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TALLEYRAND-PERIGORD, CHARLES. 



TALLEYRAND-PERIGORD, CHARLES. 



898 



It is not impossible that the minister may have speculated more 

 deeply in the funds than was proper ; but had there been no other 

 reason for his dismissal, Napoleon could, and often did, wink at more 

 flagrant pecuniary delinquencies. M. de Talleyrand, in his character 

 of grand-chamberlain, did the honours of the imperial court at 

 Erfurt; and was on more than one occasion privately consulted by the 

 emperor, who one day said, "We ought not to have parted." In 1809 

 however the ex-minister was so loud and unreserved in hia condemna- 

 tion of the Spanish expedition, that Napoleon, on his return from the 

 Peninsula, deprived him of the office of chamberlain. The last five 

 years of the empire elicited many caustic criticisms from M. de Talley- 

 rand, which were duly carried to the ears of the emperor, who 

 retorted by sallies of abuse which irritated the prince without render- 

 ing him less powerful. In 1812 M. de Talleyrand is said to have 

 predicted the overthrow of the empire. In 1813 overtures were made 

 to him with a view to his resuming the portfolio of foreign affairs, but 

 without success. In 1814 he re-appeared on the stage of active life on 

 his own account. 



In 1814, as vice-grand-elector of the empire, he was a member of 

 the regency,, but was prevented joining it at Blois by the national 

 guard refueing to allow him to quit Paris not much against his will. 

 When Paris capitulated, the Emperor Alexander took up his residence 

 in the house of the prince of Benevento. The words attributed by 

 the Memoirs of Bourrieune to Talleyrand, in his conversations with 

 those in whose hands the fortune of war had for the time placed the 

 fortunes of France, are characteristic, true, and in keeping with his 

 opinions and subsequent conduct : " There is no other alternative 

 but Napoleon or Louis XVIII. After Napoleon there is no one 

 whose personal qualities would ensure him the support of ten men. 

 A principle is needed to give consistency to the new government, 

 whatever it may be. Louis XVIII. represents a pi'inciple. Anything 

 but Napoleon or Louis XVIII. is an intrigue, and no intrigue can be 

 strong enough to support him upon whom it might confer power." This 

 view lends consistency to the conduct of M. de Talleyrand at the close 

 of Napoleon's career. Their alliance had long been dissolved ; they 

 stood confronting each other as separate and independent powers. 

 M. de Talleyrand had advocated a limited monarchy, until the old 

 throne was violently broken up and overturned ; he had lent his aid 

 to construct a new monarchy and a new aristocracy out of the frag- 

 ments of old institutions which the Revolution had left ; he saw 

 France again without a government, and, with his principles, he 

 might have consistently taken office under any government, holding, 

 as he did, the opinion that any government is better than none, and 

 that any man may hold office under it provided he take care to do as 

 much good and as little harm us he can. But M. de Talleyrand did 

 more : he exerted the influence he possessed over Alexander to obtain 

 the combination of constitutional forms with the recognition of legiti- 

 macy. Louis XVIII. saved appearances by insisting upon being 

 allowed to grant the charter spontaneously, but it was M. de Talley- 

 rand's use of the remains of the revolutionary party that made him 

 feel the necessity of this concession. As minister Talleyrand insisted 

 upon its observance with a precision that rendered him as much 

 an object of annoyance to the courtiers of the Restoration as ever 

 Clarendon was to the gay triflers who surrounded Charles II. When 

 he set out for the congress of Vienna, in September 1814, the court 

 cf France is said to have presented the aspect of a school at the com- 

 mencement of the holidays. The powers who had refused to concede to 

 Napoleon at the head of a victorious army any thing beyond the limits of 

 France in 1792, gave more favourable terms to M. de Talleyrand, the 

 representative of a nation upon which they had just forced a king. 

 He baffled the Emperor Alexander, who said angrily, " Talleyrand 

 conducts himself as if he were minister of Louis XIV." On the 5th 

 of January 1815, he signed, with Lord Castlereagh and Prince Metter- 

 nich, a secret treaty, having previously obliged Prussia to remain con- 

 tented with a third of Saxony, and Russia to cede a part of the grand- 

 duchy of Warsaw. The imbecility of the Bourbons, by inviting 

 the descent of Napoleon at Frejus, again unsettled everything. M. 

 de Talleyrand dictated the proclamation of Cambray, in which 

 Louis XVIII. confessed the faults committed in 1814, and promised 

 to make reparation. He suggested the more liberal interpretation of 

 the charter, announced from the same place. He obtained an exten- 

 sion of the democratic principle in the constitution of the Chamber of 

 Deputies, recommended the rendering the peerage hereditary, and 

 induced the king, restored for a second time, to institute a cabinet 

 council, of which he was nominated the first president. 



The constitutional monarchy, tho object of his earlier wishes, was 

 now definitively established ; but the part he was destined to perform 

 in it was that of a leader of opposition. In his note of the 21st of 

 September 1815, he protested, as a prime minister, against the new 

 terms which the allies intended to impose upon Fi ance. He said they 

 were such conditions as only conquest could warrant. His argument 

 was fruitless : Louis XVIII. bowed to the dictation of his powerful 

 allies ; and M. de Talleyrand resigned office two months before the 

 conclusion of the treaty which narrowed the frontiers of France and 

 amerced her in a heavy contribution. By this step M. de Talleyrand 

 enabled himself to contribute essentially to strengthening the con- 

 stitutional monarchy, to which, if he had any principle, he bad 

 through life preserved his attachment. Had he been a party to the 



BIOG. DIV. VOL. V. 



treaty, lie must have shared with the elder branch of the Bourbons 

 tho odium which attached to all who had taken part in it ; and hence 

 thrown the opposition into the hands of the enemies of the constitu- 

 tion. By resigning office, he obtained a voice potential in the 

 deliberations of the opposition ; and no English nobleman born and 

 bred to the profession could have discharged more adroitly the 

 functions of an opposition leader. For fourteen y< ars his salon was a 

 place of resort for the leaders of the liberal party ; in society he aided 

 it by his conversational talents ; in the chamber of peers he lent it 

 the weight of his name and experience. He defended the liberty of 

 the press in opposition to the censorship; he supported trial by jury 

 in the case of offences against the press ; and he protested against 

 the interference of France in the internal affairs of Spain in 1823. By 

 this line of conduct he was materially instrumental in creating a 

 liberal party within the pale of the constitution ; and to the existence 

 of such a party was owing in no small degree the result of the revolu- 

 tion of 1830, in which, though the dynasty was changed, the con- 

 stitution survived in its most important outlines. That revolution 

 also placed Prince Talleyrand in a condition to realise what had been 

 one of his most earnest wishes at the outset of his political career 

 an alliance between France and England as constitutional govern- 

 ments. To accomplish this he had laboured strenuously in 1792; to 

 accomplish this was one of the first objects he aimed at when appointed 

 minister for foreign affairs under the consulate : he accomplished it as 

 representative of Louis Philippe. 



M. de Talleyrand was appointed ambassador extraordinary and 

 minister plenipotentiary to the court of Great Britain on the 5th of 

 September 1830; and he held the appointment till the 7th of January 

 1835, when he was succeeded by General Sebastiani. During these 

 four years, M. de Talleyrand, besides obtaining the recognition of the 

 new order of things in France by the European powers, procured a 

 similar recognition of the independence of Belgium, and concluded 

 the quadruple alliance of England, France, Spain and Portugal, for 

 the purpose of re-establishing the peace of the Peninsula. 



After his return from the mission to England, M. de Talleyrand 

 retired from public life. The only occasion on which he again emerged 

 from domestic retirement was when he appeared at the Acade'mie dea 

 Sciences Morales et Politiques, to pronounce the eloge of Count Rein- 

 hard, only three months before his own death. He died on the 20th 

 of May 1838, in the eighty -fourth year of his age. 



The object of this sketch has been to present, as far as the very 

 imperfect materials which are attainable would permit, a view of this 

 very extraordinary man undistorted by any partisan feeling either 

 with regard to his person or principles. It must be admitted in favour 

 of M. de Talleyrand that he was warmly beloved by those who were 

 his intimate friends, and by all who were at any time employed under 

 him. It must also be allowed that when his life is contemplated as a 

 whole, it bears the imprint of a unity of purpose animating his efforts 

 throughout. Freedom of thought and expression, the abolition of 

 antiquated and oppressive feudal forms and the most objectionable 

 powers of the church, the promotion of education, the establishment 

 of a national religion, and' a constitutional government compounded of 

 popular representation and an hereditary sovereign and aristocracy 

 these were the objects he proposed for attainment when he entered the 

 arena of politics. He attempted to approach this ideal as far as cir- 

 cumstances would admit at all periods of his long career ; and he 

 ended by being instrumental in establishing it. No act of cruelty has 

 been substantiated against him ; and the only charges of base sub- 

 serviency that appear to be satisfactorily proved, are his participation 

 in the attempt to extort a bribe from the American envoys, and in the 

 violation of an independent territory in the seizure of the Due 

 d'Enghien. His literary was subordinate to his political character. 

 It is difficult to say how much of the writings published in his name 

 were really his own. Latterly, we are informed upon good authority, 

 he was in the habit of explaining his general views on a subject to 

 some one whom he employed to bring this communication into shape ; 

 and when the manuscript was presented to him he modified and 

 retouched it until it met his views, throwing in a good deal of that wit 

 which gave zest to his conversation. The domestic life of M. de Tal- 

 leyrand has not been alluded to ; for almost every statement regarding 

 it is poisoned by the small wit of the coteries of Paris. 



The report upon education of 1791 ; a report to the first consul 

 upon the best means of re-establishing the diplomatic service of 

 France; the essays upon colonisation, and the commercial relations 

 of England and America; and the e"loge of M. de Reinhard may all 

 be regarded as his own composition. The first is the most common- 

 place ; the other three are master-pieces in their different ways. They 

 bespeak an elegant and accomplished mind, a shrewd insight into 

 character and the structure of society, and a felicitous and graphic 

 power of expression. The wit of M. de Talleyrand was the wit of 

 intellect, not of temperament. It was often full of meaning ; always 

 suggestive of thought ; most frequently caustic. His reserve, pro- 

 bably constitutional, but heightened by the circumstances of his early 

 life, and cultivated upon principle, was impenetrable. In advanced 

 life it seemed even to have affected his physical appearance. When at 

 rest, but for his glittering eye it would have been difficult to feel 

 certain that it was not a statue that was placed before you. When 

 his sonorous voice broke upon the ear it was like a possessing spirit 



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