From an engraving.TALLEYRAND(A portrait taken in early life).
From an engraving.
TALLEYRAND(A portrait taken in early life).
In dress, furniture and banquets the fashion was equally luxurious and criminal. The age of Henri Quatre took the fancy of the younger nobles, and they tried to revive the splendid costumes of that time, but the King interfered. Whole fortunes were spent on fantastic head-dresses. Ladies drove among the impoverished people and before bankrupt tradesmen with structures two or three feet high on their heads, landscapes, symbolic designs—the American Independence hat, the racing hat, the vaccination hat, and so on. Orders of chivalry were set up by this nobility that was squeezing the blood out of the veins of the peasantry. There was an Order of Perseverance, with statutes by Mme. de Genlis, meetings in a gorgeous tent inLauzun’s garden, and costumes of white and grey and silver; in this edifying company the initiate had to answer a riddle, reply to a “moral question,” make a speech in eulogy of some virtue, and—vow to redress injustice and succour the poor and distressed! Clotho and Lachesis must have smiled for once. There were rival Orders of Patience and Felicity and what not. Then Anglo-mania crept into their idle brains, and long evenings were spent in discussing the excellence of popular representation over tea and bread and butter, and the geometrical gardens were Anglicised at great expense, and Gobelins tapestry gave place to wall-paper. And, in fine, we get a real novelty in the shape of Cagliostro with his toad that had received all the Sacraments, his innocent young girl, and his devils at command. Cardinal-Prince de Rohan, with the two-and-a-half millions a year and heavy debts, with the alb worth 100,000 livres, with the twenty-fivevalets de chambreand fourteenmaitres d’hotel, had set him up in his palace at Paris; and dashing colonels and elderly countesses and philosophic abbés went to see Beelzebub in the flesh. And the Fourth Estate was coming rapidly to birth.
Into this giddy stream the Abbé de Périgord gladly plunged. He was in his twenty-fourth year, still pale of face, but with the familiar Talleyrand features fully developed: the quiet blue-grey eyes, so very observant, under bushy eye-brows, the nose pointed and slightly turned up, the lower lip protruding a little, a faint smilehovering about the mouth, and a fine crop of long, wavy hair framing the attractive face. He had taken a small house in the district of Bellechasse (near the Invalides), collected an excellent library of good books in good bindings, and at once renewed his acquaintance with Choiseul, Count Louis de Narbonne, and the Abbé de Périgord. They were collective owners of a stable of racers, and were the nucleus of a group of diners and talkers that nearly every ambitious woman must entertain. Talleyrand soon completed his education. He became a famous whist-player (his chief amusement through life), and added a good deal to his income at the tables.
He had in the Rue Saint-Dominique an interesting and useful neighbour in the Countess de Genlis. After a very romantic career she was then in charge of the children of the Duc de Chartres. In 1779 she had retired from the gaiety (and orgies) of the Palais Royal to train, on the best moral and philosophical principles, the twin daughters of the Duchess. The Convent of the Sisters of the Holy Sepulchre at Bellechasse was a favourite spot for “retreats” amongst the wealthy Parisians, and a house was built in its grounds in which the retired countess could carry out her work. Over its street door—a grilled, very religious-looking door—was written, in gold characters, Addison’s excellent saying: “True happiness is of a retired nature and an enemy to pomp and noise.” Two of the nuns guarded the door, which was firmly closed at ten every night,and the key was taken into the convent. Inside, beyond the simple furniture (she had left her seven hundred pounds’ worth of mirrors in her salon at the Palais), all was calmly educative. Busts of great and good men, maps, historical tablets, &c., abounded. So Mme. de Genlis in her memoirs. She was just such a neighbour as Talleyrand would appreciate at that time. With the same ever-flowing pen she would write a most edifying book on moral education, a Jacobin speech for the Duke, and an erotic novel. Her moral writings testified, as E. de Goncourt says, to “the ease with which her imagination could find a substitute for experience.” All Paris descended on the model teacher’s dwelling in the Rue Saint-Dominique. There being a royal princess (the infant) in the house men could enter the enclosure; and, says Talleyrand, in one of his caustic moments, she “always yielded at once so as to avoid the scandal of coquetry.” Heavy gambling went on under the Addisonian maxim. One youth lost 13,000 louis there. Talleyrand was a very frequent visitor, and an assiduous observer. “When you see much of men,” said his cynical friend, Chamfort, “your heart must break or bronze.” Talleyrand was not afflicted with a tender heart. His own house at Bellechasse soon became the centre of a brilliant circle of talkers. Though he rarely went to bed before three or four he was up early, and was joined by his friends over a cup of chocolate. He had a peculiarity in the heart-beat, to which he attributed his power of dispensing withsleep. He ate little—a cup of chocolate or a biscuit and glass of Madeira during the day, and a choice dinner in the evening. But his wine, his coffee, and his cook were carefully chosen, his toilet elaborately neat. One of the most cultured groups in the city used to gather at his house in the morning. Choiseul was the best of the group, and it is gratifying to find Talleyrand speaking of him in the later days with real affection. He was an animated talker and a good scholar, but he departed presently for the Embassy at Constantinople. Few of the others are spared in the terrible memoirs. He might have said with Chamfort, if he had deigned to borrow a phrase: “I have friends who love me, friends who don’t care a pin about me, and friends who detest me.” But their daily talks were one of the events of Parisian life. Most of them were, or became, Academicians. There was the boisterous young colonel, Count Louis de Narbonne, the third of the trinity, a hard military student, but jovial in company beyond the limit of taste. There was Colonel Lauzun (later Duc de Biron), who had begun his gallant adventures at seventeen, and contracted a debt of a million and a half by his thirty-fourth year; who often shot with the King, and boasted of the affection of the Queen. Later (when he came out of his third prison) there was young Mirabeau, “the tribune of the people,” with the huge, pock-marked face, and the sonorous denunciation of the social order that persecuted him. Of older men, there were the Abbé Delille, the chiefpoet of the time, friend of Voltaire, anabbé commendataire(30,000 livres) with “the face of an infant,” the pen of a libertine, and the ideas of a philosopher: Chamfort, of the “electric head” (it bristled so with ideas), living now with the widow of Helvétius, pouring out vitriolic doses on humanity in all its aspects, but secretly writing Mirabeau’s and Talleyrand’s elevated democratic speeches—“How many fools does it take to make a public?” he used to ask: Count Lauraguais, very cultured and a generous patron of science and letters: Panchaud, the Swiss banker, greatly esteemed by Talleyrand, “the only man in France who could make the goose with the golden eggs lay without cutting its guts out,” said Mirabeau: Barthez, the doctor-philosopher, editor of theEncyclopædia: Ruehière, the young historian of Russia: Dupont de Nemours, the famous young economist.
From an engraving, after a picture by Retsch.MADAME DE GENLIS.
From an engraving, after a picture by Retsch.
MADAME DE GENLIS.
Conversation would not lack variety or brilliance amongst such a group. Talleyrand’s assemblies began to be talked about. He was invited “more or less everywhere,” and went. He was already sufficiently detached from the idea of partisanship to find his way about amongst the conflicting salons. The houses of twenty noble dames were the centre for as many parties—of the King, of the Queen, of d’Artois, of the Duc d’Orléans, of Turgot, and Choiseul, and Necker, and de Rohan, and de Brienne, and so on. Talleyrand overlooked their political differences, except for a tactical opposition to Necker, and enjoyed their gracefulfriendship and influence. He went to the Palais Royal, where the Duc de Chartres (later d’Orléans, and finally Egalité) was wearing out his useless life—“his vices,” says Talleyrand, in one of those phrases that were gaining him respect, or at least neutrality, “his vices knew no bounds but the limit of his imagination and that of those about him.” Those about him had not infertile imaginations. Talleyrand was taken by Archbishops Dillon, de Brienne, and Cicé, to the house of Mme. de Montesson (secretly married to the Duc d’Orléans), and was granted a seat in the box reserved for “more or less dissipated clerics” (his own phrase) in the private opera-house where Madame and the Duke and other noble amateurs performed. He found her house “at the furthest limit of decency, but very pleasant.” It is the only place at which he speaks of meeting his spiritual leaders. Loménie de Brienne had been proposed to the King for the archbishopric of Paris. “But surely,” said Louis, “the archbishop of Paris should be a man who believes in God.” It did not seem to matter at Toulouse. He went also to the Hotel de Rohan, where the adventurer, Cagliostro, with the olive complexion and brilliant eyes, was exhibiting the devil to people who did not believe in God. At Mme. de Montesson’s he one early day made a feeble joke to the Duchess de Gramont, the sister of Choiseul, and several doors were immediately opened to him. Once a week he took his own brilliant group to dinner at the house of Mme. d’Héricourt. The Swedishminister instituted another day for them, but the dinner was killed by forcing the talkers to listen to long readings—the craze of the hour. Another house he visited, at Auteuil, was that of the Countess de Boufflers-Rouvrel; and at the house of her next-door neighbour, Mme. Helvétius, he would find Chamfort at home, with the Abbé Sieyès, the later constitution maker, and Cabanis, the materialist.
The only house which he visited with any particular freedom, besides that of his mother and that of Mme. de Genlis, was that of the Countess de Flahaut, at the Louvre. Governor Morris, the American Envoy, affirms that he found Talleyrand helping to give her a foot-bath there one morning. Her son, born in 1785, was pretty generally accredited to Talleyrand, but in an age of myths and scandals exact determination is as difficult as it is superfluous.
He shared the celebrated dinners of Mme. de Reynière, saw the deistic Abbé Delille dine with the Queen at Mme. de Polignac’s, and went to “learned and tiresome concerts” at Mme. Lebrun’s (the artist), M. d’Albaret’s, and the Count de la Rochechouart’s.
It must not be supposed that he was merely tolerated in these circles. He was sought and esteemed. It is said that he was generally one of the last to enter a salon, limping slightly, faultlessly dressed in blue coat and white vest and chamois breeches (unless it were advisable to remember the soutane), and there was an appreciable movement towards him. His biting witand quick repartee soon forced people to reckon with him. One never knew when his deep, deliberate voice would break in with effect. “I don’t know why people don’t like me,” one man was saying; “I have only done one wrong thing in my life.” “When will it be over?” asked Talleyrand. “Sieyès is deep,” said another to him. “You mean hollow,” he at once replied. A lady once asked him, in a period of difficulty, how his affairs were going. One version has it that she asked how his legs were. “As you see, madame,” he suavely answered. The lady squinted. His liberal ideas were, of course, an advantage. “He dresses like a fop, thinks like a deist, and preaches like an angel,” said someone; though we have no trace whatever of his ever delivering sermons. But it was the age of the philosophers. Talleyrand disliked the more consistent and more advanced of them, such as Condillac, Hélvetius, d’Holbach, and the Abbé Raynal, because they not only destroyed superstition, but “broke the links of the moral and social order”—such as it was. But this was written twenty years afterwards. He was never caught by the charlatanry of Jean-Jacques. He greatly esteemed Voltaire, and took care to be presented to him when he came to Paris and was fêted to death in 1778. The myth-makers of later years describe how he went on his knees for the aged philosopher’s blessing.
I will only add, to complete Talleyrand’s environment about this time, that he had relations also withmost of the retired statesmen of the day, Maurepas, Malesherbes, Choiseul and Turgot, and with the chief scientific workers, La Place, Condorcet, Lagrange, Monge, &c. Of this I will say more presently. Enough has been said to elucidate the progress of Talleyrand’s character up to the time of the Revolution. The work which I have to describe in the next chapter will prevent one from thinking that his time was wholly spent in pleasure or devoted to the task of social advancement. From 1780 onwards he was a most assiduous worker, and must have been an industrious student before that time. But he tasted, at least, every part of the life of Paris in those ten years at Bellechasse. I do not mean that he devoured all that it offered. He was an essentially temperate and refined man. He played for heavy stakes, as most people did; there were some 4,000 gambling houses at Paris when the Revolution began, to say nothing of salons, from that of the Queen at Marly downwards. But this is the only irregularity he admits; though, of course, the “Memoirs” are not “Confessions.” The Baron de Vars has compiled a work onLes femmes de Talleyrand. There is only one on the list, Mme. de Flahaut, besides the pretty actress of Saint-Sulpice and the lady he eventually married, with whom his name is connected by any show of evidence. At the same time it would be absurd to claim for him any prohibitive principles in such matters. He took a mind almost swept of ideals into a world where, one social writer says, you couldcount the families that were not stained with incest: where, at all events, almost every man, from princes and cardinals down to butchers and abbés, had a mistress. He was no hypocrite. The Church and the world alike expected too little of him for that.
Priest and Bishop
Talleyrand had already spent two years of this kind of life when he was ordained priest. In a biographical inquiry it is only necessary to point out that the priesthood was required for his purpose. Possibly he thought of his parents, as some biographers suggest. However regrettable his life, he was a noble, and must not remain a minor cleric. In any case, he would see that the only entrance to the higher political world, along the path into which he had been forced, was the episcopate. He could not be expected to foresee the upheaval of 1789, which would make possible the rise of such men as Sieyès. In 1780 the General Assembly of the Clergy would meet again, and he had ground to believe that he would be appointed Agent-General. From this important position one usually passed to the episcopate. After such an experience as his had been he would very well leave it to the Church to settle its own credit in the matter.
In September (1779) he asked his uncle, in a letter which is extant, to receive him into the Rheims clergy. The Archbishop of Paris was a conscientiousprelate, where it was still possible to consult conscience. Archbishop Talleyrand (he had succeeded Roche-Aymon in 1777) consented and obtained his transfer from Paris. He, too, was one of the better prelates of the time, but he doubtless thought he could influence his gay nephew. He was transferred on September 17th and ordained deacon. Three months later (December 18th) he was ordained priest in the chapel of the archbishopric.10Choiseul was with him, and made a strong appeal to him to desist. He said it was impossible. All that we shall learn of Talleyrand in the chapters to come justifies us in thinking—nay, compels us to think—that he took the step, not with a cynical levity, but with great reluctance. The qualities of refinement and humanity he never surrendered.
On May 10th, 1780, he was nominated by the clergy of Tours (where he now had a second chaplaincy) Agent-General for the next five years. This was a position of the first political importance in the French Church. The Agent-General was the connecting link between the two powers, secular and ecclesiastical, and by the end of the eighteenth century he needed some competence in diplomacy, as well as a fair administrative faculty for domestic matters, especially of finance. Two were appointed by the various provinces in rotation before each General Assembly, and they held office andguarded the interests of the Church until the next ordinary Assembly. If Talleyrand had, aspromoteurat the last Assembly, left the chief share of the work to his colleague, the case was very different now. His fellow-agent was the Abbé de Boisgelin, cousin of the Archbishop of Aix, and Vicar-General of that diocese, an indolent, incompetent, and disreputable priest. He shared the fruits and prestige of Talleyrand’s labours, but not the work itself. In fact Talleyrand says that a scandal supervened immediately, and made it advisable to keep him in the background.
These General Assemblies did not vary much in their chief features, so that little need be said of that of 1780. Only two deputies (one of each order) were sent from each of the provinces, and the Cardinal-Archbishop of Rouen took the chair. The King now asked thirty millions, and Talleyrand was directed to wait on him at Versailles and say that his faithful clergy, though “exhausted by its gifts,” would find the money; he was to add a hint (with an eye to the increasing attacks on the Church’s property) that the King would doubtless see the wisdom of not killing the goose. Talleyrand would not lose his opportunity at Versailles. There were the usual indignant discussions of the claim of the Crown lawyers to exact feudal service from the clergy, and violent attacks on Voltaire and the “formidable deluge” of improper literature that was poured over the whole country. The Assembly sat from May to October. Talleyrand was now so secure in hisposition that he even claims that this “lent some prestige to his Agency.”
Two years later he had to summon the clergy to an Extraordinary Assembly at the Grands-Augustins. The King’s letter which he had to submit to his colleagues must have appealed to his diplomatic sense. Louis XVI declared that, though there had been unforeseen losses in connection with the help given to America, he had no actual need to appeal to the country. But the fact was that every class seemed so eager to contribute towards covering these losses, and he could not think of excluding his devoted clergy from a share. He therefore graciously permitted them to assemble in extraordinary session in 1782. Talleyrand was charged to explain to the Assembly why the King had altered his mind, and not kept the solemn promise that he would ask no more money until 1785. The fifteen millions were granted as usual, and the clergy added a million to be applied to the relief of the poor families who had suffered by the war. Talleyrand went further, and pressed one of the prelates to urge the granting permission to re-marry to the Breton women whose husbands had disappeared without any definite proof of death. He says that the prelate saw no advantage to himself in making a motion, and so the matter was not brought before the Assembly. Bad books occupied more attention than ever. A complete edition of Voltaire was being printed at Kehl, and was expected at Paris with the most open rejoicing. Thedeputies drew the King’s attention to its “monstrous obscenities,” and petitioned him to prevent its circulation. Talleyrand had not to sign this petition, but he saw Loménie de Brienne and many another Voltairean pastor do so.
In this Assembly Talleyrand himself made two proposals of an interesting character. The first was that the clergy should buy up the royal lottery, by making the King a “gratuitous gift” every year to cover the profits missed. His colleagues were not sufficiently moved by his eloquent denunciation of public gambling to make the sacrifice. Some of them, who knew the Abbé de Périgord’s own habits, may have even smiled. But Talleyrand’s aim was good, if not virtuous. He saw that the clergy were rapidly losing ground, and he felt that a sacrifice like this, in such a cause, would do much to redeem their degradation. The memoir to present to the King (and, of course, publish afterwards) “might have been superb,” he observes with a chuckle; he would have been very glad to write it. The other proposal he made was to raise the salaries of the lower clergy. On these fell the real work of maintaining religion in the country, yet thecuréhad only 700 livres (less than thirty pounds) a year and hisvicairethe miserable sum of 350 livres. The episcopate was, like the army commissions, a preserve of the nobles, and a great gulf yawned between the two Orders. I calculate that the 140 bishops of France then drew about 8,000,000 francsa year from ecclesiastical sources alone; and as all were nobles, many of them had in addition huge private incomes and some State emoluments. Dillon had 160,000 a year from the Queen’s private purse for his amiability. They drove about Paris in gilded coaches, contributed to the opera, had opulent hotels and country palaces and hunting seats, and so on. The starving peasantry were beginning to rebel. At the Assembly of Notables the Archbishop of Aix spoke of tithe as “that voluntary offering from the piety of the faithful”; “as to which,” broke in the Duke de la Rochefoucauld, “there are now 40,000 cases on in the Courts.” The lower clergy, too, were forming associations for the betterment of their condition. The prelates heard this with pained surprise, but resisted Talleyrand’s motion. His earliest political efforts, as he said afterwards, failed because his proposals were too bold for his colleagues. But there can be no question as to the wisdom of his counsels. No one could at that time have had even the dimmest prevision of the events of 1789-1790—and so we may at once reject Pozzo di Borgo’s suggestion (afterwards) that Talleyrand from the first took the side of the weak and poor on subtle calculation—but Talleyrand’s view of the situation of the Church was singularly wise and shrewd, and his suggestions were, as we now very clearly see, wholly to its advantage. Nor can we with justice ignore the clear strain of humanity that is seen in the young abbé’s proposals in favour of theBreton widows (whom he had seen in their native home) and the lower clergy. In the latter instance he was even endangering his interest with the prelates.
Talleyrand’s labours as Agent-General had the effect that he desired. If the Church would not listen to wise advice it must go its way. For him its work was an instrument, and he used it with success. His various reports on their labours to the Conseil du Roi brought him in contact with his real fellows. Before his Agency was over he had won the notice and esteem of the first minister. But I will conclude this account of his clerical work before tracing his earliest political action. The clergy greatly appreciated his ability. At the Assembly of 1785 he was elected secretary, with the Abbé de Dillon, and one day the president rose, after a speech from Talleyrand, to exhibit him to his colleagues as a model of zeal! The report of their Agency which he and Boisgelin sent in was received with enthusiasm, and described as taking “a distinguished place amongst the reports which adorn our annals.” Talleyrand neglected nothing in those early years. His work was sound and thorough, and at the same time presented with a rare literary effect. The mythopæic biographers of a later date11had private knowledge that he was too lazy and too incompetent to write a single letter, and that everything was done for him by his associates. We know that from 1780 onwards he attracted to his help a number of capable men, M. Mannay, Count Bourlier, M. Duvoisin (these three reaching their reward in bishoprics), and especially the young Abbé des Renaudes. He could not have done his work so well single-handed, and, as a fact, he quite early learned from Choiseul the rule to utilise subordinates to the fullest extent. It was good statesmanship. But it is quite clear that he must have worked hard. Thirty years afterwards, long after he has exchanged financial politics for diplomacy, he writes with the pleasure and ease of an expert on the financial questions of 1780-1790. There is no doubt that he thoroughly understood them, and discussed them on equal terms with Panchaud, Foulon, or Dupont de Nemours. And the memoirs themselves show that he could write; he was often seen to sit writing them until four in the morning. Sainte-Beuve himself admits (p. 44) that Talleyrand could do some “fine writing” when he cared.
The report he submitted in 1785 was to be his last plea for a bishopric. It was the custom to find a benefice as a reward for the Agent-General when his term was over. Talleyrand, therefore, wrote it with great care and with plenty of that flattery which his colleagues appreciated. How he felt when he spoke of “the honour of being associated with the labours ofthe first body in the kingdom, the happy necessity of communicating with the chief members of this illustrious body, and of maintaining with them relations which their virtues and their intelligence have made so precious,” we can very well imagine. One only wonders if he caught the eye of his friends of the Palais Royal when he referred to the Archbishop-President, Dillon, as a man “to whom all offices have been but fresh occasions to display the nobleness of his character and the vigour of his patriotic genius.” Dillon is the prelate who, he tells us elsewhere, spent six months every year in hunting, though he had done some good work. In return the archbishop urgently recommended the ex-agents to the favour of the King and of Mgr. Marbœuf (who held thefeuille des bénéfices, or list of vacant bishoprics). The assembly then voted, as was usual, a gift of 24,000 livres to each ex-agent, and further sums of 4,000 and 3,000 for having discharged the functions of promoter and secretary. But the recommendation for a bishopric fell very flat, to Talleyrand’s extreme annoyance. The most brilliant Agent-General of recent times was made to wait three years for his reward, and saw one bishopric after another fall to others. It is said that the king was resolutely opposed to the consecration of so equivocal a candidate, but we have no real evidence of this. Talleyrand complained, in a letter to young Choiseul, of malice on the part of Marbœuf, but it is possible that the circumstance of Marbœuf being a religious man with some firmnessmay afford explanation enough. Talleyrand’s name was persistently connected with that of Madame de Flahaut, and at one time with that of the daughter-in-law of Buffon. There was a good deal of joking about the prospect of his consecration. Chamfort and a group of amiable ladies were marked out as ready to accompany him to his seat. It is not impossible that Versailles drew the line—when it felt strong enough.
From an engraving, after the painting by Chappel.MARIE ANTOINETTE.
From an engraving, after the painting by Chappel.
MARIE ANTOINETTE.
Another feature of the situation was that he had incurred the hostility of the Queen, and she robbed him of a cardinal’s hat in that very year; though the hat might have been very much in the way in 1791. The Countess de Brionne persuaded the King of Sweden to ask the Pope for a hat for the Abbé de Périgord. The Pope, who at that time was friendly with the Protestant prince, agreed, and the matter was nearly arranged when the diamond-necklace affair happened. Mme. de Brionnne sided with de Rohan, and Talleyrand followed. The Queen took a small revenge by getting the Austrian Ambassador to protest against another hat being sent to France, and Talleyrand was disappointed. Later, when the archbishopric of Bourges fell vacant, and he was passed over, Talleyrand complained bitterly to his friend Choiseul. It was not until the end of 1788, that he became Bishop of Autun.
In the meantime Talleyrand had opened his political career on other than ecclesiastical questions. I have already said that, whilst he lived at Bellechasse, he visited not only fashionable ladies, savants and artists,but also some of the great statesmen of the last generation. He met Maurepas, a typical representative of the decaying order, Malesherbes, the great parliamentarian and liberal reformer, and Turgot. As Maurepas and Turgot died in 1781, he must have given serious attention to political matters as soon as, or even before, he left the Sorbonne. With the elder Choiseul in his retirement he would be more closely connected through his intimacy with the nephew. The outbreak of the American war and the departure of a number of young French nobles, had done even more than the prospect of national bankruptcy to arouse political interest. Franklin’s house at Passy was besieged by fair enthusiasts, eager to embrace him; his fur cap was copied by every dandy in Paris, and constitutional problems were discussed by young ladies in the intervals of a dance. “The zeal for America is simply sublime,” says Michelet; while Alison has opined that “the American war was the great change which blew into a flame the embers of innovation.” The philosophical party certainly tried to give it that character. When Lafayette and his nobles returned with an account of the glorious new constitution and democracy, the concrete instance led to a more general discussion, which was boldly, though in a limited extent (for there were no republicans yet to speak of) applied to France. Talleyrand was not carried away in the flood. He did fit out a privateer with his friend Choiseul, begging a few guns from the Ministry of Marine; but he ridiculed the general enthusiasm. Thenext fashion was Anglo-mania, and this in turn raised constitutional questions of interest to France.12
It is clear that, from an early stage of his attention to the questions raised in the salons and circles by these episodes, Talleyrand was prepared for popular representation, and was disposed to favour the English model. His manifesto, issued on the eve of the States-General, will show us that he did not wait for the logic of events to make him embrace democracy, but there are earlier indications. During the Assembly of the Notables in 1787 he complained to Choiseul that “Paris was taking its cue from the Assembly instead of an instructed Paris impressing its opinion on the Assembly;” and in the same letter he observed with satisfaction that “the people were going to count for something,” and that “the granting of provincial administration [local self-government] and the abolition of privileges would prove a source of great gain.” The tragic incompetency of the King and Queen to master the situation of their country impressed him. Mere “goodness of heart” was fatal. “Too great a familiarity in sovereigns,” he says in his memoirs, “inspires love rather than respect, and at the first mishap affection goes.” It was the opinion of a man in whom (to turn his own words upon himself) “philosophic ideas had replaced sentiments,” but it expresses the facts here. The network of noble and ecclesiastical privileges made aristocracyimpossible in an impoverished country. The choice was between a strong autocrat (whom the gods gave when they willed) and a monarchy limited by an educated democracy. With Montesquieu he leaned to the latter; the satirical description of France as “an autocracy tempered with lampoons” is attributed to him. With Turgot he felt that the people must be educated up to self-government. He pleaded strongly for more efficient and more comprehensive education. A contemporary gives this as his fad. He travelled in privileged provinces like Brittany, and noted the good result of local administration. He would hardly admit moral feeling in the matter, but as a practical politician he was for gradual and constitutional, but thorough, reform.
But the central question of French politics to every thoughtful man was that of finance. He saw nobles coquetting with democracy who were not prepared to surrender a tithe of those pecuniary privileges which were strangling the actual order. He saw constitutionalists working out their “theory of irregular verbs” without even a moderate grasp of the crucial need. He immediately set himself to master the science of finance and the fiscal disorders of his country. His archiepiscopal friends were well acquainted with the one, and such friends as Panchaud and Dupont de Nemours would help him with both. His first open political expression was a vehement attack on Necker after his assumption of power in 1776. There was a good dealofparti prisin his first attack. He ridiculed the person, the features, the dress, the speech, and everything about Necker, as well as his financial operations. But he did oppose on conviction the tactics of the Genevese banker. He thought them too slow, too timid, too small-minded to rescue France from the precipice. At last he made an opportunity for a constructive effort. The funds of the clergy were interested in the bank founded by Turgot, and when anxiety arose about this in 1784 he forced his position as Agent-General (so he himself says), and drew up a memoir in which he proposed a reconstruction of the bank. The memoir attracted much attention. One elderly banker listened to it almost with tears—at the pretty way in which he put banking common-places, Talleyrand says. A number of experts became acquainted with him—Foulon, Sainte-Foy, Daudé, &c. Presently he was introduced to Calonne, the new Minister of Finance, a man of great ability but fitful and unscrupulous.
Calonne’s failure is a matter of general history, but during the three years of his ministry Talleyrand was usefully associated with him. The stormy Mirabeau also appears on the scene, and alternately embraces and quarrels with Talleyrand. His dispatches from Berlin, where he acted as a kind of secret agent, were nearly all edited by Talleyrand before being submitted to the King. He addresses Talleyrand from Berlin as his “dear master,” but has a violent quarrel with him, and calls him “a wretched, mean, greedy, intriguing creature,” when he returns to Paris, on account of some offensive allusion to his mistress. Talleyrand overlooked his violence and vulgarity, and intervened for him when he published one of his spirited attacks on Calonne. But Talleyrand’s next important act was to help in preparing a scheme for the redemption of the debt of the clergy. Calonne had thought of parrying the growing demand for the convocation of the States-General by summoning an Assembly of Notables. Talleyrand speaks of his scheme as “a vast plan,” but without base, as the Notables had no power whatever to raise the necessary supplies. However, it afforded him an opportunity to do helpful work. The Assembly was to meet on February 22nd (1787), and on the 14th Calonne invited Talleyrand,13Dupont de Nemours, and several others to come to assist him in preparing the papers to be submitted. They found a chaos of material, and none of the work done. They divided the work, Talleyrand undertaking to write the memoir and law on the new grain-proposals. He also helped M. de Saint-Genis to draw up a scheme for the redemption of the debt of the clergy. This was to be part of Calonne’s plan of a general land-tax and the abolition of all pecuniary privileges.
Calonne’s expedient, as is known, only brought about his own downfall. Talleyrand, in Paris, met these angry notables as they filled the salons during theEaster recess, and heard their comments on the impertinence of thesubvention territoriale, by which they, the nobles and clergy, were to be mulcted. Loménie de Brienne fostered the opposition amongst the clergy. Calonne was dismissed, and, after an interval of nonentities, the Archbishop of Toulouse secured the long-coveted honour, chiefly through the influence of the Queen. Talleyrand would expect few favours from de Brienne (of whom he writes in the memoirs with disdain and dislike) and the Queen’s party. He felt that the near future would smooth out their intrigue. “The passion of the hour was the curtailment of the royal authority,” he says. The King was pitied and the Queen regarded with cold suspicion. The enormous deficit dismayed thoughtful men, whilst frivolous nobles called airily for a declaration of national bankruptcy as a means of salvation they had themselves tried with success. The letters which Talleyrand then wrote to his friend at Constantinople show that his observations in the memoirs faithfully convey the ideas he had at the time. Certain technical improvements in finance would do something, but it was clear that the situation of the nobility and clergy must change. The life-blood of France was being sucked for the support of a parasitic growth. Financial privileges must be curtailed or abolished. Who would cut away the exhausting growth of commissions, sinecures, benefices, and gifts? Clearly, neither the nobles themselves nor the King. The country must be prepared for popular representation onthe English model—as seen through the merciful mists of the Channel. Talleyrand proceeded with interest to the Provincial Assembly at Chalons, to which he was deputed as abbé of St. Denis at Rheims.
The Provincial Assembly was a compromise with the new idea of popular representation. Six members of the clerical order and six of the nobility were pitted against twelve of the Third Estate; equal representation for the sansculottist twenty millions against the privileged two hundred thousand. And the president was to be chosen from the first two orders. These twenty-five nominated twenty-four other members, and one-fourth of the Assembly was to retire every year. At the elections to replace them everyone who paid ten livres in taxes was entitled to vote. Archbishop Talleyrand presided at Chalons, and must have gratified his nephew and the Third Estate at least by his outspoken denunciation of “greed” and his welcome of the promised reform of taxation. The work of these Assemblies was presently transferred to Versailles, in the opening of the States-General, and it need not be dwelt on. Talleyrand is believed to be the author of two long memoranda, submitted to the Chalons Assembly, on points relating to taxation. He was confirmed in his opinion of the value of these schools of popular training, for we find him urging the reopening of them in the National Assembly in 1789.
From an engraving, after a miniature by M. Gratis.LOUIS XVI.
From an engraving, after a miniature by M. Gratis.
LOUIS XVI.
But his entry into political life was now properly regulated by his nomination to a bishopric. He had gone to Rheims as Vicar-General to his uncle, whenMgr. Marbœuf, who is believed to have so long opposed his promotion, was transferred from the See of Autun, and it was offered to Talleyrand. There are legends enough to explain how the King suddenly acquired his conviction of the “piety” of the Abbé de Périgord. The most probable story is that Talleyrand’s father, who died in 1788, begged Louis to confer the lingering bishopric on his son. Lieutenant-General Talleyrand had been an attendant on the King in his early years, and was a useful officer and a religious man. He would regard the long delay in finding a benefice for his son as a disgrace to one of the oldest houses in France. At all events, on November 2nd, the King signed the nomination, informing an amused Paris that he was “properly assured as to the good life, the morals, the piety, the competence, and all the other virtuous and commendable qualities of the Abbé de Périgord.” Paris remembered that a former Bishop of Autun had been the original of Tartuffe. “Ah, if Molière had only known his successor,” said one wag at the time. There were many religious and high-minded prelates amongst the French hierarchy, and they commanded a priesthood of considerable self-sacrifice and devotion. But Talleyrand’s opinions and habits would not cause a grave shock to a body that included Cardinal de Rohan, Archbishops Dillon, De Brienne and Cicé, and a considerable body of bishops and abbé’s of the type of de Grimaldi, Morellet, Arnaud, Bertrand, Delille, de Bourbon, de Dillon, Raynal, Maury, Sabatier, &c.
AT THE STATES-GENERAL
Talleyrand was consecrated in the seminary-chapel at Issy, a house of retreat belonging to Saint-Sulpice, on January 16th, 1788. He had observed, in that age of forms, the form of making a preliminary retreat at Issy. His delighted friends from Paris took care that the “solitude,” as the place was called, should not depress him. The ceremony was performed by the Bishop-Count of Noyon, Mgr. de Grimaldi, a Voltairean prelate. There are two legendary versions of Talleyrand’s bearing during the service. Renan was told by an aged priest who had been present that he was so scandalised at the jauntiness of the new prelate as to feel compelled to charge himself with disrespectful thoughts at his next confession. Another version affirms that Talleyrand fainted from some emotion or other during the morning. It is more likely that Talleyrand bore himself with perfect propriety and indifference. Liberal nobles and prelates rarely ridiculed religion even in private conversation. “I have always moved in good society,” said one at a later date, when asked if he had ever scoffed at sacred things. Talleyrand would regard his share in the ceremony as a regrettable necessity of his politicalcareer. It deceived nobody. In the evening he returned to Paris, and received the pallium (a privilege of the Autun bishopric) from the archbishop.
With the sonorous title of “Bishop of Autun, First Suffragan of the Archbishop of Lyons, Administrator of of the Temporalities and Spiritualities of the said Archbishopric,sede vacante, Perpetual President of the States of Burgundy, Count of Sanlien, Baron of Issy-l’Evéque, Lucenay, Grosme, Touillon, &c.,” he was now somewhat better equipped for political work. The See of Autun was one of the most ancient in France, though its income was relatively very small—22,000 livres a year. It was, however, regarded as having next claim to the Archbishopric of Lyons, and the King had already bestowed a second abbey (of Celles, with 9,500 livres a year) on Talleyrand, and I find assigned to him in a list published at Paris in 1790, the rich Abbey of Bec. He was able to resume his pleasant ways at Paris, with an income of about 100,000 livres, and the credit of a rising prelate. It is probably to this period that the story of his adventure with the coach builder belongs. Receiving no answer to his applications for payment for the new episcopal carriage, the maker presented himself, hat in hand, at Talleyrand’s door when Monseigneur come out. After a few days of this Talleyrand blandly asked him what he wanted. “Oh, you will be paid,” he affably replied to the man. “Butwhen, Monseigneur?” “Oh, you are very inquisitive,” said the prelate with an appearance of astonishment, as he drove away. It was the golden ageof debtors. The King once ventured to tell Archbishop Dillon that he had heard he was greatly in debt. “I will consult my steward and report to your Majesty,” said the prelate.
On the other hand Talleyrand found that he must at length resort to actual duplicity to strengthen his position at Autun. The diocese of Mgr. Marbœuf was likely to hear of the new appointment with some misgiving. But already there were rumours of States-General, and it was necessary to secure real influence at Autun. Within a fortnight Talleyrand issued—let us hope he did not write—a letter to his flock, which closed the mouths of the pious grumblers. It was full of Scripture and redolent of a quiet, unmistakeable fervour and simplicity. “God is my witness,” it says, in the words of St. Paul, “that I am mindful of you without interruption.” He praises the zeal of his clergy, alludes to those unhappy people who “only seek in offices the miserable gratification of their vanity,” and urgently asks their prayers for his comfort. It was read to tearful congregations in all the churches of his diocese the next Sunday—Talleyrand being detained in Paris. A few weeks later his useful secretary, the Abbé des Renandes, was offered the Vicar-Generalship by the canons. He would not fail to follow up the effect of the letter he had (probably) written. On January 27th Talleyrand took possession of his cathedral, by representative. Important events were preparing at Paris and Versailles. A great arena for political adventurewas being opened. About the middle of March he was free to follow the impulse of his heart and visit his beloved sheep; he had in his pocket the order to convoke the preliminary assembly of the clergy which was to send him to the States-General at Versailles.
This is really the most unpleasant page in Talleyrand’s life. I am glad the writing of it is over. But there is—perhaps unhappily—no mystery about it. He was carrying to logical conclusions the cynical estimate of the ecclesiastical order which his experiences had forced on him.
On Sunday, March 15th, he took solemn possession of his cathedral, and was honoured with a great fête. He took the oath, so often recalled by his enemies afterwards, to defend all the rights and privileges and the property of his church. He remained a month at Autun and captivated everybody. Were there rumours of Voltairean opinions and loose practices? He said his breviary daily in the garden—as anyone could see—attended to every function of his office, presided at the episcopal council, was a model bishop. Meantime his young abbé-assistants from Paris were circulating in the diocese, their conversation always ending with politics. There was open table at the episcopal palace for the poor curés, and the reputation of some of his Lenten dishes flew from parish to parish. The townspeople were badly supplied with fish, and a word to friends at Versailles got the post to stop at Autun and drop a load of fresh fish daily for the publicmarket. The religious congregations were amiably cultivated, and became zealous for Monseigneur’s candidature. Soon there are 209 ecclesiastical electors assembled at Autun, many of them rough, hard-working curés, who distrust this descendant of all the Périgords. Monseigneur is tactful, candid, democratic; quietly leads their meetings as honorary president. He finds that the only serious rivals are Radical curés, with cries of “Down with the aristocrats in Church and State,” and better salaries for the “working clergy.” Then he issues his manifesto.
Sainte-Beuve was forced to say after reading it that Talleyrand “showed from the first day that he was one of the most enlightened and most penetrating minds of the time.” It met every serious grievance on which his rivals depended, and it was perfectly sincere. Talleyrand was not embittered against his order, like Mirabeau, by his experiences, nor did he lean to democratic principles on the lines of the Duc d’Orléans. He formed a sober and consistent judgment on the social and political situation, and it does no less credit to his humanity than his sagacity. He would claim at the States-General that that body should not be arbitrarily interfered with or prematurely dispersed. He would press for the making of a constitution as its first achievement; and, for all Carlyle’s raillery, this was the first political need of France. In this new constitution the rights of the people must be recognised as well as those of the king. The new political structure must have itsfirst elements in the parish, and so up through Provincial Assemblies to a permanent States-General. All elections shall be free. The sanctity of private or corporate property shall be respected, but only after claims have been judicially examined and unsound claims rejected; in this he is clearly foreshadowing his attitude towards Church property. The administration of justice shall be simplified and purified; the criminal law reformed, lotteries suppressed, privileges abolished. The press shall be free, and the post shall not be interfered with. Feudal servitude shall be abolished. There shall be a strict inquiry into the financial situation, a reduction of expenditure, and the abolition of pecuniary privileges.
I repeat that this was not a rhetorical and insincere document, written for the purpose of catching votes. There is, in the first place, no rhetoric about it. It is a plain and sober statement of remedies for the national malady. Then, it is quite in accord with the few previous expressions of Talleyrand’s mind; and it is a faithful presentment of the measures he proposed or supported unequivocally afterwards at the National Assembly. To appreciate it fully, we must, as Mr. Belloc strongly pleads, beware of reading the ideas of ’91 and ’92 into ’89. Camille Desmoulins said there were not ten Republicans in France at that time. There were demands for reform on every point that Talleyrand takes up. I do not claim originality in the details, but the manifesto, as a whole, is an unanswerablerefutation of those who would see nothing but frivolity, selfishness and cynicism in its author. His experiences had made him almost incapable of a zeal for an abstract ideal of justice, but his sympathy and humanity, as well as his political sagacity, gave a serious strain to his work. He was elected deputy by a large majority, and his address, with a few additions, was adopted by his clergy as theircahieror book of instructions to their representative.
But from the moment of his election he ceased to be an ecclesiastic, as far as possible. He left for Paris on Easter Sunday, not waiting to officiate at the services or to follow the retreat of the clergy which was commencing. His parishioners never saw him again; except that, thirteen years afterwards, his carriage broke down at Autun, as he passed through on the way to Lyons, and he is said to have been rather roughly noticed.
The next fortnight was spent in feverish debate at Paris on the forthcoming meeting. At the Thirty Club, where cultured Radicals foregathered, and where Talleyrand and Mirabeau had met the boldest politicians of their class during the last year or two, the interest was deep. Lafayette, Roederer, the Dukes de Luynes and Larochefoucauld, Sabatier, and other Liberals belonged to it, as well as some of Talleyrand’s earlier friends. A new salon that he frequented, and that rang with political controversy, was that of Mme. de Staël. Necker’s daughter had married the SwedishMinister in 1786, and she succeeded in drawing Talleyrand into her social circle. In such a circle the dangers and possibilities of the coming meeting were properly appreciated. These men, resolutely bent on anticipating instead of waiting for events, like the bulk of the nobles and the King’s party, saw clearly enough that the great question was: Will the voting be by orders separately or in common? The country had been agitated over the question what proportion of delegates should be allowed to the Third Estate. The King had granted them a representation equal to that of the first two orders together, or 600 members. But the effect of this was inappreciable until the procedure of voting had been settled; and this had been left undecided. No one, indeed, approached the date with the feeling of solemnity with which we now look back on it through the smoke of the revolutionary fires. But the situation was serious for men who, like Talleyrand, were bent on making the national parliament a reality. If the orders were to vote separately, the machine would produce nothing; if together, the Third Estate would be supported by the democratic curés and would rule the Assembly.
And were the people prepared for this power? Talleyrand must have stopped many a time in the gardens of the Palais Royal, now the agora of Paris, and listened to the barrel-oratory before the cafés. Men who had been seen washing their only shirt in the Seine a few months ago are leading crowds. Pamphlets arepoured out by the thousand. The Duc d’Orléans is fanning the flames that break out here and there. Mirabeau is thundering. Sieyès is giving substance to the quips of Chamfort. Grim, gaunt, ragged crowds flood the street at the slightest provocation, sack merchants’ houses, and attack the troops. Talleyrand goes to Versailles in thoughtful mood. Popular representation on the English plan, with a second house, is the only hope.
Arnault describes in hisSouvenirshow he saw Talleyrand at Versailles at that time. He would have us believe that he did not know the bishop, but was struck by this “angel’s face through which broke the spirit of a devil.” He would have thought it the face of a fast-living officer, but for the cassock and pectoral cross. The portrait given in theGalerie des États-Généraux, of Choderlos de Laclos, is of greater value, because it was drawn at the time. It gives the estimate in which he was held by his shrewder contemporaries. Intelligence, it is said, is his distinctive gift. Moderation, tact, and restraint are well cultivated. He is mild to a possible fault. He “yields to circumstances, to reason, and thinks he can make concessions for the sake of peace, without deserting the principles which he has made the ground of his morality and conduct.” His future depends on himself. If he is influenced byesprit de corpshe will do nothing; if he acts independently he may do anything. We are justified in thinking that Talleyrand had made up his mind to act independently,though he had no dream of leading. He was for a limited monarchy and a second chamber representing culture and wealth.14Beyond this he was for Talleyrand, for France, and for humanity.
On the very eve of the opening of the States-General he received another proof of the foolishness of the order to which he now belonged. A few days before the 4th the leaders of the clergy met at the Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld’s house at Versailles to discuss the situation. All were agreed, to Talleyrand’s disgust, that this was a favourable opportunity for asking the nation to extinguish their debt. One of their number was deputed to introduce the proposal, and for a long time they clung to it. Clearly, one must not sacrifice much for clericalesprit-de-corps.
Then the 4th of May arrives. Chaos settles into order at Versailles. Talleyrand notes the petty devices by which royalism mitigates its concession of popular representation. On the previous day the King had received the deputies: first the Clergy and Nobles, then, with less ceremony, the Commons. He notes, too, how the leaders of the Commons are beginning to emphasize the distinction. “Three orders? No: three nations,” says Sieyès, constitution-maker for the next ten years. Now they march to theSalle des menus, all Paris lining the route or hanging out of the windows. Talleyrand sees the 550 popular deputies greeted with a roar ofapplause; mostly lawyers, with set faces under their “slouch-hats.” He sees the plumed and embroidered nobles, “the illustrious obscure,” tread daintily between silent hedges of soldiers and people. He marks the same silence as he and his forty colleagues in violet cassock and lace surplice step out, followed, with a convenient band between, by 260 curés. He hears the shouts ofVive le Roiin the rear: the Queen is ignored. Even in the intoxication of the spectacle and its symbolism the people discriminate conspicuously. The next day he is interested to hear the King express his pleasure that the privileged “are going to renounce their privileges” and Necker rub in the lesson. And he notices that first innovation in the history of France, when commoners put their hats on before the King has got out of the room. It is the first shot. On the third day the Third Estate finds itself alone in the great hall. The clergy and the nobility are meeting separately, as of old, to verify their papers. The commoners see that this means separate votes and impotence, and the historic battle begins.
History has described the fortunes of the Commons. I must follow Talleyrand into the obscurer meeting-place of the First Estate. The Nobles, pampered and encouraged by the unfortunate Queen, were violently opposed to union with the Commons. The Clergy knew they were fatally divided, being themselves composed of two orders, and their leaders were for a policy of drifting or compromise. Cardinal de laRochefoucauld was president, and he contrived to bring the Clergy together for three hours a day for six weeks without doing anything. Some of the curés spoke at once in favour of joining the Commons, but they were silenced by an agreement to verify their papers “provisionally” where they were: the delegates from Paris, and several others, had not yet arrived. The Commons break in on their provisional action the next day by inviting them to come into the large hall—into which their own hall opens—and the struggle begins. The prelates name commissioners to discuss the matter with their colleagues of the other orders. The Commons, after a grumble, assent: the Nobles assent, but practically say their decision is taken. The cardinal suspends sittings, but there is mutiny amongst the curés, who are going to appoint a new president, and he hastily retracts. A week is taken up in “provisional” verification, voting commissioners, being polite to each other (except when a deputation comes from Dauphiné to disown the Archbishop of Vienne as improperly elected), and hair-splitting. On the 13th they send deputies to inform the Commons they have appointed commissioners: the deputies announce on their return that they were “not so well received as they had expected.” Fourteen days more are spent in discussing theircahiers(instructions), disputes about titles and costumes, abandonment of privileges (which is carried in general form, but disputed in detail), homage to the King, and indignation that pamphlets are in circulation accusingthem of slowness. On the 27th they are “examining theircahiers” when “a numerous deputation” of grim, business-like lawyers from the Third break in, and implore them “in the name of the God of Peace and the interest of the nation” to stop quibbling and join the Commons. The deputies are bowed out, and a discussion follows, which is interrupted by M. Target and his companions once more with the same message. They are assured that the Clergy are going to “occupy themselves seriously” with the matter.
Talleyrand knew (as all his colleagues did) that these men of business had been sitting in the next room day after day in the most painful idleness. They would not open a letter or do a single act that could be construed as an admission that they were a separate body. They were “a meeting of citizens,” waiting to be joined by other citizens to do the business of the State. It was now clear that their resolution was unshakeable, and Talleyrand and the moderates cursed Necker very freely. The situation was becoming serious. Citizens from Paris (who had now sent their deputies) keep running down to see how business is proceeding. The curés are getting restless. One of them is interrupted by a Vicar-General, and he says: “Hold your tongue, monsieur.” Prelates leap to their feet in horror. Then some of the curés induce a secretary to begin at the bottom of his list when he is calling the names. One of the bishops rushes at him and snatches the list from his hand. That night (the 27th) 60 or 70 curés meet anddecide to press matters. The next day there is a warm debate, when the cardinal produces a letter from the King, who is painfully surprised to hear there is some hitch or other; the commissioners will meet to-morrow in presence of his keeper of the seals. Another fortnight goes in meetings of commissioners, &c. The Nobles have sent to say they are determined to remain a separate order, and the shifty cardinal has betrayed himself: “Your fathers built and defended our churches: you will be to-day the saviours of your country.” They have tried, too, to tempt the Commons into action by inviting them to discuss the pitiful condition of the country; just what we are waiting for you to come and discuss, reply the Commons. Now (the 10th) Sieyès, the cool, hard-headed ex-theologian, is urging the Commons to “cut the cable.” On the 12th a deputation of ten offers a dignified but unmistakeable invitation to the clergy; they get a promise of “serious consideration.” The next morning it appears that three curés have joined the Third; three more go during the discussion: five the next day. On the 17th they hear that the Commons have constituted themselves the National Assembly. On the 19th they put the question of union to a formal vote. The cardinal says that separation is maintained by 135 votes against 127. The archbishops of Vienne and Bordeaux, the leaders of the unionists, cry that the list has been manipulated, and keep their party in the hall; they turn out to number 149 (against 115). Talleyrand marches out with the separatists, whoare hooted by the great crowd at the door; the Archbishop of Vienne and his colleagues are carried in triumph. Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld and the Archbishop of Paris fly to the King.
The rest of this story of the disruption of the First Order and the consequent recognition of the National Assembly (the Revolution) is well known. Talleyrand was opposed to union. He looked with anxiety to the formation, in a totally uneducated country with a wide franchise, of a single elective chamber. We know now how just his concern was. He and the moderate reformers pressed the King (through M. d’Artois) to dissolve the States-General at whatever cost, and make a fresh appeal on a stricter franchise. He was told that it was too late (and in this the King was probably right), and had then to witness the miserable devices by which the royal party insinuated a power they dare not assert. The halls were closed to prepare for a royal sitting, and the famous oath in the tennis-court was the result. That night (June 20-21st) or the following Talleyrand probably made his last effort to stem the tide of the Revolution. He has told us in the memoirs how he and one or two other Liberal nobles went to Marly by night to see and advise the King.15The King would not see them, and hisbrother told them that their proposals—namely, that the King should disperse the present Assembly and proclaim a fresh election—could not be considered. Talleyrand then said that the Prince could not hold them responsible if in the course of events they felt compelled to throw in their lot with the popular party, and M. d’Artois replied that he could not blame them. Talleyrand thereupon returned to Versailles with a deep resentment of the folly of the King’s advisers and a feeling of independence. “Under pain of folly,” he writes, “it was time to think of oneself.” He, of course, held to his ideal of a limited monarchy, but it was clear that this might have to be attained in spite of the Court party. He proposed to watch the development closely and act as circumstances would direct.
On the Monday the tennis-court was closed—reserved for the Princes to play—and the deputies, after wandering about Versailles in sight of an angry crowd, met in the church of St. Louis. There 151 clerical deputies, with two archbishops at their head, join them amidst the wildest excitement. The royal sitting takes place on the Tuesday. The King promises considerable reforms and then affects authority, and orders them to separate into their respective rooms. Talleyrand saw, on the one hand, the delighted noblescrowding about the Queen, in the belief that all danger was over; and, on the other, the sullen Commons send Brézé to tell the King they will only yield to bayonets, and King Louis abdicate, as he says, “Let them stay”; and 6,000 people invade the chateau with cries for Necker. The Archbishop of Paris has to fly for his life. Soldiers refuse to fire on the crowd. On the next day (24th) the clergy find the door walled up that leads to the Assembly, and the minority continues its separate sitting, but its members melt away. On the 26th Talleyrand and the Bishop of Orange quietly take seats in the National Assembly; they are presently followed by the Archbishop of Paris. On the 27th the King enjoins the rest of the Clergy and the Nobles to unite with the National Assembly. Talleyrand sees the crowds frantically cheer the King and Queen, but he knows it is the royal submission, not the royal authority, they are greeting.
It is from this date, and during the next three years, that Talleyrand is especially found enigmatic, and I must trace his course with care, avoiding the temptation to linger over the stirring scenes of the time. Talleyrand’s opposition to the union of the three orders is clear enough; he wanted a second chamber as a check on undisciplined passion. When it became imperative he went into the Assembly to do what good he should find possible. He was becoming seriously concerned for the nation. He knew well the leaders of the democratic party. Desmoulins was living with his friend Mirabeauat Versailles, and Sieyès was often there. Sieyès ridiculed the English model. Desmoulins was a Republican.