Chapter VI: Part IV: First Consulate (1)

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 contemporary[39] to have held, at a private interview with the first consul, the following language:[40]--

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

II.

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

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

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

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

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

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

III.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“_To our very dear son, Charles Maurice Talleyrand._[42]

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

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

IV.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

V.

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

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

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

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

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

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

VI.

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

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

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

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

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

VII.

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

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

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

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

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

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

VIII.

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

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

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

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

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

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

IX.

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

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

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

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

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

X.

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

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

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

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

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

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