EXILE
Talleyrand arrived at Paris just in time to witness the last weak
struggle of order against anarchy. Lafayette had flown back to Paris,
had fruitlessly appealed to the Legislative Assembly against the
Jacobins, had just as fruitlessly appealed to lawless order against
lawless disorder, and had retired in despair to his army. However, the
Department of Paris, which still represented the orderly and stable
elements of the city, had suspended the Mayor, Pétion, the day after
Talleyrand left London. The forest of pikes glistened in the streets
once more, and the Legislative Assembly was forced to restore Pétion to
office and abandon the Department. Talleyrand, la Rochefoucauld, and
other moderates, then resigned their positions, and awaited the next
step of the mob and the Jacobins. The following day was the anniversary
of the fall of the Bastille, and though it passed quietly Talleyrand
would observe the fiercer attitude of the crowd and its emblems. He
and la Rochefoucauld were passing under the balcony of the Tuileries
that evening when the Queen nodded to them. Talleyrand must have made
his own reflections on this; also on the unpleasant spirit it at once
provoked in the crowd.
Talleyrand lingered beyond his fortnight. The atmosphere was sultry,
electric. Something would happen soon—something graver than all the
grave rest. Provincial petitions began to trickle in praying for the
deposition of the King. On August 3rd Mayor Pétion comes openly, at the
head of the municipal officers in their tricolour scarves, to demand
it of the Assembly. The fiery Marseillais have arrived; fiery troops
are pouring in from all parts of France. The official declaration that
“the country is in danger” has strengthened the Jacobins. On the 8th
of August the Assembly refuse to condemn Lafayette, and its refusing
majority is hunted by the crowd. On the 9th it must discuss the
question of the deposition of the King. It can come to no resolution,
and sits wavering between the pale ghost of loyalty and the city of
pikes. That night the insurrection becomes fully conscious of its
power. At sunrise the grim flood surges again about the walls and flows
over the terraces and through the outer gates of the Tuileries. The
Swiss guards are provoked into firing, and within a few hours nearly
2,000 lie dead. Paris has tasted blood now with fearful effect. It
has 1,200 patriots to avenge. The King is “suspended”; a National
Convention is summoned, with no restriction whatever on electors or
candidates.
[Illustration: DANTON.]
What Talleyrand thought at this time we do not know, but we can
confidently assume. The last particle of his constitutional ideal
was disappearing. Still he clung to France for a few days. Danton,
now all-powerful as Minister of Justice, had been his colleague
in the Department, and seems to have been not indifferent to him.
Something might yet be done. They induced him to write a defence of
the events of the 10th to pacify England. This document—which must be
admitted to come from Talleyrand’s pen—has been gravely censured. It
is certainly a desperate appeal, but, save for an odd phrase that is
diplomatically exaggerated, is not indefensible. We can well imagine
what the French papers in London were making of the 10th. Talleyrand,
in the name of the new executive (bound to defend its supporters),
put the other side of the matter. He strongly, but justly, criticises
the conduct of the royal family, as being seriously provocative. The
only downright injustice is when he speaks of the Swiss guards as the
“cowardly satellites” of the monarchy. Lady Blennerhassett thinks this
unpardonable. It is certainly a harsh phrase to write over men who
died a brave and noble death, but the truth is that many of them were
encouraging the crowd to advance when the others (unknown to them very
probably) began their deadly fire.
Lady Blennerhassett sees a grave inconsistency, inspired by a base
motive, in Talleyrand’s protesting against the affair of June 20th,
and then condoning the worse attack of August 10th and siding with
the Jacobins. We must remember that many things had happened since
July 13th. Hostile armies hung threateningly on the frontier; one
must take desperate measures now to secure the continued neutrality
of England. Further, on July 13th it was not at all certain that the
Jacobins could not be checked; it was now clear that one must work
with them or through them, or desert the country to its fate, for no
human judgment, not patriotically intoxicated, could see how Prussia,
Austria and Brunswick were to be held off. It is a sheer perversion of
history to say that Talleyrand deserted the King after August 10th. He
had deserted his _cause_ long ago; his _person_, his life and liberty,
Talleyrand never willingly saw endangered; nor did he ever cease to be
a partisan of limited monarchy. It is, indeed, a question if the events
of August 10th did not put the royalist cause in a more hopeful plight.
Certainly the royalists thought so. These events doubled the pace
of the armies that were heading towards Paris. Finally, it is quite
impossible to see that Talleyrand expected any advantage out of the new
administration.
Briefly, then, Talleyrand was perfectly consistent in writing the
official “explanation” of August 10th. One would imagine from some
of the references to it that it was a blatantly patriotic boast
of the affair; one need only recollect that it was written by an
astute diplomatist to a well-informed country, and for a strictly
conciliatory purpose. It merely pointed out the extenuating features
of the “terrible events” with diplomatic casuistry. We must not judge
Talleyrand as if he had ever believed in the divine right of Kings. Nor
had he any particular grounds of personal loyalty to King or Queen; nor
can he be accused of untruth in laying on the royalist cause the burden
of the Austrian and Prussian invasions.
But Lady Blennerhassett is herself unpardonable when she says
Talleyrand’s destiny “dragged him deeper still, into the bloody torrent
of the September massacres.” This is a most unhappy way of expressing
the fact that Talleyrand was a disgusted spectator of those awful
scenes, and that he fled the country as soon as they happened. We lose
sight of him from August 18th, when he penned the diplomatic defence
of Danton, until September 14th. On that day Barrère finds him leaving
Danton’s room in travelling dress with a passport for London.[23]
Danton had sent his friend Noel to London to supersede Chauvelin and
keep England neutral. At the beginning of September Noel had written
to say that negotiations seemed possible (August 10th had evidently
not been regarded as inexcusable at London), and Danton had thought
the conditions suggested were not inacceptable. Meantime, the hostile
forces were converging successfully on Paris. On August 29th comes
terrible news of Prussians, Austrians and Brunswick, and of the rising
in La Vendée. There are not weapons, when even women offer to bear
them. Danton gets an order for a visitation of suspected houses and
incarceration of suspects. Royalists are leading every invading army.
Paris is in the last stage of the new “intoxication.” The awful story
of the first week of September has been told often enough. By Thursday
evening Talleyrand would hear that more than a thousand men and women,
mostly innocent, had been savagely murdered. The next day he obtained
from Danton a passport: “Leave to pass to Citizen Talleyrand, going to
London by our order.”
The last phase of the movement he had followed since May 6th, 1789,
was too repulsive. He could say no longer that “provided he remained
French, he was prepared for anything.” He was not prepared for murder.
His one thought was to leave France. On the pretext of a mission to
persuade England to adopt the metrical system he received permission to
leave. Research in the archives of the Foreign Office has brought to
light (says M. Pallain) a letter in which Talleyrand asks permission to
return and continue his work in London before the end of August, when
the guillotine had already begun its work. He did not, therefore wait
until there was personal danger before he fled. He did not cling to
ruling powers until their long lists were drawn up. However, he would
probably have less difficulty than is supposed in securing permission
to leave from Danton. It was more than ever imperative to have an able
man in London. The British Ambassador, like all others, had fled from
Paris. Noel had to face a storm of indignation in England. Danton
would, one imagines, see no more useful man in the emergency than
Talleyrand. However that may be, he left Paris on September 14th, not
to return until the long story of the reign of violence was over. His
“real aim” was, he says, to get away from France; but he applied for
a passport so as not to close the door behind him in the event of his
wishing to return.
He arrived in England on the 23rd, only to find, as he expected, his
whole diplomatic work in sad danger. He announced his arrival to the
Foreign Office, denying that he had any mission, but expressing his
readiness to give information. He was not invited to give any. A good
deal has been written on the question whether he had a mission or no,
but the solution is hardly obscure when all the evidence is read. While
denying in England (and even in a letter to Danton) that he had any
mission, he told several correspondents that he had, and in his later
petition from America he claimed that he was enjoined to prevent a
rupture between England and France. The conflict of evidence is easily
reconciled if we suppose he had an informal, secret understanding to
that effect with Danton. It is the most likely thing to happen in the
circumstances. In any case he had not long to continue his delicate
task. The Opposition in England was prepared to support him to very
great lengths, even after the triumphant Jacobins at Paris had decreed
a war of revolutionary propaganda. Talleyrand always regarded this
as a fatal step, and he even now wrote to Paris to counteract the
feeling. The very able memorandum “On the actual relations of France to
the other States of Europe,” which he forwarded to Lebrun, now Chief
Minister, and to several members of the Convention, has been published
by Pallain. It is a finely-written and sober political document. To
the new idea of French dominance he replies that “the only useful and
reasonable dominance, the only one that becomes free and enlightened
men, is to be master of one’s self, and never to make the ridiculous
pretention to domineer over others.” It is time that a mature
France had done with illusions. An understanding with free nations,
for peaceful, commercial purposes, should be the ideal. Wars of
aggrandisement should be condemned. It is a very sincere and admirable
political gospel.
By a curious chance it must have reached Paris[24] just before the
Convention began to discuss the question of putting its author on the
list of emigrants, forbidden to return under pain of death. A letter
had been found amongst the King’s papers, in which Laporte, the King’s
steward, had reported (in April, 1791) that Talleyrand was anxious to
serve him. On the strength of this letter condemnation was passed on
December 5th, and Talleyrand was made an exile. A letter, signed D.
(probably from des Renaudes, but possibly Danton), was inserted in
the _Moniteur_ in defence of Talleyrand. It appealed to the minister
Lebrun, and others to whom Talleyrand had sent his patriotic memorandum
a few days before, to produce this proof of his loyalty. Talleyrand
himself wrote a letter to the _Gazette_ in which he flatly denied that
he had any relations whatever with the King or Laporte. He claimed that
the only particle of truth on which one could make such a statement was
that he had written a report in defence of freedom of worship (which we
have considered, dated May 7th, 1791), in which he upheld the King’s
right to the ministration of a non-juring priest. Laporte, he said,
must have seen this memorandum as it circulated privately—as so many
speeches did—before May 7th, and interpreted it to mean that Talleyrand
favoured the King. It is likely enough, and at all events we have no
further evidence. But the defence was of no avail. Talleyrand remained
on the proscribed list for three years.
It is not probable that Talleyrand would have ventured again to live at
Paris during those years. He _was_ an aristocrat, even if he clothed
himself from head to foot in tricolour. He was a man of refined and
humane temper, and could not possibly have co-operated further with
the sanguinary parties that now came to power. At the most he would
wish to retain a distant connection in the event of an improvement in
the condition of Paris. A few days after reaching London, in accepting
an invitation to Bowood, he wrote to Lord Lansdowne that “when one
has passed the last two months at Paris one needs to come and refresh
oneself with the conversation of superior people.” Then came news of
the impeachment and trial of the King. London listened with growing
horror and disgust to the details of the “trial.” On January 21st
Louis was guillotined. On January 24th the late French ambassador,
Chauvelin, the only official-looking Frenchman the Government could
find, was swept out of England. On February 1st the Convention declared
war against England and Holland (the one entanglement that endangered
England’s neutrality). Talleyrand found the door which he had so
cleverly contrived to leave open violently slammed upon him.
He says in the memoirs that he did not intend to stay long in
England. In fact, we know now that he applied about this time for
permission to settle in Tuscany, but the Grand Duke had to refuse on
the ground of his neutrality. The position must have been trying for
a man of Talleyrand’s taste and ambition. If we may trust his later
observations, his mind wandered unsteadily from one country to another
and one occupation to another. He settled down, however, to the life of
an emigrant in London, and managed to spend a year not unpleasantly.
His library had been transferred to London,[25] and he spent his
mornings in writing. He does not tell us the subject, but says that
when he had returned to France a huge mass of his notes and memoranda
came over from London. He would have us believe that they proved of
little use for the writing of his memoirs, but the chapter on the Duc
d’Orléans is so ample and circumstantial that it seems to have been
written at an early date, and was not improbably written in 1793. It
affords a thorough reply to the rumours, for which no documentary
ground has ever been discovered by his most bitter enemies, that he
was secretly working with the Orleanist group. He did not frequent the
Palais Royal in a political capacity.
But in spite of emigrant hatred and the general British hostility to
France, he found a sufficiently large social circle in London. Mme.
de Genlis had come to England with her niece. Talleyrand offered her
a little money out of his small fund, and actually did assist other
compatriots. Many of them were, as is known, living in bitter poverty.
Mme. de Staël came over in January and remained until the summer. She
took a house near Richmond, and Talleyrand spent a good deal of his
time there. In Kensington the Countess de la Châtre kept a house, where
many of Talleyrand’s old friends met. Narbonne had with difficulty
got away—with the assistance of Mme. de Staël and Talleyrand—at the
beginning of September. Rivarol and Lalley-Tollendal and many other
constitutionalists were there. Fox and Sheridan and their friends
afforded a fairly large circle of English acquaintances. Lord Lansdowne
continued friendly long after he left England. At his house Talleyrand
speaks of frequently meeting Hastings, Price, Priestley, Romilly, and
Jeremy Bentham. His reputation for culture and conversation opened
many doors. Sydney Smith was brought in contact with him somewhere,
and says that he found him unequal to his reputation; but one imagines
that Sydney Smith would not be unbiassed, and he admits he could not
understand his French. The German physician, Bollmann, found him
so charming that he “could listen to him for years.” On the whole,
Talleyrand fared better than most of his indigent companions, though
the enforced idleness annoyed him. “Patience and sleep,” he told Mme.
de Staël, was his programme for the present. In another letter he
described his chief occupations as “fishing and correcting proofs” (of
Mme. de Flahaut’s novel).
It is from the letters he wrote to Mme. de Staël after her return
to France that we find he is still watching the situation in that
country without despair. In one letter he sketches a plan. The southern
provinces, which still show some attachment to the constitution, should
unite, and invite the members of the old Constituent Assembly to meet
at Toulon. He believes that the nation is still attached to the
constitution, and that it is really in the supposed defence of this
that they have risen against King and invaders. When he hears of the
execution of the Queen he has to modify his view. “It is all over with
the house of Bourbon in France,” he says; but he never believed that
France would remain permanently republican. His wistful speculations,
which were equally resented by republicans in France and royalists
out of it (who charged the constitutionalists with bringing all his
misfortunes on the King), were cut short at the beginning of 1794 by
a peremptory order to quit England within five days (in another place
Talleyrand says twenty-four hours).
[Illustration: _From an engraving, after the picture by F. Gérard._
MADAME DE STAËL.]
The order was inexcusable, but no influence that Talleyrand could
command had any effect on it. A law had been passed twelve months
before empowering the Government to expel undesirable aliens, and it
had been applied to Noel and Chauvelin. Talleyrand may have feared its
extension to him at first, when he applied for residence in Tuscany,
but he was not prepared for this cruel application after twelve months
of peaceful life in London. He pressed his most influential friends to
obtain some explanation, at least, of the order, but none was given. In
the end, he attributed it to intrigues of his emigrant enemies, and one
can see no other reason for it. He was the only distinguished Frenchman
of moderate views to incur the order. Sainte-Beuve says it “proves he
was not in the odour of virtue.” It, at all events, proved, if this
needed proof, that he had enemies. He protested to Pitt and to the
King, but it was no use, and he took ship for America on February 3rd.
His letters to Lord Lansdowne and Mme. de Staël show a very natural
bitterness of feeling, but even at this time he hardly blamed England.
But when the ship was detained at Greenwich he refused an invitation
from Dundas to spend the time at his house, saying that he could not
set foot on English soil again after receiving such an order.
The romantic biographers have enlivened his voyage with adventures.
They tell how the Dutch vessel in which he sailed was stopped and
searched by an English frigate, and Talleyrand dressed himself in the
cook’s clothes to pass the scrutiny. M. Michaud, as usual, does not
deign to mention his authority. Talleyrand only says that the ship was
beaten back by heavy storms, and seemed at one time in danger of being
driven on the French coast. It did put in at Falmouth for repairs, and
Talleyrand landed there, so that his objection to English soil was
relaxing. He was told that an American general was staying at an inn
in the town, and he found that it was General Arnold, who would hardly
give him an attractive picture of his future home. Whether it was from
this conversation, or from a real weariness of spirit (or, in fine, a
freak of memory in later years), he says that he did not want to leave
ship when they reached Philadelphia. Another ship was sailing out as
they reached the mouth of the Delaware, and he sent a boat to learn its
destination. It was going to Calcutta, and he wanted, he says, to take
a berth in it, but could not get one. He landed at Philadelphia with
his companions, M. de Beaumetz and des Renaudes, towards the end of
March.
A number of acquaintances had preceded him to America. When the
emigration began people recollected the lively stories brought back
by Lafayette and his companions, and many who either had wealth or
wanted to make it sailed to the States. At Philadelphia, Talleyrand
found a Dutchman named Casenove, whom he had known at Paris, and
who now proved useful to him. There were half-a-dozen emigrants in
Philadelphia, and they met at nights over gay but frugal suppers, at
the house of Moreau-Saint-Méry, who had opened a book-store there.
Michaud says Talleyrand opened a store for the sale of night-caps;
the legend probably grew out of a curious custom of Talleyrand’s of
wearing several of these at night. But Talleyrand was evidently very
restless and irritated. Washington declined to grant him a formal
interview, and Talleyrand refused, as he says, to go to see him by the
back door. The only man whose friendship relieved the depression of
that time was Colonel Alexander Hamilton, whom Talleyrand describes as
the ablest statesman then living, not excepting Pitt and Fox. They had
long conversations on political and economic subjects, and were happily
agreed on most matters; though Hamilton was a moderate Protectionist
and Talleyrand a strong Free-trader.
Talleyrand sought some relief by a voyage into the interior with
Beaumetz and a Dutch friend, Heydecooper. He was not insensible to
the natural beauty of the forests and prairies, which he describes
with unusual literary care, but he was chiefly impressed with the vast
possibilities of these leagues of uncultivated territory. Within a few
miles of every sea-coast town you plunged into virgin forests, and
from the hill-tops you looked over illimitable oceans of wild growth.
A thoughtful traveller like Talleyrand could not but speculate on the
future of the country. Convinced as he was of the primary importance of
agriculture, the future of America had a peculiar interest for him. But
as he wandered from town to town, and saw more of the people, he felt
some disappointment in them. The idealist fervour which he expected
to find still glowing, within a few years of the declaration of
independence, seemed to be wholly extinct. In fact, if Talleyrand had
been able to anticipate that elegant phrase, he would have said “making
their pile” was the chief preoccupation of the Americans of 1794.
Without bitterness, but with something like sadness, he tells a number
of stories about his experience. He met a fairly rich man in one town
who had never been to Philadelphia. He would like to see Washington,
the man assented to Talleyrand’s inquiry, but he would very much rather
see Bingham, who was reported to be very wealthy. At another place he
noticed that his host put his hat—a hat that a Parisian stable-boy
would not wear, he says—on a beautiful table of Sèvres porcelain
brought from the Trianon. When Talleyrand speaks impatiently of America
as “a country without a past,” he is thinking of these incongruities;
there had not yet been time in the history of America for the fixing of
inviolable canons. In some other respects the features of life in this
new country were amusing. In a log cabin on the Ohio they found some
good bronzes and a fine piano. When Beaumetz opened it, however, the
owner had to ask him to spare them; the nearest tuner lived a hundred
miles away, and had not called that year.
Talleyrand makes it clear that he understands how these features of
American life are inseparable from its newness and its pioneering
character, but he feels the discord too keenly to enjoy it on its
adventurous and picturesque sides. “If I have to stay here another year
I shall die,” he wrote to Mme. de Staël. He appreciates the sincerity
of their religious life after that of pre-Revolutionary Paris, but a
country of thirty-two religions and only one sauce does not suit him.
He wrote a long letter to Lord Lansdowne (February 1st, 1795), with
the view of bringing about a better understanding between England
and America. The independence of the States is settled for ever, he
says; there is no question whatever of a reversion to the status of
a British colony. Nevertheless, though feeling is at present averted
from England and turning towards France, the link between the two
nations is strong and natural. All the institutions of America and
all its economic features (which he discusses at great length) compel
it to look in friendly interest to England. In June and July he sent
other brief notes to Lord Lansdowne. In June, moreover, he heard of the
rout of the Jacobins at Paris. In the memoirs he affirms (and the most
indulgent admiration fails to ascribe _this_ to a freak of memory) that
the National Convention rescinded the decree against him “without any
request on my part.” We have a copy of the petition he wrote to the
Convention on June 16th, pressing for the removal of his name from the
proscribed list. He urges that the reasons for putting him on the list
were frivolous, but he had not been able to return to Paris to contest
them, because “under the tyranny of Robespierre” the prisons were
violated, and he would be executed without trial. It is probably about
the same time that he wrote to Mme. de Staël, who quotes his words in a
later letter to him.
Whether Talleyrand despaired of obtaining permission to return he does
not say, but he tells us that in the autumn of 1795 he and his friend
Beaumetz invested their small capital in stocking a ship for the East
Indies. They had seen the first American adventurers return from India
in 1794 with rich spoils, and seem to have caught the Indian fever that
then broke out in America. They were joined by a number of Philadelphia
firms, and their ship was about to start when the Fates intervened.
How the biography of Talleyrand would have run if this adventure had
been permitted it is difficult to conjecture. In fact, the whole story
has a most undeniable odour of legend about it, but, apart from a few
details (such as that of Beaumetz attempting to murder him in New York)
which the romanticists add on their own authority, it is Talleyrand
himself who tells it, in the memoirs. I am not quite sure that this
puts it beyond dispute, but probably we should admit it, and see in
it a proof of the most unusually restless and irritated temper he had
fallen into in America. However, his petition had succeeded at Paris.
Mme. de Staël, who was sincerely devoted to him, induced Legendre
and Boissy d’Anglas to favour the petition. It was presented to the
Convention on September 4th, and supported by M. J. Chénier and the
ex-Oratorian, Daunou. Talleyrand’s name was erased from the list of
_émigrés_, and he was described as an unappreciated patriot. He had
struck the right note in alluding to “the tyranny of Robespierre.” The
various sections of the Terrorists had annihilated each other in mutual
distrust; and more peaceful, if not quite more admirable, elements had
come to power. In the summer of 1795 the Jacobin Club was closed, and
the once terrible name was now laughingly hurled at one as “Jacoquin.”
Sanculottist Paris had risen in insurrection twice, and had twice been
chased back into its slums. Chénier had only to describe Talleyrand as
a victim of the persecutions of Marat and Robespierre, and “the perfidy
of Pitt,” and one whose “noble conduct as a priest and man had greatly
promoted the Revolution,” and his name was struck off the black list.
He let Beaumetz sail alone for India, bade farewell to Hamilton and la
for Rochefoucauld and his many friends in the States, and sailed for
Europe in a Danish vessel in November. He had not been thirty (as he
says), but twenty, months in America. It had seemed longer.[26]