There can be no doubt that at the first establishment of something like order and government under the Republic, the relations of France with foreign powers were considerably strengthened by a man of M. de Talleyrand’s birth and well-known acquirements and abilities being selected as minister of foreign affairs. It is also undeniable that, during the Consulate and early part of the Empire, the experience, sagacity, and tact of the accomplished diplomatist were eminently useful to the young, half-educated, and impetuous warrior whose fiery genius had placed him at the head of the State. To Louis XVIII. M. de Talleyrand’s assistance, when that sovereign recovered his throne, was invaluable, and Louis Philippe derived in no small degree, as I have already noticed, the respect which foreign governments paid so promptly to his suddenly-acquired authority from the fact that M. de Talleyrand had consented to undertake the embassy to London. I must likewise here repeat that to which I have already called attention. No party had to complain of treachery or ingratitude from this statesman so frequently stigmatised as fickle. The course he took at the different periods of his eventful life was that which seemed natural to the position in which he found himself, and the course which both friend and foe expected from him. His defections were from those whose policy he had been previously opposing, and whose views the higher order of intellects in his country condemned at the time that his own hostility commenced. Indeed, the rule of his conduct and the cause of his success may be pretty generally found in his well-known and wise maxim, that “The thoughts of the greatest number of intelligent persons in any country, are sure, with a few more or less fluctuations to become in the end that public opinion which influences the State.”
It must, however, be confessed that there is something to an honest nature displeasing in the history of a statesman who has served various masters and various systems, and appeared as the champion of each cause at the moment of its triumph. Reason may excuse, explain, or defend such versatility, but no generous sympathy calls upon us to applaud or recommend it.
The particular and especial talent of M. de Talleyrand was, as I have more than once exemplified, his tact; the art of seizing the important point in an affair—the peculiar characteristic of an individual, the genius and tendency of an epoch! His other qualities were accessories to this dominant quality, but of an inferior order and in an inferior degree.
His great good fortune was to have been absent from France during the horrors of the Committee of Public Safety; his great merit, to have served governments when in serving them he served the public interests. His great defect, a love of money, or rather a want of scruple as to how he obtained it. I never heard any clear justification of his great wealth, though that which, it is said, he gave to Bonaparte, “I bought stock before the 18th Brumaire, and sold it the day afterwards,” has wit and à propos to recommend it. His great calamity was to have been minister of foreign affairs at the moment of the execution of the Duc d’Enghien; and the part of his conduct most difficult to explain justifiably, is to be found in the contradiction between his declaration to Lord Grenville, when he came over to England after the 10th of August in 1792, that he had nothing to do with the provisional government then established in France, and the declaration of M. de Chénier to the convention in 1795—a declaration which he himself subsequently repeated—that he went to England at the time alluded to as Danton’s agent.
An extract from the Moniteur, the 27th of May, 1838, page 1412, quoting from the Gazette des Tribunaux, is worth preserving:[81]
“We have already said that in the sequel to the will of Prince Talleyrand was found a sort of manifesto, in which the celebrated diplomatist asserted the principles which had guided him in his political life, and explained his way of looking at certain events.
“According to various facts we have collected, the following is the substance of that declaration, which is dated in 1836, and which, in accordance with the wish of the testator, has been read to the family and assembled friends.
“The prince declares that before all things, and to all things, he had preferred the true interests of France.
“Explaining himself on the part he had taken in the return of the Bourbons in 1814, he says that, in his opinion, the Bourbons did not re-ascend the throne in virtue of a pre-existing and hereditary right; and he gives us, moreover, to understand that his counsels and advice were never wanting to enlighten them on their true position, and on the conduct which they ought to have followed in consequence.
“He repels the reproach of having betrayed Napoleon; if he abandoned him, it was when he discovered that he could no longer blend, as he had up to that time done, France and the Emperor in the same affection. This was not without a lively feeling of sorrow, for he owed to Napoleon nearly all his fortune. He enjoins his heirs never to forget these obligations, to tell them to their children, and to instruct these, again, to tell them to their offspring; so that if some day a man of the name of Bonaparte should be found in want of assistance, he should always find it in the family of Talleyrand.