Читать книгу Historical Characters - Henry Bulwer - Страница 6

Talleyrand supports the extension of the First Consul’s power, based on a principle of toleration and oblivion of the past. – Napoleon attempts peace with England; fails. – Battle of Marengo. – Treaty of Lunéville and peace of Amiens. – Society at Paris during the peace. – Rupture. – M. de Talleyrand supports Consulate for life, Legion of Honour, and Concordat. – Gets permission from the Pope to wear the secular costume and to administer civil affairs. – Marries. – Execution of Duc d’Enghien. – New coalition. – Battle of Austerlitz. – Treaty of Presburg. – Fox comes into power; attempts a peace unsuccessfully. – Prussia declares against France, and is vanquished at Jena. – Peace of Tilsit. – M. de Talleyrand resigns Ministry of Foreign Affairs. – Differences about policy in Spain. – Talleyrand and Fouché now at the head of a quiet opposition. – Russian campaign; idea of employing M. de Talleyrand. – Napoleon’s defeats commence. – Offers M. de Talleyrand the Ministry of Foreign Affairs after the battle of Leipsic, but on unacceptable conditions. – In the continued series of disasters that ensue, Talleyrand always advises peace. – Tries to persuade Marie-Louise not to quit Paris. – Doubtful then between a regency with her and the Bourbons. – When, however, her departure suspends the constituted authority, and the Emperor of Russia takes up his residence at the Hôtel Talleyrand, and asks M. de Talleyrand what government should be established, he says that of the Bourbons. – Efforts to obtain a Constitution with the Restoration. – Napoleon arrives at Fontainebleau. – Negotiates, but finally abandons the French throne, and accepts the island of Elba, under the title of Emperor, as a retreat.

I

One of M. de Talleyrand’s striking phrases (a phrase I have already quoted) was that the great Revolution “avait désossé la France” – “had disboned France!” There had ceased, in fact, to be any great principles in that country, holding affairs together, and keeping them in form and order. He said, then, “What principles cannot do, a man must. When society cannot create a government, a government must create society.” It was with this idea that he was willing to centre in Napoleon all the power which that wonderful man’s commanding genius required. But he wanted, in return, two things: one, that he should himself profit by the power he aided in establishing; the other, that that power should be exercised, on the whole, for the benefit of the French nation. Relying, for the moment, on the fulfilment of these conditions, he delivered himself up to a dictatorship which should quietly and gradually absorb all the used-up opinions and institutions.

Sieyès, who, with a more profound, had a less sagacious intellect, imagined that after he, a man of letters, had handed over the State to a daring, unscrupulous man of the world, he could govern that man. But M. de Talleyrand rather despised and underrated Sieyès, whom he looked on as a tailor who was always making coats that never fitted – a skilful combiner of theories, but without any tact as to their application; and when some one, à propos of the new constitution, which Sieyès had undertaken to frame, said, “Après tout ce Sieyès a un esprit bien profond,” he replied, “Profond! Hem! Vous voulez dire peut-être creux.”38

Bonaparte’s conduct justified this witticism; for when the first project of the constitution alluded to was presented to him, he treated it with ridicule, in the well-known phrase: “A man must have little honour or intellect who would consent to be a pig, put up in a stye to fatten on so many millions a year.”

The hero of the 18th Brumaire was not, in truth, a man who would accept the robes without the reality of power; and having taken out of the plan proposed for his acceptance what suited his views, and discarded the rest, he endowed himself with as much authority as he thought would be tolerated; for though France was wearied with perpetual changes and convulsions, she was not at that time prepared to end them by a new sovereignty.

One of the causes, indeed, which facilitated Napoleon’s early steps towards the great object of his ambition, was the general incredulity as to the possibility of his attaining it.

M. de Talleyrand himself did not, in all probability, imagine that he was making a military empire, when he was aiming at concentrating authority in the hands of the chief of the Republic; but he thought that the first care was to steady a community which had so long lost its balance; and on one occasion, shortly after the formation of the new government, and when the part which the first consul was to play was not yet altogether decided, he is said by a contemporary39 to have held, at a private interview with the first consul, the following language:40—

“Citizen consul, you have entrusted to me the ministry of foreign affairs, and I will justify your confidence; but I think I must declare to you that henceforth I will communicate with you alone. This is no vain presumption on my part. I say that, in the interest of France – in order that it may be well governed – in order that there may be unity of action in its conduct – you must be the first consul; and the first consul must have in his hands all the political part of the government; i. e., the ministry of the interior and of the police, for internal affairs; and my ministry for foreign; and also the two great ministries of execution, the war and the marine. It would be proper that these five departments should communicate with you alone. The administrations of justice and finance are, no doubt, connected with the policy of the State by many ties, but these ties are less inseparable from that policy than the departments I have mentioned. If you will allow me to say so, then, general, I would add that it would be convenient to give to the second consul, a very clever jurisconsult, the department of justice; and to the third consul, also very able as a financier, the direction of the finances. These matters will occupy and amuse them. And you, general, having at your disposal all the mainsprings of government, will be able to give it that fitting direction for arriving at the noble aim which you have in view – the regeneration of France.”

II

The minister of foreign affairs, in advising a willing listener thus to take possession of all important affairs, merely echoed, it must be allowed, a general sentiment; for all the different parties then in presence saw the new dictator through glasses coloured by their own particular illusions. The Royalists imagined that General Bonaparte would turn out a General Monk; the moderate Republicans, a General Washington! M. de Talleyrand knew that Bonaparte was neither a Monk nor a Washington; and that he would neither hand over the power he had acquired to the exiled dynasty, nor lay it down at the feet of the French people. He was aware, on the contrary, that he would keep it as long as he could keep it; and he wished him to keep it with a system which should have at its head the men of the Revolution, without excluding men of the ancient régime who would accept the principles that the Revolution had founded. This was precisely, at that moment, the view of Napoleon himself; and the appointment of Fouché, a regicide, as minister of police, and the permission for the Royalist émigrés and the proscribed priests to return to France, gave the exact expression of the policy that was thenceforth to be pursued.

But none knew better than the first consul that it was necessary, having gained power by war, to show that he wished to consolidate it by peace. He addressed, therefore, his famous letter to George III.,41 on the effect of which he counted little, and his minister of foreign affairs less. But it was always something in the eyes of his nation to have evinced his own inclination for an interval of repose, and to have placed himself on a level with kings when he spoke to them as the popular chief of the French people.

The refusal of England to treat was the signal of a new coalition, and the renewal of a general war; at the commencement of which Bonaparte, by a stroke of genius, defeated the Austrians in Italy when they were marching as they conceived without opposition into France.

But although the hopes of the cabinet of Vienna were struck down at the battle of Marengo, it did not yet submit to despair, even when the Emperor Paul, flattered by the attentions of the first consul (who had returned him his prisoners newly clothed), had withdrawn from the coalition. The policy of France, under these circumstances, was to create divisions amongst the remaining allies (Austria and England) by opening negotiations with each. This was tried by M. de Talleyrand with the cabinet of Vienna, through the means of the Comte St. Julien, who (sent to settle some particulars relative to the convention which took place after the Italian war) actually signed a treaty which his government disowned; and with that of St. James, through the means of an agent employed in the exchange of prisoners, but whose attempts as a negotiator also failed. The success of Moreau, in Germany, however, at last obtained the treaty of Lunéville; and shortly afterwards M. Otto concluded in London the preliminaries of a similar treaty, which was received with equal joy by the French and English nations.

The skill with which these affairs were conducted was generally acknowledged; but M. de Talleyrand had nevertheless to undergo the mortification of seeing Joseph Bonaparte named the negotiator with Lord Cornwallis instead of himself. He accepted, however, this arrangement with a good grace, for he had this great advantage over most men, – his vanity submitted itself easily to his interest or his ambition; and seeing the impolicy of a rivalry with the first consul’s eldest brother, he saw also that, having already obtained the signature of the preliminaries of a treaty, he should have with the public all the merits of that treaty if it took place, and Joseph Bonaparte all the blame, if any failure in the further negotiations occurred.

In the meantime, the seas were opened at once to France, and the English government, having made this immediate concession, was almost bound to give way in any subsequent discussions; for to have yielded what France most desired in order to obtain peace, and then not to have obtained it, would have been ridiculous. Thus, a definitive treaty was shortly afterwards signed at Amiens, and Paris re-opened its gates to the excited curiosity of the English traveller.

III

During this period M. de Talleyrand’s house became necessarily one of the great resorts of foreign visitors. He lived in the Hôtel Galifet, then the official residence of the minister of foreign affairs, a large hotel in the Rue St. Dominique (Faubourg St. Germain), which had been built by a rich colonist of St. Domingo, who gave no other order to his architect than to erect an hotel with ninety-nine columns – a monument of the skill of the builder, and of the singularity of the proprietor – which yet remains.

The principal habitués of the ministry were M. de Montrond, Duc de Laval, M. de Saint-Foix, General Duroc, Colonel Beauharnais, afterwards Prince Eugène, Fox, Erskine, &c., &c.

Some few yet remember the easy nonchalance with which, reclining on his sofa by the side of the fire, the minister of foreign affairs welcomed those whom he wished to make at home, the extreme and formal civility which marked his reception of his colleagues and the senators with whom he was not intimate, and the careless and pleasing familiarity that he used towards the favourite officers of the first consul, and the ladies and diplomatists to whom he was partial.

The enmity which for the last few years had been so violent between the French and English people was beginning to subside amidst their intercourse; but, unhappily for them and for the world, the peace, or rather truce, which they had concluded could only be maintained by acknowledging a galling inferiority to the French ruler, who, it was evident, regarded our retirement from the contest we had long waged without dishonour as a means for relieving St. Domingo, confirming his dominion over Italy, and invading Switzerland, circumstances which rendered it justifiable for England to retain Malta, even though she had foolishly and inconsiderately engaged to resign it.

I need hardly observe that the conduct of Napoleon throughout the whole of this affair was overbearing; but that of his minister of foreign affairs was the reverse; and I should add that that minister had the credit of having obtained, just as Lord Whitworth was departing, the first consul’s permission to propose an arrangement which would have left us Malta for such a compensation as, under all the circumstances, might perhaps have been accepted. But this compromise being haughtily rejected, war somewhat abruptly recommenced.

The respite, however, thus secured, had served Napoleon’s purposes, and enabled him, by the popularity it brought, to lay the first stones of the Empire, – in the Legion of Honour, out of which grew the nobility of the Empire; – in the consulship for life, which was a step towards the hereditary rank he soon assumed; and in the Concordat, which preluded his coronation by the Pope.

It is not to be presumed that these great innovations on the principles which had so long been dominant took place without a struggle. All the ardent republicans combated them as a matter of course, designating the tyrant who proposed them as a second Cæsar, who evoked the patriotism of a second Brutus. But a more serious party also attacked them in the legislative bodies, nor was it without an illegal act of authority that this party was vanquished.

The measures in question were not in fact popular, and the Concordat at one time seemed not unlikely to provoke an insurrection in the army.

M. de Talleyrand, nevertheless, supported these measures warmly; and, with the aid of Cambacérès, softened and conciliated many of their opponents.

“We have,” he constantly repeated, “to consolidate a government and reorganize a society. Governments are only consolidated by a continued policy, and it is not only necessary that this policy should be continued, – people should have the conviction that it will be so.

“I look upon the consulship for life as the only means of inspiring this conviction.”

So again, he said, with respect to the Legion of Honour and the Concordat, “In reorganizing any human society, you must give it those elements which you find in every human society.

“Where did you ever see one flourish without honours or religion? The present age has created a great many new things, but it has not created a new mankind; and if you mean to legislate practically for men, you must treat men as what they always have been and always are.”

For the Concordat he had a peculiar reason to plead; no one gained so much by it: for he now legitimately entered into civil life on the authority of his spiritual master, and by a brief which I here cite: —

“To our very dear son, Charles Maurice Talleyrand.42

“We were touched with joy at learning your ardent desire to be reconciled with us and the Catholic Church: loosening then on your account the bowels of our fatherly charity, we discharge you by the plenitude of our power from the effect of all excommunications. We impose on you, as the consequence of your reconciliation with us and the Church, the distribution of alms, more especially for the poor of the church of Autun, which you formerly governed: we grant you, moreover, the liberty to wear the secular costume and to administer all civil affairs, whether in the office you now fill, or in others to which your government may call you.”

This brief was taken by M. de Talleyrand as a permission to become a layman, and even to take a wife. The lady he married, born in the East Indies, divorced from a M. Grand, and mentioned, in connection with a scandalous story, in the life of Sir Philip Francis, was as remarkable for being a beauty as for not being a wit. Every one has heard the story (whether true or invented) of her asking Sir George Robinson after his man “Friday.” But M. de Talleyrand vindicated his choice, saying, “A clever wife often compromises her husband; a stupid one only compromises herself.”

IV

It was shortly after the renewal of hostilities that the event occurred which has given rise to the most controversy concerning Napoleon, and to the bitterest attacks upon M. de Talleyrand. I speak of the execution of the Duc d’Enghien. Many details attending this transaction are still in dispute; but the broad outline of it is as follows: —

The pure Republicans (as they were then called) had, on the one hand, at this period become desperate; on the other hand, the latitude that had for a time been allowed to the Royalists, had given that party courage. The renewal of an European war increased this courage. The power and prestige of the marvellous person at the head of the consular government had made both parties consider that nothing was possible to them as long as he lived.

A variety of attempts had consequently been made against his life. The popular belief – that of Bonaparte himself – was that these attempts proceeded mainly from the émigrés, aided by the money of England, a belief which the foolish correspondence of the British minister at Munich, Mr. Drake, with a pretended émigré– in fact, however, an agent of the French government (Mahée), – might unfortunately have encouraged.

George Cadoudal, the daring leader of the Chouans, who had already been implicated in plots of this kind, was known to be in Paris and engaged in some new enterprise, with which Pichegru, certainly – Moreau, apparently – was connected. But in the reports of the police it was also stated that the conspirators awaited the arrival at Paris of a prince of the house of Bourbon.

The Duc d’Enghien, then residing at Ettenheim, in the Duchy of Baden, seemed the most likely of the Bourbon princes to be the one alluded to: and spies were sent to watch his movements.

The reports of such agents are rarely correct in the really important particulars. But they were particularly unfortunate in this instance, for they mistook, owing to the German pronunciation, a Marquis de Thumery, staying with the Bourbon Prince, for Dumouriez: and the presence of that general on the Rhenan frontier, and with a Condé, strongly corroborated all other suspicions.

A council was summoned, composed of the three consuls, – Bonaparte, Cambacérès, Lebrun, – the minister of justice and police, Régnier, – and Talleyrand, minister of foreign affairs.43

At this council (10th March 1804) it was discussed whether it would not be advisable to seize the Duc d’Enghien, though out of France, and bring him to Paris; and the result was the immediate expedition of a small force, under Colonel Caulaincourt, which seized the prince on the Baden territory (15th March); M. de Talleyrand, in a letter to the Grand Duke, explaining and justifying the outrage. Having been kept two days at Strasburg, the royal victim was sent from that city, on the 18th, in a post chariot, arrived on the 20th at the gates of Paris at eleven in the morning; was kept there till four in the afternoon; was then conducted by the boulevards to Vincennes, which he reached at nine o’clock in the evening; and was shot at six o’clock on the following morning, having been condemned by a military commission – composed of a general of brigade (General Hullin), six colonels, and two captains – according to a decree of the governor of Paris (Murat) of that day (20th March), which decree (dictated by Napoleon) ordered the unfortunate captive to be tried on the charge of having borne arms against the Republic: of having been and being in the pay of England, and of having been engaged in plots, conducted by the English in and out of France, against the French government. The concluding order was, that, if found guilty, he should be at once executed.

The whole of this proceeding is atrocious. A prince of the dethroned family is arrested in a neutral state, without a shadow of legality;44 he is brought to Paris and tried for his life on accusations which, considering his birth and position, no generous enemy could have considered crimes; he is found guilty without a witness being called, without a proof of the charges against him being adduced, and without a person to defend him being allowed.45

This trial takes place at midnight, in a dungeon; and the prisoner is shot, before the break of day, in a ditch!

It is natural enough that all persons connected with such a transaction should have endeavoured to escape from its ignominy. General Hullin has charged Savary (afterwards Duc de Rovigo), who, as commander of the gendarmerie, was present at the execution, with having hurried the trial, and prevented an appeal to Napoleon, which the condemned prince demanded. The Duc de Rovigo denies with much plausibility these particulars, and indeed, all concern in the affair beyond his mere presence, and the strict fulfilment of the orders he had received; and accuses M. de Talleyrand – against whom it must be observed he had on other accounts a special grudge – of having led to the prince’s seizure by a report read at the Council on the 10th March; of having intercepted a letter written to the first consul by the illustrious captive at Strasburg, and of having hastened and provoked the execution, of which he offers no other proof than that he met Talleyrand, at five o’clock, coming out of Murat’s, who was then, as I have said, governor of Paris, and who had just given orders for the formation of the military commission. It must be observed also, that, for the report of what passed in the council, M. de Rovigo only quotes a conversation which he had some years afterwards with Cambacérès, who was anxious to prove that he himself had opposed the violation of the German territory.

As to the supposed letter written by the Duc d’Enghien, the persons about the Duc declared that he never wrote a letter at Strasburg; and in the prince’s diary, which speaks of a letter to the Princesse de Rohan, there is no mention of a letter to the first consul. With respect to another letter, written, the Duc de Rovigo seems to suppose, by M. Massias, French minister at Baden, there is no trace of it in the French archives; whilst the mere fact of M. de Talleyrand having been at Murat’s proves nothing (if it be true that he was there) beyond the visit. Indeed, as Murat himself blamed the execution, and did what he could to avert it (see Thiers’ Consulate and Empire, vol. v. p. 4), there is some probability that, if M. de Talleyrand sought Murat, it was with a view of seeing what could be done to save the prince, and not with the view of destroying him. On the other hand, Bourrienne, who had opportunities of knowing the truth, asserts that M. de Talleyrand, so far from favouring this murder, warned the Duc d’Enghien, through the Princesse de Rohan, of the danger in which he stood.

The Duc Dalberg, minister of Baden at Paris in 1804, also speaks of M. de Talleyrand as opposed to all that was done in this affair.46

Louis XVIII., to whom M. de Talleyrand wrote when the Duc de Rovigo’s statement appeared, ordered that personage to appear no more at his court. Fouché declared the act to be entirely that of the first consul; and lastly, Napoleon himself always maintained that the act was his own, and justified it.

For myself, after weighing all the evidence that has come before me (none of it, I must admit, quite conclusive), my persuasion is that the first consul had determined either to put the prince in his power to death, or to humiliate him by a pardon granted at his request; and it seems to me not improbable that he hesitated, though rather disposed, perhaps, to punish than to spare, till all was over.

For this supposition there is the declaration of his brother Joseph, who says that a pardon had been promised to Josephine; of Madame de Rémusat, who, playing at chess that evening with Napoleon, states that he was muttering all the night to himself lines from the great French poets in favour of clemency; and, lastly, there is an order given to M. Real, minister of police, who was charged to see the Duc d’Enghien, and to report to Bonaparte the result of the interview, which evidently implied that no execution was intended till the minister’s report had reached the terrible disposer of life or death, who might then finally take his resolve.

But the opportunity of coming to a decision, after receiving the report of the minister of police, never occurred. By one of those unforeseen accidents which sometimes frustrate intentions, M. Real, to whose house the written instructions I have been speaking of were carried by Savary himself, had gone to bed with the injunction not to be disturbed, and did not wake till the prince was no more: – so that Napoleon had not the chance of clemency, which he undoubtedly expected, presented to him. At all events, whatever may have been the intentions of this extraordinary man, whose policy was generally guided by calculations in which human life was considered of small importance, I believe, as far as regards the person I am principally occupied with: first, that M. de Talleyrand did read at the Council on the 10th of March a memoir containing the information that had reached his office, and which he was naturally obliged to report; secondly, that when M. de Cambacérès spoke against the original arrest, M. de Talleyrand remained silent, which may be accounted for either by a wish not to compromise himself, or, as persons well acquainted with Napoleon have assured me, by a knowledge that this was the best way to give efficacy to M. de Cambacérès’ arguments; thirdly, that when M. de Talleyrand wrote to the Grand Duke of Baden, excusing the intended violation of his territory, he did endeavour to convey such a warning to the Duc d’Enghien as would prevent his being captured; finally, that when the Duc was brought up to Vincennes he gave no advice (which he thought would be useless) to Bonaparte, but approved of the efforts made by Josephine and Joseph, who were the best mediators in the prince’s behalf, and that, being also aware of the instructions sent to M. Real, he did not think the execution probable.

As to taking an active part in this tragedy, such conduct would not be in harmony with his character; nor have the accusations, to which his position not unnaturally exposed him, been supported by any trustworthy testimony. To have lent himself, however, even in appearance, to so dark a deed, and to have remained an instrument in Napoleon’s hands after its committal, evinces a far stronger sense of the benefits attached to office, than of the obloquy attached to injustice.

This, it is said, he did not deny; and, when a friend advised him to resign, is reported to have replied: “If Bonaparte has been guilty, as you say, of a crime, that is no reason why I should be guilty of a folly.”

The execution of the Duc d’Enghien took place during the night of the 20th March. On the 7th of April, Pichegru, who had been arrested, was found strangled in his room, as some thought, by the police – as the government declared, by his own hands; George Cadoudal, who had also been captured, suffered on the scaffold; and Moreau, after being brought before a tribunal which condemned him to two years’ imprisonment, had this absurd sentence commuted into exile. Bonaparte having thus struck terror into the partisans of the ancient dynasty, and having rid himself of his most powerful military rival, placed on his head, amidst the servile approbation of the Legislature and the apparent acquiescence of the nation, a crown which was solemnly consecrated by Pius VII. (2nd December, 1804).

V

The assumption of the imperial title was an epoch in the struggle which had for some time been going on between the two statesmen who contributed the most, first, to raise the power of Napoleon, and finally to overthrow it. Talleyrand and Fouché are these two statesmen; and they may be taken as the representatives of the classes whose adhesion marked Bonaparte’s force, and whose defection marked his decline. The one, a great nobleman, an enlightened member of the Constituent Assembly, a liberal, such as the fashion, the theories, and the abuses of the old régime had created him. The other a plebeian and conventionalist of the mountain, a democrat and regicide by circumstances, position, and the fury of the time. From the 18th Brumaire they both attached themselves to the first consul’s fortunes. Cool, unprejudiced, without hatred, without partialities, each, notwithstanding, had the feelings of his caste; and, in moderating the passion and influencing the views of Napoleon, the one never forgot that he was born in the aristocracy, the other that he was the offspring of the people.

Fouché, then, was for employing the republican forms, and entrusting authority exclusively to what may be called new men. Talleyrand was rather for returning to the fashions of a monarchy, ridiculed, to use his own expression, the “parvenus” who had never walked on a “parquet,”47 and endeavoured to introduce into the employment of the State the aspirants whose principles were liberal, but whose names were ancient and historical.

The Empire which was the natural consequence of the tendency which Talleyrand had favoured and Fouché opposed, nevertheless united and wanted these two politicians; for while it sanctioned the advantages and titles of the old nobility, it established on a firm and equal basis a new nobility, and brought both to a central point, under the rule of a man of genius.

Fouché, once the Empire decided upon, renounced all further attempts to limit Napoleon’s will, and only sought to regain his favour.

Talleyrand, conceiving that all the hopes of the enlightened men of his youth who had sought to obtain a constitutional monarchy were at that moment visionary, abandoned them for a new order of things, which, while it pressed upon the energy and intellect of the individual Frenchman, gave a concentrated expression to the energy and intellect of the French nation, and made it ready to accept a glorious tyranny without enthusiasm, but without dissatisfaction. Nor was the French nation wholly wrong.

A great deluge had swept just recently over all that previous centuries had established; society was still on a narrow and shaking plank which required widening, strengthening, but, above all, fixing over the still turbulent and agitated waters. Everything of ancient manners, of those habits of thought, without which no community of men can march long or steadily together, was gone. No received notions on essential subjects anywhere existed; and a nation which has no such notions cannot have that sort of public morality which is, to the position and respectability of a state, what private morality is to the respectability and position of an individual. The first essential to a community is order, for under order received notions establish themselves. Order combined with liberty is the highest degree of order. But order without liberty is preferable to disorder and license. Now, Napoleon’s internal government, with all its faults, was the personification of order, as that of the convention had been of disorder; and what was the consequence? a spirit of freedom grew up amidst the despotism of the latter, as a submission to tyranny had been engendered under the wild violence of the former. The phrase, that Bonaparte “refaisait le lit des Bourbons,”48 was a criticism on his own policy, but it might be an eulogium on that of his followers.

VI

In the meantime a change of forms and titles at Paris was the sign of a similar change throughout Europe. Republics became kingdoms: the Emperor’s family, sovereigns: his marshals and favourites, princes and grand dignitaries of the Empire. Those who had shared the conqueror’s fortunes had a share allotted to them in his conquests, and for a moment the theory of the nineteenth century brought back the realities of the middle ages. Yet, and notwithstanding these signs and tokens of ambition, had it not been for the rupture with England and the cruel deed at Vincennes, Napoleon’s new dignity, that gave a splendid decoration to his new power and an apparent close to his adventurous career, would probably have induced the continent, without absolutely prostrating itself at his feet, to have acknowledged and submitted to his superiority. But the fortitude with which England had braved his menaces, and the act which had sullied his renown, produced a new coalition, and led to a treaty between England and Russia and Austria, the one signed on 11th of April, and the other the 9th of August, 1805. So formidable a combination served to disturb Bonaparte from the project of an invasion, with which he was then threatening our shores. But his star, though somewhat clouded, was still in the ascendant. The battle of Austerlitz sanctioned the title of Imperator, as the battle of Marengo had done that of Consul.

M. Mignet has given us a curious instance, extracted from the French archives, of the comprehensive views of the minister of foreign affairs at this period.49 Immediately after the victory of Ulm, M. de Talleyrand wrote to Napoleon in something like these terms:

“While your Majesty is gaining the victories which will lead to a glorious peace, I am considering how that peace can best be established. There are four great States in Europe – France, Russia, England, and Austria. England and France, from their juxtaposition, their spirit, and consequent rivality, may be considered natural enemies; that is to say, no great war will take place in Europe without these powers coming into collision. In such case, Russia cannot cordially be with France as long as she retains her projects over the Ottoman empire, which it would be madness in us to encourage. Austria, on the other hand, is sure to side with England as long as her frontiers join ours, and her natural objects of ambition are the same. A great policy, therefore, would be to deprive Russia of her Turkish dreams, and Austria of the possessions neighbouring to those states which we protect, and which, in fact, are ours. I would take from Austria, then, Suabia, in Southern Germany, the Tyrol, adjoining Switzerland; and I would make Venice an independent Republic, and thus a barrier to both parties in Italy. To this plan, however, Austria herself must consent with satisfaction, or it cannot be permanent; and I would obtain that consent by giving her, in exchange for what we take, Wallachia, Moldavia, Bessarabia, and the northern portion of Bulgaria. By this plan, your Majesty will remark, the Germans are for ever shut out of Italy, Austria made the rival of Russia and guardian of the Ottoman empire, and the Russians excluded from Europe, and thus directed upon the kingdoms of Central Asia, where they will naturally come into conflict with the rulers of Hindostan.”

“This project,” says M. Mignet, “being conceived at a time when nothing was impossible, might, after the battle of Austerlitz, have been accomplished, and would doubtless have given another destiny to Europe, and established the grandeur of France on solid foundations.”

Napoleon, however, was not inclined to adopt so great a plan on the suggestion of another; nor, indeed, is it impossible but that the secret instinct of his peculiar genius, which was for war, opposed itself to a permanent system of tranquillity. He advanced, then, in the false policy which ultimately proved his ruin; neither gaining the affection nor utterly destroying the power of the vanquished: and the cabinet of Vienna, subdued in Italy, humbled, by the confederation of the Rhine and the elevation of the secondary states, in Germany, but with its power not annihilated, and its goodwill not conciliated, signed the treaty of Presburg. This treaty, which severed the relations between the Russian and Austrian empires, and a change which now took place in the British councils, afforded another chance of giving to the new empire a peaceful and durable existence.

VII

Mr. Fox had succeeded to Mr. Pitt, and Mr. Fox was an advocate of peace and an admirer of the warrior who guided the destinies of France. He was also a personal friend of M. de Talleyrand. The Emperor Alexander shared in some degree Mr. Fox’s admiration. The hopes which he had founded on an alliance with Austria were now, moreover, at an end, and no one at that time relied on the shuffling, grasping, and timid policy of Prussia. Both the Russian and English cabinets were willing then to treat. M. d’Oubril was sent to Paris by the cabinet of St. Petersburg, and negotiations begun through Lord Yarmouth, the late Marquis of Hertford (then a “détenu”50), between the cabinets of St. James and the Tuileries.

M. de Talleyrand, in these double negotiations, succeeded in getting the Russian negotiator to sign a separate treaty, which, however, the Russian government disavowed; and acquired such an influence over Lord Yarmouth, that the English government deemed it necessary to replace him by Lord Lauderdale, who was empowered to negotiate for the two allied governments. It is but just to observe that M. de Talleyrand, though thwarted by a variety of intrigues, laboured with the utmost assiduity in favour of a peaceful termination of this negotiation; for he already saw, and at this time almost alone saw, that without peace all was yet a problem, and that, to use the words of a contemporary, “a succession of battles was a series of figures, of which the first might be ‘A,’ and the last ‘zero.’”51

The position of Malta and Sicily, both at this time in our hands, the natural reluctance that we felt at resigning them without solid guarantees for European tranquillity; and the impossibility of getting such guarantees from the pride and ambition of an aspirant to universal empire, were nevertheless difficulties too great for diplomacy to overcome; and when Prussia, which had lost the golden opportunity of fighting France with Austria by her side, had become so involved by secret engagements with Russia and by public engagements with France – and so restless in the dishonourable and dangerous position in which she found herself, as to be determined on the desperate experiment of escaping from her diplomacy by her arms, another great European struggle commenced.

Throughout the new campaigns to which this new coalition led – campaigns beginning with the victory of Jena and closing with the peace of Tilsit – M. de Talleyrand accompanied his imperial master; and though he could hardly be said to exercise a predominant influence over those events, which a more violent character and a more military genius decided, his calmness and good sense (qualities rarely, if ever, abdicated by him) produced a moderating effect upon the imperious warrior, that tended generally to consolidate his successes. The sort of cool way in which he brought to ground many of this extraordinary man’s flights, testing them by their practical results, is well enough displayed in a reply which he made to Savary, who, after the battle of Friedland, said, “If peace is not signed in a fortnight, Napoleon will cross the Niemen.”

“Et à quoi bon,” replied M. de Talleyrand, “passer le Niemen?”52 “Why pass the Niemen?”

The Niemen, then, partly owing to M. de Talleyrand’s counsels, was for this once not passed; and, at last, France, pretending to sacrifice Turkey, and Russia abandoning England, the two combatants signed a treaty, which anticipated that the domination of Europe was for the future to be shared between them.

VIII

At this period M. de Talleyrand, who had been more struck in the recent war by the temerity than by the triumph of the conqueror, thought that Napoleon’s military and his own diplomatic career should cease. Fortune, indeed, had carried both the one and the other to the highest point, which, according to their separate characters and the circumstances of the times, they were likely to attain. To Napoleon’s marvellous successes seemed now to belong a supernatural prestige, which the slightest misfortune was capable of destroying, and which a new victory could hardly augment. So also the reputation of M. de Talleyrand was at its height, and many were disposed to consider him as great a master in the science of politics as his sovereign was in that of war. He had acquired, moreover, immense wealth, as it is said, by extorted gifts from the Powers with which he had been treating, and more especially from the small princes of Germany, whom in the general division of their territory he could either save or destroy, and also by successful speculations on the stock exchange:53– means of acquiring riches highly discreditable to his character, but thought lightly of in a country that teaches the philosophy of indulgence, and had recently seen wealth so rudely scrambled for, that the “Res si possis recte” had become as much a French as ever it was a Roman proverb. His health, moreover, was broken, and unequal to the constant attendance on the Emperor’s person, which had become almost inseparable from his office; while the elevation of Berthier to the rank of vice-constable established a precedency exceedingly galling to his pride. Under these circumstances, he solicited and obtained permission to retire, and already Prince de Benevent received the title of “vice-grand electeur,” raising him to the rank of one of the great dignitaries of the Empire; a position which it appears – so small are even the greatest of us – he desired.

This change in his situation, however, was by no means as yet what it has sometimes been represented – a “disgrace.” He still retained great influence in the Emperor’s councils, was consulted on all matters relative to foreign affairs, and even appointed with M. de Champagny, his successor, to conduct the negotiations with the court of Spain, which, owing to the invasion of Portugal and the quarrels which had already broken out in the family of Charles IV., were beginning to assume a peculiar character.54

It has been said, indeed, on the one side, that M. de Talleyrand was opposed to any interference with Spain; and, on the other, that it was actually he who first counselled Bonaparte’s proceedings in that country. It is probable that he did so far compromise himself in this matter as to advise an arrangement which would have given the territory north of the Ebro to France, and yielded Portugal as a compensation to the Spanish monarch. It is not impossible, moreover, that he knew as early as 1805 – for Joseph Bonaparte was then told to learn the Spanish language – that Napoleon had vague dreams of replacing the Bourbon by the Bonaparte dynasty in the Peninsula. But when the French armies, without notice, took possession of Burgos and Barcelona; when an insurrection deposed Charles IV., and the Emperor was about to adopt the policy, not of peaceably aggrandizing France and strengthening Spain against Great Britain, but of kidnapping the Spanish princes and obtaining by a sort of trick the Spanish crown, he was resolutely and bitterly opposed to it, saying: “On s’empare des couronnes, mais on ne les escamote pas” (“one takes a crown from a sovereign’s head, but one does not pick his pocket of it”). “Besides, Spain is a farm which it is better to allow another to cultivate for you, than to cultivate yourself.”

Comte de Beugnot, in his memoirs recently published, speaks thus of these transactions:55

“The Prince de Benevent was acquainted, in all its details, with what had passed (at Bayonne). He appeared indignant. ‘Victories,’ he said, ‘do not suffice to efface such things as these, because there is something in them which it is impossible to describe, that is vile, deceitful, cheating! I cannot tell what will happen, but you will see that no one will pardon him (the Emperor) for this.’ The Duc Decrès, indeed,” M. de Beugnot continues, “has told me more than once that the Emperor had in his presence reproached M. de Talleyrand for having counselled what took place at Bayonne, without M. de Talleyrand seeking to excuse himself. This has always astonished me. It is sufficient to have known M. de Talleyrand to be sure that, if he had been favourable to dispossessing the princes of the House of Bourbon of the Spanish throne, he would not have resorted to the means that were employed. Besides, when he spoke to me, it was with a sort of passion that he never displayed but on subjects which strongly excited him.”

There can be no doubt, indeed, that what took place as to Spain was a subject of great difference between M. de Talleyrand and Napoleon. M. de Talleyrand would never afterwards during the reign of Louis XVIII. have publicly affirmed this, surrounded as he was by contemporaries and enemies, if it had not been true. Moreover, the general voice of the time, which is more in such cases to be trusted than any individual testimony, loudly proclaimed it; and as to not answering Napoleon when he was pouring forth in violent and insulting language the accusations which he sometimes levelled at those who displeased him, it is well known that M. de Talleyrand never replied to such attacks but by an impassible face and a dignified silence.

IX

Nor were the affairs of the Peninsula the only ones on which M. de Talleyrand and the Emperor at this time disagreed. The French troops entered Rome and Spain (for Napoleon was now for despoiling the Pope as a prince, after courting him as a Pontiff) about the same epoch; and the Prince of Benevent was as opposed to one violence as to the other.

It was not, however, out of this affair, or that affair in particular, that the enmity between the emperor and his former minister – an enmity so important in the history of both – took its rise.

M. de Talleyrand, the Empire once established and fortunate, had attached himself to it with a sort of enthusiasm. The poesy of victory, and the eloquence of an exalted imagination, subdued for a time the usual nonchalance and moderation of his character. He entered into all Napoleon’s plans for reconstituting “An Empire of the Francs,” and reviving the system of fiefs and feudal dignitaries; by which it is, however, true, that the followers and favourites of the conqueror had nothing to lose. “Any other system,” he said, “but a military one, is in our circumstances at present impossible. I am, then, for making that system splendid, and compensating France for her liberty by her grandeur.”

The principality he enjoyed, though it by no means satisfied him, was a link between him and the policy under which he held it. He wished to keep it, and to safeguard the prosperity of a man, whose adversity would cause him to lose it. But he had a strong instinct for the practical; all governments, according to his theory, might be made good, except an impossible one. A government depending on constant success in difficult undertakings, at home and abroad, was, according to his notions, impossible. This idea, after the Peace of Tilsit, more or less haunted him. It made him, in spite of himself, bitter against his chief – bitter at first, more because he liked him than because he disliked him. He would still have aided to save the Empire, but he was irritated because he thought he saw the Empire drifting into a system which would not admit of its being saved. A sentiment of this kind, however, is as little likely to be pardoned by one who is accustomed to consider that his will must be law, as a sentiment of a more hostile nature.

Napoleon began little by little to hate the man for whom he had felt at one time a predilection, and if he disliked any one, he did that which it is most dangerous to do, and most useless; that is, he wounded his pride without diminishing his importance. It is true that M. de Talleyrand never gave any visible sign of being irritated. But few, whatever the philosophy with which they forgive an injury, pardon a humiliation; and thus, stronger and stronger grew by degrees that mutual dissatisfaction which the one vented at times in furious reproaches, and the other disguised under a studiously respectful indifference.

X

This carelessness as to the feelings of those whom it would have been wiser not to offend, was one of the most fatal errors of the conqueror, who could not learn to subdue his own passions: but he had become at this time equally indifferent to the hatred and affection of his adherents; and, under the ordinary conviction of persons over-satisfied with themselves, fancied that everything depended on his own merits, and nothing on the merits of his agents. The victory of Wagram, and the marriage with Marie Louise, commenced, indeed, a new era in his history. Fouché was dismissed, though not without meriting a reprimand for his intrigues; and Talleyrand fell into unequivocal disgrace, in some degree provoked by his witticisms; whilst round these two men gathered a quiet and observant opposition, descending with the clever adventurer to the lowest classes, and ascending with the dissatisfied noble to the highest.

The scion of the princely house of Périgord was, indeed, from his birth, quite as much as from his position in the Empire, at the head of the discontented of the aristocracy; M. de Talleyrand’s house then (the only place, perhaps, open to all persons, where the government of the day was treated without reserve) became a sort of “rendezvous” for a circle which replied to a victory by a bon mot, and confronted the borrowed ceremonies of a new court by the natural graces and acknowledged fashions of an old one. All who remember society at this time, will remember that the ex-minister was the sole person who had a sort of existence and reputation, separate and distinct from the chief of the State, whose policy he now affected to consider, and probably did consider, as verging towards the passion of a desperate gambler, who would continue to tempt Fortune until she grew wearied and deserted him.

Nor did the Austrian alliance, which the Emperor had lately formed, meet with M. de Talleyrand’s approval, although he had at one period advised it, and been also mixed up in the question of a marriage with the imperial family of Russia. This change might have proceeded from his now seeing that such an union as he had at one time favoured, in the hope that it would calm the restless energy of Napoleon, would only stimulate his ambition: or it might have been because, having had nothing to do with the resolutions adopted at Vienna, he had gained nothing by them. At all events, what he said with apparent sincerity, was – “Nothing is ever got by a policy which you merely carry out by halves.” “If the Emperor wants an alliance with Austria, he should satisfy Austria: does he think that the House of Hapsburg considers it an honour to ally itself with the House of Bonaparte? What the Emperor of Austria desires, is to have his provinces restored, and his empire raised and revived: if the government of France does not do this, it disappoints him; and the worst enemies we can have are those we disappoint.”

These sentiments, however, found as yet no echo out of the circle of a few independent and enlightened politicians.

I remember two of these – both high in the service of the Empire – M. de Barante and M. Molé, referring in my hearing to a conversation they had had at the period I am speaking of, and one saying to the other, “Do you call to mind how we both regarded what was passing before us as a magnificent scene in an opera, which, whilst it satisfied the eye with its splendour, did not fill the mind with a sense of its reality?”

But the masses were still dazzled by the splendid achievements of a man who, of all others, in ancient or modern history, would have been the greatest if he had joined the instincts of humanity with those of genius: but now each day that passed added to the fatal disposition which separated his future from his past; each hour he became more haughty and self-confident, and more inclined to an isolated career, which neither tolerated counsel nor clung to affection. Josephine, the wife of his youth – Pauline, his favourite sister – Louis, his youngest brother – Massena, his ablest general – were added to the list on which his two ablest ministers were inscribed. He had no longer even the idea of conciliating mankind to his arbitrary authority. His mighty intellect, subdued by his still mightier ambition, submitted itself to adopt a system of despotism and oppression which interfered not only with the political opinions, but with the daily wants, of all his subjects and all his allies.

War with him had become an effort to exterminate those who still opposed him, by oppressing those who had hitherto aided him. Thus, he had seized the Roman pontiff, kidnapped the Spanish king, taken violent possession of the Hanseatic towns and the North of Germany; and even those countries which were free from his armies, were bound, as he contended, to obey his decrees. In this state of things commenced the last and fatal struggle between the two potentates, who a short time before had projected partitioning the empire of the world as friendly confederates, and were now prepared to contend for it as deadly foes. Nor was the justice of M. de Talleyrand’s views ever more conspicuous! The destruction of Prussia, by making Russia and France neighbours, had in itself tended to make them enemies. Moreover, the proud and offended, but dissimulating Czar, though redoubling his courtesy towards the court of France after the choice of an Austrian archduchess, lest he might be supposed hurt by the rejection of a marriage with a princess of his own family, had begun to feel that, with the rest of continental Europe subdued and Austria apparently gained, he was alone in his independence; and to fret under the rein, which his imperious rider pulled, with superb indifference, somewhat too tightly.

Besides, though invested with unbounded authority over his people by law and custom, there was the example of his father to teach him that he could not wholly disregard their interests or wishes; yet this was what the Emperor of the French exacted from him. His subjects were not to sell their produce to the only purchaser who was ready and desirous to buy it; – and being thus harshly and foolishly placed between revolution and war, Alexander chose the latter.

XI

On the other hand, Napoleon, in determining on a conflict of which he did not disguise from himself the importance, awoke for a moment to his former sense of the necessity of using able men in great affairs, and was disposed, notwithstanding his disagreements with M. de Talleyrand, to send him to Warsaw to organise a kingdom of Poland; nor was it surprising that, confident in the sagacity and tact of the agent he thought of employing, he was also satisfied that, in the event of that agent’s accepting employment, he might count perfectly on his fidelity; for throughout M. de Talleyrand’s long career and frequent changes there is not any instance of his having betrayed any one from whom he accepted a trust. The difficulty of reconciling the Prince de Benevent’s position with that of the Duc de Bassano, who accompanied the Emperor on this campaign as minister of foreign affairs, prevented, it is said, the projected arrangement. But neither during this transient gleam of returning favour, nor after it, did M. de Talleyrand’s opinion against the chances which Napoleon was unnecessarily (as he thought) running, ever vary; neither were they disguised. He insisted principally on the chance of war, which often decides against the ablest general and the most skilful combinations; on the great loss which would result from a defeat, and the small gain that would follow a victory. The whole of Europe that the reckless general left behind him was, he knew, kept down merely by fear and constraint, and though ready to assist an advancing army, certain to fall on a retreating one. Besides, supposing defeat was almost impossible, what had France to gain by success?

Alexander might reiterate his promise of preventing all commercial interchange between Great Britain and his dominions; but would he be able to keep that promise? He could not. The mind of Napoleon, however, had now been trained by Fortune to consider wars mere military parades, shortly after the commencement of which he entered the capital of his conquered enemy and returned to Paris to be greeted by enthusiastic acclamations at the theatre. He required this sort of excitement, and like most men similarly influenced, convinced himself that what was pleasing to his vanity was demanded by his interests.

There were three epochs, indeed, in Napoleon’s career: the first, when he fought for glory abroad to gain empire at home; the second, when, being master of the government of France, he fought to extend the limits of France, and to make himself the most powerful individual in his nation, and his nation the most powerful nation in the world; the third, when France being but a secondary consideration, his ambition was bent on becoming master of the universe, and acquiring a dominion of which France would be almost an insignificant portion.

It is necessary to bear this in mind, since it explains Napoleon’s Russian campaign; it explains the difficulties he raised against withdrawing his troops from Germany after that campaign had ended in defeat; and his constant dislike to accept any conditions that put a positive extinguisher on his gigantic projects. To support his own confidence in such projects he persuaded himself that a charm attached to his existence, that supernatural means would arrive to him when natural means failed. He did not, however, neglect on this occasion the natural means.

When Fouché expressed his apprehensions at so vast an enterprise, the soldier’s answer is said to have been, “I wanted 800,000 men, and I have them.”56 But France had begun to be at this period wearied even with his successes; and the affair of Mallet, which happened just previously to the arrival of the bad intelligence from Russia, showed pretty clearly that her Emperor’s fall or defeat left an open space for any new system that circumstances might favour or impose.

No sooner, then, had the news that Moscow was burnt reached Paris than M. de Talleyrand considered the Bonapartist cause as lost. Not that Bonaparte might not yet have saved himself by prudence, but he was not prudent; not but that the French government might not yet have brought as many men in uniform into the field as the allies, but that nations fought on one side, and merely soldiers on the other.

The sagacious statesman, therefore, who now began again to be consulted, advised a conclusion of the war, promptly, at once, and on almost all conditions. So, again, when the defection of the Prussians was known, and Napoleon summoned a council to determine what should be done under such circumstances, he said: “Negotiate: you have now in your hands effects which you can give away; to-morrow they may be gone, and then the power to negotiate advantageously will be gone also.”57

During the armistice at Prague (June, 1813), when the prestige of two or three recent victories coloured the negotiations, and France might have had Holland, Italy, and her natural frontiers, both Talleyrand and Fouché, who was also asked for his advice, repeated constantly, “The Emperor has but one thing to do – to make peace; and the more quickly he makes it, the better he will make it.” So also, when M. de St. Aignan, after the battle of Leipsic, brought propositions from Frankfort, which might even yet have given France her frontier of the Rhine (November), M. de Talleyrand urged their acceptance with the least delay, and told the Emperor that a bad peace was better than the continuation of a war that could not end favourably.58

Napoleon himself at this time wavered, and with a momentary doubt as to his own judgment, and a remembrance very possibly of happier times, offered the portfolio of foreign affairs to his ancient minister, but on the condition that he should lay down the rank and emoluments of vice-grand-elector.

The object of the Emperor was thus to make M. de Talleyrand entirely dependent on his place; but M. de Talleyrand, who would have accepted the office, refused the condition, saying, “If the Emperor trusts me, he should not degrade me; and if he does not trust me, he should not employ me; the times are too difficult for half measures.”

XII

The state of affairs at this period was assuredly most critical. In looking towards Spain, there was to be seen an English army, crowned by victory, and about to descend from the Pyrenees. In looking towards Germany, there was a whole population, whom former defeat had exasperated, and recent success encouraged, burning to cross the Rhine in search of the trophies of which an enemy still boasted. In Italy, a defection in the Emperor’s family was about to display the full extent of his misfortunes. In Holland, the colours of the exiled family (the House of Orange) were displayed with rapture amidst shouts for national independence; even the King of Denmark had left the French alliance; while in France a people unanimated by liberty, an army decimated by defeat, generals that had lost their hopes, and arsenals which were empty, were the sole resources with which its ruler had to encounter all Europe in arms.

The refusal of M. de Talleyrand, then, to accept office at such a time, unless with all the confidence and splendour that could give it authority, was natural enough; but it is also not surprising that the sovereign who had made that offer should have been irritated by its rejection, whilst many urged that the vice-grand-elector, if not employed, should be arrested. All proof, however, of treason was wanting; and the chief of the Empire justly dreaded the effect which, both at home and abroad, any violent act might produce; for it was far more difficult, than many have supposed, for him to strike, when his power was once on the decline, any strong blow against an eminent functionary. His government was a government of functionaries, throughout whom there reigned a sort of fraternity that could not safely be braved.

This stern man had, moreover, – and this was one of the most remarkable and amiable portions of his character – a sort of tenderness, which he never overcame, for those who had once been attached to his person, or had done eminent service to his authority.59 He resolved, then, not to take any violent measure against M. de Talleyrand; but though he could restrain his anger from acts, he could not from expressions.

A variety of scenes was the consequence. Savary relates one which happened in his presence and that of the arch-chancellor. I have also read of one in which Napoleon, having said that if he thought his own death likely he would take care that the vice-grand-elector should not survive him, was answered by M. de Talleyrand rejoining, quietly and respectfully, that he did not require that reason for desiring that his Majesty’s life might be long preserved. M. Molé recounted to me another, in the following terms: “At the end of the Council of State, which took place just before the Emperor started for the campaign of 1814, he burst out into some violent exclamations of his being surrounded by treachery and traitors; and then turning to M. de Talleyrand, abused him for ten minutes in the most violent and outrageous manner. Talleyrand was standing by the fire all this time, guarding himself from the heat of the flame by his hat; he never moved a limb or a feature; any one who had seen him would have supposed that he was the last man in the room to whom the Emperor could be speaking; and finally, when Napoleon, slamming the door violently, departed, Talleyrand quietly took the arm of M. Mollien, and limped with apparent unconsciousness downstairs. But on getting home, he wrote a dignified letter to the Emperor, saying, that if he retained his present dignity, he should be by right one of the regency, and that as he could not think of holding such a charge after the opinion his Majesty had expressed of him, he begged to resign his post, and to be allowed to retire into the country. He was informed, however, that his resignation would not be accepted, and that he might stay where he was.”

It is to be presumed that insults like that I have been relating went a great way towards alienating and disgusting the person they were meant to humiliate; but though at the head of a considerable party which were dissatisfied, M. de Talleyrand did little more than watch the proceedings of 1814, and endeavour to make the fall of Napoleon, should it take place, as little injurious to France and to himself as possible.60

During the conferences at Chatillon, he told those whom the Emperor most trusted, that he would be lost if he did not take peace on any terms; when, however, towards the end of these conferences, peace seemed impossible with Napoleon, he permitted the Duc Dalberg to send M. de Vitrolles to the allied camp with the information, that, if the allies did not make war against France, but simply against its present ruler, they would find friends in Paris ready to help them. M. de Vitrolles carried a slip of paper from the Duc in his boot as his credentials, and was allowed to name M. de Talleyrand; but he had nothing from that personage himself which could compromise him irrevocably with this mission.

M. de Talleyrand saw, nevertheless, at that moment, that a new chief must, as a matter of course, be given to France, and he wished to be the person to decide who that chief should be, and under what sort of institutions the government should be assigned to him.

Still, his communications with the Bourbons were, I believe, merely indirect. Many of their partisans were his relatives and friends. He said obliging things of Louis XVIII. to them, and he received obliging messages in return: but he did not positively adopt their cause; in fact, it seems doubtful whether he did not for a certain time hesitate between the ancient race, and the King of Rome with a council of regency, in which he was to have had a place. At all events, he kept the minister of police, according to Savary’s own account, alive to the Royalist movements in the south. It may even be said that he did not desert the Bonaparte dynasty till it deserted itself: for at the Council, assembled when the allies were approaching Paris to determine whether the Empress should remain in the capital or quit it, he advised her stay in the strongest manner, saying it was the best, if not the only, means of preserving the dynasty, and he did not cease urging this opinion until Joseph Bonaparte produced a letter from his brother, stating that in such a case as that under consideration Marie-Louise should retire into the provinces. It was then that, on leaving the council chamber, he said to Savary:61

“Here, then, is the end of all this. Is not that also your opinion? we lose the rubber with a fair game. Just see where the stupidity of a few ignorant men, who perseveringly work on the influence acquired by daily intercourse, ends by carrying one. In truth, the Emperor is much to be pitied, and yet nobody will pity him; for his obstinacy in holding to those who surround him, has no reasonable motive; it is only a weakness which cannot be conceived in such a man. What a fall in history! To give his name to adventures, instead of giving it to his age! When I think of this I cannot help being grieved. And now what is to be done? It does not suit every one to be crushed under the ruins of the edifice that is to be overthrown. Well, we shall see what will happen!

“The Emperor, instead of abusing me, would have done better in estimating at their first value those who set him against me. He should have seen that friends of that kind are to be more dreaded than enemies. What would he say to another who let himself be reduced to the state in which he is now?”

XIII

The observation that it did not suit every one to be overwhelmed under the ruins of the government about to fall, applied, as it was intended to do by M. de Talleyrand, to himself. The part, however, he had to play was still a difficult one; desirous to remain in Paris in order to treat with the allies, he was ordered, as a member of the regency, to Blois. Nor was it merely because he feared that Napoleon might yet conquer, and punish his disobedience, that he disliked to resist his command; there is a sense of decency in public men which sometimes supplies the place of principle, and the vice-grand-elector wished to avoid the appearance of deserting the cause which notwithstanding he had resolved to abandon.

The expedient he adopted was a singular and characteristic one. His state carriage was ordered and packed for the journey: he set out in it with great pomp and ceremony, and found, according to an arrangement previously made with Madame de Rémusat, her husband at the head of a body of the National Guard at the barrier, who stopped him, and, declaring he should remain in the capital, conducted him back to his hotel, in the Rue St. Florentin, in which he had soon the honour of receiving the Emperor Alexander.

The success of the campaign had been so rapid, the march to Paris so bold, the name of Napoleon and the valour of the French army were still so formidable, that the Emperor of the Russias was almost surprised at the situation in which he found himself, and desirous to escape from it by any peace that could be made safely, quickly, and with some chance of duration. Beyond this, he had no fixed idea. The re-establishment of the Bourbons, to which the English Government inclined, seemed to him in some respects dangerous, as well on account of the long absence of these princes from France, as from their individual character and the prejudices of their personal adherents. To a treaty with Napoleon he had also reasonable objection. Some intermediate plan was the one perhaps most present to his mind; a regency with Marie-Louise, – a substitution of Bernadotte for Bonaparte; but all plans of this sort were vague, and to be tested by the principle of establishing things in the manner most satisfactory to Europe, and least hateful to France.