Talleyrand: A Biographical Study

by Joseph McCabe

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.