Talleyrand: A Biographical Study

by Joseph McCabe

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.