CITIZEN TALLEYRAND

Talleyrand explains in the Memoirs that, after resigning his bishopric, he “put himself at the disposal of events.” “Provided I remained a Frenchman” he says, “I was prepared for anything.” The outlook must have been blank and perplexing. His ecclesiastical income was entirely stopped, and he was prevented by the vote of the Assembly from accepting a place in the Ministry, or any paid office under Government, for two years. He had, however, been appointed member of the newly-formed and important Department of Paris on January 18th. He retained this municipal office for eighteen months, and there and on the Assembly did some good work during the course of the year 1791. SieyÈs and Mirabeau were elected with him: Danton followed on January 31st. Within six months two events of great importance occurred—the death of Mirabeau and the flight of the King. Each event left the outlook darker for constitutionalists like Talleyrand.

Mirabeau had realised at length that France was travelling downwards, and had secretly rallied to the Court. Talleyrand was accused later of having done the same; but he denied it, and there was no solid proof, as we shall see. It is by no means unlikely that Mirabeau would tell the King of Talleyrand’s disposition as a monarchist and constitutionalist. On the extreme left in the Assembly a menacing group was forming, and was gaining favour in Paris and the provinces. It was also dominating the club at the Jacobins and extending its influence over France through the affiliated clubs. Mirabeau roared down the violent suggestions of these Marats and Robespierres for a time, but his constitution was shattered18 by excess and work. He died on April 2nd, taking with him, he said, “the doom of monarchy.” Talleyrand was with him for a couple of hours before he died, and the interview is generally described as the bequeathing of Mirabeau’s plans to him. Lamartine says he left Talleyrand “all his grand views in his grand speech;” another writer says he left him his idea of an alliance between England and France. Talleyrand read Mirabeau’s last words at the Assembly. The notion of a bequeathing and inheriting of views is exaggerated. Talleyrand had been friendly with Mirabeau in the intervals of their numerous quarrels, but he was not likely to be influenced by him—if by anybody. Mirabeau’s violence and intemperance imposed restraint on him. Their views largely coincided, and, just as Talleyrand’s few and wise proposals in the Assembly had almost always had Mirabeau’s support, so, now that Mirabeau was gone, Talleyrand seemed to be continuing his views in the Assembly. The idea of drawing towards England had been expressed by him twelve months before, in his letter to Sir J. R. Miller. As Talleyrand was nominated to the place left vacant by Mirabeau on the diplomatic committee he would naturally begin to give greater prominence to this idea.

A week later Talleyrand gave a proof of the moderation and splendid balance of his character. At Paris the priests who would not take the oath according to the new civil constitution of the clergy were being roughly handled by the “patriots.” Talleyrand induced the Department to pass a measure for their protection. Six weeks earlier his life had been threatened by these “Nonconformists,” as he called them. Now he endangered his popularity in securing for them complete liberty to follow their cult in their own way, in churches specially assigned to them. It is not scholarship, but partisanship, to ignore the traits of character—the unchanging concern for justice, humanity and moderation—which inspire these interventions on behalf of his bitter enemies, and in antagonism to the dominant feeling, and then pronounce Talleyrand a “sphinx.” A little later (May 7th) he repeated his plea to the Assembly. He had to report the discussion of the constitution-committee on a decree of the Department of Paris in reference to deserted religious edifices. He upheld the right of the municipality to dispose of these, and went on to plead again for liberty for the “Nonconformists.” “Let us not speak of tolerance,” he finely says; “such a domineering expression is an insult, and should no longer be found in the language of a free and enlightened people.” The king himself, “the first functionary of the nation,” shall be free “like other functionaries” to worship as a Nonconformist if he wishes: only not in his character of State-official. On the other hand, these Nonconformists must drop their ridiculous talk of “schism.” A nation cannot be schismatic until it declares itself in rebellion against the Church. He politely invites the Pope to mind his own business. I repeat that there is nothing mysterious about these actions except to men whose personal experience disables them from understanding a passionless moral and intellectual consistency.

The reference to the King reminds us of the other great event of 1791 that prepared the way for the Terror. With religious conscientiousness, but political folly, the King had tried to leave the Tuileries for the purpose of making his PÂques at Saint-Cloud. Lafayette was willing; but the Jacobins saw, in long perspective, a flight over the frontier and an Austrian invasion. There was another fatal conflict of mob and authority, and victory for the mob. On the following day the Department of Paris sent a letter of censure to the King for his impolitic attempt. M. Belloc says the letter has been imputed to Danton, but was really written by Talleyrand. He is quite right, as Talleyrand says in his letter to the Convention from London (December 12th, 1792), that he “redacted this famous address of the Department,” and, in fact, took it himself to the King: not impossibly using the opportunity to gild the pill. But the brain of Louis XVI was not likely to be the only one to remain unintoxicated in such times. Indeed, calm political wisdom, looking back now from placid studies, is at a loss to determine the move he ought to have taken. A royalist plot, an unguarded door, and he was off on the night of June 20th for Metz.19 On the evening of the 26th Talleyrand saw the sad return again through the lane of some hundred thousand faces, not now cheering, not frigidly silent, but surly and menacing. For a time the increased danger rallied the constitutionalists. They had left the Jacobin club, and met at the Feuillants, where all that was left of moderation and constitutionalism now gathered. But the ancient homes of the Dominicans (Jacobins) and the Franciscans (Cordeliers) had become furnaces, heating Paris. The party on the extreme Left had found a “new fact” to proceed on. Talleyrand’s speech of May 7th had been loudly applauded and placarded20 over Paris and the provinces. Evidently the situation was then far from hopeless. But this pardonable madness—unpardonable only in its stupid details and blunders—of the King had wrought terrible mischief. Paris rose, and Lafayette crushed it, and made it a more bitter enemy than ever of constitutionalism, more accessible to the new Dominicans and Franciscans—Danton, Marat, Desmoulins, PÉtion, Robespierre, and the rest.

One other day does Talleyrand fill the Salle de ManÈge with ringing applause before the Constituent Assembly breaks up. We rarely catch sight of him in these long and angry debates that fill whole sessions, when the victory is to the strong-lunged. But nearly on every single occasion when his low-pitched, deliberate voice is heard, putting judicious views in temperate, lucid, convincing language, he obtains his point. On September 10th he has his last declaration to make in the name of the constitution-committee, a report of their views on education. It is, of course, disputed whether Talleyrand wrote the speech. Some attribute it to Chamfort, others to Condorcet, others to des Renaudes. Talleyrand distinctly claims it, acknowledging his debt to the chief savants of the time—Lagrange, Lavoisier, Laplace, Monge, Condorcet, Vicq d’Azir, la Harpe, and others. It is, in fact, a most remarkable presentation of the best opinions of the time, united in a brilliant scheme of national education. We know that Talleyrand had a habit of writing a heap of scrappy notes and leaving it to his secretary to unite them: just as M. de Bacourt has done with the memoirs. In this sense the finished manuscript is possibly the work of des Renaudes, but the vast and striking scheme is a construction of Talleyrand’s. Long before, Morris had said that education was “the bee in Talleyrand’s bonnet.”

He begins with a ruthless account of the pre-Revolutionary education, and makes an appeal to the Assembly to complete its work with a worthy system of national instruction. Education must be universal, free, the same for both sexes (this he modifies presently), and must regard adults as well as children. It must include lessons on religion, but its lessons in morality and civism must be completely separated from these, and purely humanitarian. Thinkers must be invited to draw up manuals for this most important section of the code. The organisation must correspond to the civic organisation. The primary schools must be under the control of the elementary political division. Secondary schools must be set up by the District, technical schools by the Department, and there must be a great central Institute at Paris. The State must provide all primary education, and it must found and assist higher schools, but in these the pupil must contribute; though the State will see that poverty does not exclude able youths. Girls will have equal instruction with boys in the primary schools, and a few higher schools will be provided for them, but the home must be their chief school (this is put in rather awkwardly towards the close). The construction of the scheme must proceed slowly and cautiously. No children under seven shall attend school. The work of the technical or special schools is very fully discussed. First amongst them he puts “schools of theology,” and in these the subtleties of the older theology shall be avoided, and a solid, rational Christian doctrine expounded. There is not a shade of offence to old ideas or colleagues in the phrasing. The work of the medical, legal, and military schools is similarly analysed. The Institute, for which he makes a stirring appeal, is to have the first professors in France and the best laboratories and equipment; it shall have branches all over the country. Public libraries must be built in connection with all higher schools. The French language is to be purified and strengthened. National fÊtes shall be designed by artists and scientists, and form part of the great scheme of uplifting the people.

Jules Simon has described this speech as “at once a law and a book,” and Renan says it is “the most remarkable theory of public instruction that has ever been propounded in France.” It is certainly a wonderful vision, in its general outline, of the education of the future. No doubt thinkers and reformers of all schools were working for a reform of education. The clergy themselves were prepared on the eve of the States-General to respond to the demand for progress. But only a few in France were fully acquainted with the views of the expert thinkers, and Talleyrand did a fine piece of work in thus presenting them. Unfortunately, a firework of applause was all that he could obtain. The subject was deferred—for ten years, as it turned out. The sadly imperfect education of the earlier regime was succeeded by the complete absence of it during the Revolution. Talleyrand had to wait for the genius of Napoleon to make a beginning with his scheme. It is growing near to realization in the twentieth century.

On the 30th of September the Constituent Assembly broke up. It had at length completed the constitution. Those who think lightly of its work, who see only its constitution-committee, and that on its vulnerable side, may be asked to conceive France without it during those two years and a half; as well try to conceive Paris in some order without Lafayette and his National Guard. But what it did, and what its constitution was worth, and how anarchy had grown too strong before it was given—all these things are told in the larger story of the Revolution. One thing it did that affected Talleyrand. It bound its members to refrain from taking office or commission or gift or pension for two years. “Greenish” Robespierre had proposed this. As a consequence the nation was deprived of the service of its most trained and expert governors and administrators. A special gallery was appointed from which they might witness the proceedings of the new Legislative Assembly, and be able to afford friendly hints in private; but a vast amount of talent was wasted at a critical period. So slow and delicate had been the transfer of executive power, so dazzling the new ideal of liberty to the emancipated, so strong and daring the self-assertion of mobs, so skilled the art of the demagogue, that the air was thick with dangers. It would need all the sound heads and steady arms in France to launch that new Constitution safely on such waters; and they began by turning the majority of the soundest and steadiest away.

Talleyrand, with ever mistier prospect in front, did what he could in the next three months. The Girondists had quickly come to power in the new Assembly, decreed death and confiscation against emigrants, and pronounced expulsion against all priests who would not take the oath. They then asked the Department of Paris to furnish a list of suspected priests, but it refused to do so. Talleyrand and several other of its members even went on to beg the King not to sanction the decree of November 29th against the non-swearing priests. The sections at Paris unsuccessfully demanded their impeachment for the letter. Later, in December, we find him prevailing upon the Department to pay the salaries of the non-juring priests. It is his last official act before he leaves France. But the significance of these two acts should not be neglected. At a time when the more violent are seizing power, our excommunicated bishop—our “Judas,” and all the rest—with no position, exerts himself to rescue from them his most bitter opponents.

But Talleyrand had now completed the first part of his career, and was about to enter the path of diplomacy. Paris became less attractive every month. He began to think of foreign embassies. No doubt these also were forbidden by the September decree, but in regard to these at least it was possible to evade the measure. Moreover, war had at length been decided on, and Talleyrand would be of use in keeping England neutral. Early in December we find an active correspondence going on between Talleyrand, Narbonne (now Minister of War) and de Biron (formally Lauzun). Talleyrand, in the capital, is evidently in close touch with the new Ministry, and not without influence over de Lessart. De Biron is pressed to take up military command; he in turn suggests that an ambassador should be sent to London. Talleyrand proposes De Biron himself, who knows London well. De Biron cannot be spared from the army, and suggests Talleyrand. De Lessart, the Minister, presses him to accept, and in January he starts for England, with an informal diplomatic mission.

Talleyrand left his country, but not Paris, with reluctance. The Paris he had so much enjoyed up to 1789 was changed, desecrated, beyond endurance. Closed now were most of the fine salons where he had played and talked. Hardly could a Mme. de StaËl and a few survivors restore some faint gleam of the faded brilliance. Even her, with all her devotion to him and her great helpfulness, he never loved. “I believe we are both in it, disguised as women,” he said, with piercing cruelty, of the novel in which she afterwards depicted their relations.21 Apart from one or two houses, Paris was getting insufferable. Ugliness, vulgarity, strident pedantry of the ignorant sort, followed one everywhere. Your servant, sweeping the salon while you spoke to your visitor, could join in the conversation. “Who? Montmorin? He’s a scoundrel,” interrupted one, while his mistress and visitor were discussing the late minister. The drawing-rooms of new Paris were hung with blatant caricatures. Ladies wore the tricolour even in the shape of boots. Jewellery had been replaced by bits of Bastille stone. Some wore red dresses, of the shade “Foulon’s blood.” The graceful furniture of the preceding generation was replaced by pseudo-classic of the crudest sort.

Abroad there was no chance of eluding the growing coarseness without hearing the word “aristocroc,” if not “lanterne.” Old titles had been abolished, as well as armorial bearings. Now “thou” and “thee” were being thought patriotic; the fashion would presently be enforced by law. Patriots of the more thorough kind were discovering that it was beneath the dignity of a man to raise his hat, or bow, or be polite in the old fashion. From equality they were passing on to that idea of fraternity which Chamfort—who was venting lurid phrases in the middle of it all—described as: “Be my brother, or I’ll kill thee.” Solicitation on the streets or at the Palais became disgusting. Coureur des filles had been a term of reproach in the day of liaisons. Now 60,000 of them, most of them about 14 or 15 years old, calculated to be making an income of 143,000,000 a year, held the city. Caricatures and pamphlets became grosser every week, the press more strident and hysterical. Every wall was covered with gaudy placards. Even classic dramas were altered to suit the patriotic taste.

From such a picture the refined noble, to whom the supreme virtue was taste, turned wearily away. At the same time it did seem probable that he could be very useful at London. Pitt’s bias for peace was known, as well as the sympathy of Fox and the Opposition. But the emigrants were employing every fair and foul means in their power to alarm and alienate England. For France its neutrality, at least, was supremely important in face of the inevitable war on the continent. Pitt, Grenville and Dundas, were known to be favourable; but Camden, Thurlow, and especially the King, were very unfavourably disposed. So, urging de Lessart to fix up the fleet—“one must talk to the northern powers with an army, and to England with a fleet”—Talleyrand departed for London, which he reached on January 24th.

His difficulties began before he arrived. He was delayed at the coast for a day, and so did not reach London at the appointed time. But the London press had announced his arrival, all the same, and added that he had been badly received by Pitt. It was the opening of the subterranean campaign of his former friends, now needy and embittered emigrants, at London. Pitt, as a matter of fact, received him with the utmost politeness, but nothing more. He reminded Talleyrand of their earlier meeting at Rheims, and declared his satisfaction at being able to discuss the situation in France with one so well informed, but said that Talleyrand’s unofficial character prevented him from going any further. Talleyrand was, of course, really holding an official and salaried appointment, but no action could be taken that might expose this to the keen scent of the patriots at home. He had to pursue his task with double diplomacy, and he succeeded very well until the Terror made England recoil. He saw the King on February 1st, and was received with frigid correctness; the Queen would not speak to him. He then saw Lord Grenville. For three-quarters of an hour he held Grenville listening to an explanation of the situation, politely suppressing all his attempts to speak, and postponing his answer. But Grenville could only follow Pitt’s example. He intimated plainly enough to Citizen Talleyrand in his private capacity that England strongly desired peace, but he could make no official communication to him. Beyond this Talleyrand could do nothing with the Government. It seemed to have a surprising respect for the decree of the Constituent Assembly which said that Talleyrand must be a private individual. Talleyrand did not appreciate such virtue. However, he really did a good deal with Grenville in the way of arranging the details of the understanding between the two countries.

On the other hand Talleyrand neglected no opportunity of cultivating English society. When we find him in 1802 instructing the French representative at London to accept all invitations and make frequent attendance at the Exchange (“there is nearly always a Minister about”) we can see his own conduct of 1792. He became very friendly with Lord Lansdowne, and was, naturally, warmly welcomed by Fox, Sheridan, and their party. His chief first impression of England was its slowness; it is more curious to find that this was the chief impression he himself made on his hosts. This was owing to the reputation of his gay life in the eighties, which had preceded him, and partly to the ineradicable English idea of the French character. No doubt there was some excuse for it in those days. England had listened with open mouth to the news of the grand pyrotechnic displays of French emotion in 1790 and 1791. The reports had not lost colour in crossing the Channel. Journalism and caricature and Burke-oratory had effectively conveyed them to the British imagination. Emigrant conduct during the same period would doubtless confirm the idea that the Frenchman was a bundle of doubly-charged nerves. To these stolid fathers of ours with such an expectation the person of Talleyrand was a mystery. One of the gayest figures of pre-Revolutionary days, with a reputation for keenest wit and brilliant mots, and now hot from the crater of the volcano, he was expected to dance and gesticulate and emit electric phrases. Instead they were introduced to a pale, sedate, stolid-looking man, who hardly opened his mouth after the first quiet and brief courtesies were over. With closer friends Talleyrand enjoyed himself in the old way. But he wore a diplomatic sedateness on ordinary occasions; and his puffy, rounded face and full figure, his perfect ease and quietness of bearing, and his deep, slow, sententious speech, disconcerted people.

In his letters to de Lessart he shows that his feelings were lively enough beneath this exterior. What with provincial risings and foreign threats and Jacobin violence, poor de Lessart was too distracted to pay adequate attention to Talleyrand’s mission, and the letters to him are impatient. “Kill each other or embrace,” urged Talleyrand, when he heard of the quarrels at Paris. Moreover, his companion in London had gravely compromised him. Narbonne had given de Biron a commission to buy horses in England for the army, and he accompanied Talleyrand in January. His real purpose was to introduce Talleyrand in London society, with which he was familiar—unfortunately, too familiar; he was arrested for debt shortly after they landed. De Biron swears the bills were forged, and others talk of emigrant plots. The truth seems to be that he gambled very heavily at the London clubs. At these places the stewards obliged the players with loans, at a good discount. De Biron, dreaming of easy-going Paris, where there were no debtors’ prisons, was a good customer. Between former visits and the present one he owed about £16,000. Some of his creditors closed, and the Colonel found himself in the King’s Bench. French visitors often failed to realise the new conditions. The Count d’Artois had only escaped imprisonment by seeking sanctuary at Holyrood. Talleyrand, greatly annoyed, employed Erskine to dispute the bills or raise the plea of “privilege,” but he failed on both counts. Lauzun was eventually bought out by Lord Rawdon and a French admirer, and retired in a violent passion to France. The episode was not lost on the emigrants and French libellists, whose spicy contributions to the London press were appreciated. A further source of annoyance was that the Times made a violent attack on Talleyrand, on the ground of his constant intercourse with the Opposition and, it alleged, with such men as Tooke and Paine. There is a letter from one of their secret agents to the French Government which says that the English Ministers were annoyed at Talleyrand’s relations with the Opposition, but it adds that his culture and dignity have made a good impression in England.

Talleyrand now thought it would be better to have a nominal ambassador at the Court, through whom he could act with greater effect, and he crossed over to Paris in March to persuade de Lessart. That Minister had disappeared when he arrived (March 10th), but he convinced his successor, Dumouriez, of the importance of the matter, and returned to London (April 29th) with three companions (besides des Renaudes, who had been with him all along). Talleyrand had asked for the young Marquis de Chauvelin as ambassador. Duroveray, who knew England, was appointed in much the same position as Talleyrand, and Reinhard was secretary. The long instructions which were given them, directing them to press for an alliance, or at least for perfect neutrality, and to negotiate a loan with England’s credit, and in return for the island of Tobago, were either written by Talleyrand or from his notes. He intended to leave very little to his prÊte-nom; who, unfortunately, intended to do very much. The idea had been to appoint a competent nonentity. Chauvelin proved both incompetent and self-assertive enough to harass Talleyrand. His luggage was opened at the custom-house and found to contain contraband goods. The hostile press was not impressed by the new embassy. Tory shops in Piccadilly exhibited strong caricatures of Talleyrand. But such insinuations as this were grossly misplaced. Talleyrand had, as a member of the diplomatic committee at Paris, fought successfully against the demand for a revolutionary propaganda abroad, and he censured very severely the conduct of one or two ambassadors who obtruded their republicanism at Foreign Courts. But, besides the incompetence of Chauvelin—who was once sharply pulled up by Lord Grenville for his language, when he had boldly acted without Talleyrand—a great deal of mischief was done by the press on both sides. This letter of Lord Grenville’s was published in the emigrant papers, and the King’s private letter to George III was published almost before it was delivered. The Parisian journals, on the other hand, were full of tactless and irritating announcements of an impending revolution in England, and attacks on the King and his Ministers. Few but members of the Opposition would now entertain the French envoys. On one occasion, when they went in a body to Ranelagh, they were most ostentatiously shunned by the whole crowd. English spies were constantly at their heels. Exaggerated reports of events in France were circulated, and Talleyrand was left without any official information. He complained bitterly to Dumouriez of their “painful and embarrassing situation.”22

But, in spite of all the difficulties, Talleyrand succeeded very well. If an alliance was concluded with England, Austria would reflect a little longer before interfering in French affairs; hence the desperate intrigues of the royalists to prevent such alliance. On the other hand, the continental coalition against France was strengthening the anti-French elements in England. At the beginning of May Prussia made overtures to England. Pitt rejected them, and stood firm for neutrality. On May 25th he was induced to have a public declaration made of neutrality, and Talleyrand scored his first diplomatic triumph. He does not forget to tell Dumouriez that it would be well if his (Talleyrand’s) name were mentioned in the Paris journals. But Dumouriez was exacting. He pressed for an alliance, and for explicit statements as to England’s position if the war in Belgium led to a conflict with Holland. Talleyrand kept his position skilfully between the two Governments, each now impelled by a heated nation, but, in June the French Ministry was again broken up and Dumouriez dismissed. A few days later came the news of the invasion of the Tuileries. A private letter from the Duke de la Rochefoucauld warned Talleyrand of the grave development in Paris, and appealed to him to come over and strengthen the Department of Paris, of which he was still a member.

On July 5th Talleyrand again set out for Paris. He had immediately (June 22nd) applied to the Foreign Minister for leave of absence for a fortnight, in order to come and confer with him at Paris. His real purpose was to study the latest development of the situation. The King was now a mere puppet in the hands of the people; and, without army, France had declared war on Europe. Talleyrand, with a sigh, went over to study this latest phase, and wonder what the abyss would produce next. It proved to be the close of his first diplomatic mission.