Best books on talleyrand

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, the renegade, married Bishop of Autun, Prince of Benevento, Prince of Talleyrand of largely infamous renown. His name, where it is still known, is likely to call up images of what some thought to be his spirit animal, the snake, or perhaps just the snake charmer. He is best known as the remarkable survivor of five straight French regimes, and not the relatively kind ones where you got to rusticate in the country when you fell out of favor. These were the years of Louis XVI, Danton, Marat, Sièyes, Fouché, Napoleon and the Ultras, and aside from the two years of the Terror which he largely spent abroad in England and America, he was rarely out of government service the whole time. By reputation, he was considered a man without honor by many, the untrustworthy minister who was nonetheless recalled and recalled again to serve the French government, whomever might be at its head. His most famous and unambiguously triumphant episode: the astonishingly favorable outcome of the Treaty of Paris, followed by the Congress of Vienna, at which, despite the return of Napoleon and the slight…. interruption of Waterloo, he was able to obtain for France a still almost unbelievably favorable settlement and return her to the status of a Great Power. This allowed the completely exhausted and occupied country to maintain her borders and visited punishment largely only on the conqueror, rather than on the people who had supported him (again, incredibly, even after the Hundred Days!). Later on, through his time at the London Embassy, he was also a large player in ensuring that the question of Belgium, one of the major mistakes of the Congress, was peacefully fixed and resolved, and helped ensure that war did not break out once more.

And yet, despite these amazing feats, his negative reputation remains. The clever Talleyrand, certainly. But more importantly, the man who stood for nothing- who changed his opinions and advice to suit his masters, who was just as happy serving the good king as the ambitious conqueror. The man who who was only out for himself and his own survival- oh, remarkably good at it, one must give him that, but still, not one that anyone, in fact, from any faction would trust farther than they could throw him.

But why? Surely whatever faults he may have had, his accomplishments and many years of government service (and remember this is centralized France we speak of) must outweigh them. You would think this would especially be the case as passions faded and the practical results of his work became more evident, especially as his memoirs were released and the Second Empire came to a close, that it would be time for the revisionist biography. But, as of 1932, that had not occurred.

Cooper’s reasoning for writing this biography lies there. At one point in this biography, Cooper reminds us of the politics of historians in France. At least into the early 20th century, they tended to fall into one of three camps- Republican, Royalist and Bonapartist. Perhaps even more so than most countries, the story of France’s 18th and 19th century history depends on where your sympathies lie- whether we can hear tears over the wheels of the tumbrils or only the iron march of justice or perhaps only a faraway prophecy of the Savior to Come. Talleyrand was the firm disciple of none of these camps and thus, points out Cooper, he has not “yet found his defender in France.” Duff Cooper, a diplomat, politician and historian himself, takes up his sword here to become his defender in their place with what seems to me to be a great deal of sympathy towards one that I believe he considered a colleague of sorts that he had a right to analyze like he would analyze the work of any other counterpart, based on his own experience in the field. (I would like to do him the credit of saying that Cooper states his bias straight out as he remarks that he is “an Englishman who believes that Talleyrand was a true patriot and a wise statesman to whom neither contemporaries nor posterity has done justice”.)

Thus, Cooper dedicates his history of Talleyrand to refuting, or at the least complicating the negative reputation that generally attaches to Talleyrand. His major means of doing this is through defending him from the biggest charge made against him: that he was a man of inconsistent or non-existent principles who cared only for his own survival and acted accordingly. He does this by stating, consistently, that he argued, from 1789 to the 1830s for a policy that was marked by moderation, conciliation and the desire for domestic and foreign peace. He believed in constitutional monarchy and freedom of the press and in reconciling the old guard and the new revolutionary spirit, and said so on many occasions.

Cooper admits that Talleyrand would not die for these principles. He was willing to state them, argue them, make the best case possible for them. But he would not fall on his sword if they were not obeyed. But nonetheless, he maintains that each time he was asked for his advice or given the opportunity to state his views, he held to these same principles, whether in the last days of 1789 or throughout Napoleon’s mad expansionist period.

An example is an episode where he is rather prophetic about the fates of both Prussia and Austria which were to eventually follow later in the century, in part due to their crushing treatment at the hands of Napoleon . As a demonstration of Talleyrand’s policy of conciliation, peace and moderation, he accurately analyzed the weakness of the Austrian empire and wrote Napoleon, after both Ulm and later Austerlitz, that “Such a power is necessarily weak [Austria}, but she is an adequate bulwark against the barbarians and a necessary one. To-day, crushed and humiliated, she [Austria] needs that her conqueror should extend a generous hand to her and should, by making her an ally, restore her to confidence in herself, of which so many defeats and disasters might deprive her forever… To-day more than ever I date to consider it the best and wisest policy.” Napoleon ignored his advice, and ignored similar advice given about the likelihood of the lessons that Prussia was likely to draw from their treatment in defeat and indeed, his blunt statement that so crushed a country could never be an ally. Talleyrand attempted to rein in the worst of Napoleon’s excesses, and various statesmen attest to him being the voice of reason at this time. In addition, within a year he resigned from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, unable to bear supporting Napoleon’s endless ambition and ever-changing policy, especially when he would no longer listen to his advice. Therefore, in actuality, we have a man who consistently spoke his unpopular truth to a man who many considered the modern Caesar and was ready to argue away some of Napoleon’s desire for the spoils of victory.

Beyond his defense of Talleyrand’s consistency in arguing for moderation, conciliation and peace, one interesting feature of the biography is that his defense is remarkably tailored to the audience he seems to have in mind- that is upper class Englishmen with some experience with government. Thus it is no surprise to find that Talleyrand is endowed with all the virtues that that audience could be counted upon to appreciate, and many opinions that were likely to endear him to that particular crowd. For instance, one argument that returns again and again is that Talleyrand was an Anglophile. Indeed, beyond that that he always believed that France and England were natural allies. He points out each time that Talleyrand strove for an Anglo-French alliance (which he maintains was one of those “consistent principles” that was nearly as important to him as general European peace) and spends a great deal of time on Talleyrand’s time as Ambassador in London. He further more reports the favorable impression that he made on various famous English of the time, men and women his audience would have recognized-Aberdeen, Lord Grey, Lord Holland and Wellington himself. It also probably did not hurt that he intimates that the French never recognized Talleyrand’s worth, but Englishmen were smart enough to do so- so hah!- those ungrateful, wrong French need to be tutored by England once more. In addition, he takes every opportunity to position Talleyrand as a graceful, aristocratic survivor of the 18th century, a species which was thought of at the time in England with nostalgia by many in the upper class: the time before the storm and the scare, when conversation was an art and the rabble hadn’t a thought in their heads of such horrid things as revolution and demanding their rights. There are a legion of anecdotes contained here that serve no other purpose but to illustrate Talleyrand’s inborn class and grace and his ability to strike the sort of pose that aristocrats liked to believe that aristocrats have always struck. Finally, he makes frequent off-hand asides that his audience is meant to understand with a small smirk and a knowing nod of the head. You know, the sort of joke that comedians make that starts, “You know how when….” except rather than detailing a character from the metro, the characters he expects us to recognize are types that you are likely to see about an embassy or an upper-class drawing room- or at the very least in a book that anyone sitting in either of those locales would have read. He expects his audience to have the same base that he is working from. Again, it is a defense of a colleague (I don’t care how long in the past it was- this is a man who could blithely write that “Pitt received him and was as stiff as only Pitt could be,” of the English Prime Minister of two centuries previously- as if he had just gone to his house for tea the previous day).

Indeed, to that end, it was interesting to me how much of his defense ultimately rested on the fact that Talleyrand was, after all, incredibly good at his job. Reading this from modern-day, it sounds as if Talleyrand would have made an incredibly successful consultant of the Booz Allen type. Another major way that Cooper defends him is to state over and over again that Talleyrand gave the best advice to whoever asked it of him, whether royalist conspirator or Napoleon himself, whether to members of the Directory or to the restored Bourbons. For example, when he was asked if the Empress should leave Paris when the allies were marching on it before the formal capitulation of the government- he said no, that it would indicate the surrender of Paris and “throw away the game with good cards in hand.” He said this despite the fact that he supported the royalist cause at the time and had done for some time. This advice was ignored and the Empress left Paris, but nonetheless he gave the best advice possible at the time for Napoleon’s position. Cooper writes:

“When he was asked afterwards why he had given advice, which, if it had been followed, would have proved injurious to the cause which he already secretly supported, he replied that his credit at the time stood so low that he knew that he had only to advise one course for the opposite to be adopted. This was an ingenious explanation of his conduct, but it is permissible to believe that in giving it he was doing himself, as not infrequently, less than justice. He may have doubted whether his advice would be followed, he certainly wished no good to the Napoleonic regime, but when required to deliver an opinion on a question of policy, he probably preferred to give the opinion which he really held, and which also was the wisest counsel in the circumstances. All through the previous year whenever Napoleon had asked for his opinion he had given it honestly, advising the Emperor to make the best peace he could, although with little expectation and less desire that such advice would be followed. Although his conscience troubled him little, there exists such a thing as professional pride, and it must have afforded him some consolation to feel that the advice which he had given was always sound and that those who refused to follow it were the architects of their own misfortunes.”

Now tell me: Hand this to a bunch of career diplomats and government servants and politicians. How many of them do you think can maybe recognize some part of that scenario?

In the end, then, it is a fairly able defense. His writing is remarkably authoritative, his narrative runs smoothly for the most part, and his general insights about politics, in-depth analysis of each political situation Talleyrand deals with and finally his determination to point out what seems to be fairly obvious bias on the part of many of Talleyrand’s contemporaries makes the reader apt to want to believe him. However, I should point out a few flaws: For those looking for a particularly scholarly biography, you will not find it here. You will cringe with his frequent, lordly assumption of how people “must” have felt (with sometimes little textual evidence to support it) or how Talleyrand must “doubtless” have proceeded due to some motive that he never wrote down. Also, while his citations of primary sources are frequent and impressive, they are embedded like anecdotes in the narrative and there are no footnotes or endnotes to be found where we might go look up a quotation for ourselves. In addition, despite his indignation about the biases of Talleyrand’s contemporaries, he does not hesitate to assassinate the character of many of Talleyrand’s accusers himself. There is a general tone of “Well this mean old man said this horrid thing about Talleyrand, but he was a mean old man who was just jealous of him anyway,” about a lot of his refutations of others. And due to his lack of citations or in-depth review of the history of many of these people he mentions, I am unable to judge whether Cooper is making this up as he does how Talleyrand “doubtless” must have felt on several occasions. Finally, during what were actually Talleyrand’s surprising amount of years away from the center of power, Cooper has a tendency to wander about quite a bit with his narrative and go out of his way to point out Talleyrand’s relevance by taking us through a sequence of barely related anecdotes about interesting personages he met along the way. Sometimes amusing, but I think lengthened the book unnecessarily for what seemed to be the purposes of providing character witnesses for Talleyrand.

Ultimately, I think of his biography in the same vein that I do Nancy Mitford’s biographies. The tone is nearly the same. The writing is just as divinely sure of itself, his advice and opinions as magisterial as only an English politician and diplomat who grew up under Victoria’s empire and owned a quarter of the globe could be. There is no suggestion that he might not know something, not a hint of qualification or ambiguity. Where Cooper defends Talleyrand, he has his back 100%. Where he is willing to condemn him, he says so straight out and wastes no more than a few sentences on it.

And his writing- I really cannot emphasize enough how excellent his writing is. Aside from that wonderful tone I mentioned above which just makes me smile every time, he is really a master of character sketches. I met many characters here I had never heard of before, and after usually less than one page of description on Cooper’s part, I never felt the need to read another word about them again. One of my favorite examples:

“A brave and loyal messenger was needed who would carry through the line defended by Napoleon’s army to the allied statesmen and if possible to the Bourbon Princes themselves… Such a man was available in the person of the Baron de Vitrolles, one of those faithful and fearless supporters of the old order, whose belief in the righteousness of their cause was as sincere as their religion, and whose services were as valuable in moments of crisis as they were embarrassing after the victory was won. The Baron had already fought for the cause, but this was his first introduction into the world of high politics and he has left us in his memoirs the impression that it produced on him. He was naturally alarmed at the prospect of negotiating with statesmen whose names were already famous throughout Europe, but the more he saw of them the less he thought of them, and it appeared to him that both Talleyrand and Fouche were rather lacking in intelligence as neither of them seemed to have a clear idea of exactly what he wanted. Politics are indeed a simple science to honest souls like the Baron de Vitrolles, who believe that all solutions of the problem save their own are wrong and who are prepared to die for their cause.”

(Aside: On top of everything else that's great about it, does this remind anyone of a certain bombastic PM-to-be? Come on! Get way harsh about it. Put WWI center brain. People could still be snotty about Churchill in 1932- and were. It probably isn't a comment, but it totally could be, right??)

Cooper also takes periodic time out to express his own views on various subjects, usually, again, in a pleasing and interesting fashion. There is a lovely and somewhat astonishing- when considered in its parts- description of time passing in England that he gives just as Talleyrand arrives in the country to begin his ambassadorship in 1830:

“It was a very different country that this lover of England was revisiting in 1830 from that which he had left in 1794. Never perhaps have thirty-six years effected so complete a change in the outward aspect and inner mind of a whole nation. It is hardly too much to say that the complete process of alteration from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century had taken place in that period. He had known the London of Horace Walpole and he came back to the London of Charles Greville. When he was last there Pitt and Fox had been at the height of their powers; now the young Disraeli was already older than Pitt had been when he became Prime Minister and the young Gladstone was coming of age. He had left the London of knee-breeches and powdered hair and he returned to the London of frock-coats and top-hats. White’s Club, down steps of which he would have been kicked as a rascally Jacobin in 1794, elected him an honorary member. The famous bow window had been built over the steps in the interval and had already seen its greatest days, for the brief reign of Brummel was over and the dandies of the Regency were no more. Boswell had been alive when he was last in London. The whole life-work of Keats, Shelley and Byron had taken place during his absence and this, the year of his return, the first publication of Tennyson saw the light. Those who were alive at his first visit could remember the reign of Queen Anne, those who were alive at his second could live into the reign of George V.”

In the end, whether Cooper offers the best factual account of Talleyrand’s life or not- and really for a biography published in 1932 I don’t know how we can’t expect a certain amount of his facts and interpretations to be quite dated, as indeed they are- he is really just, I must say once more, a pleasure to read. Think of it as a well-written collection of sometimes amusing, sometimes quite serious short stories, a “based on a short story” tale written by someone with a sure hand who has taken up his pen to defend a friend. On this basis, I have no flaws to find or criticism to offer. Eighty years later, still a job very well done indeed.