrand, who rightly believed that these changes were for the real good of France, would not be insensible to the humour of the situation or the diplomatic genius of the new head of the State. It had been decreed that ministers should discuss their portfolios every day before the three Consuls, but Talleyrand had pointed out to Napoleon on the day of his installation at the Foreign Office (Nov. 21st, 1799) that its affairs were of a peculiarly private nature, and had proposed that he should confer with the First Consul alone. Napoleon was more than willing, and the long, close, and most fruitful co-operation of the two began. Napoleonist writers are apt to imagine that Talleyrand was little more than a clerk, as most of the other ministers were, but we shall see as we proceed that Napoleon often left even the initiative to him. Thiers observes that Fouché and Talleyrand were the only ministers who were not effaced by the phenomenal activity of Napoleon. His vast intelligence was already at work on plans for beautifying Paris, improving the roads of the country, restoring financial soundness, creating a system of education, reviving industry, formulating a code of laws, and effecting a hundred other improvements. A royalist visitor who saw Napoleon at the time said that he looked like a well-dressed lackey—until you met his eye. That eye was now searching Paris through and through for means of consolidating his position; it was sweeping over the broad provinces of France in search of disorders to remedy and dangers to crush: it was following royalists and Jacobins into exile, scanning the countenances of kings and statesmen abroad, counting their ships and forces, turning from East Indies to West Indies, from St. Petersburg to Cairo and Persia. In Fouché he had a political detective, unhampered by the faintest sense of moral principle, who could answer for Paris. Gradually relaxing the laws against the emigrants, he threw open the career to all talent, excepting only the militant royalists and the most violent Jacobins. Priests were now only required to promise, not to swear allegiance; large numbers of emigrants were struck off the list on one pretext or other, though the peasants were at the same time assured that not a franc’s worth of emigrant or ecclesiastical property would be restored; and all were promptly put under the searchlight of the Ministry of Police. Even Jacobins were in time absorbed. Talleyrand saw one leave Napoleon’s room one day, and expressed surprise at it. “You don’t know the Jacobins,” said Napoleon. “There are the salty Jacobins and the sugary Jacobins. That one is a salty Jacobin. I do what I like with those. They have to be arrested sometimes, but a little money soon manages that. But the sugary Jacobins! They would destroy twenty governments with their metaphysics.”

From an engraving, after the picture by Delaroche.

NAPOLEON.

As long as such a man would leave the choice of language to Talleyrand the diplomatic combination would be superb. They got quickly to work. The year 1799 had hardly closed, London was still wondering what this new phase of French politics portended, when George III. received an edifying invitation from the First Consul to entertain a project of peace. In flawless and dignified language he was urged to reflect before plunging Europe once more into the horrors of war. “The fate of all civilised nations,” the letter concluded, “cries for the termination of a war that embraces the whole world.” Pitt replied—or, rather, sent a note to Talleyrand at the Foreign Office—that England saw no guarantee of stability in French policy until the legitimate ruler of the country was restored. It is generally agreed that this was an egregious blunder, an arrogant and tactless attempt to dictate to the French nation. It was, at all events, immediately recognised as such in France, and the people were more than reconciled to a continuation of the war with England. Talleyrand gravely enquired of Lord Grenville what England would say to a proposal to restore the Stuarts. Napoleon had written at the same time and in the same vein to the Emperor of Austria. “A stranger to every sentiment of vain glory, my first desire is to arrest the shedding of blood.” Austria replied to Talleyrand, as England had done, though less offensively, asking for guarantees of stability. The reply to Austria indicates clearly enough that, as Talleyrand writes, Napoleon did not want peace. They were asked to take the Treaty of Campo Formio (framed when Austria was in a much worse position) as the base of negotiation.

In both cases the correspondence soon came to a futile close. Napoleon had reached the steps of the throne as a military commander, and new victories would at least sustain his prestige. Moreover, the financial condition of France was very low, and Napoleon had had experience of the pecuniary value of victorious warfare. His letters and the first replies (ignoring his official position) strengthened his support in the country, and in fact, as Talleyrand observes, made him out to be “something of a statesman.” He turned cheerfully to the rest of his diplomatic task before proceeding to face Austria. By tactful action in the western provinces he put an end to the civil war there, induced the Vendean leaders to come to Paris, and actually attached some of them to his service. The next important step was to detach Russia from Austria, secure the neutrality of, if not an alliance with, Prussia, and have a good understanding with Spain. The King of Prussia was not unwilling to see France and Austria exhaust themselves in a long conflict, while he himself could continue in peace to strengthen his finances and his army. Duroc was sent to inform him of the change of Government in France, and soon afterwards Talleyrand sent his friend General Beurnonville, an enemy of Austria, to fill the embassy at Berlin. Through Prussia an attempt was to be made to reach the Tsar. Very soon Prussia ceased to talk of the Rhine provinces, and reported that the opposition to France at St. Petersburg was relaxing. Napoleon suspected that Prussia was maintaining too long the profitable rôle of mediator, and urged a direct appeal to Russia. Hearing that the Tsar had seriously quarrelled with Austria, and was not well disposed towards England, he collected all the Russian prisoners he had, re-clothed them, and sent them home with military honours. When he further sent the sword of La Valette to the Tsar (who had been appointed Grand Master of the Order of St. John, and had an enthusiasm for his charge) and invited him to take possession of Malta (then very precariously held by the French against the English), the Tsar was won.

In the meantime the French Minister at Madrid had reported on the situation in Spain. A boorish, thoughtless king, who gave the slightest possible attention to public affairs: a spirited, hard-working queen, with an eye for Parisian millinery: a conceited and incompetent paramour of the queen, Godoy, who was in reality the first minister of the country. In a few weeks cases of valuable French arms were on their way to Godoy. The king, innocent of the vaguest suspicion of political machinery, desired some for himself. A splendid assortment was at once dispatched; and Citoyenne Minette was sent to the queen, with boxes of exquisite Parisian costumes, chosen by Josephine, and with diplomatic instructions from Talleyrand in her pocket.

By the beginning of May Napoleon was ready to open the campaign against Austria. He had set in motion his vast plans for the improvement of Paris and the country, and the restoration of commerce, education, justice, and order. He had pacified la Vendée, and set free the troops for the campaign in Italy. Russia was detached from the coalition, and had sent an ambassador to Paris—a man with whom it would be easy to deal, said Talleyrand, because he had no instructions, and was incensed against his own government. Prussia was most benevolently neutral. Spain seemed to have entirely forgotten Louis XVI. Leaving Talleyrand to sustain the good disposition of these Powers, Napoleon set out on May 6th for Italy. “What we want now,” said Talleyrand to him, “is for success in war to put new life into the department of peace.”

Within six weeks came the news of the victory at Marengo. By July 3rd Napoleon was back in the capital. Austria was crushed, Italy won, and England isolated. A new phase of diplomatic work had now to begin. From the battle-field Napoleon had written to the Austrian Emperor. The Emperor injudiciously sent his reply by the same messenger, a very undiplomatic Austrian soldier, the Count St. Julien, who followed Napoleon to Paris, and was entrusted to Talleyrand to deal with. He had, of course, no power whatever to negotiate, but was instructed to sound the French, and only say sufficient for that purpose about Austria’s disposition. Within a week St. Julien signed the preliminaries of a treaty with France that bound Austria to close her ports against England (with whom she had signed an agreement one month before). The inexperienced soldier had asked Talleyrand’s advice as to the extent of his powers, and Talleyrand gravely replied that if he were in St. Julien’s place he would sign. When Napoleon heard that St. Julien was disavowed and sent to a fortress, and the negotiations were annulled, he said that he rather expected it, but merely “wanted to put the Emperor in the wrong in the eyes of Europe.” He talked of renewing hostilities, but Talleyrand dissuaded him, and in October Count Cobentzl reached Paris for the serious work of negotiation. In the meantime the effect of Marengo was visible on all sides. A succession of fêtes brought Paris and France to the feet of the First Consul. Millions were sent to the Treasury from the seat of war.

Cobentzl was to treat with Joseph Bonaparte at Lunéville, but Napoleon invited him to pay a visit to Paris first. On the evening of his arrival Talleyrand took him to the Tuileries. Napoleon had prepared the very furniture of the room to receive him. Cobentzl, with distinct recollection of the violent little man who had smashed his porcelain to illustrate how he would break Austria, found himself admitted into the large room on the ground floor where Napoleon worked. The lustre was unlit. One small lamp shone on the desk in the far corner where Napoleon sat, and Cobentzl found, after crossing the long dark room, that all the chairs had been removed except the one that Napoleon used. He was nervous and uncomfortable, while Napoleon conducted his well-rehearsed part with the ease of a conqueror. The few days in Paris were not pleasant to the Austrian envoy. He gladly moved to Lunéville to treat with the less dramatic and less violent Joseph. Napoleon’s brother had already been used in the conclusion of a treaty with the United States. It is absurd to say that Talleyrand was passed over in these matters for personal reasons. Napoleon’s employment of his elder brother, who had no mean ability, in these high affairs of State requires no explanation. On February 9th, 1801, the new treaty was signed at Lunéville. Austria was restricted to Venice in Italy, and lost the Rhine provinces and the Netherlands. Talleyrand did little more than conduct the correspondence between the two brothers. Count Cobentzl had made every effort to escape a rupture with England by signing a separate peace, but the supervention of the victory of Hohenlinden in December had too utterly enfeebled his country.

An event had occurred in December in connection with which Talleyrand is often severely censured. An attempt had been made by certain chouans to blow up the First Consul as he went to the opera. Napoleon at once called a Council of State, and declared it was the work of the Jacobins. Whatever the suspicions of the Councillors were, they knew that Napoleon was bent on making this a pretext for a severe blow at the Terrorists, and they said nothing when a number of the more truculent were executed and deported for a crime that was afterwards found to be the work of Royalists. There was much indignation against Fouché for the negligence of the police. Mr. Holland Rose says that “if we may credit the on dit of Pasquier, Talleyrand urged the execution of Fouché.” We may not credit the on dits of Pasquier when they reflect on Talleyrand; and such a suggestion is entirely inconsistent with Talleyrand’s character. It seems to be stated with more authority (though the reports are not consistent) that Talleyrand—probably at the instigation of Napoleon—advocated taking action on a senatus-consultum, which would dispense with the need of passing measures through the less complaisant bodies. Talleyrand said at the time that it was necessary to give foreign governments one of those guarantees of stability about which they were so anxious. There were few tears shed over the brutal and hasty treatment of the remnant of the Terrorists.

In those early years Talleyrand felt a lively personal attachment to Napoleon. “The sentiment that attaches me to you,” he writes, “my conviction that the devotion of my life to your destiny and to the grand views that inspire you is not without effect in their realisation, have made me take more care of my health than I have ever done before.” Later, when Napoleon had rendered some service to his family: “I am with you in life or death.” His letters up to 1804 frequently exhale an odour that the British perception would class as that of rank flattery. Making due allowance for the exaggerated manners of the day, the sentiment seems to be sincere. The allusions of Napoleonists in later years to “an Auteuil conspiracy” (where Talleyrand had a house) early in the nineteenth century are frivolous. Talleyrand would, no doubt, shudder at the coarseness of Napoleon’s language at times and cannot have been blind to his ambition. But the latter coincided as yet with the interest of France, and the former was almost obliterated in the glare of his genius. When we consider the vast work that Napoleon was doing for France, and the very probable effect a restoration of the King at that period would have had, we feel that Talleyrand must have clung to him with real anxiety.

On the other hand, Napoleon would take care to attach to his person and cause a minister of the ability of Talleyrand. To the end of his career he acknowledged that Talleyrand had no equal in his work, and their letters show that “foreign ministry” was taken in a wide sense. Talleyrand could entertain returned nobles who despised the thin polish of the Tuileries, as well as play with a St. Julien, or conciliate Swiss and Italian patriots. To one letter Talleyrand appends a list of the ladies at his last soirée who did not dance. When the Spanish princes came to Paris, it was Talleyrand’s fête at Neuilly that remained in their memories; it was at Neuilly they met the old nobility and culture of France, and enjoyed the most brilliant display of Parisian decorative art. When Napoleon wanted to have himself appointed President of the Italian Republic it was Talleyrand he sent to meet the 450 stern Italian patriots at Lyons, who would not venture nearer into the mesmeric circle of the Tuileries. Talleyrand describes the state of the roads, the price of bread and the feeling of the provincials, as he travels; selects his friend Melzi among the deputies to “open his heart to”; puts before them in his grave, sententious way “not what Napoleon desired, but what it was expedient for the Cisalpine Republic to ask.”[33] When Napoleon and Josephine arrived, it was almost superfluous to awe the Italians with reviews and parades. The Constitution was accepted, and the Italian branch of Napoleon’s empire created. When, in the summer of 1801, Spain made its “orange-war” on Portugal, instead of subjugating it as Napoleon had demanded, the First Consul sent the whole of the papers to Talleyrand who was at the baths of Bourbon l’Archambault. “I fear my advice has a smack of the douche and cold bath about it,” says Talleyrand in reply; but his moderate and judicious scheme saved the angry Napoleon from a serious blunder. The news of Spain’s interested failure to close Portugal against England had come to Napoleon in the midst of his negotiation for peace with London, and he talked of making war on Spain. Talleyrand urged the more refined punishment of disposing of Trinidad to England, sending Lucien (the Madrid ambassador) on a long visit to Cadiz, and of generally “wasting time at Madrid and pushing things on at London.”

TALLEYRAND
(Under Napoleon).

Peace with England was, in fact, the next measure that the interest of France demanded. In March, 1801, overtures were made from England. Pitt had fallen over the Catholic Emancipation proposals, and the new ministry under Addington desired to close the war. Now that Napoleon had crushed Austria, cajoled Spain, and conciliated Russia, he would prefer to attempt a blow at his great enemy, but the news from abroad moderated his ambition. From St. Petersburg came the announcement that the Tsar had “died of apoplexy.” He had been murdered in a palace-conspiracy on March 23rd. Napoleon vented his feelings in the customary rhetoric. Talleyrand lifted his eyebrows and said, “Apoplexy again? It is time they invented a new disease in Russia.” Immediately afterwards came the report of the English victory at Copenhagen, and the detachment of Denmark; and about the same time bad news reached Paris from Egypt. Shortly afterwards Bonaparte is described by Stapfer as saying to the British Ambassador at Paris: “There are only two nations in the world, England and France. Civilisation would perish without them. They must be united.”

One cannot claim that Talleyrand did much more than clerical work in the negotiations that led to the Peace of Amiens, though he entered into it with more than usual ardour. Napoleon’s temporary and insincere cry for a peaceful co-operation of the Mistress of the Sea and the Mistress of the Land expressed Talleyrand’s habitual feeling[34]. He did desire to see a naval supremacy of France in the Mediterranean, but he would leave the high seas to England, with a hope that free trade would still favour France’s commerce and colonising adventures. It was, therefore, with a real sense of triumph that he saw France conclude a most advantageous peace at a moment when a change of policy seemed possible in Russia. Joseph Bonaparte again conducted the negotiations. The preliminaries were signed on October 1st, 1801, and the Treaty of Amiens was ratified on March 27th. England had imprudently relied on certain verbal promises of Otto in signing the preliminaries, and these were, of course, disavowed by Talleyrand. “Make plenty of promises but put nothing on paper,” is a very frequent charge from him and Napoleon to envoys. The integrity of of Portugal was guaranteed. Egypt was assigned to the Turks, and Malta to the Knights of St. John. France gave to England the islands of Trinidad and Ceylon (which did not belong to her), and obtained recognition of her extension into Italy and Germany. The diplomatic reputation of the Bonapartes and Talleyrand rose to a great height at Paris, where the advantages gained were discussed with astonishment. As Mr. Rose puts it: “With three exceptions England had given way on every point of importance since the first declaration of her claims.”

Towards the close of March Talleyrand presented himself to Napoleon one morning for the usual discussion of business. When it was all over he calmly produced the Treaty of Amiens! But he was far from insensible of the height to which France had risen since the end of 1799. The flood of allied armies that had dashed against her frontiers for seven or eight years had now ebbed impotently away. Her territory reached to more natural boundaries, and her influence was felt far beyond them—in Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Spain. There seemed some hope at last of that internal organisation which France so sorely needed. And Bonaparte’s ideal went very largely on the lines of Talleyrand’s own schemes. His great address on education was exhumed; his financial proposals were followed more than once in the restoration of fiscal health to the country. Nor would Talleyrand have any sympathy with the opposition to Napoleon’s creation of the Legion of Honour. “Toys!” said Napoleon, when someone spoke lightly of his distribution of ribands: “Well, you keep men in order with toys.” It was a not unhappy mean between the old hereditary gradation of society, with its demoralising and irritating narrowness, and the crude “equality” of the Revolution.

When, therefore, the proposal of a life Consulship was put before Paris by Napoleon’s instruments, Talleyrand had no reason to demur to it. The benevolent despot was his ideal of government for France. Besides, who could succeed Napoleon? Who else could give form and substance to the fair vision of France that had arisen before the minds of thoughtful men? To talk of Talleyrand “deserting” the principles of the Revolution which he had embraced is mere verbiage. He had never believed that pure democracy would be permanent or practicable in an uneducated nation. There did not seem to him on that account any reason why he should sit idly beyond the frontiers, living on an English pension, until others would lead France again into the paths of destiny. So when Cambacérès hinted that the work of the First Consul merited a peculiar recognition, he felt no repugnance. The obsequious Senate proposed a Consulship for ten years, and Napoleon disdainfully ignored it. Then the idea of a life-Consulship was put to the country in a plebiscite, and carried by an imposing majority.

In the long and complete negotiations that followed the peace Talleyrand was very active. His detractors had the alternative of ignoring his action altogether, and reducing him to the inglorious rank of first clerk of the Foreign Office, or of assigning to him a very considerable activity with a proportionate “corruption.” The truth is that during 1802-3 Talleyrand was very busy, and his work was lucrative. Once more, however, there is no charge that he sold the interest of France or of peace. In those last days of the buccaneering period the great Powers regarded helpless little States as a providential means of compensating each other. Poland had been coldly dismembered. Turkey in Europe was freely subjected to plans, as it still is. Holland, Hanover, and a score of other places were pawns on the board. It was understood that after the peace the possesssions of the ecclesiastical princes on the Rhine should be put on the market. The hotel of the Foreign Minister at Paris was besieged with princes and their envoys. Baron von Gagern tells how he saw Luchesini, Cobentzl, and others playing with Talleyrand’s adopted daughter, Charlotte, and her lap-dog.

Prussia was the first to be rewarded for her benevolent neutrality and her silence in view of the invasion of Italy. Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Hesse, Baden, and the House of Orange were indemnified out of ecclesiastical property. Vienna saw its legendary “empire” break up without the power of murmuring. Austria itself and the Grand Duke of Tuscany absorbed more of the ecclesiastical domains. The cession of the left bank of the Rhine to France had created the need for indemnities. France, with the ready consent of Europe, covered her aggression by dividing the right bank among the dispossessed princes and the Powers. At the Hotel Galiffet and at St. Cloud the map of Europe was assiduously used. Little squares of territory with few guns and troops changed colour rapidly. There were believed to be men and women in them.

Then there were the southern odd parts of the map to be settled. Switzerland had invited the interference of a strong hand by her constant anarchy. Napoleon was not unwilling to play the part of mediator, and clip off the province containing the road to Italy. The sturdy Swiss patriot, Stapfer, has left us the long correspondence with which he reported to his authorities the dreary two years he spent at Paris. In one of his letters he says to Talleyrand: “I shall feel gratified and honoured throughout life that I have been in touch with you who have brought the light and the urbanity of the old regime into the new, and who have proved that all the results of social advance and of the culture of the first ranks of society may be completely reconciled with democratic principles.” It is just to add that this is a prelude to a very solid “but.” However, Stapfer acknowledged in the end that Napoleon’s mediation in Switzerland had done good. Luchesini tells us that when Napoleon asked Talleyrand to secure his nomination to the presidency of the Swiss Republic, as he had done with the Italians at Lyons, the Foreign Minister at once threatened to resign. Piedmont had been incorporated as a French province by a senatus consultum in September. Genoa and Lucca had been granted “constitutions.” Elba had sent three deputies to Paris, where they were entertained as princes and given a douceur of 3,000 francs each; and Elba was incorporated into the growing empire.

In two years the Foreign Office had negotiated treaties with Austria, Russia, Prussia, Bavaria and England, redistributed all the small principalities of the Rhine valley, and prepared constitutions for Lucca, Genoa, Elba, Piedmont and Switzerland. Many princes, provinces and free towns gained by the changes: many escaped losses that seemed only too imminent: many lost less than they might have done. It is probable enough that Talleyrand accepted from these sums of money that were collectively respectable. A few cases are put on reliable record. There is not the least reason to doubt that in most cases of advantage conferred the Foreign Minister was ready to receive money. He freely expressed his disposition. Cadeau diplomatique was a familiar and not dishonourable phrase of the day. “I have given nothing to St. Julien,” Talleyrand wrote to Napoleon, “because all the Directory jewellery is out of date.” On another occasion he urges Napoleon to give a substantial sum of money to the Spanish Minister. No doubt, the present usually took the form of a piece of jewellery worth money. “Talleyrand preferred cash,” says von Gagern, indulgently. It saved trouble. When we regard the enormous quantity of negotiations and settlements thrown on Talleyrand by Napoleon’s plans, it is difficult to feel surprise that he made some millions of francs. His action does not invite our admiration, but we may bear in mind that in not a single case is he known to have strained or deserted his duty for money, and that more than half the specific charges against him will not sustain examination.

To complete the picture of the extraordinary activity of Napoleon and Talleyrand at this time we must notice its range beyond Europe. Treaties were concluded with Turkey, Algeria and Tunis. Napoleon’s mind found time to interest itself in Australia, India, America and the West Indies. After the peace of Amiens he took up the idea of colonies as “safety valves” for the over-strained and over-populated nation which Talleyrand had put forward under the Directory. But Talleyrand seems to have been little more than a clerk in the not very honourable pursuit of this plan. Napoleon sent out his ill-fated army to St. Domingo with a message to Toussaint l’Ouverture that it was coming to help him. At the same time he directed Talleyrand to inform England that it was going to destroy the native government, and hint that it might restore the slave trade; while Bruix and others were pointing out to the dazed new democracy in France that slavery had been fully recognised by those admirable models of theirs, the “free peoples of antiquity.” In 1801 he made Talleyrand assure Spain that Louisiana, which Spain ceded to him, would never be given to a third Power. It is on record that Talleyrand firmly opposed him when he unscrupulously sold it to the United States two years later. Expeditions to India and to Australia complete the gigantic programme of their activity, save for the important work of reconciliation with Catholicism which may open a new chapter.

CHAPTER XI

THE RESTORATION OF RELIGION

Napoleon’s imperial vision included in its first vague outline the restoration of the Church in France and the establishment of good relations with Rome. The sharpness of his earlier antagonism to religion was worn down by his experience and his political requirements. Let the old clergy overrun the provinces of France again, and they would soon exorcise them of their superficial Jacobinism. He had seen in the East how despotism throve where it had the support of religion. The new Pope, Pius VII, should be disposed to make a bargain with the new Charlemagne. Not only did France seem still to drift away from Catholicism, but the spirit of Gallicanism had passed over the Rhine and the Pyrenees. Alarming rumours of the founding of “national” churches came to the Vatican from Spain and South Germany; while Catholic Austria held aloof with an open cupidity for the Pope’s temporal dominions. So the Corsican free-thinker converted himself into “Charlemagne.” The Pope might be reminded of the spiritual desolation that cried for his spiritual intervention in France; ultramontanism could be made innocuous by the simple expedient of abolishing the mountains, and making a Catholic Constantinople of Paris; the police would be seconded by the subtler gendarmery of the clergy, the heads of which would be ingeniously fitted into the political machinery of the country. Before Napoleon left Italy (after Marengo) he sent the Bishop of Vercelli to the Pope with a message of peace.