The difficulty increased rapidly. There was still great distress in the country, and plots against the Directory were continual; one writer says there was an average of one per day. Six weeks after Talleyrand’s nomination a crisis occurred, and his conduct during it has been severely censured. The relaxation of the more violent measures had encouraged the royalists and other malcontents to act more vigorously. Evidence reached the Directors (partly from Napoleon) of a powerful and far-reaching conspiracy against them. At the head of it was the royalist General Pichegru, who was believed to have a following of 180 deputies. The Clichy Club at Paris had become a notorious rallying-place for malcontents, and Director Carnot was patronising it in a very compromising way. On the other hand, the Constitutional Club—with Talleyrand and Constant and Mme. de Staël—could naturally be relied on to oppose a counter-revolution, little as it respected the Directorate. Napoleon, too, made it clear that his assistance could be had.
It is, however, in complete opposition to the evidence, that Lytton accuses Talleyrand of taking the initiative; and still worse is Michaud’s reckless statement that Talleyrand “arranged everything.” A sober inquiry into the coup d’état of Fructidor only discovers that Talleyrand supported it in advance, but was not implicated in the violent manner of its execution, which, indeed, he used his influence to moderate. On the information supplied to the Directors no legal action could be taken. Reveillère, whose life was threatened, then conceived the idea of acting by force, though without unnecessary severity. He approached Rewbell, who consented, and the two easily induced Barras to join. It is absurd to suppose that these officials, who hampered Talleyrand in his own department and kept him in habitual ignorance of other affairs, should do more than secure his support as a Constitutionalist. Napoleon was requested to send troops, and to these he added as general the excitable and meddlesome Augereau, who soon had his men quartered within striking distance. The Clichy Clubbites meantime grew more audacious, and on September 3rd they warmly cheered a proposal in the Chamber to destroy the executive. That night the streets of Paris rang with the unfamiliar tread of an army, a token to all that an unconstitutional act was afoot. The next morning the two Councils found themselves surrounded by 10,000 troops. Pichegru and 42 of his followers in the Five Hundred, Barbé-Mabois and eleven of the Ancients, and 148 other alleged conspirators, especially journalists, were arrested. The Directors had warned Carnot and Barthélemy, whom they had no wish to injure personally. Carnot, who had long toyed with the Opposition, and had resisted every friendly overture, now fled. Barthélemy was arrested. Merlin de Douai, a lawyer, and Francois de Neufchateau, a literary man, took the places of Carnot and Barthélemy. The new Directorate obtained extensive powers from the newly-constituted Councils, revived the old stringent decrees against emigrants and priests, and initiated a long series of deportations. They sent 65 of the worst conspirators to Guiana—the guillotine would have been more merciful—and the rest to the Isle of Oléron. In all some 10,000 Nonconformist priests and returned royalists were prescribed, but only a proportion of these were actually banished. There was another general flight to the frontier.
CARNOT.
As I said, it is absurd to ascribe to Talleyrand a very active share in these proceedings. The charge seems to rest chiefly on the authority of Miot de Melito and Pasquier; both are deeply prejudiced against Talleyrand (Miot de Melito had just been deposed from his embassy at Turin by the Foreign Minister), and both were hundreds of miles away from Paris at the time. It is a good instance of the levity with which the case against Talleyrand is conducted. Talleyrand was at Barras’ house the night before the coup d’état; so were Constant and Mme. de Staël, who, Pasquier admits, “wished the day but not the morrow.” It is admitted, moreover, that Talleyrand used every effort to moderate the execution of the laws, and saved several individuals from banishment. As to the defence of the proceedings in his letter to Napoleon and his circular letter to the government agents abroad, no one will be so foolish as to seek in these an expression of his judgment. Officially he had to present the case in optimistic language or resign. The only ground for a censure is, in fact, that he did not resign; and it would be to ascribe to Talleyrand a quite heroic degree of sensitiveness to expect him to resign on account of a procedure which Thiers soberly regards as having “prevented civil war, and substituted in its stead a stroke of policy executed with energy, but with all the calmness and moderation possible in times of revolution.”
Probably one of the clearest proofs that the Directors were not much indebted to Talleyrand for their successful extinction of the conspiracy lies in the fact that his relations with them became more strained than ever. In October the Prussian envoy wrote to his Government that Talleyrand could only retain his position “by a miracle of intelligence and conduct.” Four of the Directors would not speak to him, and he was reduced almost to the position of a clerk in his department. It suits Michaud to imagine that Talleyrand took the initiative in important matters like the revolutionising of Switzerland, where there was money to be had. It is certain, however, that Talleyrand had no responsible part in forming the Roman and Helvetian Republics. In his Éclaircissements (July, 1799) he says he was not even present at a single discussion on the matter. On the other hand, he must have felt some satisfaction when he saw how Napoleon was ignoring the Directors. In October Napoleon concluded the treaty of Campo Formio with Austria, in complete opposition to the instructions Talleyrand had been sending him to the end of September. Talleyrand wrote him a letter of warm congratulation, which I give later. He secured the nomination of Napoleon as plenipotentiary at the subsequent Congress of Rastadt, but the instructions sent to him were always drawn up by the Directors. Talleyrand had been similarly slighted in the negotiations for peace with England. He had come into office at the time when Lord Malmesbury was conferring with the French envoys at Lille. Malmesbury was sincerely anxious to effect peace, though Talleyrand believes Pitt had merely sent him as a blind. Talleyrand wrote a memorandum on the situation soon after his appointment, in which he pleaded for a real effort to secure peace, and suggested a tactical procedure in view of the embarrassed position of the English Government. He was called “an ass” for his pains, and was directed to replace Maret by two new envoys with inflated statements of the position and claim of France. On September 18th Malmesbury sadly recognised that peace was impossible, and returned to London. The truth was that the Directors now relied on the operations of Napoleon to fill their empty coffers and sustain their prestige.
In October of the same year (1797) occurred an event which Talleyrand’s critics contemplate in a perfect luxury of moral indignation. Vice, venality, and treachery are said to be the capital offences of his career. The first charge we have considered; the third can be appreciated only at a later stage; the second now calls for examination. Let me indicate at once my reply to it. Talleyrand was not “venal” in the more offensive sense of the word. He never sold the interest of his country, or any humane cause. He did endeavour to make as much money as possible out of the Governments and princes which benefitted, or escaped injury, by his diplomatic arrangements; but these were always in the interest of France. Further, whatever be said of diplomatic arrangements in our time, the secret transfer of money was a common association of them in Talleyrand’s day; and the transaction, being secret, was commonly exaggerated. At the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1815, Metternich and Nesselrode were accused of taking a million each from Louis XVIII. M. de Bacourt, who was in a position to know, says they “only took the usual diplomatic present” (boxes worth 18,000 francs each). Hangwitz is accused of being still more venal. Mirabeau and Danton had been in the secret pay of the Court. Mirabeau is even said to have taken a thousand louis d’or from Spain for his diplomatic recommendation in 1790. Sieyès took 400,000 francs from Napoleon for his share in making him First Consul—when, in fact, Napoleon distributed a respectable fortune. Barras was notoriously corrupt. Rewbell was implicated. Roger Ducos was bought. Pitt had been quite willing to make the Directors a secret present of ten and a half million francs (while loftily refusing to pay two million sterling) during the negotiations, and Malmesbury had on his own account tried to buy the vote of one of the Directors. Fifty blacks do not make one white. I am only pointing out that Talleyrand’s conduct was not distinctive. He had far more opportunities than any other man of his time; and the actual charges against him are generally frivolous. The American “scandal” is one of the most authentic.
Adams had sent envoys to Paris in 1797 to settle the differences outstanding between the United States and France. Instead of being invited at once to meet Talleyrand, they were visited by secret agents who hinted that they came from the Foreign Minister, and said the Directors were too angry to negotiate, but might be induced to do so. The means they indicated were, firstly, a private payment of 1,200,000 livres (£50,000) “to the Directors,” and secondly, a loan from America to France[29] of 32,000,000 on Dutch securities that were only worth half that sum. After a number of interviews the envoys were recalled by their President, and a full account of the negotiations (without the names of the agents) was published by the United States. Talleyrand disowned his agents, but there can be no reasonable doubt that they acted on his instructions. His action provoked a widespread and deserved censure, but certain features of the transaction need to be emphasised. Talleyrand was certainly acting for Barras, though he would assuredly share the spoil. Further, the American envoys never professed the least moral resentment of the suggestion of a commission until all was over. During the negotiations they wrote home of it as being “according to diplomatic usage,” and said they “might not so much regard a little money, such as he stated to be useful.” No stress whatever is laid on it, “that being completely understood on all sides to be required for the officers of Government, and therefore needing no further explanation.” Their objection was solely raised against the loan, which they regarded as a kind of tribute wrung from the States. It was also this second proposal that led to the dangerous outbreak of anger and war-like preparations in the States, as the Cambridge text-book shows. It is quite clear that the suggestion of a commission alone would have done no harm, and would not have been considered unusual, except in amount, which was possibly determined by Barras.
Thus an examination of the documents published by the American Government greatly reduces the gravity of the matter. Had there been no suggestion of a loan we should never have heard of it; and even in France the cry of “scandal” was very much confused with a perception of the very evil result of pressing the loan, which was an honest, if impolitic, attempt to trade in the interest of the nation. Sieyès wrote from Berlin to reproach Talleyrand with “trafficking in his honour.” There are so many who make amends to the moral ideal by their generosity in condemning others. Mme. de Staël implored Talleyrand to exculpate himself, but he smiled. His habitual critics were, of course, delighted at so well authenticated an exposure, and to the Michauds and Sainte-Beuves of a later date this one exact documentary proof has seemed providential. So little serious notice was taken of it (apart from the loan) by sober men at the time that, when Talleyrand resigns on other grounds, in the following year, and writes the only apologia of his life, he dismisses this in two lines.[30]