Part 6

The Abbé de Talleyrand was in possession of his rich bishopric of Autun when the States-General were convened, and he was appointed deputy of the clergy of his diocese to the Constituent Assembly, so remarkable from its adventurous spirit, the boldness of its conceptions, and its total want of connexion, and absence of all kind of unity or method, either moral or political. The Constituent Assembly was a great chaos, where the opinions of men of talent clashed with each other, where all sorts of extravagances were proposed in the executive government, and all the ideas most fitted to overturn the monarchy and the society of France were encouraged; Rousseau's social contract was applied to a people already old in its customs and civilisation.

The Bishop of Autun shewed himself the most zealous protector of all these innovations; he proposed the abolition of titles, and vehemently advocated the civil constitution of the clergy; he also introduced into the public system of education all the ideas of false and mischievous philosophy which the eighteenth century had diffused in human minds. Along with the Marquis of Condorcet, and Cabanis, he was one of the adepts, and of the friends of Mirabeau, whom that statesman and popular orator used to employ for the furtherance of the interests of his intellectual dictatorship. They were accustomed to meet in the evening at Mirabeau's house, to prepare the projects which would resound the next day from the tribune of the assembly. Without being very well educated, the Bishop of Autun was gifted with an extremely fluent style, and a mode of expression remarkable for its clearness, and its elegant precision: the ancient high nobility certainly always possessed great natural talents; they had but little information, and yet they were eminently gifted with the power of expressing what they wished to say.

The solemn festival of the confederation took place at this period, a singular proceeding of which the spirit has been greatly misrepresented: it was theatrical, for such is always necessary in France. In the Champ de Mars an altar was erected, surmounted by tricoloured flags, upon a scaffolding fifty feet high, ornamented with ribands, also of the national colours. Then came M. de Lafayette, at that time a very handsome man, with his courteous and somewhat hypocritical countenance beaming with smiles, mounted upon his snow-white, slender, prancing steed, and wearing the uniform of the National Guard with long skirts and a three-cornered hat on his head, as it was the fashion at the time of the American War. He was then trying on his royal dignity. Around him crowded the deputations from the Departments with their flags; there were many drunken people, as it was natural there should be, and others tired with having wheeled earth from the Champ de Mars; and there was a plentiful exchange of kisses and embraces, according to the system so approved by Lamourette. At the foot of the altar of which I have spoken appeared M. de Talleyrand, bishop of Autun, dressed in his pontifical habits, his mitre on his head, a crosier in his hand, and with manners as elegant, as much refinement, and as studiously dignified a demeanour, as he afterwards discovered when carrying his crutch stick into the assembly of the corps diplomatique: kneeling beside him was the Abbé Louis (afterwards Minister of Finance) one of the curates, in his alb and surplice.

The mass was celebrated with due solemnity by the Bishop of Autun; but there is a tradition which, for the honour and character of Talleyrand, we will believe to be unfounded, that when Mirabeau passed beside the altar the officiating pontiff addressed to him some expressions of mockery and irreligion, which must have weighed heavily upon his conscience on his death-bed. There are, unfortunately, seasons of youth and evil passions, when people give way to anti-Christian ideas, and at that time a degree of impiety was the fashion. Was it not then considered good taste to ridicule the holy and noble ceremonies of the Catholic religion? Talleyrand took a part in all the anti-religious proceedings of the Constituent Assembly upon the situation of the clergy in France, and he was commissioned to apply the civil constitution to his diocese, but the powerful opposition of his clergy did not permit him to accomplish his purpose, for the greater part of the parish priests refused to take the oath. He was present at the consecration of the first constitutional bishops, and, if this devoted conduct was considered deserving of praise by the assembly, it was regarded in a very different light elsewhere, and drew upon him the excommunication of the holy see. Pope Pius VI. published a bull against the Bishop of Autun, in which he declared him out of the pale of the Church, for having become an adherent of the civil constitution of the clergy. This step needs no explanation, such a constitution being in its very essence subversive of all Catholic faith. It was a work of the ultra-Jansenist party, and so thoroughly overstepped all the established rules, that it allowed the Jews and Protestants belonging to various districts and corporations to participate in the election of the Catholic clergy. A bishop or a schoolmaster was appointed in the same manner that a deputy was elected for the National Assembly, for the whole electoral body discharged their duties in the same manner. An absurd principle of equality had levelled every thing; the people appointed the mayors, the bishops, the parish priests, the deputies, and the municipal officers. It was disorder in equality; the levelling principle had trampled down society.

Talleyrand was the intimate friend of Mirabeau, or, to speak with more precision, the great tribune made a tool of him. They had lived together, and together had prepared their works for the Assembly. The popular orator had just been attacked by the mortal disease which carried him off in so rapid and mysterious a manner, and the Bishop of Autun was present when his friend breathed his last. It was not as a ghostly comforter affording him the consolations of his ministry, it was not as a Catholic bishop pointing to a world beyond the grave when those eloquent lips were about to be sealed in death; M. de Talleyrand sat by the bedside of the dying man as the depository of his last thoughts and of his political labours, which led to the destruction of the monarchy. Mirabeau had committed to writing a work upon the equal division of inheritance among the different members of a family, and on the right of making testamentary dispositions, it being the object of the Revolutionists to overturn civil rights as they had already destroyed political ones, because it was well known they were intimately connected. The Bishop of Autun undertook to read the discourse of Mirabeau in the name of his friend at the National Assembly, and excited the most lively enthusiasm while repeating the last words of the orator whose career was now at an end. The life of Mirabeau had been, in some respects, the reaction of a mind filled with strong passions against the persecutions he had endured as a son from the hand of a severe and inflexible father, and his discourse upon limiting the right of making a will and on the equal division of inheritance affords the most certain proof of it. The gift of eloquence was held in the most enthusiastic estimation by the Constituent Assembly, it resolved the greatest part of its business into brilliant oratorical theories, resting upon the ideas of demolition, which were the offspring of the eighteenth century, and as Talleyrand had some difficulty in ascending the tribune, he played but a secondary part at that time. He excited attention principally by his management of business and by his assiduous attendance on committees; it does not appear that he had attained, even at this period, to the reputation of taciturn ability enjoyed by the Abbé Siéyès, and I seldom meet with his name in important and brilliant discussions.

When the Constituent Assembly had concluded their work, Talleyrand quitted France for England. M. de Chauvelin was ambassador there from the unfortunate Louis XVI., and the Bishop of Autun received a commission, of which the object was to draw the two governments of France and England into a nearer resemblance to each other, by establishing a system of two legislative chambers exactly upon the model of the English houses of parliament. There was already some idea of a revolution like that of 1688, and Talleyrand might serve as an agent for the attempt, for there was a good understanding between him and M. de Chauvelin, and a still better between him and the clubs of England. But opinions travelled too fast to allow proper consideration being given to the due balance of power, and the sovereignty of the people had given rise to the scheme of a single chamber. Diplomatic business now went on in a singular manner; instead of the clever and prudent system, which since the commencement of the reign of Louis XVI. had secured so many advantages to France, so many favourable treaties, so many important annexations of territory, the diplomatic corps now amused themselves in encouraging the propaganda and spreading every where the spirit of Jacobinism. M. de Talleyrand had some interviews with the principal leaders of the Whigs, and his intimacy with Earl Grey began from this date. Shortly after this, being concerned in the intrigues of Danton, he returned to Paris on the 11th of August, and he always took pleasure in saying that his not having perished on the 2d of September was owing to the efforts of that singularly energetic man, as well as his having been able to obtain a passport for England.

As the course of events was progressing towards war, and that the trial of Louis XVI. was considered by the Tories as a total subversion of every thing, Talleyrand received an order to quit Great Britain in virtue of the alien act, and was only allowed twenty-four hours to make his arrangements. In the year 1793 people were in the midst of revolutionary excitements; he, therefore, did not return to France, but embarked for the United States, the country that was then pointed out as a model, a pattern government, which the republican party in the Legislative Assembly always cited as the most perfect that political ideas could conceive, and which M. de la Fayette never ceased to extol. At that time two schools prevailed, the American system and the revolution of 1688, both of which have been since renewed and perpetuated both in men and events.

Talleyrand settled in the United States, and during some years he devoted himself to commerce, and engaged in speculations with a considerable degree of activity. There always was something adventurous and bold in his disposition in money matters; to use a familiar expression, no one ever made his fortune oftener than M. de Talleyrand, without being particularly scrupulous as to the means he employed. His property in France was sequestered, it was, therefore, with very limited funds that he commenced his mercantile operations in the United States; and it was certainly singular enough to see a bishop of 1789, afterwards a popular orator, then a secret diplomatist acting as a spy for a party of the National Assembly, finally transforming himself into a merchant in a counting-house at Boston or New York. The shades of the ancient Bosons of Périgord, those great feudal barons, must have been horrified and have indignantly grasped their lances and their coats of arms when they contemplated their descendant seated amid bales of cotton in a republic of shopkeepers. In this manner do revolutions take hold of a man's destiny, play with it, and raise and abase it by turns; but the nobility had already accustomed France to still more extraordinary courses: had not men of noble birth in Brittany and Gascony become freebooters and buccaneers under Henry IV., Louis XIII., and Louis XIV.?

A commercial profession in a country so distant from important events did not suit Talleyrand's inclination, and when order was a little restored, he lost no time in soliciting permission to return to France, the scene of his earliest days. He had left many friends there, among the partisans of what was called the moderate republic and constitutional system; such were Chenier and Madame de Staël, belonging to the literary and philosophical portion of society under the Directory, who had regained some degree of importance after the Reign of Terror was past, for in calmer times the different shades of a party become more evident.

It was particularly to the earnest solicitations of Madame de Staël that Talleyrand owed his return, and we know that her influence was at that time very great. Chenier undertook the report, and a decree was passed revoking the rigorous measures that had been adopted in 1793 against the late Bishop of Autun; it was also declared that he had not emigrated. Talleyrand had at that time entirely left off the ecclesiastical habit, and appeared every where as a layman. He enjoyed in the world a great reputation for wit and talent; there was something noble in his countenance, without its being exactly striking; he carried his head remarkably well, and his hair fell in curls upon his shoulders. He was no longer a young man, still his reputation for gallantry and for agreeableness in society had procured for him a great ascendancy over some women of that period, in the midst of that most singular society in the time of Barras and the Directory, in which were jumbled together men of high rank, contractors, renowned characters, and courtesans. Talleyrand had brought with him Madame Grand, with whom he had become acquainted at Hamburg, and, by a whimsical contrast, it was said no woman ever was possessed of less sense or less intelligence. We know how many capital stories were told of her in the Fauxbourg St. Germain, of which even the republic was so much afraid. The reason is, that the spirit of good society possesses great influence at the time that a bad state of society prevails. Jests were uttered, and the most charming _naïvetés_ were attributed to Madame Talleyrand, of which that regarding _M. Denon and Robinson Crusoe_ is, perhaps, the most inimitable.

As soon as he arrived in Paris, Talleyrand joined the Constitutional Club, which used to meet at the Hôtel de Salm. Many thinking people saw the republic was gradually coming to an end, it had then but very little root in France. It was no longer possible to maintain a feeble and violent democracy, which gave way to the most fantastic and extraordinary paroxysms in the public assembly; people returned to the system of the balance of power, and to the English ideas that the school of Mounier and Lally-Tollendal had been desirous of rendering prevalent in the Constituent Assembly, and that Talleyrand had been commissioned to represent in London, in his secret mission, in which, as I before observed, there was mingled some idea of a revolution like that of 1688.

The institution of an executive directory had been the first step towards an oligarchic system, where, in default of an unity of power, a centre of action, reduced to five persons, had been established. Talleyrand applied all his credit to the support of the Directory, for, not being strong enough at that time to resist or to try to overturn the government, his only object was to draw some advantage from it. He refused steadily to join the royalist party, which, before the 18th Fructidor, was preparing the downfall of the Directory; still less would he belong to the Jacobin faction, for which he felt a strong antipathy, on account of its construction and its inclinations; accordingly, when the 18th Fructidor burst over France, with the proscription of the councils and the press, he was appointed to the ministry for foreign affairs; and the _Moniteur_ announced that citizen Talleyrand, devoted to the interests of the republic, was about to give a powerful impulse to our relations with foreign powers. To accept office under a republic was a singular employment for the heir of the Bosons of Périgord; but then was not the heir of the Barras, a family as old as the rocks of Provence, the chief of the five directors? A curious history might be written by following the career of the old nobility during the French revolution; they assumed the position that men of gentle blood had done in former times during civil disturbances, every thing adventurous suited the younger branches of a noble family.

We must now consider what was the state of France with regard to foreign affairs. The Directory was at war with Austria, Russia, and England; Belgium was ours, we occupied part of Italy, and the rest was transformed into little republics, after the model of the executive directory; for there was at that time, as during all revolutions, a great propaganda mania. Money was the principal instrument of the Directory, every thing was accomplished by means of bribery, and people made haste to achieve a fortune, that they might afterwards spend it in miserable debauchery. When a negotiation was opened with a foreign power, the first step was to impose contributions, and to demand secret presents; and the minister for foreign affairs was a sort of agent commissioned to receive all this _spolia opima_, which afterwards went to fatten the friends of Barras and Siéyès, or some women who invaded the saloons of the Luxembourg, and presided over their sensual rites. It was a time when modesty was banished; the state of society resembled the Greek courtesans of the Directory, who, while they almost dispensed with clothing, covered even their feet with precious stones. Talleyrand began afresh to work at his fortune, but, no doubt, he manœuvred with too little discretion, for at the end of some months he was openly denounced by Charles de Lacroix, and was obliged to give in his resignation, after having published a rather curious pamphlet, which I have succeeded in obtaining; it bears the name of "Eclaircissements." A pamphlet written by him is a very rare book, for he has written very little in the course of his life. This little work contains an exposition of the conduct of Citizen Talleyrand, from the time of the Constituent Assembly to his appointment to the ministry for foreign affairs, and is couched in very moderate language. The ex-minister replies to his calumniators with remarkable clearness and simplicity, appealing to the testimony afforded by the past, during the whole course of his life. This pamphlet excited a vast controversy. Citizen Talleyrand was also impeached as an extortioner from the tribune of the Five Hundred, even by Lucien Buonaparte, and he was overwhelmed under the evidence produced against him, with the view of applying the principle of ministerial responsibility to his case. He had great difficulty in escaping from this unpleasant situation, in which he had been placed by rather too much avidity during his ministry for foreign affairs. I must confess, one of the defects of his character was his public indifference to all charges brought against him with regard to money; it often compromised his reputation, and sometimes placed him in a very awkward situation.

Having quarrelled with the Directory, we now find him working with all his might for the establishment of the consular government. Buonaparte had surrounded himself on his return from Egypt with all the men who possessed any political talent or any idea of order in society, and he did not disdain the extensive abilities of M. de Talleyrand. The Abbé Siéyès had no predilection for the Bishop of Autun; there was an angry feeling between them on clerical subjects; but Napoleon required them both, he indulged in no feelings of repugnance when the triumph of his ambition was at stake; he therefore employed them both, each according to his abilities, so as to render them subservient to his designs. The influence of Talleyrand over the constitutional party was not devoid of utility upon the 18th Brumaire, and when the consular government was established, the provisional commission appointed him minister for foreign affairs as a recompense for the service he had rendered, and Buonaparte confirmed him in his situation as soon as he was proclaimed First Consul.

A more extensive field was now open before him; the consular government was founded on a principle of unity, there was no longer in their relations with foreign powers the unrestrained violence exhibited by the National Convention, or the unconnected measures pursued by the Directory. It was possible to negotiate with decency and moderation, the relations of one state to another were assuming a character of regularity they had never possessed under any of the preceding governments, and then commenced the great diplomatic arrangements which were at last to bless Europe with repose.

The glorious commencement of the consulate was distinguished by numerous treaties; at Lunneville peace was concluded with Austria, at Amiens a covenant was made with England; other treaties were succeeded by peace with Russia and the Porte, and in all these negotiations Talleyrand evinced great skill and knowledge of what was proper and advisable. He placed the correspondence between governments upon an excellent footing, keeping aloof from the extravagant system which the agents of the Directory introduced into foreign negotiations during the time of the _Carmagnole_ diplomatists, who levied so many forced contributions upon the pictures, the gold crucifixes, and the little property of the poor in the Mont de Piété.[9]

[9] A pawnbroking establishment in Paris under the protection of the government.

These treaties were a great assistance to the fortune of Talleyrand, being almost all followed by presents of considerable value, according to the custom observed in negotiations between one state and another.

On these occasions the minister did not exhibit sufficient modesty, I might say, sufficient discretion, for people had a tolerably good idea how much he had gained by each treaty, in money and diamonds. No doubt there was some exaggeration in the charges brought against him by discontented people, but I repeat it, one great defect of M. de Talleyrand was an inclination to play with bribery and corruption, and to establish it as a theoretic principle, even in his conversation: the stain remains upon his name. He held men in too much contempt, and this is a sentiment which society always returns with interest. It was now necessary he should lay the foundation of a new fortune; he entered boldly into various speculations: while avaricious and economical in little things, he gambled in the stocks with a perfect frenzy, and even lost considerable sums of money in them. Immediately after the peace of Amiens he had speculated upon a rise, and his gain appeared almost certain, but it happened by one of those caprices which stock-jobbing can alone explain, that the public funds fell more than ten per cent after the signing of the treaty, and he lost several millions of francs in a single turn of the stocks. These caprices of fortune occurred repeatedly in the course of his long life, and explain the necessity he was constantly under of repairing his fortune.