[1] The date is variously given as February 2nd or 13th, and even March. The first seems to be correct. Dupanloup speaks of the Prince celebrating his eighty-fourth birthday on that date. But the myth-making faculty has been so busy with the life of Talleyrand that his very birthplace and parentage have been disputed. It will prepare the reader for the wild legends we shall encounter to learn at once that serious French writers have attributed Talleyrand’s lameness to a congenital defect or to an encounter with a savage sow, and that serious American writers (Bookman, September 26, 1901) have asked us to consider gravely a story of his having been born at Mount Desert, Maine, the illegitimate son of an American fisher-girl and a French naval officer.
[2] Mr. Holland Rose (Life of Napoleon) is entirely wrong in speaking of his “resentment against his parents.”
[3] I have already ignored scores of stories about Talleyrand’s youth. The biographer has to plunge beneath a mass of them to reach his true subject. A discharged secretary of his, who could imitate his signature, flooded Paris and London with fabricated letters and anecdotes, and he had many rivals in the business. Writers like Bastide, Pichot, Villemarest, Michaud, Stewartson, Touchard-Lafosse, and even Sainte-Beuve, readily admit these, and some of the best biographies contain a few that are inconsistent with known facts. Such are the stories of his chalking Voltairean verses on his uncle’s garden wall, and of (in the following year) scaling the walls of Saint Sulpice by night, seducing a whole family, and being imprisoned in the Bastille. The dates or other features betray these apocryphal legends.
[4] Lady Blennerhassett and most biographers wrongly describe him as a priest. He was not ordained until four years later. The archives of the Sorbonne, in registering his application in April and June, 1775, speak of him as a sub-deacon.
[5] On the strength of this absurd story historians like Professor Sloane inform their readers that Talleyrand “was a friend of the infamous Mme. du Barry, and owed his promotion to her.” So the legendary Talleyrand still lingers in serious literature. The story contains a gross anachronism, and the mere fact of the abbey being at Rheims points at once to the influence of Archbishop Talleyrand having obtained it for his nephew.
[6] I speak throughout the work of livres (=francs) unless I state otherwise. It is not true that, as is often said, the sum was invariable.
[7] Talleyrand signs the minutes (from which I take my account) under this name, but he is described in the scrutiny of titles as a sub-deacon. The title abbÉ was then given, not only to priests and abbÉs commendataires, but to many teachers and others who never took orders.
[8] Michaud tells that he first attended lectures on constitutional law at Strassburg for a few months. Talleyrand does not mention this.
[9] “Shall we ever teach him to be polite?” sighed one noble to Maurepas, after a lesson from the King on his irregularities.
[10] M. de Lacombe has investigated all the documents at Rheims, and so cleared up the mystery of his ordination—a mystery which had emboldened the myth-makers to say he received the episcopate whilst in minor orders.
[11] I do not know whether it is necessary to point out that, though Talleyrand was one of the most tactful and forbearing of men, he was bound to create numbers of enemies. When he passed on from the clergy and nobility to the Revolution, from the Directorate to Napoleon, from Napoleon to the Restoration, and finally from the Bourbons to the Orleanists, he left a shoal of bitter enemies behind him at each step. His personality, his caustic wit, and his curious experiences, formed an excellent nucleus for legends to gather about. You have to pick your way through hundreds of these to reach the real Talleyrand.
[12] It is interesting to note that he met Pitt (with Elliot and Wilberforce) at Rheims in 1783.
[13] The Cambridge History, in saying Talleyrand was “no expert in administration or finance,” forgets his five years’ Agency.
[14] In the Memoirs he gives as the only possible alternative a strict limitation of the franchise and of the conditions of candidates.
[15] The date is not certain, however. Talleyrand speaks of going to Marly, and of seeing M. d’Artois just before he left France. But the Court had left Marly a week before the emigration began. We must suppose there were several visits, and must fix this one, in which he urged strong measures, by the political circumstances. Such measures Footnote: would certainly not be possible in the middle of July, where M. de Bacourt would put the interview; they would have a plausible value up to June 24th. Talleyrand probably did see d’Artois again later. The fact of the interview and the substance of the conversation were afterwards admitted by the Prince.
[16] Talleyrand was appointed to the Committee with the Archbishop of Bordeaux, Lally-Tollendal, Clerment-Tonnerre, Mounier, SieyÈs, Chapelier, and Bergasse. Three of these were Anglophile like himself, and the work seemed not only vitally necessary but promising. Carlyle sadly failed to appreciate it.
[17] Maury was not without wit. “Now I will close the abbÉ in a vicious circle,” said Mirabeau one day during one of their usual contests. “What! Are you going to embrace me?” asked Maury.
[18] The legendary suggestion that Talleyrand poisoned him is absolutely frivolous, yet Sainte-Beuve professes to have a “terrible doubt” in the matter.
[19] It is assumed by some biographers that Talleyrand was privy to the plot. There is no evidence whatever of this, and I think it quite improbable.
[20] The reader may usefully be reminded that the fashion had come in at that time of pasting several-page leaflets on the walls.
[21] She had introduced a female friend to stand for the man she really intended, Talleyrand.
[22] Most of the reports of the embassy to the Foreign Minister (published by Pallain) were obviously written or dictated by Talleyrand. At the end of the report of May 28th Chauvelin is made to say very pointedly that, though he alone signs, “nous” means all three of them. In one dispatch Talleyrand thus describes the English (for whom he had a genuine regard: there is not a sharp or sarcastic word about them in these letters): “A nation slow and methodical by temperament, and which, unceasingly occupied with its commercial interests, does not care to be constantly diverted from it by political controversy.” He is explaining why the French Revolution has little echo in England.
[23] But the passport is dated the 7th, and we know of a still earlier application to leave.
[24] Lady Blennerhassett makes it precede the Jacobin propagandist decrees, and so not only robs it of half its credit, but finds it in a ridiculous predicament. She dates the memorandum November 2nd. It is really dated the 25th.
[25] Fortunately for him, as it now proved his only resource outside of France. His fine collection passed under the hammer at Sotheby’s in April (1793). The sale lasted ten days and realised more than £2,000. Talleyrand puts it at £700, but I have seen a catalogue with the prices filled in. Another somewhat mysterious sale of a French diplomatist’s library took place at Sotheby’s in 1816, realising £8,000. The King’s librarian describes this collection also as having belonged to Talleyrand, and in that case the earlier sale would not represent his whole library. But we shall see that it is almost impossible to trace the second sale to Talleyrand.
[26] I have referred already to a legend assigning his birth to America. The only foundation for this is that he visited Mount Desert, and, as he limped about, reminded the older inhabitants of a lame boy, born there of a French officer and American girl in 1754, and afterwards taken to France. In spite of the fact that Talleyrand’s father was a distinguished noble of high character attached to Versailles; that the father’s wife, daughter of the Marquis d’Antigny, acknowledged Charles Maurice to her death in 1809, and was supported by him in her later years; that the interest in him of his great-grandmother, his uncle, and every member and friend of the family was known to all France; this legend has been put forward in America (Bookman, September 26th, 1901) as worthy of serious consideration. There is hardly another character in recent history about whom myths have been so blindly entertained.
[27] To be quite accurate, I must add that it is by no means certain Talleyrand met Mme. Grand before he became Minister. Mme. RÉmusat makes her come to his ministerial bureau for a passport at their first meeting.
[28] Let me add, too, that the letter is full of gratitude to her. “I love you with my whole soul” is his sincere (if rather Gallic) expression.
[29] The Cambridge “French Revolution” states that they asked £50,000 for Talleyrand, and the 32 million francs for the Directors! A minor slip in the Cambridge “America” makes the agents claim 50,000 dollars “for each Director.” Some of the Directors were honourable men.
[30] Professor Sloane informs America that Talleyrand was forced to resign “in consequence of his scandalous attempt to extort a bribe from the American envoys.” It is of a piece with Sloane’s whole reckless reference to Talleyrand. He would have us believe that Talleyrand was from the beginning in the pay of Napoleon; and so he contrives to be ignorant of the fact that when Napoleon left Toulon for Egypt in May, 1798, Talleyrand gave him 100,000 francs.
[31] Thus, the list includes 1,500,000 made on change during the English negotiations, and 2,000,000 as a share in the prizes taken at sea. It also includes 1,000,000 from Austria for the insertion of the secret articles in the Treaty of Campo Formio (on which Talleyrand had no influence whatever), and 1,000,000 from Prussia for preventing the fulfilment of these articles, and so on.
[32] Napoleon speaks in his memoirs of Talleyrand dreading to meet him on account of his failure to follow him to the East, and making every effort to win his favour. It is absurd. Talleyrand knew precisely what he was worth to Napoleon. All Napoleon’s later remarks on Talleyrand must be read with discrimination; many of them are obvious untruths.
[33] Lady Blennerhassett misses the subtlety of the distinction when she suggests that Talleyrand attempted to play a double game with Napoleon on this occasion. Compare Mr. Holland Rose’s version: “Talleyrand took the most unscrupulous care that the affair of the Presidency should be judiciously settled.” Standing between the two I should say he took most “scrupulous care” to have Napoleon’s wish realised. The full passage in the memoirs runs: “Je m’ouvris À Melzi, non pas sur ce que le Premier Consul dÉsirait, mais sur ce qu’il fallait que la RÉpublique Cisalpine demandat. En peu de jours je parvins À mon but. Au moment que Bonaparte arriva Á Lyons, tout Était prÉparÉ, &c.”
[34] Yet M. Olivier, in his attack on Talleyrand (Revue des Deux Mondes, September, 1894), complains of him deserting the English Alliance under Napoleon.
[35] Contrast with Mr. Rose’s opinion that of E. Ollivier, a violent modern critic: “He threw himself with equal zeal into the negotiation of the Concordat.”
[36] See M. CrÉtineau-Joly’s Bonaparte et le Concordat.
[37] As described in the civil registry of marriage at the time.
[38] The habit is, of course, pointed to as proof of the indolence of the legendary Talleyrand. The more candid observer would be disposed to refer it to his lameness. We know that Talleyrand had to keep a heavy ironwork about his foot and wear a heavy thick-soled boot. One can easily understand his preference for lying in bed or on a couch.
[39] Mr. Holland Rose claims to have shown that the officials of the English Foreign Office were co-operating in the Cadoudal conspiracy.
[40] In one letter, for instance, he tells how the Spanish Minister at Paris had died and left him 60,000 francs to settle on his god-daughter. “I found,” he adds, “that she had a more sacred title to his interest than that.”
[41] Rogers, hearing this from Talleyrand, asked Lucien if he knew of it. Lucien said he did not; but he added with a laugh that he knew his brother had once had a similar fit when an actress declined to be honoured by him.
[42] He relieves his narrative here by telling how the courier arrived from Paris, and Napoleon interrupted his triumph to read his correspondence. There was a letter from Mme. de Genlis, and Napoleon fell into a violent storm of anger and mortification in the midst of his glory as he heard of the irrepressible chattering about him of the Faubourg St. Germain.
[43] Towards the close of his “Memoirs” (Mein Anthiel an der Politik,” vol. vi.) he again emphatically denies that “zwischen mir und ihm, weder direct noch indirect, sowohl was die Nassauischen als die Zahlreichen andern FÜrstern betrifft die ich in den Rheinbund aufnehmen liess, zu irgend einem Handel, Bedingung, oder Bieten gekommen sei.”
[44] See Demaria’s “Benevento sotto il Principe Talleyrand.”
[45] I give the quotation with a becoming hesitation, because, though Mr. H. Rose says “it is difficult to see on what evidence this story rests,” Professor Sloane says the words are “reported by Napoleon himself.”
[47] Such as the following: “His Majesty, who may justly regard himself as the most powerful of living Christians, would feel his conscience aggrieved if he paid no attention to the complaints of the German Churches, which the Pope has neglected these ten years. As Suzerain of Germany, heir of Charlemagne, real Emperor of the West, and eldest son of the Church, he desires to know what conduct he ought to pursue for re-establishing religion amongst the peoples of Germany.” What he wanted, the bishops and cardinals knew but dared not suggest, was a sanction of the secularisations.
[48] She refused this when he married Mme. Grand. Talleyrand, with great delicacy and generosity, continued to pay it, unknown to her, through his brother!
[49] I have earlier described the sale of Talleyrand’s first library at London in 1794. I have seen a second catalogue, of the year 1816, in which the library of a “foreign nobleman, distinguished for his diplomatic talents,” is put up at Sotheby’s. This must have been taken as a reference to Talleyrand, and the King’s librarian explicitly describes the books as his. The sale lasted eighteen days and produced £8,000. But it is almost impossible to believe that the library was Talleyrand’s. The books are described as having been consigned from France in 1814, and as the finest collection ever put at auction. By that time Talleyrand’s anxiety was over, and he could not have taken the extreme step of selling a superb library. Either the books were sold in 1812, or they were not Talleyrand’s.
[50] Napoleonists are naturally very ready with accusations against Talleyrand at this time. Maret, besides impugning his advice in the matter of Ferdinand, hints that he secretly sent word to the Allies of the state of feeling in France, and the slight resistance the Emperor could make to their advance. It is impossible to weigh seriously irresponsible charges of that kind. Still less serious is Bourrienne’s statement that he advised Napoleon to win over the Duke of Wellington by offering him the throne of Spain. Such a suggestion ought to enable English readers to appreciate fully the recklessness of Napoleonist charges against Talleyrand.
[51] The drama would not be complete without the suggestion of a plot on Talleyrand’s part to assassinate Napoleon. I will deal with this later.
[52] A stupid story is told by Vaulabelle, and greatly embroidered by some of the romanticists, that the Duchess of Courland’s daughter was seen joining in wild orgies on the night of April 2nd, and riding on horseback behind a Cossack. One of Talleyrand’s letters to the duchess unconsciously reveals the germ of this monstrous story. Talleyrand had sent a Cossack escort to accompany her back to Paris from Rosny that evening on account of the mob.
[53] Talleyrand probably gives the more correct version. Both he and Beugnot make the King say: “We were the cleverer. If you had been so, you would say to me: ‘Let us sit down and talk.’ Instead of that I say to you: ‘Take a seat and talk to me.’” Talleyrand says the King was speaking of their remote ancestors and the relative positions their families had won in France. Beugnot would have it that the emigrant party had been the cleverer in 1789. But it is impossible to understand the words in this sense. They would imply that Talleyrand had aimed at the throne.
[54] The determination to have Murat deposed and Naples restored to Ferdinand is one of the cardinal points. This was insisted on by Louis XVIII as a family accommodation. It was not less advisable for France generally. Murat was too near Elba, as the sequel showed. Yet an able French critic of Talleyrand, M. Ollivier (Revue des Deux Mondes, September 15th 1894), has so far strained, perverted and ignored the evidence as to say Talleyrand first corresponded with Murat, and got 1,250,000 francs from him, and then turned against him and obtained several millions from Ferdinand. The blind hostility of Sainte Beuve is not yet extinct at Paris. Ollivier’s whole case is founded on Sainte Beuve’s “remarkable study” (a happy phrase!), Pasquier’s “judicious” memoirs and the wild charges of Savary, Chateaubriand and Napoleon.
[55] It is also clear that presents more frequently took the form of cash then than they do now. Ambassadors of historic and wealthy families could afford the luxury of disdaining money. Talleyrand had not a franc of hereditary wealth; and his diplomatic pre-eminence entailed enormous expenditure. To-day no man of character or culture could be offered money. Talleyrand lived in an age of transition, and was a cynic.
[56] Pasquier does not name her. Lady Blennerhassett thinks it was the Duchess of Dino. It is much more likely to have been the Duchess of Courland, her mother, as we find the daughter in touch with Talleyrand. The Duchy of Dino had been given to the Foreign Minister by Ferdinand IV, and he had assigned it to his nephew.
