Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord

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Charles de Talleyrand-Périgord
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Prime Minister of France
In office July 9 – September 26, 1815
Preceded by	None
Succeeded by	Duc de Richelieu
Born	February 2, 1754
Died	May 17, 1838
Political party	None

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, Prince de Benevente (February 2, 1754 – May 17, 1838) was a French diplomat. He worked successfully from the regime of Louis XVI, through the French Revolution and then under Napoleon I, Louis XVIII and Louis-Philippe. Known since the turn of the 19th century simply by the name Talleyrand, he is widely regarded as one of the most versatile and influential diplomats in European history.

Early life

Talleyrand was born into an aristocratic family in Paris. By his own account, a foot injury in childhood left him unable to enter the anticipated military career, although he may have had a birth defect. Deprived of his rights of primogeniture by a family council, which judged his physical condition incompatible with the traditional military careers of the Talleyrand dukes, he was instead directed to an ecclesiastic career. This was considerably assisted and encouraged by his uncle, then Roman Catholic Archbishop of Rheims. It would appear that the family, while prestigious and ancient, was not particularly prosperous, and saw church positions as a way to gain wealth. He attended the Collège d'Harcourt and Saint-Sulpice College until the age of 21. He was ordained a priest in 1779. In 1780, he became a Catholic Church representative to the French Crown, as the Agent-General of the Clergy. In this position, he was instrumental in drafting a general inventory of church properties in France as of 1785, along with a defence of "inalienable rights of church", a stance he was to deny later. In 1789, due to the influence of his father and family, the already notably non-believing Talleyrand was appointed Bishop of Autun, a bishopric that was something of a family possession, and consecrated to the episcopacy.

French Revolution

In the Estates-General of 1789, he represented the clergy, the First Estate. During the French Revolution, Talleyrand supported the revolutionary cause. He assisted Mirabeau in the secularization of ecclesiastical properties. He participated in the writing of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and proposed the Civil Constitution of the Clergy that nationalized the Church, and swore in the first four constitutional bishops, even though he had himself resigned as Bishop following his excommunication by Pope Pius VI. Notably, he promoted the public education in full spirit of Enlightenment. He celebrated the mass during the Fête de la Fédération on 14 July 1790.

In 1792, he was sent twice, though not officially, to Britain to avert war. Besides an initial declaration of neutrality during the first campaigns of 1792, his mission ultimately failed. In September 1792, he left Paris for England just at the beginning of September Massacres, yet declined the émigré status. Because of his aristocratic background, the National Convention issued a warrant for his arrest in December 1792. His stay in England was not uneventful either; in March 1794, he was forced to leave the country by Pitt's expulsion order. He then arrived in the United States where he stayed until his return to France in 1796. During his stay, he supported himself by working as a bank agent, involved in commodity trading and real-estate speculation. He was the house guest of New York U. S. Senator Aaron Burr. Talleyrand years later refused the same generosity to Burr because Talleyrand had been friends with Alexander Hamilton.

After 9 Thermidor and the demise of Robespierre, he mobilized his friends (most notably the abbé Martial Borye Desrenaudes and Germaine de Staël) to lobby in the National Convention and newly established Directoire for his return. His name was then suppressed from the émigré list and he returned to France in September 25, 1796. In 1797, he became Foreign Minister. Talleyrand saw a possible political career for Napoleon during the Italian campaigns of 1796 to 1797. He wrote many letters to Napoleon and the two became close allies. Talleyrand was against the destruction of the Republic of Venice, but he complimented Napoleon when peace with Austria was concluded (Venice was given to Austria), probably because he wanted to reinforce his alliance with Napoleon. Together with Napoleon's younger brother, Lucien Bonaparte, he was instrumental in the 1799 coup d'état of 18 Brumaire, and soon after he was made Foreign Minister by Napoleon, although he rarely agreed with Napoleon's foreign policy. The Pope also released him from the ban of excommunication.

French Empire

In March 1804, he may have been involved in the kidnapping and execution of the Duke of Enghien, which was a cause célèbre in Europe, as a sort of echo of the execution of Louis XVI, and which tended to delegitimize the Napoleonic regime, but whose specifics remain to this day something of a mystery. Napoleon accused him of such involvement, a charge seconded much later by Chateaubriand, but such an act would have been out of character: Talleyrand consistently advocated against violence, most notably speaking out against the guillotine, and during the coup of 18 Brumaire he assured that Barras could leave Paris safely.

In May 1804, Napoleon made him Grand Chamberlain and Vice-elector of the Empire. During this year, Talleyrand also bought the Château de Valençay. In 1806, he was made Sovereign Prince of Benevento (or Bénévent). Talleyrand was against the crude treatment of Prussia in the Peace of Tilsit in 1807. The queen of Prussia wept and was consoled by Talleyrand. This gave him a good name among the elite of the European countries outside France. He resigned as minister of foreign affairs in 1807, over his opposition to the Franco-Russian Alliance, and by 1809 he was even further from the Emperor. The break was completed in 1812, with the French attack on Russia. Talleyrand had no responsible position between 1807 and 1812, when Napoleon appointed him as representative of France at the Congress of Erfurt. There, Tsar Alexander wanted his advice in dealing with Napoleon, and they met regularly during the Congress. It is said that Tsar Alexander changed his attitude towards Napoleon because of Talleyrand. Alexander was afraid of Napoleon, because the Russians had been defeated twice. He admired the modern institutions of France and wanted to reform his country. Talleyrand allegedly convinced him that Napoleon's France was a threat to European nation states and that Russia should resist the will of Emperor Napoleon. Talleyrand became a Russian secret agent from 1812 onwards, but his political career was over until the fall of Napoleon.

While serving under Napoleon, Talleyrand began to accept bribes from hostile countries, particularly Austria and Russia, to betray Napoleon's secrets. Typically of Talleyrand, it is hard to determine where his principles met his pecuniary interests. Growing weary of Napoleon's endless ambitions, which he felt would ruin France, he became a paid agent of the opposing powers, most notably Austria and England. His agitations against the Spanish campaign, which he considered unwise, produced a rapprochement with Joseph Fouché and convinced Napoleon that Talleyrand was plotting against him. This perception caused the famous dressing down of Talleyrand in front of Napoleon's marshals, during which Napoleon famously claimed that he could "break him like a glass, but it's not worth the trouble" and added with his usual scatologic tone that Talleyrand was "shit in a silk stocking," [1] to which the minister coldly retorted, once Napoleon had left, "Pity that so great a man should have been so badly brought up!"

Restoration

When Napoleon was succeeded by Louis XVIII in April 1814, Talleyrand was one of the key creators of the restoration of the Bourbons while opposing the new legislation of Louis's rule. Tsar Alexander would probably not have leaned that way, but Talleyrand wanted the restoration of Louis XVIII. Talleyrand was the chief French negotiator at the Congress of Vienna, and, in that same year, he signed the Treaty of Paris. It was due, in part, to his skills that the terms of the treaty were remarkably lenient towards France. At the start, only four countries made the decisions: Austria, the United Kingdom, Prussia, and Russia. France and other European countries were invited, but had no influence on the decision making. Talleyrand became the champion of the small countries and demanded admission with the decision makers. The big four admitted France and Spain to the decision-making backrooms of the conference after a good deal of diplomatic maneuvering by Talleyrand, who had the support of the Spanish representative, Pedro Gómez Labrador, Marquis of Labrador. Spain was excluded after a while (a result of both the Marquis of Labrador's incompetence as well as the quixotic nature of Spain's agenda), but France (Talleyrand) was allowed to participate until the end. Russia and Prussia wanted to enlarge their territory during the Congress. Austria was afraid of losing territories to them and the United Kingdom was against their expansion as well.

Talleyrand managed to establish a middle position and received some favours from the other countries in exchange for his support. France even returned to its 1792 boundaries with no reparations, with French control over papal Avignon and Salm, which had been independent at the start of the French Revolution in 1789. (Some historians, critical of Talleyrand, blame his diplomacy for establishing the faultlines of World War I, especially for allowing Prussia to engulf small German states west of Rhine. This simultaneously placed Prussian armed forces at the French-German frontier—-which had never happened before; made Prussia the largest power in Germany in terms of territorial extent, population and the industry of the Ruhr and Rhineland; and eventually paved the way to German unification under Prussian throne.)

Napoleon's return to France in 1815 and his subsequent defeat, the Hundred Days, was a reverse for the diplomatic victories of Talleyrand; the second peace settlement was markedly less lenient and it was fortunate for France that the business of the Congress had been concluded. Talleyrand resigned in September of that year, either over the second treaty or under pressure from opponents in France. He thereafter restricted himself to the role of 'elder statesman', criticising--and intriguing--from the sidelines. When King Louis-Philippe came to power in the July Revolution of 1830, Tallyrand was made ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1830 to 1834. In this role, he strove to reinforce the legitimacy of Louis-Philippe's regime, and he proposed a partition plan for the Netherlands.

Character traits

Catherine (Worlée) Grand, princesse de Talleyrand-Périgord, painted by François Gerard 1805–6

Talleyrand had a reputation as a voluptuary and a womanizer. Leaving no legitimate children, four possible illegitimate children are discussed. Charles Joseph, comte de Flahaut is generally recognized to be an illegitimate son of Talleyrand; the painter Eugène Delacroix, was rumored to be Talleyrand's son, but historians who have examined the issue (for example, Leon Noel), doubt this. Two possible daughters survived him, "The Mysterious Charlotte"—possibly his daughter by his future wife, Catherine Worlée Grand; and Pauline, ostensibly the daughter of the Duc and Duchess Dino.

Aristrocratic women were very much part of his political tactics, both for their influence and their ability to cross borders unhindered. His presumed lover, Germaine de Staël, was a major influence on him, and he on her. Though their personal philosophies were most different (she, a romantic; he, very much a baroque sensibility) she assisted him greatly, most notably by lobbying Barras, to permit Talleyrand to return to France from his American exile, and then to have him made foreign minister. He lived with Catherine Worlée, born in India and married there to Charles Grand. She had traveled about before settling in Paris, as a notorious courtesan in the 1780s, for several years before she divorced Grand and married Talleyrand in 1802. Talleyrand, largely indifferent, tried to prevent a marriage, but after a lot of postponement, he was obliged to marry on instigation of Napoleon: otherwise his political career would have been over. Visitors to Talleyrand, including Napoleon himself, were shocked by the behaviour of his wife, who was regarded as a beauty, but very stupid.^[1]

Talleyrand's venality was celebrated; in the tradition of the ancien régime, he expected to be paid for the State duties he performed—whether these can properly be called "bribes" is open to debate. For instance, during the German Mediatization (Reichsdeputationshauptschluss), the mediatization or consolidation of the small German states, German rulers and elites paid him to save their possessions, or to enlarge their territories. Less successfully, he solicited payments from the United States, precipitating a diplomatic disaster (the "XYZ Affair"). The difference between his effective diplomacy in Europe and the American faux pas illustrates his capacities and limitations as a diplomat—his manners, behaviors, and tactics made sense in the context of the Old World, but were perceived as antique and corrupt by the more modern. After Napoleon's defeat, he stopped using his imperial title "Prince of Benevento", referring to himself henceforth as the "Prince de Talleyrand", in the same manner as his estranged wife.^[2]

Talleyrand was a great conversationalist, gourmand, and wine connoisseur. From 1801 to 1804, he owned Château Haut-Brion in Bordeaux. He employed the renowned French chef Carême, one of the first celebrity chefs known as the "chef of kings and king of chefs." His Paris residence on the Place de la Concorde, acquired in 1812 and sold to James Mayer de Rothschild in 1838, is now the Embassy of the United States.

Perhaps most remarkable, near the end of his life, Talleyrand became interested in Catholicism again while teaching his young granddaughter simple prayers. The Abbé Félix Dupanloup came to Talleyrand in his last hours, and according to Dupanloup's account Talleyrand made confession and received extreme unction. When the abbé tried to anoint Talleyrand's palms, as prescribed by the rite, he turned his hands over to make the priest anoint him on the back of the hands, since he was a bishop. Though some doubted the sincerity of the conversion, given Talleyrand's history, Talleyrand never contradicted it. Talleyrand died on May 17, 1838 and was buried at his Château de Valençay.

Today, when speaking of the art of diplomacy, the phrase "he is a Talleyrand" denotes a statesman of great resource and skill. It is anecdotally said of him that he could fool anyone without ever telling a lie, as opposed to Metternich, of whom the exact opposite was said: that he always lied but never managed to fool anyone.^{[citation needed]}

In fiction

Talleyrand was featured in the two-character theatre piece by Jean-Claude Brisville Supping with the Devil,^{[citation needed]} in which he is depicted dining with Joseph Fouché while deciding how to preserve their respective power under the coming regime. The drama was hugely successful and was turned into the movie Le Souper (1992), directed by Edouard Molinaro, starring Claude Rich and Claude Brasseur.

Talleyrand was also a major supporting character in Katherine Neville's book The Eight, a quasi-mystical adventure novel about a centuries-long struggle for control of a chess set with mysterious powers.

References

• Orieux, Jean (1970). Talleyrand ou Le Sphinx Incompris. Flammarion. ISBN 2-08-067674-1.
• de Waresquiel, Emmanuel (2003). Talleyrand, le prince immobile. Fayard. ISBN 2-213-61326-5.
• Cooper, Duff (1932). Talleyrand. Harpers. ISBN 0-88064-065-0.
• Bernard, J.F. (1973). Talleyrand: A Biography. Putnam. ISBN 0-399-11022-4.

External links

• Charles Maurice de Talleyrand Perigord 1754-1838
• Talleyrand, The Prince of Diplomats (in English)
• Society of friends of Talleyrand
• Career of Mme Grand, Talleyrand's wife

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