Talleyrand: A Biographical Study

by Joseph McCabe

Faster ran the pace when, on the morning of the 30th, the allied armies reached the outskirts of Paris. All that day the roar of artillery and the rattle of musketry kept people in suspense. At night Marshals Marmont and Mortier came in, black with dust and smoke, and it was agreed to capitulate. Talleyrand had been ordered to follow the Empress to Blois, as a member of her Council. He asked Savary to authorise him to stay, but the Minister refused, and instructed the police to see that he went. Pasquier, however, mentioned to him the barrier at which Rémusat commanded, and Talleyrand, sending a message to his friend Mme. de Rémusat, set out with great ceremony in his state carriage. He was, of course, forbidden to pass the barrier, and returned to the Hotel St. Florentin. In his judgment Napoleon was not yet certified to be dead. Michaud, the devoted leader of the “true royalists” in Paris, who were contemptuously ignored by Talleyrand, says the crowd wanted to pitch him in the Seine. Michaud was to write Talleyrand’s biography as soon as he was dead, and it was to be taken as authoritative by judicious people like Sainte Beuve.

At eight in the morning Count Nesselrode and a Cossack enter Paris, and gallop between the great crowds to the Hotel St. Florentin. Talleyrand, just dressing, covers the Russian envoy with embraces and powder. While they are talking, a message comes from the Tsar to say that he hears the Elysée Palace, in which he was to stay, has been undermined. Talleyrand puts his hotel at the Tsar’s disposal. Nesselrode and he redact a proclamation, and entrust the printing of it to Michaud. At two in the afternoon Caulaincourt comes from Napoleon. At four the allied forces defile along the Champs Elysées, and Alexander arrives. He had previously given orders that Talleyrand was to be detained, by force, if necessary, at Paris; he was the necessary man. Michaud admits that his activity was “prodigious” that day. In the evening Alexander, the King of Prussia, Prince Schwartzenberg and others discussed the situation with Talleyrand and Dalberg. Talleyrand demanded the restoration of the monarchy. “With the return of the Bourbons France would cease to be gigantic, and would become great once more.” To the foreigners he pointed out that the only alternative to Napoleon that rested on a principle was the re-establishment of the Bourbons. The Tsar was not at all convinced that the country wanted the Bourbons, but Talleyrand promised to get a vote of the Senate to that effect, and produced the Declaration he had printed. When Napoleon’s envoy arrived to treat with the Allies, Alexander showed him the Declaration. The reign of Napoleon was over. Talleyrand had restored the monarchy. Napoleon remarked when he heard it: “Talleyrand was a good servant. I treated him badly without making him powerless. It was a great mistake. Now he has taken his revenge on me. The Bourbons will avenge me by throwing him over within six months.” There is no trace in the whole of Talleyrand’s career of “revenge.” It was, like zeal, one of the passions he thought it unprofitable to cultivate. He restored the monarchy, partly because he knew Napoleon, partly because he did not yet know Louis XVIII. He knew Napoleon would never sit in peace within the old frontiers of France, or refrain from meddling with a regency. Castellane rightly points out that he had much to fear under Louis, but would have had an assured influence under a regency. He acted in what must have seemed to be the interest of the country.

He at once set to work to secure the allegiance of Paris. Bourrienne, Pasquier, and others quickly deserted Napoleon. He won over many of the senators in Paris, and sent his friends to others. When the Senate met under his presidency on April 1st, it appointed a provisional government consisting of—Michaud bitterly says—“the whist-table,” and a few others. Talleyrand was president, with Dalberg, Jaucourt, Beurnonville, and Montesquiou as colleagues, and Louis and Beugnot and others as ministers. Michaud says they helped themselves freely to the funds. Talleyrand claims that their provisional administration was a miracle of economy. Its budget for seventeen busy days was only two million francs. On the following day the Senate deposed Napoleon, with rather needless emphasis. The Legislative Body supported it. Benjamin Constant wrote to congratulate Talleyrand on having “at once destroyed tyranny and laid the foundations of liberty.” “There is a noble consistency in your life,” he said, “between 1789 and 1814.”[51]

Talleyrand was in good spirits when he saw the smooth run of events. His friend de Pradt was piqued at being left out of the provisional government, and complained that he had no opportunity of helping. Talleyrand recollected that it was April 1st. He told de Pradt that he could render great assistance by joining in an attempt to evoke a royalist demonstration. They were both to leave the hotel waving their white handkerchiefs, and proceed in different directions along the boulevards. Talleyrand returned to the hotel as soon as de Pradt’s back was turned, and left the Archbishop to run the gauntlet of the crowd with his Bourbon flag. The National Guard had refused to replace the tricolour by the white cockade.[52]

But there were more anxious hours before the final settlement. Napoleon had still a considerable force, and talked of retaking Paris. On April 4th his marshals forced him to abdicate in favour of his son, and three of them came to the Hotel St. Florentin to inform the Tsar. The provisional government was at that moment assembled in Talleyrand’s rooms on the ground floor, and had drawn up the invitation to the King’s brother to advance to Paris. Alexander now spoke again in favour of a regency, and Talleyrand replied that it would mean the Napoleonic rule in disguise. The Tsar wavered between the politicians and the soldiers, until at last a messenger broke in on the discussion with the news that one of Napoleon’s generals had deserted with 12,000 men. On the 5th the Allies rejected Napoleon’s proposal; on the 6th the Senate proclaimed Louis XVIII, and Napoleon abdicated at Fontainebleau.

Then began the pitiful story of the men who “forgot nothing and learned nothing,” the King and his emigrant courtiers. Imagining that Europe had, out of respect for the divine right of kings, drawn the flat of its style over the tablets of the last twenty years, they marched into France without a glance at the real spirit of the people. A messenger came to tell Talleyrand that the Count d’Artois would make his entry into Paris on April 12th as the King’s deputy. Talleyrand calmly told him he was ready to hand over the reins of the provisional government to him. He had worked with the Senate for days at a constitution after the model of the English, with a hereditary Senate, an elective second chamber, freedom of worship, and open access to office for all Frenchmen. They invited the late King’s brother to ascend the throne as soon as he would adopt on oath the new constitution. This meant to the infatuated royalists that the roots of republicanism were still alive. The Tsar was less patient of their folly than Talleyrand. He gave them to understand that the King would forfeit the support of Europe if he did not accept the constitution; though Talleyrand admitted the possibility of changes in detail.

The Count d’Artois greeted Talleyrand with cordiality, and was too overcome with emotion to do more than stammer an expression of his joy. Beugnot tells how Talleyrand directed him afterwards to report, or rather construct, the scene for the Moniteur. After several attempts Beugnot made the Prince say: “Nothing is changed. There is one Frenchman more in France—that is all.” “That is what he did say,” said Talleyrand; “I answer for it.” The pretty speech—leagues removed from the real one—was scattered over the country in the Moniteur. Talleyrand had once defended d’Artois against Napoleon’s disdain, but he now saw with concern that the Prince’s watch had stopped at 1789. To the address of the Senate, delivered by Talleyrand, he only replied with a vague assurance that the King would be sure to accept the main lines of their constitution. Dispatching a Liberal noble, the Duke de Liancourt, to Hartwell, Talleyrand turned to the negotiations with the Allies until the King should arrive.

When someone had expressed to him a fear that the King might prove unreasonable, Talleyrand replied optimistically that Nature had put a man’s eyes in front, not at the back, of his head. It was, however, with grave misgiving that he went to meet Louis XVIII at Compiègne on April 29th. Cold, cynical and selfish in person, surrounded by evil and incompetent councillors, folded complacently in the outworn mantle of Capetian divinity, Louis XVIII came rather with an idea of forgiveness than of conciliation. He had enough perception of the situation to admit in the letter some scheme of constitutional monarchy, but he had not surrendered a particle of the medieval doctrine of divine right. Nothing was more remote from his mind than the idea of receiving sovereignty from the people and holding it on their conditions. With such a man co-operation was only possible as long as Talleyrand could prove himself to be indispensable. He was steeped in the convenient fiction that ministers serve the crown, so that its wearer escapes the burden of ingratitude. For such men Talleyrand would soon say, bitterly enough, “By the grace of God” is a protocol of ingratitude. As to the King’s surroundings he had no illusion. When someone asked him whether he thought them capable of saving France, he replied: “Why not? The geese saved the Capitol.”

King and king-maker met at the royal chateau of Compiègne. Talleyrand declares that the King received him with compliments; an eye-witness, Beugnot, describes him as ironically polite and very kingly.[53] When Talleyrand broached the subject of the constitution, the King brushed aside his plea for tact and consideration with a courtly sneer. “You wish me to accept a constitution from you, and you don’t wish to accept a constitution from me. That is very natural; but in that case, my dear M. Talleyrand, I should be standing and you seated.” Talleyrand saw that his worst fears as to the conduct of the returned emigrants—whom he would soon call “the foreigners of the interior”—were likely to be realised. In the end the King asked him, with some suspicion of irony, how he had been able to upset in succession the Directory and Bonaparte. Talleyrand saw his opportunity. “I did nothing at all, Sire,” he replied. “There seems to be an inexplicable something in me that brings bad luck to governments that neglect me.” This, at all events, is the current version of the interview. The mythopæic faculty has evidently been at work. It is safe to assume that the King was cold, cynical, polite and tactless.