691 



TALLART, CAMILLE, COUNT. 



TALLEYRAND-PERIGORD, CHARLES. 



892 



After this account, no one can reasonably doubt that Taliacotius'a 

 operation was very often successful. That it should be superseded by 

 the Indian method, as it is called, in which the skin for the new nose is 

 taken from the forehead, is due to the latter being a less tedious and 

 less painful operation, rather than to its being more certain of success. 

 The number of instances in which later attempts to imitate the 

 Taliaootian operation have failed, are due to its having been performed 

 not according to the original method, but according to some of the 

 plans which Taliacotius is erroneously supposed to have followed. 



The indecent joke which Butler has made popular in his 'Hudibras' 

 has little foundation. Taliacotius does indeed discuss the propriety 

 of taking the skin for a new nose from the arm of another person ; and 

 he concludes that for several reasons it would, if it were possible, be 

 better to do so : but he says he cannot imagine how it would be 

 possible to keep two persons fastened together for the necessary time 

 and with the necessary tranquillity, and that he never heard of the 

 plan being attempted. The tale of the nose falliug off when the 

 original proprietor of the skin died, is founded on an absurd story 

 which Van Helmont relates to prove at how great a distance sym- 

 pathy can act. A gentleman at Brussels, he says, had a new nose 

 made for him by Taliacotius from the arm of a Bolognese porter; and 

 about thirteen months afterwards, as he was walking in Brussels, it 

 suddenly became cold and dropped off, at the very instant at which 

 the porter died at Bologna. Similar stories are told by Campanella, 

 Sir Kenelm Digby, and others ; but, as already shown, they are not 

 even fair satires, for Taliacotius never attempted to transfer the skin 

 of one man to the body of another. 



(Brambilla, Storia delle Scoperte fatte dagli Uomini Illustri Italiani, 

 vol. ii. ; Sprengel, Geschichte der Cldrurgie, ZweiterTheil, p. 195.) 



TALLART (incorrectly TALLARD), CAMILLE, COUNT, was 

 born on the 14th of February 1652, of an ancient family in Dauphine". 

 He entered very young into the military service, and made his first 

 campaign under the great Conde" in the Netherlands. In 1674 and 

 1675 he served under Turenne in Alsace, where he greatly distin- 

 guished himself. In 1677 he was promoted to the rank of Brigadier, 

 and in 1678 to that of Major-Qeneral, and in both capacities ably 

 fulfilled the duties confided to him upon the Sarre and upon the 

 Rhine. In the winter of 1690 he conceived and executed the bold 

 design of leading his army across the Rhine upon the ice : it was com- 

 pletely successful, and the Rheingau was at the mercy of the French 

 army. In 1693 he was made Lieutenant-General, but performed 

 nothing remarkable before the peace of Ryswyk in 1697 terminated 

 for a time his military career. On the 19th of March 1698 he arrived 

 in London as ambassador from Louis XIV., ostensibly to compliment 

 William, but in reality to induce him to join Louis in what is known 

 as the Partition Treaty, for regulating the succession to the throne of 

 Spain. Count Tallart displayed considerable ability in the negociation, 

 and a treaty was signed ; but the young Prince of Bavaria, to whom 

 the crown of Spain had been allotted, dying before Charles II. of Spain, 

 and Louis claiming the succession for his grandson Philip, the War of 

 the Succession broke out, and in 1702 Tallart received the command 

 of an army to operate upon the Rhine, where he was opposed by the 

 Duke of Marlborough. The French would not venture a battle, but 

 saw Landau and several other places taken without an attempt to save 

 them; but his army having been strengthened, he broke up the Dutch 

 camp at Miihlheim, took Trfeves and Trarbach, and was rewarded with 

 the marshal's staff. In 1703 he was appointed to the command of the 

 army in Germany under the young Duke of Burgundy, and in Novem- 

 ber totally defeated the Elector of Hesse near Spires, capturing, as he 

 boastfully related in his despatches to his sovereign, " more standards 

 of the enemy than your majesty has lost men." The reputation of 

 this success occasioned his being transferred to the command of a 

 corps destined to act with Marshals Villeroi and Marsin against Marl- 

 borough and Prince Eugene, which terminated in the battle of Blen- 

 heim, on the 13th of August 1704. [MARLBOROUGH.] Tallart dis- 

 played great courage in this battle, though his want of skill has been 

 severely censured by his own countrymen. In the heat of the contest, 

 being short-sighted, he mistook a party of the allied forces for his own, 

 and was taken prisoner before the disgraceful surrender of a large part 

 of his army, amounting to 13,000 men, with arms in their hands, as 

 prisoners of war. Tallart was sent to London, where he was honour- 

 ably treated and allowed his liberty on parole ; and there he remained 

 for seven years, contributing, it is said, by his representations as an 

 agent of France to the recall of the Duke of Marlborough from 

 Germany. His misfortune at Blenheim had not injured him in the 

 favour of his sovereign, and on his return to France, when released 

 without exchange in 1711, he was appointed to the government of 

 Frauche-Comte', and in 1712 created Due d'Hostun. Louis XIV. also 

 named him by his will a member of the Council of Regency, but he 

 did not act. Some time after the accession of Louis XV. he became 

 for a time minister of state; and he died on the 20th of March 1728. 

 The Due de St. Simon characterises him as having more ambition 

 than talent, as owing Ins court favours to the patronage of Villeroi, 

 and as being a man with whom all the world was pleased, but in whom 

 no one confided. 



TALLEYRAND-PERIGORD, CHARLES MAURICE DE, was 

 born on the 13th of January 1754, the eldest of three brothers. His 

 family was ancient and distinguished ; but he was neglected by his 



parenta, and placed at nurse in one of the faubourgs of Paris. The 

 effects of a fall when about a year old rendered him lame for life, and 

 being on this account unfit for the military career, he was obliged to 

 renounce his birthright in favour of his second brother, and enter the 

 Church. The contempt and aversion for him, which his parents did 

 not attempt to conceal, imposed a gloomy and taciturn character on 

 the boy. From the charge of his nurse he was transferred to the 

 College d'Harcourt, and thence successively to the seminary of St. 

 Sulpice and to the Sorbonne. In all of these institutions he maintained 

 the character of a shy, proud, bookish lad. He showed in after-life a 

 taste for literature, and such an extensive acquaintance with and 

 appreciation of science as sits gracefully on the statesman ; and the 

 taste and knowledge must have been acquired at an early age, for his 

 turbulent career after he was fairly launched into busy life left little 

 leisure for that purpose. 



By the time he had attained his twentieth year his reputation for 

 talent and his confirmed health appear to have reconciled the vanity 

 of his parents to the necessity of acknowledging him. They intro- 

 duced him to the society of his equals in rank for the first time at the 

 festivities with which the coronation of Louis XVI. was celebrated 

 (1774), under the title of the Abbe" de PeYigord. His opinions and 

 tastes, and his temperament, combined to render the clerical pro- 

 fession an object of detestation to him, but he could not escape from 

 it. He availed himself to the full extent of the indulgence with 

 which his age and country regarded the irregularities of the young and 

 noble among the priestly order ; but the pride and reserve with which 

 twenty years of undeserved neglect had inspired his confident and 

 strong character served him in part as a moral check. He was a strict 

 observer of the appearances exacted by the conventional morality of 

 society; and this good taste exerted a powerful influence over his 

 whole future career. 



In 1776 Voltaire visited Paris. M. de Talleyrand was introduced to 

 him, and the two interviews he had with him left such a deep impres- 

 sion that he was accustomed to talk of them with a lively pleasure 

 till the.close of his life. Voltaire and Foutenelle were M. de Talley- 

 rand's favourite authors, upon whom he formed his written and still 

 more his conversational style. Conversational talent was in great 

 demand at Paris when he entered the world, and both his love of 

 pleasure and his love of power prompted him to cultivate that which 

 he possessed. That he did so with eminent success the concurrent 

 views of the beat judges of his age declare. Excellence of this kind 

 however is like excellence in acting : it is impossible to convey an 

 adequate impression of it to posterity. The robust and healthy 

 Epicurean who requires the stimulus of intellectual in addition to 

 physical pleasures, is almost inevitably driven to seek the former in 

 the pursuits of ambition. M. de Talleyrand was no exception to the 

 general rule : and the Abbe" de Pe"rigord must have displayed, even 

 when he was apparently, when perhaps he believed himself to be, 

 living only for pleasure, qualities which inspired a belief in his business 

 capacity ; for in 1780, while yet only in his twenty-sixth year, he was 

 appointed general agent of the clergy of France. He discharged the 

 functions of this important office for eight years. The Gallic Church 

 was all along the most independent in its relations to the Papal chair 

 of any church that remained in communion with Rome. It was also 

 a powerful church viewed in its relations to the state, of which it 

 formed an element. Its revenue derived from landed property was 

 large ; that derived from other sources perhaps still larger : it had 

 regular assemblies in which it legislated for itself, determined what 

 contributions it ought to pay to the state, and in what proportions its 

 members were to be assessed. Here was a wide field for cultivating 

 experimentally a talent for administration. Nor was this all : the 

 dignified clergy of France took an active part in secular politics. The 

 general agent of the clergy was their minister of state ; and M. de 

 Talleyrand, while he continued to fill the office, was a powerful subject, 

 and occupied a considerable place in the eye of the public. In 17S8 

 he was appointed bishop of Autun. 



The commencement of his political career, in the strict acceptation 

 of the term, is synchronous with this promotion. An article upon 

 M. de Talleyrand in an early number of the ' Edinburgh Review ' 

 the materials for which were furnished by Dumout asserts that he 

 owed his advancement to the see of Autun to a ' Discours sur If s 

 Loteries,' which he pronounced in his capacity of agent for the clergy 

 of France, in the Assembly of Notables which met at Versailles in 

 February 1787. As bishop of Autun he was a member of the Etats 

 Generanx convoked in May 1789, which continued to sit as an Assem- 

 blde Constituante till it dissolved itself on the 30th of September 

 1791. The interval from the meeting of the notables till the disso- 

 lution of the Assembly is an important one in any attempt to solve 

 the problem of M. de Talleyrand's real character. 



Previously to the meeting of the States-General, M. de Talleyrand 

 indicated the course he intended to pursue, in a discourse which he 

 addressed to the assembled clergy of his diocese, and in which he 

 advocated the equality of all citizens in the eye of the law, and free 

 discussion. When the three orders, by assenting to meet as one body, 

 had enabled the Assembly to proceed to business, the precise directions 

 given by many of the bailliages to their deputies were found an 

 impediment in the way of practical legislation : M. de Talleyrand 

 moved that they should be entirely disregarded, and carried his 



