Talleyrand: A Biographical Study

by Joseph McCabe

During the whole of August and the early part of September the Allies had succeeded in wrapping their deliberations in a secrecy which he could not penetrate. About the middle of September he learned their terms, and they were presented a few days later in “a sort of ultimatum.” They themselves summarised their intentions pointedly enough in the clause: “Two-thirds of the territory added to the France of former days by the Treaty of Paris will now be detached from it.” In addition, France was to pay an indemnity of 600,000,000 francs, provide 200,000,000 to build fortresses against herself in the provinces adjoining her frontiers, and maintain a foreign army of 150,000 men along her frontiers for seven years as a guarantee of peace. Prussia had triumphed. The English Ministers had wished to moderate the terms, but even they were shaken when it was pointed out that the Netherlands must be strengthened against France. Talleyrand, who rightly or wrongly believed that the whole of these harsh proceedings of the Allies would have been prevented if Louis had followed his advice at Mons, made a last effort to resist. The Council agreed with him in rejecting the terms, and he wrote a long and very able statement of his objections. He fell back on the bases of his policy as laid at Vienna. Conquest did not, in modern life, constitute a moral right to confiscation; moreover, Louis had been expressly admitted as one of the Allies against Napoleon. France was prepared to make sacrifices in return for the sacrifices of the other Powers, but he would not continue the negotiations if these exorbitant demands were pressed.

Castlereagh, who is severely censured by Lytton for joining in these harsh claims, replied that the Allies made no pretence whatever to a right given by conquest. The whole base of their claims was the right to indemnity and to a territorial settlement that gave Europe some guarantee of stability. Some of the foreign representatives were pressing for a special notice of the defiant conclusion of Talleyrand’s letter, but he decided to resign. Louis was prepared to yield; he had no army with which to threaten resistance, and it was clear that Talleyrand’s diplomatic talent would now avail him nothing. Talleyrand explains that his position was weakened by the fact that some of the King’s entourage were all along in favour of a cession of territory, and that during the Hundred Days the Chamber of Representatives had already made the offer. He was, therefore, unable to press his last plea that the country would not endure such terms. He resigned his post on September 23rd, rather than sign the treaty. Metternich, Castlereagh and Stewart begged him to continue to be “a statesman of Europe,” and Pasquier admits that almost all the Foreign Ministers deeply regretted his retirement, though he confesses that he himself did not share that feeling. The Tsar was pleased. His favourite, the Duc de Richelieu, was substituted for Talleyrand. Louis accepted his resignation with a mingled feeling of apprehension and relief. “I thank you for your zeal,” he said to Talleyrand before the whole Cabinet; “you are without reproach, and nothing prevents you from living peacefully at Paris.” Talleyrand replied: “I have had the pleasure of rendering to the King services enough to believe that they have not been forgotten. I am unable to see how anything could force me to leave Paris. I shall stay here; and I shall be happy to learn that the King will not be induced to follow a line that may compromise his dynasty and France.”

Napoleon had not been very wide of the mark when he said in 1814 that the Bourbons would avenge him by throwing over Talleyrand within six months. It did not, however, require any great penetration to foresee such an issue. The personality of the King and of his entourage furnished solid ground for prophecy. The curious evolution of the Tsar into a friend of Louis and enemy of Talleyrand, and his resumption of a great influence on French affairs, made further for estrangement; and when the first elections under the Restoration gave the power to the ultra-royalist faction in the country, the situation was complete. Talleyrand retired to write his impressions of men and events. Louis provided for him the sinecure of High Chamberlain at 100,000 francs a year, and a further pension of 16,000 francs. He did not foresee that Talleyrand would take a conscientious view of his new duties, and would haunt his chair, a silent, smiling Mephistopheles, for years to come.

Talleyrand probably felt that the King would be forced to recall him in time. For the moment he betook himself to the writing of the famous memoirs which were to sustain the legend of his inscrutability until the close of the nineteenth century. It is probable that he had written the material for the first volume (up to 1809) already. In this he gives a prosaic and brief account of his first fifty years, with lively and artistic pictures of some of his great fellow actors (especially the Duc d’Orléans), and with a very discreet and unboastful account of his share in the Revolution. The second volume and half of the third carry the story up to the middle of 1814. The rest of the work consists almost entirely of his correspondence from Vienna, during the second Restoration, and from London under Louis Philippe; the letters being scantily threaded on a brief and common-place narrative. The close of the narrative at his retirement from the Ministry is dated “Valençay, 1816.” The rest was compiled in the last three years of his life. He took stringent precautions that they should not be published until thirty years after his death, and not even then if those to whom they were entrusted thought fit to postpone the publication. It was, in fact, decided in 1868 to refrain from issuing them for another generation, and they only appeared in 1891. From one end of Europe to the other there was an expression of profound disappointment when they appeared. Such stringent measures had promised stirring revelations, but the volumes contained absolutely no sensational matter and very little that was new to historians.

There is very little of the “apologia” in the memoirs, and not much of the impulse that urged most of his contemporaries to cover reams of paper with their contradictory versions of history. He is usually content to let documents tell the story. But, though Talleyrand ignores most of the charges that were made against him, he naturally reviews history in a light that sets his own career in harmony. Lady Blennerhassett surmises that his chief object when he wrote in 1816 was to conciliate Louis XVIII, and prepare the way for a return to power. Lord Acton has expressed the same opinion. It is based on the dexterous presentation of the way in which he was forced into the Revolution, the brevity with which he dismisses the more offensive parts of his share in it, his explanation of Napoleon as a step towards the Restoration, and the fulness of his account of his share in the Restoration and the work at Vienna. But this theory has to struggle desperately with the fact that his precautions against the publications of the memoirs before the appointed time were absolute, and must have been sincere. Nothing would have been easier for a man like Talleyrand than to have secured an accidental disclosure or theft of his papers; and the fact that he used to read passages from them to a few of his friends does not further his supposed plan in the slightest degree. Ordinary conversation with them would do just as well. On the other hand, we can quite understand the air of progressive policy he gives to his career by merely assuming that he wished to make it appear consistent. A statesman who was convinced that monarchy was the best form of government for France, and who, nevertheless, took a purely rationalist and utilitarian view of monarchy, would deal just in that way with his share in the Revolution and the Napoleonic era. It was a minor comfort to the epicurean to leave a rounded version of his life to posterity.

The literary aspect of the memoirs may be briefly dismissed. Their authenticity is now beyond dispute, but it is acknowledged that Talleyrand did not write the connected narrative. He had the habit of jotting down his ideas on scraps of paper, and leaving it to his secretaries to weave them together. This was done by M. Bacourt with the memoirs. M. Pierre Bertrand has, in his preface to the “Lettres inédites de Talleyrand à Napoleon,” sufficiently disposed of the insinuation that Talleyrand could not write. By comparison of the Prince’s notes with the secretary’s drafts and the finished letters he has shown that Talleyrand counted for far more than was supposed in the composition. He might have shown, by internal evidence, that many of the letters were wholly written by Talleyrand. However, we know that Talleyrand dictated letters, or left it to his secretaries to compose them, whenever it was safe to do so. It was a sound economy; and it was not unconnected with his heavy foot-gear, which led him to prefer the couch to sitting at a table. Of the literary quality of his writing there is not much to be said. He could do “fine writing” at times, as Sainte-Beuve said; and Lord Acton admits that much of the characterisation in the memoirs is very clever. But the bulk of the work is without distinction.

Talleyrand’s position in Paris during the year after his resignation was a curious one. The Hotel St. Florentin continued to be a resort of the most distinguished foreigners and many of the ablest French politicians, but the strange conflicts of the time put the Prince (Benevento had returned to the Papacy, but he had now a French title) in a peculiar attitude. The King and the Cabinet were now engaged in a struggle to defend constitutional monarchy against the excesses of the extreme Royalists. Talleyrand claimed to be at once “constitutional and anti-ministerial.” The positive ground for this attitude was that the King had annulled the elections and ordered fresh ones, to give the Liberals the chance of undoing the triumph of the reactionaries. As a result of this novel situation Talleyrand found himself using almost the same language as his bitterest Royalist enemies, and declaiming against “a Cabinet that enslaved and degraded France.” It is quite clear that there was an element of calculation and of prejudice in his position. His opposition became so exasperating that the King forbade him to come to the Court for some months.

After this we have a period of four years of political silence. Indeed, only three incidents call for our notice during the next fourteen years. He resigned himself once more to the position of a mere spectator, and was content to throw a light jet of sarcasm on the panorama that passed before him. English visitors to Paris, who eagerly sought to enter the Hotel St. Florentin, describe him sitting in his favourite chair by the open window in the summer, looking across to the Tuileries. The long and luxuriant hair now bore the snow of more than sixty winters, but was curled and perfumed every morning with no less care than when he was the Abbé de Périgord. The bluish shade had passed from his grey eyes, and as age wore on his eyelids drooped more and more, so that he seemed at times to sleep during conversation. But when the moment came the old fire would flash from under his shaggy eye-brows, and his sepulchral voice would give forth a phrase that would reverberate through all the salons of Paris. The freshness and transparency of his younger complexion gave place in time to a death-like greyness. Lady Morgan, who saw him at this period, said his face was like that of a sleeping child. It was a superficial tribute to the art of the two valets who spent hours in preparing it every day. Most visitors who visited him at his hotel, or met him in the picture galleries, leaning heavily on his long stick, dressed in his long blue overcoat, and with his chin sunk in his large muslin cravat, thought they saw the face of a dead or dying man, or a piece of yellow wax-work—until his eye pierced them.