Titans of History

TALLEYRAND

1754–1838

It seems to me that one will do him no injustice in accepting him for what he claimed to be: the type, the representative, of the times in which he lived. But, good God! What times!

Baron de Vitrolles

Talleyrand was the undisputed grand master of diplomacy. Undeniably venal, sexually promiscuous, supposedly amoral in character and capable of ruthlessness in pursuit of his goals, but also charming and witty, Talleyrand was surprisingly consistent in his views. A champion of tolerance and liberalism, in government he advocated an English-style constitutional monarchy, in international affairs a balance of power and the rule of law. He remained all his life a dedicated enemy of power that was founded on conquest and force.

Born into an ancient noble family, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord was destined for the Church as a result of a “dislocated foot,” a disability that also prompted his parents to effectively disinherit him in favor of his younger brother. Talleyrand learned early on that charm and wiliness could more than compensate for his club foot.

Talleyrand seemed able to flourish in every circumstance. As the successful, if supremely decadent, bishop of Autun, during the last years of Louis XVI (1754–93), he argued vigorously for the Church’s privileges yet became the revolutionary clergyman who equally enthusiastically dismantled them. He was always a moderate. Through a timely departure abroad on diplomatic affairs (1792), he escaped the guillotine’s worst excesses, living in England and America. On returning to a less bloodthirsty France in 1796, he managed to refute charges of counter-revolutionary behavior, became foreign minister (1797) and struck up an alliance with the rising General Napoleon Bonaparte, organizing his seizure of power. As foreign minister, Talleyrand went on to help design Napoleon’s rise to the position of emperor of the French, serving as his grand chamberlain and becoming prince of Benevento. He played his part in some of Napoleon’s excesses—notably the kidnapping and execution of the duke of Enghien and the disastrous Spanish adventure—but he grasped quickly that Napoleon’s ambitions had become despotic and self-serving. Talleyrand, humiliated by the emperor who described him as “excrement in a silk stocking,” now worked to undermine him.

Above all, in an age dominated by war, Talleyrand wanted to secure peace and stability in Europe, even if the means involved mendacity and secret intrigues. At the 1808 Congress of Erfurt he secretly persuaded Russia to oppose Napoleon’s European designs and henceforth helped Tsar Alexander I to overthrow Napoleon. (Talleyrand was also acting as matchmaker for Napoleon, brokering his marriage to Marie-Louise of Austria and securing a religious settlement with the pope.) On Napoleon’s fall in 1814, Talleyrand supervised the capitulation of Paris, welcoming the conquering Alexander into his house, fostering the restoration of the Bourbon King Louis XVIII and forming a liberal ministry as premier.

Talleyrand’s most audacious diplomacy, though, resulted in the 1815 Treaty of Vienna. Roundly defeated, and viewed in Europe as hopelessly aggressive and regicidal, France faced partition by the victorious allies. Talleyrand managed to gain France a place at the table and then fracture the anti-French alliance. The resulting treaty restored France to her 1792 borders, with no reparations to pay, effectively still a great power.

After Napoleon’s brief resurgence and defeat at Waterloo in 1815, Talleyrand, now a prince, again became prime minister, advocating a liberal monarchy on the English model. Forced out by ultra-royalists, he remained a respected grandee until another revolution overturned the stubborn Bourbons in 1830. He then returned in triumph under the July Monarchy of King Louis-Philippe to become ambassador to London in 1830, the glorious culmination of a diplomatic career of over forty years.

A survivor through several, radically different regimes, Talleyrand nevertheless remained in some ways a defiant symbol of a way of life that had disappeared. “No one who has not lived under the Ancien Régime,” he once murmured, “will know how sweet life can be.” But those living in the France of Napoleon and the restored Bourbons who attended Talleyrand’s daily semi-public lever—the last of its kind—were given a startling glimpse of the extraordinary pomp and precision of this vanished world.

Talleyrand devoted the first two hours of every morning to his lever—the serious business of rising. Like the monarchs of pre-revolutionary France, permanently surrounded by a horde of courtiers and onlookers watching and assisting his every move, Talleyrand made getting dressed a public event. His rooms were open to all who wished to attend—provided they were amusing, or at least furnished with up-to-date news and gossip.

Talleyrand’s lever was an incomparable opportunity for networking and the exchange of information and repartee. Statesmen and society ladies, doctors, academics, financiers, on occasion the tsar of Russia, all were regular visitors to the prince’s apartments. As 11 o’clock approached and men and women of all ages intrigued and debated the events of the day, Talleyrand limped into the room swathed in white flannel and nightcap, a mummified figure who slept in a bed with a deep hollow because he was terrified of falling out of it.

The elderly Courtiade, the most famous valet of the age, directed proceedings. Two junior valets dressed Talleyrand’s long gray hair as he sat in a chair by the fire. A sponge in a silver bowl was brought to him. After he had wiped his face, Talleyrand’s hat was immediately set upon his pomade-drenched locks.

The man who kept the best table in France confined himself to a breakfast of a single cup of chamomile tea, followed by two cups of warm water which he inhaled through his nostrils and expelled through his mouth.

Dressed from the neck up, the seated figure then had his legs unwrapped. The “dislocated foot” about which Talleyrand was so sensitive was unashamedly revealed; his long, flat left foot and the stunted, gnarled right one were washed and dried. Pursued by his valets as he then meandered around the room, signing letters, listening to newspaper articles and issuing a stream of his famously understated bon mots, Talleyrand was unswaddled and helped into an array of clothes that were almost equally bulky.

Two hours after he had first limped into the room, Talleyrand, clad in a mass of cravats and waistcoats and several pairs of stockings, allowed his valets to add the finishing touch: his breeches. Fully dressed, his paperwork done, gossip exchanged, filled in on the news of the day, Talleyrand was ready to face the world.

Talleyrand lived lavishly, courted bribes (offending the rather more correct American diplomats) and was exuberantly promiscuous, fathering at least four illegitimate children. He married a disreputable courtesan, enjoyed many affairs with an army of beauteous mistresses and his last love was his own niece, the duchess of Dino. When asked if he believed in Platonic friendship with women, he replied “After; but not before.” But his principles were consistent. A co-author of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, he was a son of the Enlightenment who had praised its ideals since his seminary youth. His faith in a constitutional monarchy drove him to support the candidate who seemed most likely to secure it. This necessitated chameleon-like changes of alliance in the turbulence of revolutionary France and brought accusations of opportunistic treachery. When Talleyrand called brie the “king of cheeses,” a contemporary remarked that it was the only king that he had never betrayed! But he was hardly unique in his dissimulation. “Treason,” he said, “is just a matter of dates.”

Diplomatic to the last, on his deathbed Talleyrand was reconciled with the Church and received the last sacraments.