Part IV.
FIRST CONSULATE.
Talleyrand supports the extension of the First Consul’s power, based on a principle of toleration and oblivion of the past.—Napoleon attempts peace with England; fails.—Battle of Marengo.—Treaty of Lunéville and peace of Amiens.—Society at Paris during the peace.—Rupture.—M. de Talleyrand supports Consulate for life, Legion of Honour, and Concordat.—Gets permission from the Pope to wear the secular costume and to administer civil affairs.—Marries.—Execution of Duc d’Enghien.—New coalition.—Battle of Austerlitz.—Treaty of Presburg.—Fox comes into power; attempts a peace unsuccessfully.—Prussia declares against France, and is vanquished at Jena.—Peace of Tilsit.—M. de Talleyrand resigns Ministry of Foreign Affairs.—Differences about policy in Spain.—Talleyrand and Fouché now at the head of a quiet opposition.—Russian campaign; idea of employing M. de Talleyrand.—Napoleon’s defeats commence.—Offers M. de Talleyrand the Ministry of Foreign Affairs after the battle of Leipsic, but on unacceptable conditions.—In the continued series of disasters that ensue, Talleyrand always advises peace.—Tries to persuade Marie-Louise not to quit Paris.—Doubtful then between a regency with her and the Bourbons.—When, however, her departure suspends the constituted authority, and the Emperor of Russia takes up his residence at the Hôtel Talleyrand, and asks M. de Talleyrand what government should be established, he says that of the Bourbons.—Efforts to obtain a Constitution with the Restoration.—Napoleon arrives at Fontainebleau.—Negotiates, but finally abandons the French throne, and accepts the island of Elba, under the title of Emperor, as a retreat.
I.
One of M. de Talleyrand’s striking phrases (a phrase I have already quoted) was that the great Revolution “avait désossé la France”—“had disboned France!” There had ceased, in fact, to be any great principles in that country, holding affairs together, and keeping them in form and order. He said, then, “What principles cannot do, a man must. When society cannot create a government, a government must create society.” It was with this idea that he was willing to centre in Napoleon all the power which that wonderful man’s commanding genius required. But he wanted, in return, two things: one, that he should himself profit by the power he aided in establishing; the other, that that power should be exercised, on the whole, for the benefit of the French nation. Relying, for the moment, on the fulfilment of these conditions, he delivered himself up to a dictatorship which should quietly and gradually absorb all the used-up opinions and institutions.
Sieyès, who, with a more profound, had a less sagacious intellect, imagined that after he, a man of letters, had handed over the State to a daring, unscrupulous man of the world, he could govern that man. But M. de Talleyrand rather despised and underrated Sieyès, whom he looked on as a tailor who was always making coats that never fitted—a skilful combiner of theories, but without any tact as to their application; and when some one, à propos of the new constitution, which Sieyès had undertaken to frame, said, “Après tout ce Sieyès a un esprit bien profond,” he replied, “Profond! Hem! Vous voulez dire peut-être creux.”[38]
Bonaparte’s conduct justified this witticism; for when the first project of the constitution alluded to was presented to him, he treated it with ridicule, in the well-known phrase: “A man must have little honour or intellect who would consent to be a pig, put up in a stye to fatten on so many millions a year.”
The hero of the 18th Brumaire was not, in truth, a man who would accept the robes without the reality of power; and having taken out of the plan proposed for his acceptance what suited his views, and discarded the rest, he endowed himself with as much authority as he thought would be tolerated; for though France was wearied with perpetual changes and convulsions, she was not at that time prepared to end them by a new sovereignty.
One of the causes, indeed, which facilitated Napoleon’s early steps towards the great object of his ambition, was the general incredulity as to the possibility of his attaining it.
M. de Talleyrand himself did not, in all probability, imagine that he was making a military empire, when he was aiming at concentrating authority in the hands of the chief of the Republic; but he thought that the first care was to steady a community which had so long lost its balance; and on one occasion, shortly after the formation of the new government, and when the part which the first consul was to play was not yet altogether decided, he is said by a contemporary[39] to have held, at a private interview with the first consul, the following language:[40]—