Talleyrand: A Biographical Study

by Joseph McCabe

The long series of fêtes and spectacles wore on meantime. One day Napoleon sent his actors to Weimar, and, after a hunt on the very field of Jena, entertained the princes to a banquet. The opera that night was unhappily chosen, “La mort de César,” but a ball was added that “dissipated the impression.” Napoleon made an effort to dazzle Goethe and Wieland with the brilliancy of his culture. Goethe made quiet and neat replies to the Emperor’s forced and well-prepared sallies into literature. Talleyrand has preserved an account of the conversation, but omitted one of its best passages. When Napoleon said he did not like the end of “Werther,” Goethe replied: “I did not know that your Majesty liked romances to have an end.” Wieland took up the defence of Tacitus against Napoleon. “I agree,” he said, “that his chief aim is to punish tyrants; but he denounces them to the justice of the ages and of the human race.” When, on the day before his departure, the crowd of princes and nobles gathered about Napoleon—“I did not see a single hand pass with any dignity over the lion’s mane,” says Talleyrand—he turned again to the literary men, and asked if they had any idealists in Germany. They had many. “I pity you,” he replied. “These philosophers torture themselves with the creation of systems. They will search in vain for a better one than Christianity, which reconciles man with himself, and at the same time assures public order and the tranquility of States.” The feelings of the “idealists” are not recorded. Talleyrand himself disappoints us. He had Goethe to dinner one evening, and does not reproduce a word of the conversation, or devote a single line to appreciation of the greatest man in that historic gathering.

When they returned from Paris Napoleon set out for Spain, and Talleyrand settled down to a life of comparative quiet. After leaving the Hotel Galiffet he had occupied a small house at the corner of the rue d’Anjou, but he now bought the large Hotel de Monaco in the rue de Varennes. His old friends, Narbonne and Choiseul, had returned to Paris and helped to restore in his magnificent salon the gaiety and wit of the earlier days. Other groups of the old nobility were forming, and no figure was more welcome amongst them than that of the ex-bishop. At the Duchess de Laval’s he met once more the Duchess de Luynes, the Duchess de Fitzjames, the Countess Jaucourt, Mme. de Bauffremont, and many another great lady of the past and great admirer of himself. The Countess Tyszkiewicz, who had “caught the complaint of falling in love with Talleyrand” at Warsaw, brought a strong accession of fervour to the cult. The old society of Paris was forming the nucleus of the new, and, with a dim consciousness of their work, preparing the scene for the next act in the history of France. From these brilliant and envied centres daring witticisms crept abroad and began to circulate in Paris. The Napoleonic Court, the new Foreign Minister, the campaign in Spain, the succession to the throne, were fruitful in enlivening topics of conversation over the tea or whist tables. Possibly the story of Erfurt was discreetly told; certainly the story of the Archduchess Anna would prove irrepressible. There were more serious matters. It was observed that Talleyrand was reconciled with Fouché, and it was known that they were daring to speculate on the contingency of a Spanish ball finding its way to the Emperor’s heart; though the kinder of the myth-makers declare that the object of the new conspiracy was merely the heart of a certain pretty lady.

By this time the Bonapartes and the Beauharnais hated Talleyrand. He had never concealed his small estimate of Napoleon’s brothers. “Say what you like about my family,” said the Emperor with a laugh, when he asked Talleyrand to speak to Alexander about his want of an heir. He also warned him that Josephine knew he favoured a divorce. They and the Foreign Minister, and every other Napoleonist that had been made a butt of royalist wit, now joined in reporting to the Emperor, when he returned in January, the latest misdeeds of the Faubourg St. Germain. Talleyrand had written amiable letters to Napoleon in Spain. He had congratulated him on his victories (with, we must remember, the usual hope that they will be made a step to peace and the real good of Spain), and encouraged his political action in Paris. The Corps Legislatif was giving trouble, and Talleyrand agreed that it might be extinguished without tyranny. In a country like France it was only necessary to have sufficient popular representation to vote supplies. When, therefore, Napoleon heard of the satirical comments on his campaign and the friendship of Talleyrand and Fouché, he determined to strike.

On the day following his return, when Talleyrand and the other Court dignitaries came before him, he opened the sluices of his Corsican oratory. “He became a sub-lieutenant once more,” says Meneval in recalling his language. In the general confusion Talleyrand alone stood “like a rock,” though the Emperor even threatened to strike him. To Napoleon’s brutal observation: “You did not tell me that the Duke of San Carlos was your wife’s lover,” he quietly retorted: “I did not think it redounded either to your Majesty’s honour or mine.” When the Duchess de Laval asked him afterwards why he did not knock Napoleon down with the tongs, he said he was “too lazy.” The only remark he made to those present, when the Emperor had exhausted himself and departed, was: “What a pity that such a great man had not a better education.” We are often asked at this juncture by Talleyrand’s biographers to deplore the lack of self-respect that he betrayed in not seizing the tongs, or returning the torrent of rhetoric. If he had been a bishop the same writers would ask us to admire his superhuman fortitude. The general reader will probably prefer an intermediate attitude. The aphorism quoted by Lord Acton, that such conduct belongs to one who is either more or less than man, is pretty but absurd.

It is just four years from the date of this incident to Talleyrand’s last interview with Napoleon. Those four years are full of adventure and life for the Napoleonist writer, but they offer little material to the biographer of Talleyrand. Throughout them the scene is being prepared for the next act. Wellesley is slowly forcing his way towards the Pyrenees. The coalition against England is gradually being converted into the final coalition against Napoleon. Parisian society is falling into two definite groups, Napoleonists and people who whisper to each other that the Emperor has no guarantee of immortality—“passengers,” in the words which Metternich applies to Talleyrand and Fouché; “passengers who see the helm in the hands of a reckless pilot steering straight for the reefs, and are ready to seize the tiller as soon as the first shock knocks down the helmsman.”

Talleyrand is still, it will be remembered, Vice-Grand Elector, and member of the Supreme Council. But after January, 1809, he has little influence on the fortunes of France, and is continually offending the Emperor. His personal relation to Napoleon is curious. Michaud says that on the morning after the storm of January 23rd, he was one of the first to appear at the levee, and observers could see no trace of the events of the previous day in his bearing. The Emperor himself said to Roederer a few days later that “his feelings towards Talleyrand were unchanged,” and he would “leave him his dignities,” but would not have him closely associated as Chamberlain. The last letter of Talleyrand to Napoleon that we have, dated April, 1809, is full of amiability and ostensible devotion. Three years later, when he loses nearly the whole of his fortune, he applies to the Emperor through Savary, and receives two million francs for his hotel. In that year Napoleon even wanted to recall him to the conduct of affairs. It seems as if the two men retained, below all their political differences and personal friction, a softening memory of their joint achievements. But their divergence in policy was too serious to admit further co-operation. Napoleon saw all his hated enemies in Paris gather about the Hotel Talleyrand, and set his spies upon it. Talleyrand saw the Emperor reel fatally towards the precipice.

In the long and adventurous negotiations with the Pope in 1809 and 1810 Talleyrand had no part. He saw Napoleon as “successor of Charlemagne,” confiscate the last of the temporal power, and the Ecclesiastical Council at Paris (November 16th, 1809, to January 11th, 1810) trim and writhe before Napoleon’s theological queries.[47] He was present when several of the bishops were summoned to Saint Cloud, after Napoleon had read an unsatisfactory account of the opening of their second Council. Napoleon sat in the midst of his Court, drinking coffee poured out by the Empress, and singled out his uncle, Cardinal Fesch, for one of his characteristic attacks. But “the Corsair (Fesch had fitted out more than one privateer in 1793-5) re-appeared at times under the cassock of the Archbishop.” The reply was as Corsican as the attack. Napoleon rushed on from blunder to blunder in the historical and theological matters he was daring to discuss. “You take me for Louis le Debonnaire,” he roared, “I’m not. I’m Charlemagne.” The negotiations came to nothing, and the bishops were informed “by the minister of police” that they might return to their dioceses.

Talleyrand was an idle but disgusted witness of the subsequent abduction of the Pope, and the final defeat of Napoleon’s aims. In January, 1810, he was present with all the other great dignitaries and ministers at the conference on the divorce of Josephine and re-marriage of the Emperor. Few knew, as Talleyrand did, that there was really no question of a Russian marriage, when Napoleon put it to them as an open question. When it came to his turn to speak, he advocated an alliance with Austria. Napoleon thanked and dismissed them; and a courier was dispatched to Vienna the same evening. Talleyrand was present at the marriage in April. He heard the bells of Notre Dame ring out the ecclesiastical share in the general joy at a time when the Pope was Napoleon’s prisoner, and listened to Austrian congratulations at a moment when the fortifications of Vienna were being blown up at the order of its conqueror. A month or two afterwards he again gave offence to the Emperor. Fouché had been detected in negotiation with England, and Napoleon consulted his Council as to the advisability of punishing him. Most of the members thought Fouché should be deposed, but could suggest no substitute for that astute chief detective. Talleyrand said to his neighbour in a stage-whisper: “Fouché has certainly done very wrong, and I would find a substitute for him—but it would be Fouché himself.” This led to Napoleon’s last extant letter to him. “Prince of Benevento, I have received your letter, the contents of which pained me. During your term of office I voluntarily shut my eyes to many things. I regret that you should have thought fit to take a step that revives the memory of what I have endeavoured, and will still endeavour, to forget.” The air of righteous forbearance is imposing.

In the spring of 1812 the difference between the two seemed to be bridged for a time. Talleyrand was generously assisted by the Emperor in a grave financial crisis, of which I will speak presently, and accepted an appointment from him to a political mission. With the long story of Napoleon’s rupture with Russia and the opening of a fresh campaign in 1812 I am not concerned. The friction between the two Emperors turned largely on the question of Poland, and Napoleon resolved to send Talleyrand on a secret mission to that country. Some affirm that he cancelled the appointment when he learned that Talleyrand had let it become known to Austria by sending to Vienna for a supply of ducats. It is likely enough that Talleyrand would think an accidental disclosure of his mission the safest way to avoid incurring the displeasure of Russia or Austria. Bulwer Lytton, however, says that Napoleon did not press the appointment because he found it difficult to adjust with the position of his Foreign Minister, who was to accompany him on the campaign. However that may be, the Emperor does not seem to have felt any particular resentment. He set out to face Russia. It was immediately whispered in Paris that Talleyrand declared it “the beginning of the end.”