Talleyrand: A Biographical Study

Sainte-Beuve, after an attempt that one cannot describe as successful, declared that “it is hardly possible to write the life of M. de Talleyrand.” Frédéric Masson noticed the figure of the great diplomatist as he passed with a disdainful “ce Sphinx.” Carlyle forgot his dogmatism for a moment, and pronounced Talleyrand “one of the strangest things ever seen or like to be seen, an enigma for future ages.” Even a woman of penetration, Mme. de Staël, who had known him well, assures us that he was “the most impenetrable and most inexplicable of men.”

There were a few who thought that the long-sealed “Memoirs” of the Prince, which were published only a few years ago, would reveal every secret. They forgot that these were the work of the man who held (improving on Voltaire) that “speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts”—the man who conducted his exit from the world with all the art he had used at the Congress of Vienna. Yet, if the “Memoirs” have thrown no light, or only a deceptive light, on some of the obscurer passages in Talleyrand’s career, they have at least filled in our picture of his personality, so that the tradition of its inscrutability must be surrendered. There has been a prolonged and microscopic research into the age or ages of Talleyrand,—the Old Regime, the Revolution, the Consulate, the Restoration, and the second Revolution. The memoirs of nearly all his contemporaries have seen the light, and official records everywhere have been examined. I have made a careful use of all this research up to date, and find it possible to present a consistent and intelligible personality.

Lady Blennerhassett included the material of the “Memoirs” in the biography of Talleyrand that she wrote ten years ago. But a good deal of light has since been thrown on the earlier part of his career, and in this regard I gratefully avail myself of the investigations of M. de Lacombe. Moreover, Lady Blennerhassett is chiefly occupied with the Prince’s diplomatic action. His personality does not stand out very clearly from her very crowded canvas. That is an inherent disadvantage in writing the life of a great diplomatist. However, in spite of the alluring character of the stretch of history across which the thread of Talleyrand’s life passes, I have tried to keep it in its place as a background, and to bring out into the fullest light the elusive figure of the man who made and unmade a dozen oaths of loyalty.

J. M.

LONDON, June, 1906.

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I. THE TRAINING OF A DIPLOMATIST 1

II. THE ABBÉ MALGRÉ LUI 16

III. PRIEST AND BISHOP 38

IV. AT THE STATES GENERAL 56

V. THE BREACH WITH THE CHURCH 80

VI. CITIZEN TALLEYRAND 101

VII. EXILE 121

VIII. THE REGENERATED PARIS 141

IX. ENTER NAPOLEON 165

X. WAR AND DIPLOMACY 177

XI. THE RESTORATION OF RELIGION 200

XII. THE RENEWAL OF WAR 223

XIII. AWAY FROM NAPOLEON 251

XIV. THE RESTORATION 281

XV. A DIPLOMATIC ROMANCE 303

XVI. THE “FOREIGNERS OF THE INTERIOR” 326

XVII. THE LAST ACT 349

BIBLIOGRAPHY

This Study is chiefly based on the following Works:

1. Talleyrand’s “Mémoires” (edit, de Broglie, 5 volumes); Official Correspondence from London in 1792, during the Directoire, during the Vienna Congress, and from London in 1830-4 (edit. Pallain); Letters to Napoleon, Mme. Adélaide, D’Hauterive, Choiseul-Gouffier, the Duchess of Courland, Bacourt, Royer-Collard, Guizot, and others; and his separately published Speeches and other Documents.

2. “Procès-verbal Historique des Actes du Clergé;” “Procès-verbal de l’Assemblée Nationale;” “Histoire Parlementaire” (Bouchez et Roux); and the Memoirs or Letters of Arnault, Barante, Carnot, Consalvi, von Gagern, Mme. de Genlis, Guizot, Lauzun, Las Cases, Macdonald, Meneval, Miot de Melito, Morellet, Napoleon, Pasquier, Mme. de Rémusat, Savary, Senfft, and Stapfer.