Kitabı oku: «Historical Characters», sayfa 8

“‘Laissez passer Ch. Maurice Talleyrand, allant à Londres par nos ordres.’

[M. de Talleyrand here repeats what was said by Chénier.]

“Thus I was authorised to quit France, and to remain out of it until the orders I received were revoked, which they never were. But not wishing to prolong my absence, I asked, the instant that the Convention recovered the liberty which had been for a time suppressed, to return to my native land, or to be judged if I had committed any offence that merited exile. My request was granted. I left France then by orders which I received from the confidence of the French government. I re-entered it directly it was possible for me to do so with the consent of the French government. What trace is there here of emigration?

…

“Well, then, it was I ‘who made Malmesbury, who had been sent about his business by Charles Delacroix, return – not, it is true, to Paris, but – to Lille, the centre of our military Boulevards.’

“What is the truth? On the 13th Prairial, year V., Lord Grenville proposed to enter into negotiation; on the 16th the proposal was accepted; on the 25th Charles Delacroix sent passports to England, and fixed on Lille as the place of negotiation.

“On the 29th Lord Grenville accepts Lille as the place of negotiation, and announces the choice of Lord Malmesbury as the English negotiator. On the 2nd Messidor, the Directory sanctions this arrangement. On the 28th the conferences commence at Lille, and it was not till the 28th I was named minister.

…

“I am attacked for all the acts of the ex-Directors. My accusers know that, if my opinion differed from theirs, I should not have charged them with errors when they were in place, and still less should I do so now, when they are stripped of power, and that all I desire to remember is their kindness and confidence.

“It is for this reason that in my report to the legislative body I only glanced rapidly over the fact that all that was to be decided relative to Italy and Switzerland, during my ministry, was decided without my knowledge and concurrence. I could have added that, to the changes operated in the Cisalpine Republic, I was entirely a stranger; that, when the citizen Rivaud was sent to that Republic as ambassador, I was asked for letters of credence in blank, and that I only learnt of his mission after it had been in activity. But my enemies do not pause here.

“Ignorance and hatred seem to dispute as to which should accumulate the most falsehoods and absurdities against my reputation.

“I am reproached for not having invaded Hanover: but if I had advocated carrying the war into that country in spite of the neutral line which protects it, how much more just and more violent would have been the attacks on me for having violated that neutrality, and thereby roused Prussia against us!

“Then it is said I should have assailed Portugal! And if I had done so and been opposed by Spain, and thus lost an alliance so useful to us, what reproaches should I not have encountered!

“But I did not sufficiently encourage letters of marque against England. Five hundred and forty-five privateers fell into the hands of the English, from the commencement of the war till the year VI. of the Republic. The number of prisoners in England amounts to thirty-five thousand; these cost fifteen millions to support on an enemy’s territory, and it is principally owing to letters of marque that we owe this result.

“I will say no more; but surely I have said enough to inspire the most discouraging reflections as to that moral disorganization – as to that aberration of mind – as to that overthrow of all reasonable ideas – as to that want of good faith, of the love of truth, of justice, of esteem for oneself and others – which are the distinguishing characteristics of those publications which it is difficult to leave unanswered, and humiliating to reply to.”³⁶

We find, from the above, that the ex-minister did not scruple to make his defence an attack, and to treat with sarcasm and disdain the party by which he had been ejected; but at the same time that he denounces the follies of the over-zealous Republicans, he declares himself unequivocally for a republic: and justifying what he had done, ridiculing what he had been condemned for not doing, he throws with some address the blame of much that had been done against his opinion on those Directors still in power.

What he says as to the negotiations at Lille shows sufficiently the difficulties, after the 18th of Fructidor, of any peace with England; and a passage that I have quoted, and to which I had previously alluded, bears out what had been said by Chénier as to the famous passport.

In these “Eclaircissements,” however, the ex-minister aimed more at putting himself in a good position for future events, than at referring to past ones.

He would hardly, indeed, have fixed his signature to so bold a publication if his enemies had been firm in their places: but already the Directory was tottering to its fall.

XII

The great evil of any constitution, formed for a particular time and not the result of continual adaptation to the wants of various epochs, is that it is altogether of one character and is almost immediately out of date. The constitution of the Directory, framed after a period of great popular violence and individual despotism, was framed upon the principle of so nicely checking every action in the State, that there should be no honest means for any individual gaining great power or distinction. But when the influence of individuals in a government is over-zealously kept down, the influence of government collapses, and becomes unequal to restrain the agitation of a society more ardent and ambitious than itself.

Thus, during four years, the Constitution of the year III. was preserved in name by a series of actual infringements of it. Now, the Directory checked the councils by transporting the opposition; now, the opposition put down the Directory by compelling an unpopular director to resign his office; and now again, the absence of all laws against the license of the press was compensated for by declaring hostile journalists enemies of the State, and punishing a clever article as an insurrection.

Nor was this all: where civil ability can create no great career a civilian can excite no great enthusiasm. The persons in civil employment had their prestige limited by the same contrivances that limited their power; the nation was fatigued with talkers, for talking had no result: a general alone could strike its imagination, for a general alone was in the situation to do anything remarkable. Each party saw this. The patriots or democrats, represented in the Directory by Laréveillère and Gohier (who had become a Director instead of Treillard); Barras, of no particular opinion, who might be said to represent those generally who were intriguing for place; and Sieyès, the most capable of the executive, at the head of a moderate section, still for maintaining the Republic and establishing order, though under some new form. Sieyès had with him a majority in the Council of Ancients, a powerful minority in the Council of the Five Hundred, and some of the most eminent and capable men in France, amongst whom was M. de Talleyrand.

He sought then a General like the rest, but the choice was not so easy to make. Hoche was no more; Joubert had just perished; Moreau was irresolute; Massena, though crowned by the victory of Zurich, too much of the mere soldier; Augereau, a Jacobin; Bernadotte, unreliable. At this moment (on the 9th October, 1799), Bonaparte landed from Egypt. He broke the quarantine laws, he had deserted his army, but the country felt that he was wanted; and through his progress to Paris, as well as on his arrival there, he was hailed by acclamations.

His object at this time, if he had any distinct one, was the Directory, for which, however, he wanted a dispensation as to age. But he found that the majority of the Directory would not hear of this dispensation. Something else was to be tried, and that something else could only be combined with Barras or Sieyès. Now Barras, Bonaparte hated: for Barras had been his protector, without having been his friend. In regard to Sieyès, M. Thiers has said, not untruly, that two superior Frenchmen, until they have had the opportunity of flattering one another, are natural enemies. Moreover, Bonaparte and Sieyès had met at Gohier’s without exchanging a syllable, and had separated, disliking each other more than ever. M. de Talleyrand undertook to reconcile these two men, whose rivalry had to be conquered by their interests, – and he succeeded. But, with Sieyès, a total subversion of the existing state of things was a matter of course, because the only ambition he ever fostered was that of inventing institutions, which he did with a rare intelligence as to the combination of ideas, forgetting that societies have something in them besides ideas.

A revolution therefore was decided upon; it was to be brought about by the Ancients, of whom Sieyès was sure, and who were to declare that the chambers were in danger at Paris, and should be assembled at St. Cloud; the safety of these assemblies was then to be confided to the guardianship of Bonaparte; and the dissolution of the Directory by the resignation of a majority of its members was to follow. After this, it was supposed that the majority of the Five Hundred, overawed by a large military force, opposed by the other branch of the Legislature, and having no government to support it, would, in some way or other, be overcome. The first two measures accordingly were taken on the 18th Brumaire, but the third remained. Sieyès and Ducos, who acted together and who resigned, were balanced by Gohier and Moulins, who would not give in their resignation; while Barras had the casting vote; and it was M. de Talleyrand again, who, in conjunction with Admiral Bruix, was charged with the task of coaxing this once important man into accepting insignificance and retreat. In this task he succeeded, and the vanquished director, conquered as much, perhaps, by his own indolence, as by his politic friend’s arguments, stepped out of the bath, reposing in which his two visitors had found him, into the carriage which bore him from the Luxembourg, and thus the Directory being no longer in existence, a charge of grenadiers in the Orangery of St. Cloud settled the affair on the day following.

XIII

In glancing over the narrative of these events, we shall see that, if a similar result could have been otherwise arrived at (which is doubtful), it certainly could not have been arrived at in the same peaceful and easy way, but for the assistance of M. de Talleyrand. The legal part of the recent change was effected by Sieyès, whom he had united with Bonaparte; and accomplished through Barras, whose abdication he also procured. The time for rewarding these services was come, and when Napoleon became first consul, M. de Talleyrand was made minister of foreign affairs.

In following him through the period which intervened between the 10th of August, 1792, and the 18th Brumaire, we find him a fugitive to England under doubtful auspices, an exile in America dabbling in politics, projecting commercial adventures, and, above all, waiting on events which proved fortunate to him.

Having quitted France as the partisan of a constitutional monarchy, he returns to it when the feverish passions and opinions which had so long convulsed it were settled down under a republic – too strong to be overturned by Royalists – too weak to promise a long existence.

He takes office under the government which he finds, a government that, compared with its immediate predecessors, offered in a remarkable manner the security of property and life.

He sides, amidst the conflicts which still continue, with those who are for a middle course, between bringing back the Bourbons with all their prejudices, or re-establishing the Robespierreans with all their horrors. In these political struggles he exhibits moderation and resolution: in the department which he fills, he shows tact and capacity. His two memoirs, read before the Institute, are remarkable for the elegance of their style and the comprehensiveness of their views.³⁷ Defending himself against the two parties who assailed him – the one for being too much, the other for being too little, of a republican – he uses language which is at once bold, dignified, and moderate, and the only question that can arise is as to whether it was sincere.

Finally, he throws a government – which is at once feeble, profligate, divided, and conscious of its own incapacity, – into the hands of a man of great genius, by whom he expected to be rewarded, and who, upon the whole, seemed the one most capable of steadying the course, promoting the prosperity, and elevating the destiny of his country.

Part IV
FIRST CONSULATE

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.