Part V.
FROM THE FALL OF THE EMPEROR NAPOLEON, IN 1814, TO THE END OF M. DE TALLEYRAND’S ADMINISTRATION, IN SEPTEMBER, 1815.
Comte d’Artois, Lieutenant-General of France.—Treaty of the 23rd of April for the evacuation of France.—Louis XVIII., contrary to M. de Talleyrand’s advice, refuses to accept the crown with a constitution as the gift of the nation; but, agreeing to the first as a right, grants the second.—Forms his government of discordant materials, naming M. de Talleyrand, of whom his distrust and jealousy soon appear, Minister of Foreign Affairs.—Reactionary spirit of the Émigré party and Comte d’Artois.—Treaty of Paris.—M. de Talleyrand then goes to Vienna, and, in the course of negotiations there, contrives to make a separate treaty with Austria and Great Britain, and thus to break up solidarity of the alliance against France.—Bonaparte escapes from Elba.—New treaty against Napoleon; not clear as to its intentions, but appearing as renewal of Treaty of Paris.—Bourbons go to Ghent.—Bonaparte installed at the Tuileries.—M. de Talleyrand goes to Carlsbad.—Prince Metternich intrigues with Fouché for Napoleon’s deposition in favour of the regency of his wife; does not succeed.—The Allies again take up Louis XVIII.—M. de Talleyrand goes to Ghent.—At first ill received.—Lectures the Bourbons.—Is again made Minister.—Opposed by Royalist party and the Emperor of Russia; feebly supported by us; abandoned by Louis XVIII.—Resigns.
I.
Such for the moment was the end of the long struggle which M. de Talleyrand had maintained with a man superior to all others in the power of his faculties; but who, owing to certain faults, which were perhaps inseparable from the haughty and imaginative nature of those faculties, was finally vanquished by the patience, moderation, and tact of an adversary of far inferior genius, whose hostility he had, by a singular instinct, dreaded, and, by an unaccountable carelessness, provoked.
I have said that when M. de Talleyrand first attached himself to the destinies of Napoleon, he expected from him—first, his own advancement; secondly, the advancement of French interests.
He followed Napoleon, then, obsequiously up to the period at which he foresaw clearly that the policy of that personage was beginning to be such as would neither profit an intelligent adherent nor establish a durable empire.
It cannot be said, however, that in separating himself from this policy, after the treaty of Tilsit, he left his sovereign in a moment of adversity. France never appeared to people in general so great, nor its ruler so stable, as at that epoch. It was not at the moment of any evident decline in either, but at a moment when to a keen observer there was visible a tendency which if pursued would, a little sooner or a little later, plunge both into inextricable calamities, that the Prince de Benevent detached himself quietly from the chariot that bore the great soldier’s fortunes.
Even then he did little more than express with moderation the convictions he felt; and indeed his opposition when most provoked was never against the individual whom he had served, but against the system that individual was blindly pursuing. As the horizon grew darker, he neither shrank from giving his advice, which events proved invariably to be just, nor refused his services, if they were allowed the necessary means of being useful. His infidelity up to the last consisted in giving counsel that was rejected, and taking measures with much reserve for preserving himself and his country in some degree from the fate that was preparing for its ruler. Nor was it until Napoleon and the nation became two distinct things, and it appeared necessary to destroy the one in order to save the other, that it can be said that M. de Talleyrand conspired against the man, who, it must be added, never asked for heartfelt devotion in exacting blind obedience.
There was nothing on earth, in fact, which Napoleon himself would not have sacrificed, and did not unscrupulously sacrifice, to promote his own objects. He said, and I believe thought, that these were the happiness and glory of France. Behind his selfishness there was, all must admit, a great and noble idea; but those who felt sure that he was mistaken were not bound to subject their notions of patriotism to his: M. de Talleyrand had not been his creature, nor raised up from the dust by him. He had been a distinguished and eminent man before General Bonaparte’s career had commenced, and it is hardly fair to talk of his treachery to a man, who had of late years wearied him with affronts,—when the most intimate of that man’s favourites (Marshal Berthier) told Louis XVIII. at the commencement of the Restoration, “that France had groaned for twenty-five years under the weight of misfortunes that only disappeared at the sight of its legitimate sovereign.”