Talleyrand: A Biographical Study

by Joseph McCabe

THE “FOREIGNERS OF THE INTERIOR”

On July 9th, the day after the re-entering of Paris, Talleyrand was appointed Foreign Minister and President of the Council. His difficulties began with the new Ministry. He had in June drawn up a list of ministers, and had carefully excluded Fouché and included two men with a view to conciliating the Tsar. But Fouché was intrigueing most assiduously for a place in the Ministry. The contrast between the two men is instructive. Both have the remarkable history of taking service under the successive governments of the country; both were experts of the highest ability in their respective departments. Yet while later writers have expended a vast amount of moral indignation over the “knight of the order of the weathercock” (as they called Talleyrand) there has been comparatively little concern about Fouché. While Talleyrand has been at times buried beneath a mass of such epithets as corruption, treachery, venality, and unscrupulousness, Fouché has been passed by with a smile at his knavery. Nevertheless, while Talleyrand takes his place with some dignity in the eyes of contemporary statesmen in the successive administrations, Fouché has to resort to the most unblushing jobbery, and is only admitted under the heavy pressure of practical exigencies. Nothing could better illustrate the effort and prejudice that have been thrown into the hostile interpretation of Talleyrand’s career.

Fouché had been at work since April, when, while serving under Napoleon, he had offered the King to get rid of him on condition of receiving the Ministry of Police. After Waterloo he flew from place to place, and statesman to statesman, offering to surrender Napoleon, obtain the capitulation of Paris—anything in order to get his coveted place in the Ministry. He persuaded Monsieur that he was necessary for crushing the remainder of the rebellion, and at last imposed that view on Wellington. Talleyrand resisted the tendency to purchase his useful qualities, but was overruled and had to admit him as a colleague. He is often blamed for not resigning at once. No doubt he tested that suggestion by his usual question: “What good would it do?” It is difficult to see any real ground for censuring him. He strongly blames Wellington for admitting Fouché, and suggests that he was too eager “to be the first to enter Paris.” Chateaubriand was in attendance on the King at St. Denis, and saw Talleyrand come from his chamber leaning on Fouché—“vice leaning on the arm of crime,” he bitterly says. It was Chateaubriand above all who had implored Talleyrand to come from Vienna to the assistance of the King.

Talleyrand was further disappointed in forming the new Ministry by being unable to include the two friends of the Tsar. Pozzo di Borgo preferred to remain in the service of Russia. The Duc de Richelieu replied that he had been twenty years out of France, and was quite incompetent to take a responsible position in the conduct of the affairs of the country. Talleyrand seems to have known that the Tsar was pressing for Richelieu to replace himself, and he sent a rather sarcastic reply. When Richelieu did actually replace him at the head of the Ministry two months afterwards, he took the mild revenge of inserting a copy of his letter (pleading incompetence for a minor position) in his memoirs, and issuing a mot on the subject. Someone asked him if he really thought Richelieu capable of taking the head of French affairs. “Of course;” he said, “no one in France knows so much about the Crimea as he does.”

The next step was to nominate the prefects of departments. The most competent men were Napoleonists, and could not be reinstated. On the other hand the Court party were pressing upon the King a host of totally incompetent men on the plea that they were faithful Royalists. To have been in Ghent became the first qualification for office. When one man urged his claim on Talleyrand in this way he asked: “Are you sure you went to Ghent, and have not merely returned from there.” The man was naturally puzzled. “Because, you see,” Talleyrand continued, “there were only seven or eight hundred of us there, and to my knowledge seventy or eighty thousand have come from there.” But he had to witness the appointment of hundreds of these incapable Royalists, while the state of the provinces demanded firm and competent administrators. Between the excesses of the allied troops and the conflicts of Royalists and Bonapartists there were sanguinary disturbances. One advantage was gained indirectly. Fouché had to draw up a report on the troubles for the King, and he published this before submitting it to his colleagues. He pretended it had been stolen from him, but Talleyrand demanded his expulsion from the Ministry, and the King assented (September 19th). The mythologists give this as the last dialogue of the two ministers. “So you are dismissing me, you scoundrel.” “Yes, you imbecile.”

Meantime there were a score of other distractions. The conduct of the allied troops was so exasperating and oppressive that the King directed him to make a formal protest. The Allies demanded guarantees of peace, and a long and irritating correspondence ensued. On the other hand the ultras were making every effort to restore the vicious features of the old regime, in absolute blindness to the history of the Hundred Days; or, indeed, on the plea that greater “firmness” in 1814 would have prevented Napoleon’s raid. Talleyrand was sorely tried. “With infinite trouble,” he says, he succeeded in maintaining a certain degree of liberty for the Press. He had then to combat the demand for the punishment of those who had sided with Napoleon. He pleaded that it was enough to depose the senators who had offended, but a list of a hundred names for proscription had been prepared by the obsequious Fouché. After a struggle of several days Talleyrand got the list reduced to fifty-seven names. He also warned a large number of those who were to be brought to trial, and gave passports and money freely so that they might leave the country. He dispensed 459,000 francs in this way. Moreover, when the King went on to create the new peers, he prevailed on him to include a few of the names of those who had joined Napoleon.

Nor were Talleyrand’s difficulties with the Allies themselves less considerable. Immediately after the entry into Paris Blücher had promised himself the pleasure of blowing up the Pont Jena, a fine new bridge over the river. His whole conduct was vindictive. He had quartered his troops in the Place de Carrousel, with the guns pointing on the gates of the Tuileries. He had already mined two arches of the bridge when the King heard, and wrote to Talleyrand that if the threat were carried out he would have himself taken to the bridge and blown up with it. Talleyrand at once dispatched Beugnot to “use the strongest language at his command” to Blücher. Beugnot wanted to quote the King’s letter, but Talleyrand said the Prussians “would not believe we are so heroic as that.” Blücher was quickly discovered at his favourite gaming-room (No. 113, Palais Royal), and was pacified with a promise that the name of the bridge would be changed.

Talleyrand was less successful in his resistance to the Allies when they claimed the statues and pictures and other works of art that had been brought to Paris. On September 11th Castlereagh wrote him that the Pope, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, the King of the Netherlands, King of Prussia, and others demanded the return of their treasures, and the Allies had decided to comply. Talleyrand at once protested in the sacred name of morality against such a spoliation of the Parisian museums. At least, he concluded, this should have been done in 1814 or not at all. Wellington now took up the argument, and cut him short “with the brutality of a soldier.” The phrase is scarcely too strong. The Duke’s letter terminated: “The sovereigns were unable to wrong their subjects in order to satisfy the pride of the French army and nation, who must be made to feel that, in spite of a few temporary and partial advantages in various States, the day of restitution had come, and the allied monarchs could not neglect this opportunity of giving the French a great lesson in morality!” Talleyrand observes in the memoirs that no doubt Wellington had equally espoused the cause of morality when he had been on service in India.

And through all these troubles and distractions there was the grave anxiety about the new terms to be offered to France by the Allies. Pasquier would have us believe that during these busy months Talleyrand was peculiarly indolent, and that his whole energy was absorbed in fretting over a certain lady who seemed inclined to desert him.[56] But the whole of Pasquier’s narrative at this period is tinged with bitterness against Talleyrand, and must not lightly be followed. He is too obviously trying to justify the change from Talleyrand to his friend Richelieu. However much he may have betrayed his concern at the obstinate absence from Paris of his friend, it is, on the face of it, absurd to say that he could think of nothing else. We have seen that he had plenty to do, and did it. If it is true that there was a notable lack of the intense energy he usually displayed at critical periods (as Casimir Périer says), it is surely possible to trace this to the profound weariness and disgust that the whole situation would inspire. Feebly supported by the King, hated and maligned by the courtiers, surrounded by the intrigues of the Richelieus and Pasquiers and Fouchés, confronted with the hostility of Prussia and Russia and annoyed by the blunders of Wellington, conscious of the wretched state of the country and of the determination of the Allies to undo their generosity of 1814 and avenge Vienna, convinced that he himself would soon be cast aside as a worn-out tool, he had cause enough for weariness.