PRINCE TALLEYRAND. By ARCHIBALD ALISON.

[Charles Maurice Prince de Talleyrand-Perigord, one of the most distinguished of modern French statesmen and diplomatists, born in 1754, died in 1838. Originally a churchman, he became Bishop of Autun in 1788, though notorious for loose and licentious living. During the period of the revolution Talleyrand was in England and America. He returned to France in 1797, and under the Directory was called to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. He was of great assistance to Napoleon in accomplishing his coup d’état, and thenceforward was the French ruler’s trusted adviser in all matters of state till 1807, when a coldness grew on Napoleon’s part. Talleyrand’s bitter and pungent criticisms on Napoleon’s policy so enraged the emperor that he finally deprived him of his lucrative offices. In 1812 he foretold the coming downfall of Napoleon, and the accomplishment of the prediction achieved for him the admiration of Europe. While the allies were advancing on Paris in 1814, Talleyrand was in secret communication with them. After the restoration of the Bourbons, Talleyrand took but little part in public affairs till 1830, when, as ambassador to England, he negotiated an important treaty settling the status of the peninsula kingdoms of Spain and Portugal.]

Never was character more opposite to that of the Russian autocrat than that of his great coadjutor in the pacification and settlement of Europe, Prince Talleyrand. This most remarkable man was born at Paris in 1754, so that in 1814 he was already sixty years of age. He was descended of an old family, and had for his maternal aunt the celebrated Princess of Ursius, who played so important a part in the war of the succession at the court of Philippe V.[29] Being destined for the Church, he early entered the seminary of St. Sulpice, and even there was remarkable for the delicate vein of sarcasm, nice discrimination, and keen penetration, for which he afterward became so distinguished in life. At the age of twenty-six he was appointed agent-general for the clergy, and in that capacity his administrative talents were so remarkable that they procured for him the situation of Bishop of Autun, which he held in 1789, when the revolution broke out. So remarkable had his talents become at this period that Mirabeau, in his secret correspondence with Berlin, pointed him out as one of the most eminent men of the age.

He was elected representative of the clergy of his diocese for the Constitute Assembly, and was one of the first of that rank in the Church who voted on the 29th of May for the junction of the ecclesiastical body with the Tiers État. He also took the lead in all the measures, then so popular, which had for their object to spoliate the Church, and apply its possessions to the service of the state; accordingly, he himself proposed the suppression of tithes and the application of the property of the Church to the public treasury. In all these measures he was deaf to the remonstrances of the clergy whom he represented, and already he had severed all the cords which bound him to the Church.

His ruling principle was not any peculiar enmity to religion, but a fixed determination to adhere to the dominant party, whatever it was, whether in Church or state; to watch closely the signs of the times, and throw in his lot with that section of the community which appeared likely to gain the superiority. In February, 1790, he was appointed President of the Assembly, and from that time forward, down to its dissolution, he took a leading part in all its measures. He was not, however, an orator; knowledge of men and prophetic sagacity were his great qualifications. Generally silent in the hall of debate, he soon gained the lead in the council of deliberation or committee of management. He officiated as constitutional bishop to the great scandal of the more orthodox clergy in the great fête on the 14th of July, 1790, in the Champ de Mars; but he had already become fearful of the excesses of the popular party, and was, perhaps, the only person to whom Mirabeau on his deathbed communicated his secret views and designs for the restoration of the French monarchy.

Early in 1792 he set out on a secret mission to London, where he remained till the breaking out of the war in February, 1793, and enjoyed much of the confidence of Mr. Pitt. He naturally enough became an object of jealousy to both parties, being denounced by the Jacobins as an emissary of the court, and by the Royalists as an agent of the Jacobins; and, in consequence, he was accused and condemned in his absence, and only escaped by withdrawing to America, where he remained till 1795 engaged in commercial pursuits. It was not the least proof of his address and sagacity that he thus avoided equally the crimes and the dangers of the Reign of Terror, and returned to Paris at the close of that year with his head on his shoulders, and without deadly hostility to any party in his heart.

His influence and abilities soon caused themselves to be felt; the sentence of death, which had been recorded against him in his absence, was soon recalled; he became a leading member of the Club of Salm, which in 1797 was established to counterbalance the efforts of the Royalists in the Club of Clichy; and on the triumph of the revolutionists by the violence of Augereau in July, 1797, he was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs. Nevertheless, aware of the imbecility of the directorial government, he entered warmly into the views of Napoleon, upon his return from Egypt, for its overthrow. He was again made Minister of Foreign Affairs by that youthful conqueror after the 18th Brumaire, and continued, with some few interruptions, to be the soul of all foreign negotiations and the chief director of foreign policy, down to the measures directed against Spain in 1807. On that occasion, however, his wonted sagacity did not desert him; he openly disapproved of the attack on the peninsula, and was, in consequence, dismissed from office, which he did not again hold till he was appointed chief of the provisional government on the 1st of April, 1814. He had thus the singular address, though a leading character under both régimes, to extricate himself both from the crimes of the revolution and the misfortunes of the Empire.

He was no ordinary man who could accomplish so great a prodigy and yet retain such influence as to step, as it were, by common consent into the principal direction of affairs on the overthrow of Napoleon. His power of doing so depended not merely on his great talents; they alone, if unaccompanied by other qualifications, would inevitably have brought him to the guillotine under the first government or the prisons of state under the last. It was his extraordinary versatility and flexibility of disposition, and the readiness with which he accommodated himself to every change of government and dynasty which he thought likely to be permanent, that mainly contributed to this extraordinary result. Such was his address that, though the most changeable character in the whole revolution, he contrived never to lose either influence or reputation by all his tergiversations; but, on the contrary, went on constantly rising to the close of his career, when above eighty years of age, in weight, fortune, and consideration.

The very fact of his having survived, both in person and influence, so many changes of government, which had proved fatal to almost all his contemporaries, of itself constituted a colossal reputation; and when he said, with a sarcastic smile, on taking the oath of fidelity to Louis Philippe in 1830, “C’est le treisiéme,” the expression, repeated from one end of Europe to the other, produced a greater admiration for his address than indignation at his perfidy.

He has been well described as the person in existence who had the least hand in producing, and the greatest power of profiting, by revolutions. He was not destitute of original thought, but wholly without the generous feeling, the self-forgetfulness, which prompt the great in character as well as talent to bring forth their conceptions in word or action, at whatever hazard to themselves or their fortunes. His object always was not to direct, but to observe and guide the current; he never opposed it when he saw it was irresistible, nor braved its dangers where it threatened to be perilous, but quietly withdrew until an opportunity occurred, by the destruction alike of its supporters and its opponents, to obtain its direction. In this respect his talents very closely resembled those of Metternich, of whom a character has already been drawn; but he was less consistent than the wary Austrian diplomatist, and, though equaled by him in dissimulation, he was far his superior in perfidy.

It cost him nothing to contradict and violate his oaths whenever it suited his interest to do so, and the extraordinary and almost unbroken success of his career affords, as well as that of Napoleon, the most striking confirmation of the profound saying of Johnson—that no man ever raised himself from private life to the supreme direction of affairs, in whom great abilities were not combined with certain meannesses, which would have proved altogether fatal to him in ordinary life.

Yet was he without any of the great vices of the revolution; his selfishness was constant, his cupidity unbounded, his hands often sullied by gold, but he was not cruel or unforgiving in his disposition, and few, if any, deeds of blood stain his memory. His witticisms and bon mots were admirable, and repeated from one end of Europe to the other; yet was his reputation in this respect, perhaps, greater than the reality, for, by common consent, every good saying at Paris during his life-time was ascribed to the ex-Bishop of Autun. But none perhaps more clearly reveals his character and explains his success in life than the celebrated one, “That the principal object of language is to conceal the thought.”