Born in 1769; died in 1820.
The son of the house steward of the Marquis de Bercy. He received,
through the kindness of this nobleman, a good education, and became a
notary’s clerk.
At the outbreak of the Revolution he gave up this employment for
journalism, publishing for five months under the title of _L’Ami des
Citoyens_, a newspaper which was a worthy companion to the _Ami du
Peuple_ of Marat. His newspaper was financed by the Jacobin Club.
He took a prominent part in the events of August 10, and in the
massacres in the prisons on September 2. Elected member of the
Convention, he defended Marat and denounced General Montesquieu and
Roland (then Minister). His speeches against Louis XVI. and the Royal
family were so violent and so frequent as actually to evoke a vote of
censure from the Convention. At the King’s trial he voted, “For instant
death in the interests of humanity.”
It was upon his proposal five months later that the Girondins were put
_hors de la loi_; and in September 1793, Tallien departed with
Ysabeau for Bordeaux, “to utterly extirpate any remains of that hydra
Girondism.”
Here he instituted a reign of terror. He added tortures to executions,
and, under the name of “requisitions,” made, as he said, war upon the
commercial aristocracy, by plundering all the wealthy merchants of the
town. To the mean cruelties of the worst form of Roman pro-consul he
added in his private life the luxury and pomp of a Persian satrap.
He met Mdme. Fontenay and fell desperately in love with her. He
saved her from prison and brought her back with him to Paris. He was
in consequence ill received by the Committee of Public Safety, who
immediately imprisoned the woman he loved, on the accusation of being
an aristocrat.
To avert suspicion, Tallien affected an even more vehement and
sanguinary patriotism than he had previously shown, and on March 22,
1794, was elected President of the Convention. Robespierre denounced
him to the Convention on June 12. He also erased the name of Tallien
from the Jacobin Society; this was tantamount to a sentence of death.
Tallien determined to strike first, and to save not only his own life,
but that of his mistress; he therefore joined those who feared and
hated the triumvirate of Robespierre, St. Just, and le Bas, and who
wished to avenge Danton and save their own lives. Tallien became the
leader of the party who six weeks later overthrew Robespierre.
After this he occupied for a short time the place that the death of
Maximilien Robespierre had left unoccupied. He married the woman he
loved, closed the Club of the Jacobins, and put upon their trial le
Bon, Fouquier-Tinville and other agents of terrorism. He retained
predominant power in the State until July 1795, when he visited the
army on the western frontier on a mission to General Hoche. Here he
was once more guilty of summary executions and caused much unnecessary
bloodshed.
The advent of the Directorate in October of the same year practically
finished his active political career. He was accused of venality
and treason, and though he became a member of the Five Hundred, his
speeches were received with indifference or insult.
In May 1798 he left that assembly, and here his public life may be said
to have terminated.
He accompanied the expedition of Bonaparte to Egypt in the capacity of
a _savant_! Bonaparte and he were friends at the time owing to the
intimacy of their wives, and he had acted as witness when the general
married Madame Beauharnais.
In Egypt Tallien was appointed Administrator of the Interior, and he
wrote a work called “Décade Egyptienne.” On his return to Europe a year
after the departure of Napoleon, the ship upon which he sailed was
taken by an English cruiser and he was carried to London. Here he was
enthusiastically received by the Radical party.
After the peace of Amiens he returned to France, but did not find a
warm welcome. His wife had been notoriously unfaithful to him during
his absence; he divorced her immediately.
After vainly petitioning the First Consul for an appointment he
received, by the influence of Talleyrand and Fouché, the unenviable
situation of Consul in the unhealthy Spanish seaport of Alicante
several months later. Here he remained for some years, nearly dying on
one occasion of yellow fever, by which he lost the sight of an eye.
He returned to France, and ended his days living in obscurity on a
small pension, and dying in 1820, at the age of fifty-one.
TALLIEN, COMTESSE OF CARAMON, PRINCESSE DE CHIMAY, THERESA
CABARRUS.
Born at Saragossa, in Spain, 1773; died at Chimay, in Belgium,
1835.
This beautiful woman was the daughter of the Count of Cabarrus, Spanish
Minister of Finance. At the age of sixteen she married M. Devin de
Fontenoy, Counsellor to the Parliament of Bordeaux. Her married life
was unhappy; and when the Republic instituted divorce, she obtained
one from her husband. After this she led a life of absolute freedom,
joined the revolutionary party, and became a conspicuous feature in
their meetings at Bordeaux. For some reason, now unknown, she was
imprisoned. Tallien, on his mission to Bordeaux as Commissionary of
the Republic, heard her beauty praised, visited her in her cell, fell
madly in love with her, and carried her back with him to Paris; there
she was arrested and again imprisoned. After her release and marriage
to Tallien, she became one of the most brilliant leaders of the corrupt
and immoral society of the Directorate. Her conduct, during the absence
of her husband in Egypt, passed all bounds of decency, and she gave
birth to two children, whom Tallien refused to acknowledge. He divorced
her in 1802.
In 1805 she married M. de Caramon, who became Prince de Chimay, by whom
she had a family of two sons and two daughters.
Although she had been the companion in prison of Josephine Beauharnais,
and both Tallien and herself intimate friends of the Bonapartes in the
early days of their married life, Napoleon would never allow his wife
to receive her publicly at the Tuileries, either as Mdme. Tallien or
the Princess de Chimay.