THE LAST ACT
Talleyrand had acquired through his long experience a sense of political equilibrium. Men of science point out to us in lowly marine organisms a little vesicle filled with fluid and containing a little stone. It is the organ by which they feel that they are ascending or descending. In some such way Talleyrand felt the motion when the governing power had begun to descend a slope. In the later twenties he knew, as many did, that Charles X was moving towards the abyss into which he had seen so many plunge. The King was too narrowly Catholic to love Talleyrand, and, though their relation was amiable enough during the Martignac Ministry, Talleyrand’s house became once more the centre of the opposition. All the older Liberals and a large number of the younger men used to gather about his couch in the morning, or fill his rooms in the evening from eleven to one. The Martignac Ministry was the last effort to stem the tide of reaction. But Charles X was quietly hostile to its enlightened policy, and he dismissed it at the first check. On August 8th (1829) he bade the Prince de Polignac, a man of his own views, form a Clerical ministry. Talleyrand left Paris for Rochecotte in the interest of his health. It was said in Paris that, as when Napoleon set out for Russia, he had declared it “the beginning of the end.”
At Rochecotte he was visited by Molé, Sebastiani, de Broglie, Villemain, and numbers of other politicians. Thiers also was there, but Talleyrand regarded him rather as a promising writer than a politician. There was no plotting at Rochecotte. It was unnecessary. While Polignac was receiving directions from the Virgin Mary in visions for the governing of France, Liberal leagues were being organised everywhere, and the second revolution was preparing. “A thousand sinister rumours are circulating in the capital,” said an orator from the tribune. In March (1830) Roger Collard presented to the King an address, voted by the Chamber and drawn up by Guizot and himself. The King replied by proroguing the Chamber until September. “So you have decided on prorogation,” said Talleyrand to one of the ministers. “Well, I think I shall buy a little property in Switzerland.” Charles X declared he would make no concessions. Weakness had destroyed Louis XVI; “for my part I have no alternative but the throne or the scaffold.” “He forgets the post-chaise,” said Talleyrand.
LOUIS PHILIPPE, KING OF THE FRENCH.
In May Talleyrand was back at Rochecotte, tending his peaches and flowers as he loved to do, and discussing the situation with Thiers, Mignet, and others. The elections had gone heavily against the ministers. On June 11th he wrote to the Princess de Vaudemont that “the decisive moment was at hand.” On the 14th he wrote to Barante, “We are moving onward towards an unknown world, without pilot or compass: the only certain thing is that it will all end in shipwreck.” Although he had certainly discussed the change from Bourbons to Orleanists with his friends, he was really in a state of great concern and anxiety. It was not at all certain that they would be consulted as to the future. The excesses of the Clerical and Royalist party had so deeply moved the country that a bloody rebellion and mob-triumph was possible. In July he was back at Paris. On the 26th appeared the royal ordinances that would destroy the liberty of the press, dissolve the Chamber, and manipulate the elections. On the following day he saw the troops marching to destroy the machines of the rebellious printers, and the first barricades raised in their path. It is said that he had the large golden sign, “Hotel Talleyrand,” taken down from over the gate of his house. His darkest recollections of 1792 were revived. On the morning of the 28th the streets of Paris were found to be cut everywhere with barricades. The tricolour floated from the roof of the Hotel de Ville and Notre Dame.
The long days of the 28th and 29th were spent in great anxiety. His secretary (or that extremely imaginative person who has dressed up and expounded Colmache’s “Recollections”) says that when the tocsin rang out on the morning of the 28th the Prince exclaimed: “Hark! We triumph.” When the man asked who triumphed, he is said to have answered: “Hush! I will tell you to-morrow.” On the 29th he tried to induce the peers to take a definite line, but they were too timid. On the 30th the rumour spread that the King had fled from St. Cloud. He sent his secretary to make inquiries at the palace, and heard that it was so. He then sent Colmache with a note, to be burned in the secretary’s presence or returned to him, to the sister of the Duc d’Orléans, Mme. Adélaide, who was at Neuilly with the Duke. The note merely said: “Madame may have full confidence in the bearer, who is my secretary.” The secretary was instructed to tell her that the Duke must come to Paris and call himself Lieutenant-General of the kingdom—“the rest will follow.” Before night the Duke was at the Palais Royal. Charles X had withdrawn his inspired ordinances at three o’clock that afternoon, but it was too late. The Republicans were gradually controlled, and the Duke of Orleans was accepted as the head of the State.
This was Talleyrand’s share in the second Revolution, and the fifth change of government in France during his career. He took his last oath of loyalty without hesitation. Speaking once to an Imperialist who distrusted him, he said: “I have never kept fealty to anyone when he has himself ceased to obey the dictates of common sense. If you will judge all my actions by this rule you will find that I have been eminently consistent.” Certainly, there is no serious need of justifying his conduct in 1830. He had plainly told Louis XVIII the conditions on which the Bourbons were reinstated. “Governments exist to-day solely for the people.” Louis and his friends had tried to reverse the principle. Charles X had thought government a branch of the Church.
Talleyrand’s restoration to public affairs was a matter of course. Louis-Philippe offered him the Foreign Ministry, but he felt that the embassy at London would be at once less onerous and more important. Once more Talleyrand’s bias towards England proved its soundness. They agreed that London must be made the pivot of France’s foreign policy. Austria, Russia, and Prussia looked with little favour on the new outburst of French revolutionary ardour, or on the monarchy it had set up on deliberate utilitarian grounds. The best guarantee for the preservation of peace was to convince and draw close to England. Here, again, where the principles on which the throne of Louis-Philippe was raised should be familiar enough, there was (apart from the trouble that supervened in Belgium) a very natural tendency to view the outburst with alarm. Wellington had said in 1815, when the Duke of Orléans was proposed for the French throne, that he would be “merely a well-bred usurper.” What would he say now? The instability of Louis-Philippe’s first ministry and the propagandist expressions of the revolutionaries at Paris made the situation more difficult. It was decided that Talleyrand would be most useful at London. He received a very amiable reply from Lord Aberdeen (then Foreign Minister) to the announcement of his appointment, and left Paris on September 22nd, and reached “beautiful England, so rich, so peaceful,” a few days later. The cannonade at Dover that welcomed his arrival reminded him of the day when he had last quitted the country under an ignominious order of expulsion.
There were many sources of opposition to Talleyrand’s mission, and he was at first exposed to great annoyance. Caricatures in Piccadilly shops represented him as a cripple leading the blindfolded Kings of Europe, or as a trainer leading a monkey dressed in the livery of the new French monarchy. In society he had to face a good deal of prejudice against the new regime. He had his own way of answering it. “Say what you like,” the Russian Ambassador’s wife once said in his presence, “what has taken place in France is a flagrant usurpation.” “You are quite right, madame,” he replied. “Only it is to be regretted it did not take place fifteen years ago when your master, Alexander, desired it.” The Princess Lieven afterwards became friendly. On the other hand he was well received by Aberdeen and cordially welcomed by Wellington and his older friends.