THE RESTORATION
Napoleon had left Paris for the field towards the close of January,
and the strain of expectation became intense. All knew now that the
empire trembled in the balance. The English and Spaniards had crossed
the Pyrenees since the middle of November, and were welcomed by the
peasants of the south as deliverers. The northern allies had crossed
the Rhine on December 21st. Already the imagination could see Napoleon
and his capital hemmed between the converging forces. The group of
whist-players at the Hotel St. Florentin dropped their voices to lower
whispers, as the news came stealthily through the screen of spies and
censors. “Burn this letter” appears time after time at the foot of the
brief notes to the Duchess of Courland. In one letter he tells her that
he has sent a totally different and misleading message by post, because
he knows it will be opened. Another, probably sent by post instead
of the usual friendly bearer, ends with the postcript: “My letters
are opened. Those who read them will discover that I love you, which
concerns you and me alone. After all, I only send news that is being
cried in the streets. This interruption of a confidential exchange
of thoughts is sad for those who wish to renounce the affairs of the
world.”
The thoughts of the hermit were then as vigorously bent on “the affairs
of the world” as ever in his whole career. Was the future to be a
Napoleon with clipped wings? Was it to be a regency? Bernadotte? the
Bourbons? He had several channels of information, and was not affected
by the rigid censorship that ruled Paris. He knew well the march of
military events, but was painfully perplexed as to the political view
of the Allies. He holds in his memoirs that up to the middle of March
they were prepared to treat with Napoleon, and hardly gave a thought
to the Bourbons. But the Emperor was obstinate. He saw with rage the
vast empire slipping from his grasp. At the beginning of February he
sent his Foreign Minister to treat with the Allies at Chatillon, but
as usual insisted on terms too arrogant for his situation. “Talleyrand
would have got me out of the difficulty,” he said, when he heard of
Caulaincourt’s failure. It was not the first time the remark had been
wrung from him. But Talleyrand rightfully says he could have done
nothing of the kind. If the Emperor had gained a slight success the day
after Talleyrand had secured reasonable terms, he would have disowned
them.
The “table de whist”—a phrase of the time—listened to the daily
messages with great impatience. “The man is a corpse, but he doesn’t
stink yet,” said Dalberg of Napoleon. “All he can hope for now,”
said de Pradt, Archbishop of Malines, another of the inner group, “is
a million francs and a frigate at Brest.” Talleyrand kept quiet, but
wrote to the Duchess of Courland that “uncertainty was the worst of
all evils.” He was being closely watched. One day in the middle of
February he and Baron Louis, Mgr. de Pradt, and Dalberg were discussing
the situation, when Savary, the new detective-in-chief, burst into the
room. “Ah!” he said, with a forced laugh, “I catch you all red-handed.”
Towards the end of February they sent Baron Vitrolles, a royalist, to
the representatives of the Allies to glean something of their intention
as to the future. Dalberg gave him as credentials his seal and the
names of two Viennese ladies who were known to Count Stadion. When
Vitrolles asked if he was to have no message from Talleyrand, Dalberg
said: “You don’t know that monkey: he won’t risk burning his finger
tips, even if all the chestnuts go to himself.” He was, however, given
a short, unsigned note in invisible ink for Count Nesselrode.
Talleyrand was already secretly assured of the goodwill of Louis XVIII.
Several years earlier, when someone suggested that he ought to have an
understanding with the possible king, he replied that his uncle, the
Archbishop, was at Hartwell. At the same time he discharged his duties
as Councillor of the Empress to the best of his judgment. Napoleon
had warned Joseph against his advice, and had even ordered Savary to
expel him. Savary refused on the ground that Talleyrand alone kept the
Faubourg St. Germain in check.
Towards the close of March news came that the allied forces were
marching on Paris—were already between Napoleon and his capital.
Country folk began to pour in, flying before the advancing Prussians
and Russians. On the evening of the 28th Joseph assembled the Council
at the Tuileries for the last time. Talleyrand advised that the Empress
should remain in Paris. He spoke on a perfectly loyal and judicious
estimate of the circumstances, and nearly every member of the Council
agreed with him. Then Joseph read a letter from his brother, directing
the retreat of the Empress and her son to Blois. The members of the
Council were to follow. As Talleyrand left the room he halted for a
moment at the top of the staircase, and said to Savary: “So this is
the end of it all! Don’t you think so? The Emperor is to be pitied,
but he will get no sympathy, because his obstinacy in retaining such
incompetent people about him has no reasonable motive. What a fool!
To give his name to an adventure, when he might have given it to his
age. We must see what is to be done. It is not everybody who cares to
bury himself in these ruins.” The following day he sent two envoys
to the head-quarters of the Allies at Dijon. He gave them a letter
of introduction to Stein, who was in favour of a restoration of the
Bourbons, and who was urged “to prevent the frightful consequences of a
wrong choice.”
Faster ran the pace when, on the morning of the 30th, the allied armies
reached the outskirts of Paris. All that day the roar of artillery
and the rattle of musketry kept people in suspense. At night Marshals
Marmont and Mortier came in, black with dust and smoke, and it was
agreed to capitulate. Talleyrand had been ordered to follow the Empress
to Blois, as a member of her Council. He asked Savary to authorise him
to stay, but the Minister refused, and instructed the police to see
that he went. Pasquier, however, mentioned to him the barrier at which
Rémusat commanded, and Talleyrand, sending a message to his friend Mme.
de Rémusat, set out with great ceremony in his state carriage. He was,
of course, forbidden to pass the barrier, and returned to the Hotel St.
Florentin. In his judgment Napoleon was not yet certified to be dead.
Michaud, the devoted leader of the “true royalists” in Paris, who were
contemptuously ignored by Talleyrand, says the crowd wanted to pitch
him in the Seine. Michaud was to write Talleyrand’s biography as soon
as he was dead, and it was to be taken as authoritative by judicious
people like Sainte Beuve.
At eight in the morning Count Nesselrode and a Cossack enter Paris, and
gallop between the great crowds to the Hotel St. Florentin. Talleyrand,
just dressing, covers the Russian envoy with embraces and powder. While
they are talking, a message comes from the Tsar to say that he hears
the Elysée Palace, in which he was to stay, has been undermined.
Talleyrand puts his hotel at the Tsar’s disposal. Nesselrode and he
redact a proclamation, and entrust the printing of it to Michaud. At
two in the afternoon Caulaincourt comes from Napoleon. At four the
allied forces defile along the Champs Elysées, and Alexander arrives.
He had previously given orders that Talleyrand was to be detained, by
force, if necessary, at Paris; he was the necessary man. Michaud admits
that his activity was “prodigious” that day. In the evening Alexander,
the King of Prussia, Prince Schwartzenberg and others discussed
the situation with Talleyrand and Dalberg. Talleyrand demanded the
restoration of the monarchy. “With the return of the Bourbons France
would cease to be gigantic, and would become great once more.” To the
foreigners he pointed out that the only alternative to Napoleon that
rested on a principle was the re-establishment of the Bourbons. The
Tsar was not at all convinced that the country wanted the Bourbons,
but Talleyrand promised to get a vote of the Senate to that effect,
and produced the Declaration he had printed. When Napoleon’s envoy
arrived to treat with the Allies, Alexander showed him the Declaration.
The reign of Napoleon was over. Talleyrand had restored the monarchy.
Napoleon remarked when he heard it: “Talleyrand was a good servant.
I treated him badly without making him powerless. It was a great
mistake. Now he has taken his revenge on me. The Bourbons will avenge
me by throwing him over within six months.” There is no trace in the
whole of Talleyrand’s career of “revenge.” It was, like zeal, one of
the passions he thought it unprofitable to cultivate. He restored the
monarchy, partly because he knew Napoleon, partly because he did not
yet know Louis XVIII. He knew Napoleon would never sit in peace within
the old frontiers of France, or refrain from meddling with a regency.
Castellane rightly points out that he had much to fear under Louis, but
would have had an assured influence under a regency. He acted in what
must have seemed to be the interest of the country.
He at once set to work to secure the allegiance of Paris. Bourrienne,
Pasquier, and others quickly deserted Napoleon. He won over many of
the senators in Paris, and sent his friends to others. When the Senate
met under his presidency on April 1st, it appointed a provisional
government consisting of—Michaud bitterly says—“the whist-table,”
and a few others. Talleyrand was president, with Dalberg, Jaucourt,
Beurnonville, and Montesquiou as colleagues, and Louis and Beugnot and
others as ministers. Michaud says they helped themselves freely to the
funds. Talleyrand claims that their provisional administration was a
miracle of economy. Its budget for seventeen busy days was only two
million francs. On the following day the Senate deposed Napoleon, with
rather needless emphasis. The Legislative Body supported it. Benjamin
Constant wrote to congratulate Talleyrand on having “at once destroyed
tyranny and laid the foundations of liberty.” “There is a noble
consistency in your life,” he said, “between 1789 and 1814.”[51]
Talleyrand was in good spirits when he saw the smooth run of events.
His friend de Pradt was piqued at being left out of the provisional
government, and complained that he had no opportunity of helping.
Talleyrand recollected that it was April 1st. He told de Pradt that
he could render great assistance by joining in an attempt to evoke a
royalist demonstration. They were both to leave the hotel waving their
white handkerchiefs, and proceed in different directions along the
boulevards. Talleyrand returned to the hotel as soon as de Pradt’s back
was turned, and left the Archbishop to run the gauntlet of the crowd
with his Bourbon flag. The National Guard had refused to replace the
tricolour by the white cockade.[52]
But there were more anxious hours before the final settlement. Napoleon
had still a considerable force, and talked of retaking Paris. On April
4th his marshals forced him to abdicate in favour of his son, and
three of them came to the Hotel St. Florentin to inform the Tsar. The
provisional government was at that moment assembled in Talleyrand’s
rooms on the ground floor, and had drawn up the invitation to the
King’s brother to advance to Paris. Alexander now spoke again in favour
of a regency, and Talleyrand replied that it would mean the Napoleonic
rule in disguise. The Tsar wavered between the politicians and the
soldiers, until at last a messenger broke in on the discussion with the
news that one of Napoleon’s generals had deserted with 12,000 men. On
the 5th the Allies rejected Napoleon’s proposal; on the 6th the Senate
proclaimed Louis XVIII, and Napoleon abdicated at Fontainebleau.
Then began the pitiful story of the men who “forgot nothing and learned
nothing,” the King and his emigrant courtiers. Imagining that Europe
had, out of respect for the divine right of kings, drawn the flat of
its style over the tablets of the last twenty years, they marched into
France without a glance at the real spirit of the people. A messenger
came to tell Talleyrand that the Count d’Artois would make his entry
into Paris on April 12th as the King’s deputy. Talleyrand calmly told
him he was ready to hand over the reins of the provisional government
to him. He had worked with the Senate for days at a constitution
after the model of the English, with a hereditary Senate, an elective
second chamber, freedom of worship, and open access to office for all
Frenchmen. They invited the late King’s brother to ascend the throne as
soon as he would adopt on oath the new constitution. This meant to the
infatuated royalists that the roots of republicanism were still alive.
The Tsar was less patient of their folly than Talleyrand. He gave
them to understand that the King would forfeit the support of Europe
if he did not accept the constitution; though Talleyrand admitted the
possibility of changes in detail.
The Count d’Artois greeted Talleyrand with cordiality, and was too
overcome with emotion to do more than stammer an expression of his
joy. Beugnot tells how Talleyrand directed him afterwards to report,
or rather construct, the scene for the _Moniteur_. After several
attempts Beugnot made the Prince say: “Nothing is changed. There is one
Frenchman more in France—that is all.” “That is what he _did_ say,”
said Talleyrand; “I answer for it.” The pretty speech—leagues removed
from the real one—was scattered over the country in the _Moniteur_.
Talleyrand had once defended d’Artois against Napoleon’s disdain, but
he now saw with concern that the Prince’s watch had stopped at 1789.
To the address of the Senate, delivered by Talleyrand, he only replied
with a vague assurance that the King would be sure to accept the main
lines of their constitution. Dispatching a Liberal noble, the Duke de
Liancourt, to Hartwell, Talleyrand turned to the negotiations with the
Allies until the King should arrive.
When someone had expressed to him a fear that the King might prove
unreasonable, Talleyrand replied optimistically that Nature had put a
man’s eyes in front, not at the back, of his head. It was, however,
with grave misgiving that he went to meet Louis XVIII at Compiègne on
April 29th. Cold, cynical and selfish in person, surrounded by evil and
incompetent councillors, folded complacently in the outworn mantle of
Capetian divinity, Louis XVIII came rather with an idea of forgiveness
than of conciliation. He had enough perception of the situation to
admit in the letter some scheme of constitutional monarchy, but he had
not surrendered a particle of the medieval doctrine of divine right.
Nothing was more remote from his mind than the idea of receiving
sovereignty from the people and holding it on their conditions. With
such a man co-operation was only possible as long as Talleyrand could
prove himself to be indispensable. He was steeped in the convenient
fiction that ministers serve the crown, so that its wearer escapes the
burden of ingratitude. For such men Talleyrand would soon say, bitterly
enough, “By the grace of God” is a protocol of ingratitude. As to the
King’s surroundings he had no illusion. When someone asked him whether
he thought them capable of saving France, he replied: “Why not? The
geese saved the Capitol.”
King and king-maker met at the royal chateau of Compiègne. Talleyrand
declares that the King received him with compliments; an eye-witness,
Beugnot, describes him as ironically polite and very kingly.[53] When
Talleyrand broached the subject of the constitution, the King brushed
aside his plea for tact and consideration with a courtly sneer. “You
wish me to accept a constitution from you, and you don’t wish to accept
a constitution from me. That is very natural; but in that case, my dear
M. Talleyrand, I should be standing and you seated.” Talleyrand saw
that his worst fears as to the conduct of the returned emigrants—whom
he would soon call “the foreigners of the interior”—were likely to
be realised. In the end the King asked him, with some suspicion of
irony, how he had been able to upset in succession the Directory and
Bonaparte. Talleyrand saw his opportunity. “I did nothing at all,
Sire,” he replied. “There seems to be an inexplicable something in me
that brings bad luck to governments that neglect me.” This, at all
events, is the current version of the interview. The mythopæic faculty
has evidently been at work. It is safe to assume that the King was
cold, cynical, polite and tactless.
[Illustration: _From an engraving, after the picture by Huet Villiers._
LOUIS XVIII.]
Two days later the Tsar reached Compiègne, and endeavoured in vain to
induce the King to surrender his illusions. The Senate was also brought
from Paris, and was introduced by Talleyrand. “You succeed to twenty
years of ruin and misery. Such a heritage might frighten an ordinary
virtue,” he said gravely to the pompous mediocrity before him. His
sense of humour seems to have failed him when, after pleading for a
“constitutional charter,” he went on: “_You_ know even better than we
do, Sire, that such institutions, so well approved among a neighbouring
people, lend support to, and do not put restraint on, monarchs who
love the laws and are the fathers of their people.” It was all of very
little avail. An English caricature of the time represents the banquet
at Compiègne that night, with the Tsar, the Emperor of Austria, the
King of Prussia, Prince Schwartzenberg, Blücher, Bernadotte, and the
leading figures amongst the Allies and in France around the tables.
Talleyrand sits in silence at one end of the room, but a thread passes
from his hand to each of the other diners, as if they were puppets
under his control. The truth is that Talleyrand had now encountered
one of the most serious difficulties of his career. All his diplomacy
fell before the royal system of filling the ante-chamber with sleek,
cunning, incompetent favourites and flatterers. The King refused
to take the oath to the new constitution, or to adopt the moderate
proclamation prepared by Talleyrand. His satellites prepared one more
in accord with his inflated pretensions—the Declaration of St. Ouen—and
posted it throughout Paris. It gave a constitution to the nation
instead of receiving one from the people’s representatives. Providence
had restored the throne, and to Providence, rather than statesmanship,
it was to be confided. In ten months the king would be flying ignobly
for the frontier.
However, Louis XVIII had accepted the substance of Talleyrand’s
constitution, and he gave the guarantees which were to dispel the
expectation of vindictiveness. Talleyrand returned to Paris to prepare
for his reception, which was at least orderly. A few days afterwards
he was appointed Foreign Minister and Grand Almoner to the King’s
household. There is a story that after he had taken the oath of
loyalty to the King he observed to him: “That is my thirteenth oath of
loyalty, Sire, and I trust it will be the last.” History had another
in reserve for him—the oath to Louis Philippe. Although he afterwards
spoke strongly of the peers who had “violated the religion of the oath”
during the Hundred Days, he had not a great awe of that ceremony. He
is said to have described it once as “the ticket you take at the door
of the theatre.” Speaking once of cheeses, he declared that the Brie
was the king of cheeses; he had thought so in his youth and thought so
still. Eugène Sue observed that he had “taken no oath to that royalty.”
On another occasion, when he had to administer the oath to a pretty
lady, he said, with a glance at her ankles: “That is a very short skirt
to take an oath of fidelity in.”
Not only was Talleyrand omitted from the committee appointed to frame
the new constitution, but its members were strictly forbidden to confer
with him on the subject. He was jealously excluded from influence
on home affairs, and he saw with increasing bitterness the gradual
emergence of the worst faults of the old regime. One of the restored
nobles went about complaining that he did not feel free as long as the
press was free. Another was advocating that the King’s ministers must
be “people of quality,” with the real workers as drudges under their
control. But the task of completing the settlement with the Allies
still engrossed his attention for some time. Barante describes how
Nesselrode or Metternich or other ministers would drop in as Talleyrand
was dressing in the morning, and discuss the situation. It was no
light work to effect a generous settlement, with the King forcing on
him exorbitant pretensions and the Prussians thirsting to avenge Jena.
Talleyrand succeeded by his personal influence in attaching England and
Austria, and so defeating the righteous demands of Prussia. In the end
he was able to hand over to the King a considerably larger France than
Louis XVI had ruled, an army of 300,000 men, all the works of art that
the Directory and Napoleon had “imported,” and a complete acquittance
of all claims for indemnity. While foreign ministers were being
severely censured for admitting such terms, Talleyrand had to listen
to vapid complaints of their insufficiency amongst the Court party.
The King’s young nephew, the Duc de Berry, was especially talkative.
“You seem to have been in a great hurry to sign that unhappy treaty,”
he said one day. “Yes, Monseigneur,” said Talleyrand. “I was in a
great hurry. There are senators who say I was in a great hurry to get
the crown offered to your royal house.” Another day the pretentious
young prince was boasting what they would do with the army that had
been restored to France by Talleyrand surrendering the fortresses.
Talleyrand, who was sitting quietly near, got up and blandly reminded
him that this army had been obtained by the “unhappy treaty” he had
signed with the Allies. He actually heard courtiers talk of making war
on the Allies with this army. The Tsar was deeply disgusted, and began
to regret the return of the Bourbons. Talleyrand made every effort
to prevent his alienation from the King. “The King has studied our
history: he knows us. Liberal principles are advancing with the spirit
of the age.” He wrote these things at a time when he saw the whole
country being disposed to welcome a return of Napoleon.
The three months that followed the conclusion of the treaty with the
Allies were spent in preparation for the coming Congress and uneasy
observation of internal development. Some of the smaller sovereigns
set up by the Peace of Paris entered on their domains at once, but the
definitive settlement of the map of Europe was postponed to a Congress
to be held at Vienna in the autumn. At this Congress Talleyrand would
have to meet a formidable effort on the part of the diplomatists he
had just discomfited, and skilfully to evade the inflated directions
that the courtiers were pressing upon the King. His first care was to
part on good terms with the ministers who were to reunite at Vienna.
His personal qualities and the general recognition of the fact that he
had endeavoured throughout to moderate the bloody march of Napoleon
favoured his effort, but there was a feeling that he had secured
too much for France, and a plot was forming to exclude him by some
stratagem from the important discussions at Vienna. It was, moreover,
visible to all that the Tsar was entirely surrendering his protection
of France. The Prussian ministers departed with bitter determination
to press their claims at Vienna. The Tsar went off to England with a
mortified feeling of having been betrayed into a blunder by Talleyrand.
With the English ministers Talleyrand retained good relations, though
he had (as usual) little respect for their diplomatic gifts. “What a
prodigious amount these English do not know!” he said afterwards, _à
propos_ of Castlereagh, who was at Paris with his brother and Lord
Cathcart. Lord Wellington came to Paris as ambassador in August, and
became a great admirer and friend of the French Foreign Minister.
At the house of Mme. de Staël, who was once more shining in Paris, the
Liberals and Constitutionalists discussed the situation with concern.
The whole policy initiated by Napoleon of the open career was being
discarded. Degrees of “attachment” to the exiled royal family were
made the sole grounds of qualification for office amongst the crowd of
incompetent claimants.
“Regicides” were marked out as excluded from all honour and position.
When Talleyrand protested that this was no reason for rejecting the
abler and more useful of the Republicans, the King pleaded that his
courtiers would not tolerate them. The King’s chief confidant, Blacas,
replied to all suggestions of the dangers they were incurring with a
lofty declaration that there could be no compromise between truth and
error, between the monarchy and the revolution. Talleyrand by this time
knew how to wait, and fell back on that attitude. His only action in
the Senate, to which he belonged, was to defend the proposals of the
new Minister of Finance, his friend, Baron Louis.
On the other hand he made careful preparation for the campaign at
Vienna. The first thing to do was to discover the aims and intentions
of the four great Powers, and that did not take him long. The treaties
that had knit together the coalition against Napoleon were based on a
partition of the territory to be wrested from him. Napoleon’s ruthless
clipping and maiming of Austria and Prussia had to be amended, and
those Powers demanded a heavy discount. Prussia hoped to get Saxony,
Lower Pomerania, part of Poland, and the Rhine districts from Mayence
to Holland. The Tsar, whose plans were sufficiently revealed to
Talleyrand during the few weeks’ stay at the Hotel St. Florentin,
desired the whole of Poland (with a separate constitution, but under
the Russian Crown). Thus the claims of the two most covetous Powers
were inconsistent with each other and inacceptable to Austria, who was
especially unwilling to compensate the King of Saxony in Italy. England
had already secured Hanover and the independence of the Netherlands,
and was not further interested in Europe, except in the balancing of
the Powers against each other; but she was bound by the treaties signed.
Talleyrand fully informed himself of the views of the Powers, and
formed the plan he afterwards followed with brilliant success. He would
pose as the dignified and disinterested representative of principle in
this game of grab. Partly under directions from the King, partly from
reasons of personal regard or interest, he determined to frustrate
Prussia’s design on Saxony and to secure the restoration of Naples to
Sicily. Here the opportunist and democratic Talleyrand would plead
the principle of legitimacy. As England was the least interested of
the Powers he would win her first to his new fervour for principles,
and Austria, with her interests mainly southern and a natural concern
at any undue growth of Prussia and Russia, might be drawn with them
against the northern Powers. But the first difficulty was to get a
hearing. By one of the earlier treaties (Chaumont) the four Powers
had agreed to exclude France from the deliberations respecting the
division of the territory won from her. Prussia was bent on having this
condition carried out, and Russia and Austria had no reason as yet to
depart from it. Talleyrand prepared the way for his attack on this
formidable obstacle to his plans by a close and assiduous cultivation
of England. He impressed effusively on the English Ambassador, first
Sir Charles Stuart and then Lord Wellington, the identity of the
interests, or the disinterestedness, of France and England, and brought
about a feeling of cordiality. Castlereagh himself stopped at Paris for
a few days on the way to Vienna, and was much interviewed.
The next step was to prepare the personnel of the French party and the
indirect machinery of diplomacy. He chose Dalberg, partly as a small
reward to his friend and partly “to let out secrets” at Vienna, and
La Besnardière to do the substantial work of the legation. Of the two
royalists who accompanied him, the Count de Noailles (a moderate) and
M. de Latour du Pin, he says that as he knew he would have to take
some of the Court party to watch him, he preferred to have them of his
own choosing. The latter would be able “to sign passports.” He also
took his nephew’s charming and tactful wife, the Countess Edmond de
Périgord, to entertain for him. She proved “very useful” in breaking
down the social boycott with which hostile ministers tried to support
their resolve to exclude Talleyrand from the settlement. They rented
the Hotel Kaunitz at Vienna, and some of the most brilliant fêtes and
most attractive dinners of the ensuing winter were given there.
The last point was to obtain suitable instructions from the King, or,
rather, give sober instructions to Louis XVIII. He therefore drew
up a long memorandum and programme, and got it signed by the King
without difficulty. The French representatives at the Congress were
to see that things were done in order and on principle. The Congress
would have to settle what States should be represented in it, what
its objects were, and how they were to be attained. In this regard
the Treaty of May 30th must be followed, which promises a _general_
Congress. The idea of a “Power” must be taken in a wide sense, and all
the States, large or small, that took part in the war must be admitted.
The small German States should be formed into a confederation, and
the Congress cannot accomplish this without their assistance. In the
distribution of territory it must be remembered that modern Europe
does not recognize that sovereignty may be obtained by mere conquest,
and without the abdication of the conquered sovereign. “Sovereignty
is, in the general society of Europe, what private ownership is in
a particular civil society.” On this principle Saxony and the other
German States must be dealt with. The Congress has to dispose of the
territory renounced by France, and the principles of public right must
guide the distribution. Balance of power does not mean equality of
force. Small States must be preserved, and, _à fortiori_, Saxony, whose
king has been a father to his people, a beneficent ruler. France must
protect the little States against the larger; must see that Prussia
does not get Mayence or any territory left of the Moselle, and so on.
Poland is to be reconstructed, on condition that its restoration is
entire and complete. England being equally conservative with France as
to the state of Europe must be cultivated as an ally. In the end the
memorandum lays down four chief points on which the representatives
of France must insist, whatever concession they make apart from them.
These are: 1. That Austria shall not obtain the States of the King of
Sardinia for one of its princes; 2. That Naples shall be restored to
Ferdinand IV.; 3. That the _whole_ of Poland shall not pass under the
sovereignty of Russia; 4. That Prussia shall not get Saxony—“at least,
not the whole of it”—nor Mayence.
Had these four points been submitted to any other ambassador at
the Congress beforehand he would have smiled. We have now to see
how Talleyrand secured every one of them in the face of tremendous
opposition.[54]