Memoirs of Talleyrand

-^

ILLUSTRATED

Memoirs of
'Talleyrand

In Two Volumes
Volume One

Paris
SOCIETE DES BIBLIOPHILES

London and New "fork

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This Edition Magnifique

of the
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is limited to
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.l

MEMOIRS

OK

C. M. TALLEYRAND

DE PERIGORD

VOL. I

2081611

TO

CHARLES MAURICE TALLEYRAND

DE PERIGORD

SIR, — I am convinced that your vanity will be more
flattered by the publication of your successful intrigues
in boudoirs, than your honour hurt by the exposure of
your dangerous plots in Cabinets. I dedicate, there-
fore, to yourself the private and public Memoirs of
your own life. I have long and well known you 1

THE COMPILER.

M. DE TALLEYRAND

IN the first rank of French statesmen and diplo-
mats of the end of the eighteenth and beginning of
the . nineteenth century stands Maurice de Talley-
rand-Perigord, who for more than half a century,
under the most opposite political regimes, was in-
volved in all the important affairs of his country, and
played a great part in all the contemporaneous his-
tory of Europe.

From birth M. de Talleyrand is in nature's black
books. An accident having lamed him, he is neg-
lected by his parents and lives amidst the domestics
of the household. This desertion causes him later to
say that he "has never slept under the same roof
with his father and mother." The infirmity has yet
another disastrous consequence for M. de Talley-
rand : it interdicts him from the military career to
which, following the custom of the age, his rank as
eldest son of a noble family destined him.

As with the Cardinal de Retz, M. de Talleyrand
has the least clerical spirit possible. Like the
Cardinal, he too has to take religious orders because
such is the will of his superiors. When he leaves
the great seminary of St. Sulpice at Paris, it is to
end his theological studies with his uncle the Cardi-
nal de Reims ; then he returns to Paris with the title
of abbe. His existence there is that of all sons of
good family, wealthy and worldly. " M. I'abb6 de

ft M. DE TALLEYRAND

P6rigord," as he is called at this period, enfranchises
himself and leads the most licentious of lives ; and if
the public voice is not raised against his scandalous
debaucheries, it is because in the eighteenth century
the morals of Society, in respect to the higher clergy,
have treasuries of indulgence which we no longer
know.

Although sprung from one of the most ancient
and noble of French families, the young abbe
already shows himself imbued with liberal ideas.
He writes to his friend M. de Calonne : " There is
nothing which cannot be accomplished by the pro-
vincial administrations, and there is no prosperous
change that can be made without them. The people
will at last be counted for something'' The abbe's
words are not slow to take shape in action.

Despite his dissolute existence, and thanks to his
father's pressing solicitations to King Louis XVI., he
obtains in October 1788 a nomination to the bishop-
ric of Autun, an office to which is attached a revenue
of 80,000 livres. Yet this royal favour does not hin-
der the young prelate in the least from taking boldly
the side of the new ideas when the Revolution of
1789 breaks out, and it finds in him one of its most
ardent promoters.

From this moment the practical, calculating mind
of M. de Talleyrand stands out sharply. M. de
Talleyrand ranges himself on the side of the power
of the day, and watches the changes of the political
kaleidoscope. Not one of them will surprise him
unaware, for he will always have divined it, and
arranged to draw personal profit from it. Judge of
this by one detail. The court knows him to be very

M. DE TALLEYRAND 111

influential, desires to attach him to its interests, and
offers him money to consent to defend the royal
cause before the States-General, to which he is
deputy. Mo de Talleyrand reckons up the sum
offered him, then returns it, saying coldly to Louis
XVI. 's messengers, " I shall gain more on the other
side, and I shall be safer there, for the Revolution
will be stronger than you ! " The whole man is in
that answer.

At this moment the Revolution reigns absolute
mistress. What does M. de Talleyrand? He up-
holds the people's cause, although he belongs to the
nobility ; and he, Bishop of Autun, mounts the trib-
une of the Constituent Assembly to advocate the
abolition of the privileges of the Church and the
sale of the Church properties to the behoof of
the State. He does not stop there. He is among
the number who vote for the creation of a constitu-
tional clergy; and despite the prohibition of the
Roman court, he consecrates the new bishops, and
celebrates at Paris, in the Champ de Mars, the fa-
mous mass called that of the Federation. The Pope
excommunicates the Bishop of Autun. The latter,
on the receipt of the pontifical letter, is not disturbed.
He writes jocularly to his friend, the Duke of Lauzun :
" You know the news — come and console me and
take supper with me. Everybody is going to refuse
me fire and water, so this evening we shall have only
iced meats and drink only wine."

A little later, M. de Talleyrand is sent to London
by the Legislative Assembly, with the mission of in-
ducing England to ally itself with France. When
he returns to Paris his name is on the list of JmigrJs,

iv M. DE TALLEYRAND

because a letter has been discovered in which he ex-
presses sentiments favourable to royalty. Compelled
to leave France, he takes refuge first in the United
States ; then, coming nearer Paris, he settles at Am-
sterdam, where he awaits, after the Qth Thermi-
dor, the result of the steps taken by Chenier, who
asks of the convention the recall of M. de Talley-
rand, the benefactor of the Republic. The Assembly
votes the recall, and M. de Talleyrand reappears in
Paris, where he intrigues more than ever, for he is
homesick for power. Thanks to his restless genius,
his knowledge of affairs, and the support which
Mme. de Stael and Barras lend him, he succeeds in
having himself named Minister of Foreign Affairs
despite the resistance of Carnot, who said of him :
" He is a wretch who has all the vices of the old
regime and none of the virtues of the Republic. As
long as I am director, he shall not be minister."

At this period M. de Talleyrand is courting Bona-
parte, who seems to him marked out for the highest
destinies. The coup d'etat of the i8th Brumaire is
to come, and the ex-prelate will contribute a large
share to the general success! The powerful aid
brought to the establishment of the Empire merits
a reward. M. de Talleyrand obtains it : he is named
Minister of Foreign Affairs, a post which he had
been obliged to resign in 1799, after the scandal
caused by the discovery of his financial and other
jobberies. Thenceforward for many years he pre-
sides over the diplomatic relations of France with
foreign powers. He lends to Napoleon, with the
suppleness and penetration of his mind, his marvel-
lous talent for negotiations. He is so skilful, he

M. DE TALLEYRAND V

renders such services, that the Emperor, after he has
dictated and signed the treaty of Presburg, confers
on him, with the revenues of the principality, the
title of Prince of Benevento.

After the signature of the peace of Tilsit, M. de
Talleyrand shares the common lot of most of Napo-
leon's collaborators. Constrained to surrender his
portfolio as Minister of Foreign Affairs, he is no
longer employed save in scattered negotiations.
Not -long after, on the occasion of the Spanish war,
he falls altogether into disgrace. As Fouche also
has just been dismissed by the Emperor, M. de Tal-
leyrand and the Duke of Otranto make up with each
other, and unite in zealously preparing the fall of
that Empire which both had so largely contributed
to found.

On the events of January 1814, if M. de Talley-
rand consents to accept a place in the council of
regency, that does not hinder him from preparing,
underhand, means for the restoration of the Bour-
bons. Then, when the French government is re-
duced to impotence, when the allies are masters of
Paris, M. de Talleyrand is the one man still possess-
ing a moral authority sufficient to obtain from them,
in favour of his fatherland, conditions of peace rela-
tively very mild. Look at the diplomat once more
when Louis XIV. charges him with representing
conquered France at the Congress of Vienna. He,
whose country has no longer an army and no fur-
ther resources, succeeds in forcing the door of the
secret committee of the allies ; and when he is seated
in the congress he dares to say to the ministers of
victorious Europe, " Gentlemen, I bring you what

Vi M. DE TALLEYRAND

you have not — I bring you the conception of right ! "
Still more, he becomes the arbiter of the allies in
their differences.

During the Hundred Days, M. de Talleyrand
holds himself aloof, without lending ear to Napo-
leon's solicitations. Why should he yield to his
advances ? He knows that the restoration of the
Empire is ephemeral. He means to reserve him-
self for to-morrow's future. Hardly has Louis
XVIII. returned from Ghent, when M. de Talley-
rand appears again in power in the position of
Minister of Foreign Affairs; then he is appointed
chamberlain, with 100,000 francs salary. When the
Revolution of 1830 takes place he contributes to the
accession of Louis Philippe to the throne of France.
Finally, he returns to London as ambassador, and
lays the foundation of the Franco-English alliance,
which is designated under the name of the entente
cordiale, and which is his last diplomatic act.

From this time on, although he preserves in all
their integrity his intellectual faculties, M. de Tal-
leyrand lives retired from public business. And
when he dies, May 17, 1838, at the age of eighty-
five, you will find him, on the day of his decease,
diplomat and courtier still, just as he has been dur-
ing his whole existence. For months he has deter-
mined to reconcile himself officially to the Catholic
Church, and has drawn up a written retraction
which he has addressed to the Roman pontiff; but
he waits till the morning of the day of his death to
sign this important document And if you were in
the chamber a few hours later, when King Louis
Philippe makes a last visit to the dying diplomat,

M. DE TALLEYRAND Vll

you would see the latter raise himself with difficulty
on his bed of pain, and hear him say to his sover-
eign, smiling, " Sire, thank you : it is the greatest
honour my house has received!"

Such in brief is the curious life of that philosophic
abbe", whose line of conduct remained inimitable. A
prelate who deserts the sanctuary, M. de Talleyrand
is successively for the Revolution with the Constitu-
ent, for the Directory at the i8th Fructidor, for the
Consulate at the i8th Brumaire, for the Empire in
1804, for the Restoration in 1814, for the barricades
and the Revolution in 1830. If he has served no
other political regime, it is because France has
known no other; the occasion alone was wanting.

"This man," said Pozzo di Borgo, "has grown
great by ranging himself always beside the small, and
helping those who needed him most." This judg-
ment of a rival in influence seems to us extreme, and
we are rather disposed to accept that which M. de
Talleyrand gives of himself when he writes : " It is
not agreeable to everybody to get himself crushed
under the ruins of a building which threatens to
fall ! " Now, M. de Talleyrand was too prudent
to run such a risk, and his whole life is a proof that
he always knew how to assure his safety at the
moment as well as that of the morrow.

Physically, M. de Talleyrand exhibits a bad com-
plexion, and an impassive face on which no impres-
sion reflects itself. The head is small; the chin is
partly hidden in a large ascending cravat; above a
sharp retrouss/ nose gray eyes couch under thick
eyebrows ; the mouth, whose lower lip overflows and
advances above the upper, has a haughty and myste-

Viii M. DE TALLEYRAND

rious expression ; the voice is strong and deep ; the
gait slow and dignified ; and the cold demeanour is
corrected by the geniality of the smile. As to the
man's courtesy, it is proverbial ; it has certainly been
as useful to him in his negotiations as the subtlety
of his mind, his suppleness of character, his remark-
able aptitude for treating the most difficult affairs,
and his nose for events.

This great nobleman, who has so much ease in his
movements, who feels himself so much at home in
the most varied surroundings, has one indelible stain
— he is greedy of money: he sits at gaming tables;
he dabbles in stocks ; he has an ear open to pecuniary
propositions which all the courts of Europe make to
him. He loves little presents, — douceurs, as he terms
them, — and he himself admits to us that in the course
of his diplomatic career he has received sixty millions
from foreign powers. But sharp as he is after gain,
M. de Talleyrand can repulse the most tempting
offers if he judges that the interest of France is in
contradiction with these interested solicitations ; so
he has not hesitated a moment to refuse the four
millions of florins which the magnates of Warsaw
offer him to buy his voice in favour of reestablishing
their country. This scruple, which honours the states-
man, enough of a patriot to impose silence on his
personal selfishness, will earn him the indulgence of
posterity, which, forgetting the weaknesses of the
individual, will only remember the great services
rendered by him to his country under the most
critical circumstances.

LEON VALLEE.

PREFACE

IN the compilation of these Memoirs it has required
more assiduity, labour and industry to collect material,
to assert facts and verify authorities, than to arrange
the whole in a biographical, or, rather, in an historical,
order. . But, notwithstanding these long, troublesome
and diligent (often tiresome and always disgusting)
researches, some errors may have crept in and some
omissions have occurred. The eagerness, however,
with which they shall be corrected in another edition
will, it is hoped, convince the reader that they have
been unintentional, and that we would gladly have
avoided them.

It is hardly possible to write the life of any great
criminal who has figured in the annals of the French
Rebellion, without connecting with it some shocking
periods not immediately connected with his own plots
and crimes. In delineating, therefore, the portrait,
and relating the particulars of a traitor who, in the
name of Liberty, revolted, in 1789, against his lawful
Sovereign, and who, in 1805, is an organised slave under
the title of one of the principal dignitaries of Bona-
parte's military republic, it has been unavoidable
not to give, at the same time, a short sketch of the
revolutionary history itself. Attention has, however,
always been paid not to lose sight of the hero and
his achievements.

X PREFACE

In these volumes Talleyrand has been exposed in
his true colours : as a subject, as a Christian, as an
intriguer, as a politician, and as a lover. Since they
were sent to the Press, we have been favoured by a
gentleman of rank — a British subject, now in England
— with some traits illustrating Talleyrand's character
as a friend. They are inserted in the gentleman's own
words :

*' A Roman Catholic by birth, and a descendant
of a Jacobite family of no little notoriety in 1688, I
was sent by my parents at an early age from England
to France for education. Their reason for doing so
was a prospect I had of inheriting, at the probably
not distant death of a grand-uncle, besides a large
fortune, one of the foreign regiments in the French
service, which had, with little interruption, been hered-
itary in my family ever since the reign of Louis XIV.

" In 1784 my grand-uncle died and left me, at the
age of sixteen, property amounting to ^"4,800 a year ;
and the virtuous King Louis XVI. appointed me
Colonel, a la suite, of the regiment lately commanded
by my grand-uncle.

" At my entrance into the world, which, considering
both my rank and fortune, was brilliant, I met Talley-
rand de Perigord, then Bishop of Autun, at the hotel

of the Duchess of B , who introduced me to him.

Admiring his lively genius and fashionable wit, I
was not sorry to see that my company was not
indifferent to him, although he was fifteen years older
than myself. In his turn, he presented me to all
those societies of Versailles and Paris which were
most agreeable to me as a young man, and we became

PREFACE »

inseparable. Though not of age, I was happy enough
to oblige him, by my credit and name, with several
considerable sums to prevent his dishonour — his affairs,
from his passion for expensive pleasures, being very
much deranged. Of these sums, nearly £1,000 remained
due to me until 1791, when he paid them in assignats !

" Being too early my own master, my education
had been much neglected, and I hardly knew, in 1789,
the difference between a Monarchical and a Republican
Government. My religious notions, and the oath that
I had taken to the King at the head of my regiment,
were sufficient to convince me that I could not con-
scientiously as a Christian, or consistently as a man of
honour, take another oath to the pretended nation,
annihilating my former one. I, therefore, gave in my
resignation as a colonel, but continued to reside in
France as a British subject, and under the protection
of the then English Ambassador, the late respectable
Duke of Dorset.

" After many, but vain, endeavours to convert me to
his many revolutionary principles, and to approve of his
revolutionary conduct, Talleyrand's visits to me became
less frequent ; he declared, however, that his friend-
ship was always the same, because political disagreements
could never embroil real friends. Being indirectly accused
of being privy to the unfortunate attempt of Louis
XVI., in June, 1791, to escape his assassins, Talley-
rand informed me in time of my danger, and flight pre-
served me from imprisonment. In return, I was weak
enough to be the dupe of his professions, and to assure
the unfortunate Queen of France of his loyalty.

** After narrowly escaping the massacres of Sep-

Ill PREFACE

tember, 1792, I found Talleyrand in England continuing
the same assurances of friendship. I, therefore, on
his return to France in 1796, and his appointment as
a Republican Minister in 1797, applied to him to
show that fidelity to his friend which he had been
unable to prove to his King, in procuring me permis-
sion to return to France, and to reclaim my property
there. In July, 1797, I obtained this permission, but
not without previously paying one hundred guineas as
a douceur for a pass. The Revolution of the 4th Sep-
tember following soon, however, destroyed all my hopes,
and as sickness prevented me from obeying the decree
which ordered all claimants to quit Paris in twenty-
four hours, I was arrested and sent to the Temple.
Talleyrand's interest procured me, in January, 1798, my
release from prison ; but, in going over to England, I
was at Dunkirk plundered by the custom-house officers
of nearly three hundred louis d'or, confided to my care
by the relations of some emigrants in this country.
Two months afterwards, to reclaim this money, I went
back to France with a neutral vessel, but was arrested
on my landing and confined, first at Ostend, and after-
wards at St. Omer. I wrote to Talleyrand, who, after
some delay, obtained me my liberty ; but the money
seized had been condemned, and was lost. He refused
to interfere concerning my property, except upon one
condition — that I should either with a French com-
mission as a general officer join and instruct the Irish
rebels, or as an adjutant-general sail in a neutral
vessel with despatches for Bonaparte in Egypt, and
there obey his commands. As both my duty as a
British subject and my principles as a Royalist did not

PREFACE Xlll

permit my acceptance of such terms, I was again im-
prisoned in the Temple, from which, after a severe
confinement of nine months — during which I declined
several new and similar proposals to serve rebellion —
I was carried under an escort of gendarmes to the
Batavian frontier, and ordered, under pain of death,
never more to enter the territory of the French Re-
public.

" I then went to Embden, where, in three weeks
afterwards, I embarked on board a Prussian vessel for
the Continent of America, having there some relatives ;
but our vessel was detained by a French privateer
from Dunkirk. After being brought into that port, I,
was known again, arrested, and sent a prisoner to
Paris, and once more the Temple was my cruel abode.
There I was then tried five different times for life, by
five different military commissions. First as a returned
emigrant, and, when proving myself a British subject,
as a spy — a title the revolutionary laws gave to every
British subject found in France, and not an adopted
citizen or a prisoner of war.1 But though the con-
clusions of the public accusers were against me, the

i The compiler of these Memoirs has also several times had
the honour of confinement in the Temple, and of trials before
military commissions. That the secret agents of France are found
where they are little suspected the following anecdote proves :
Having often amused himself with sending anonymous communica-
tions to English papers exposing the views and aims of French
rebels, one of these communications, sent in 1792 to a then loyal
print, was in his own handwriting presented to him in 1799 in the
Temple by the public accuser, to convince the judges of his ancient
enmity to the Revolution. This paper could have been got nowhere
else but in the printing office, where some French spy had pene-
trated. It had marks of having been in the hands of compositors.

XIV PREFACE

members of the military commissions acquitted me.
For this, Talleyrand took upon himself the merit,
though I have reason to believe that he rather desired
my execution than acquittal.

"At last, in April, 1800, the doors of the Temple
were opened to me. Unfortunately, a desire to see the
hero of the day, Bonaparte, made me accept of a card,
procured me by a friend (whom necessity had forced
into the revolutionary Senate), to be present at the
Consular review. I got a good place on the front
benches in the great hall of the Palace of the Tuileries,
by the side of a lady with four children, dressed in
mourning. When Bonaparte passed us, she threw
herself, with the children, at his feet, and presented a
petition. I had heard, eight years before, the good
Louis XVI., on the very spot, in a similar occurrence,
tell petitioners to ' Kneel before their God, but never
before man.' My recollection of that circumstance, and,
perhaps, my indignation at what I saw, made me forget
that I was in the presence of a military despot. My
looks must have betrayed my feelings, because I
observed that Bonaparte had his eyes stedfastly fixed
on me, and rather stammered than uttered an answer
to the petitioners, always kneeling. When he went on,
he whispered to his aide-de-camp, Colonel Savary, who
regarded me with attention, and afterwards, in going
out, spoke to four grenadiers (sentries inside the door),
who fixed and observed me in their turn. Although I
was there without any criminal intent or reproach, I
became, however, rather alarmed, particularly when my
petitioning neighbour told me that the First Consul,
during her conversation with him, had never ceased

PREFACE XV

to look fixedly at me, gnashing his teeth, and that
she supposed I was a conspirator. Assuring her to
the contrary, she bid me begone. At the door of the
hall I was, however, stopped by the sentries, who told
me that I was a prisoner (consigner) until the First
Consul's return, and could not, without his orders,
leave the room. Immediately, a rumour was circulated
among the hundreds of persons present that a con-
spiracy had been discovered, and that I was one of
the principal chiefs. Everybody, in consequence,
avoided my presence with terror. At Bonaparte's re-
turn, in passing me he stared at me with a ferocious
and threatening look. When the hall was cleared,
Colonel Savary, accompanied by a police commissary,
enquired after my pass or card of citizen, who I was,
and what my business was there? Upon answering
him that I was a British subject claiming property in
France, but just released from the Temple, and that
curiosity alone had brought me there, I was ordered to
tell the names of my friends or acquaintances at Paris.
Not wishing to expose either Talleyrand or other
persons, I mentioned only a banker and notary who
for years had transacted business for my family and
myself. After being searched all over for arms, papers
or poison, I was ordered back to the Temple, where
Fouche's secretary, Desmarets, examined me secretly,
and accused me of being a British agent sent to con-
spire against Bonaparte. I referred him to the deter-
minations of the military commissions, to which he
answered: 'The rack shall make you speak out.' I
then wrote several letters to Talleyrand, telling him of
my situation, and asking, as a favour, rather to be shot

XVI PREFACE

than tortured; but without receiving any answer. In
some weeks I was called before another military com-
mission, which acquitted me of all capital charges, but
ordered me to quit France immediately.

" During my many years' wanderings without a
home, I had been taken in and defrauded to a large
amount by two men who, I am certain, were revolu-
tionary agents and missionaries. The one had been a
steward to my parents and grand-uncle ; the other was
introduced to me, as a man in great favour with the
Directory and willing to serve me, by an English gentle-
man who pretended the warmest friendship and greatest
compassion for my misfortunes. Having several affairs
to settle, and no money for a journey, I continued,
contrary to the sentence of the military commission, to
remain secreted at Paris, where, in 1800, I had the bad
luck to meet the last-mentioned of these infamous men,
who, not to denounce me or to bring forward a pre-
tended suspicious letter said to have been addressed to
me from England, wished to compel me to sign bills
due to him for 12,000 livres. He had two years before,
in showing me a promise of the Director Barras in my
favour, got from me the secret where, in my house at
Paris, my plate was concealed, which, to the value at
the lowest of ^"2,500, he stole; and, to conceal his
robbery, caused my house to be sold as national pro-
perty. My presence of mind preserved me this time
from his snares; but such was his inveteracy that,
suspecting I was gone to Holland, a police spy arrived
there with a requisition, in consequence of his denun-
ciation, to have me delivered up as an English agent.
The assistance of two English gentlemen, who lodged

PREFACE XV11

by chance in the same inn with me at Rotterdam,
kindly procured me means to escape this danger and
to go to Germany. There a Dutchman of the name
of Bruiessoh joined me, and, with the positive promise
of Talleyrand of having my unsold property restored, al-
lured me back to France. I had dined at Talleyrand's
table in this man's company, who bore a respectable
character, perhaps because he was said to be rich.
Whether he was the dupe or accomplice of Talleyrand I
cannot determine ; but I had not been at Paris ten days
when, after a refusal of carrying, under the name and
with the pass of an American traveller, despatches to
General Menou in Egypt, I was again shut up in the
Temple. Then, one of the above-mentioned persons
visited me with a proposal from Talleyrand to exchange
my pecuniary claims in France for those which a French
citizen related to him had in England, where a large sum
belonging to him in the Funds was under sequestration.
To this I willingly assented, and, according to his desire,
and not to excite any alarm, dated as from Hamburg
the letters which I, on this subject, wrote from the
Temple to my friends in England. To convince me of
sincerity on his part, to delude me so much the more,
and, perhaps, to cause my disgrace, if not ruin, letters
of credit taken in my name for defraying my travelling
expenses, &c., as from some capital banking-houses in
London and at Frankfort, were delivered to me to the
amount of 36,000 livres, for which sum I gave my bonds.
To my utter astonishment these letters of credit, when
presented, were proved to be forgeries, and had I not
been well known to a respectable banker at Frankfort,

the consequence would have become most fatal to me
VOL. i b

PREFACE

and to my honour. Fortunately, such infamous frauds
had before been played by Talleyrand's agents on un
fortunate prisoners, whom they attempted to dishonour
abroad, after being unable to pervert their loyalty or
shake their principles at home: in the commercial
cities on the Continent these nefarious deeds are well
known. But, if I escaped the plot laid against my
honour on the Continent, I suffered severely in my
fortune in France. The bonds I had given for the
letters of credit were, during my absence, brought
before the tribunals, and my remaining property, twenty
times the value of the bonds, was disposed of at an
auction for merely a trifle to pay them.1 Those
occurrences happened in the spring of 1801. In the
following autumn, when the Marquis of Cornwallis, to
whom I had seven years before been introduced, arrived
in France as an English Plenipotentiary, I presented to
him a memorial concerning my demands, which he re-
commended to Talleyrand, who, in consequence, invited
me to breakfast with him. Disowning all connection

i In this selfish and depraved age the unfortunate are always in
the wrong; though it is impossible that men who, from fidelity to
their duty and principles, have preferred poverty to affluence, and
obscurity to celebrity, could at once be capable of a mean action.
How many have not, however, their honour stained because a revo-
lutionary tribunal has sent them to death as forgers of passes, of
assignats, of bills of exchange, of banknotes, &c., which probably
they received from their very judges or their agents ? How many
honourable persons in France have not, as the Duke of Enghien,
been condemned as English spies by the hired judges and assassins
Of some powerful criminal, without any evidence but what was
forged ? In revolutionary times men have to be cautious how to
form opinions and calumniate characters. Appearances are not to
be depended upon where guilt rules in palaces and innocence
suffers in gaols, or perishes on the scaffold.

PREFACE xx

with, and even knowledge of, these infamous intriguers
who had swindled me of my bonds and exposed me to
the most imminent danger, he assured me of the con-
tinuance of his friendship, and, as a proof, he said that
he had already mentioned to the First Consul my suf-
ferings and my innocence. He endeavoured to con-
vince me of the folly of continuing to suffer for a cause
every day made more desperate, and to persuade me
to take advantage of the prosperity which was offered
in joining those whom fortune and merit favoured. He
said that Bonaparte, upon his responsibility, had consented
to appoint me a colonel of a Corps of Guides, composed
entirely of young men of good military education, des-
tined to serve, under General de Caen, in the East
Indies. ' And,' added he, ' it will be your own fault
if, in a few years, you have not regained in Asia double
the amount of the fortune you have lost in Europe;
and, if your conduct is approved of, depend upon it
that your advancement shall be rapid.' Upon my
positive declaration that neither rank nor riches should
ever make me act contrary to my principles, and upon
my observation that the recovery of my property in
France was not a favour asked, but a justice demanded
and due, he answered coolly : * You will then die as
you have lived, a ruined fanatic; because you cannot
flatter yourself that England will go to war on account
of your lost property, which will never be restored to
you. I am sorry to find you an incorrigible Anglo-
manian and Royalist. For such a one any stay in the
French Republic cannot be agreeable. My last advice
to you as a friend is, therefore, to leave the French
territory; and the sooner the better 1' I knew the

XX PREFACE

meaning too well, and dreaded the consequences of this
friendly advice too much not to take the hint and de
part. Talleyrand, you are alive ! I defy you to con-
tradict the above statement I You cannot I"

?iist of illusttations

PAGE
PETIT SOUPER ..... Frontispiece

TAXXEYRAND ....... 32

NAPOLEON ........ 62

LAFAYETTE ....... 132

DANTON ........ 200

KELLERMAN , . . 282

MEMOIRS

OF

C. M. TALLEYRAND

"The French Revolution has produced more Philips than
Alexanders." MALLET DU PAN.

THE French people call Talleyrand Bonaparte's
right arm, Berthier his military helmet, and Fouch6
his revolutionary armour. They ascribe to the talents
of two of these ministers his achievements in the
cabinet and in the field, and to the vigilance of
the third the safety which the usurper enjoys in
the midst of the bloody ruins of the throne, and
of the reeking ashes of the statues consecrated to
Liberty by Republican incendiaries. Of these three
public functionaries, Talleyrand is regarded the first,
and is thought the most necessary to preserve a
revolutionary government in France, to maintain a
revolutionary spirit in Europe, and to keep the

Revolution from any retrograde tendency. To him
VOL. i i

3 MEMOIRS OF

Bonaparte is the most obliged ; and an upstart
sovereign, with little more than a military educa-
tion, can ill dispense with his services. Fortune
and natural genius may make a warrior successful,
but to form a statesman they must be assisted
or improved by early and particular studies, by
profound meditation, and by a long knowledge of
political practice. Without Fouche, Bonaparte might
have escaped the plots of the Royalists and of the
Jacobins, and without Berthier he .could have drawn
plans of campaigns and gained battles; but with-
out Talleyrand, the fruits of victory, those advan-
tageous treaties which, at the expense of the liberty
and independence of the Continent, have extended
the boundaries and authority of France, would never
have obtained ratification ; he being the only coun-
sellor whose profound cunning has hitherto often
overcome the fierce obstinacy of the proud and in-
solent tyrant, whose military diplomacy, always con-
founding right with power, expects to have his
dictates to foreign negotiators submitted to with the
same implicit obedience as his commands to French
soldiers.

Such consequence the well-founded opinions of
his countrymen give to Talleyrand. To be ac-
quainted, therefore, with the life of this minister,

TALLEYRAND 3

to whose fatal abilities nations owe their fetters,
must be nearly as interesting and useful as to know
the character of that Corsican chieftain who, to
gratify his lust for command, for dominion and
plunder, has barbarously changed combats into
butcheries and sacrilegiously torn to pieces that
sacred compact called the Law of Nations, and
who, .by his atrocities, has become the terror and
scourge of the universe.

Charles Maurice Talleyrand de Perigord was born
at Paris on the jth of March, 1754, and is de-
scended from one of the most ancient families in
France. He is the elder son of a younger branch
of the Counts of Perigord, who, three centuries
ago, were sovereigns of a country in the south-
western part of France, yet called Perigord. Club-
footed from his birth, and having no hope of any
fortune from his parents, he was, from his youth,
educated and destined for the Church. At the
College of Louis le Grand he evinced early genius
and early depravity. In 1767 he obtained the first
prize for learning in his class ; but was, at the
same time, publicly reprimanded for his too glaring
irregularities.

At that age, to innocent and noble minds, led

astray by volatility or seduction, the publication of

i — a

4 MEMOIRS OP

their errors is generally the worst of all chastise-
ments, and produces immediate reform. A boy of
thirteen who shows no repentance for a fault with
which he is reproached among his youthful com-
panions, whose good opinion shame as well as emula-
tion should induce him to regain, when arrived at
manhood seldom regards what his contemporaries
say or think of his committing a crime to gratify a
passion : when the youth wants modesty, the man
rarely possesses honour and virtue.

Talleyrand, instead of returning to the path of
duty, continued his course of wickedness. During the
Easter week, 1768, in company with some debauched
associates, he was involved in a quarrel with some
musketeers of the King's household troops ; and, in
consequence of declining to give one of them the
satisfaction demanded, he was thrown from a two-
pair-of-stairs window into the street, and both his
legs were broken by the fall. Refusing to tell the
guet — at that time the police soldiers at Paris — his
name and place of abode, he was carried to the hos-
pital, Hotel Dieu, where he remained four days before
the superior of the college and his friends could
learn what had become of him. The lieutenant-
general of the police, influenced by his relatives, gave
out that the fracture was produced by accident in the

TALLEYRAND 5

street, and ordered him to be removed back to the
college ; but there, by the confession of one of his
associates, the real cause was already known, and
his re-admission therefore refused.

It has been related that, when he was informed of
his disgrace, though lying on a bed of sickness, he
flew into a passion, swearing that it should not be
for want of his active endeavours and philosophical
zeal, if, hereafter, Christian teachers and Christian
pupils were still found in France ; or if Chris-
tian churches were not changed into theatres, and
Christian colleges into brothels.1 That1 he has kept
his word, France has experienced, and all Europe can
attest.

Talleyrand's father had died two years before, and
bequeathed to his son nothing but his high birth.
He had, however, recommended this young vaurien*
as he was called, to his elder brother, the respectable
chief of their family, Count de Perigord, who had his
nephew secretly brought from the hospital to his
palace in the Rue de l'Universit6, Faubourg St. Ger-
main. In the autumn of the same year he was so far

I A pamphlet printed by Duchesne at Paris, in 1789, called
La Vie Laique et Ecclesiastique de Monseigneur I'Eveque d'Autun,
contains all the particulars of Talleyrand's early life: see pp. 4,
5 and 6.

a Vauritn signifies literally a good-for-nothing fellow.

6 MEMOIRS OP

recovered as to be put under the care of the same
governor, with his first cousin, the Prince de Chalay,
a nobleman equally good and loyal, and whose
worthy brother, the Viscount Saint-Albert, has since
married an English lady. The governor, Fouquet,
soon observed that, notwithstanding the brightness
of Talleyrand's genius, his most difficult task would
be with this pupil. Vicious propensities prematurely
discovered themselves in the study, in their walks,
at table, and in the drawing-room. Mischievous as
a wicked boy, he was perverse as an accomplished
villain, nicknamed among the French fashionables,
"un aimable rou6." By turns he duped his cousin
by his art, and deceived the governor by his du-
plicity. He reigned over the former by his superior
capacity, and often ruled the latter by an hypocrisy
above his age, so perfect as to be mistaken for
ingenuousness. Whenever he could get out alone,
the brothel and the gambling-house were his usual
places of resort. To indulge his extravagance, he
robbed his cousin of his pocket-money, his governor
of his books, and even made free with the scanty
purses of their servants; but always in such a
manner as to continue undiscovered, if not unsus-
pected. It was in 1770 that a scheme of infamy
was first detected which would have done honour

TALLEYRAND 7

to the heads and hearts of all the rebellious brigands
who, from Mirabeau to Bonaparte, have since figured
upon the revolutionary stage of France.

In the vicinity of Count de Perigord's palace
resided, in the Rue de Bacq, Madame Gauchier, a
widow with five children, three of whom were
daughters. Her husband, a Swiss by birth, had
early, entered the French service, and from his
merit had risen from the ranks to be a captain,
and Knight of the Order of St. Louis. After
being wounded in Germany during the Seven Years'
War, he survived the peace of 1763, which con-
cluded it, only two years. The scanty pension
allowed his widow by Government was not suffi-
cient to support her family ; she, therefore, became
a mantua-maker, and brought up her daughters to
the same trade. Their industry and regularity were
the common topics of conversation, and the ad-
miration of all their good neighbours, until the
spring of 1769, when, on a fatal day, the charms
of the girls excited the attention and desire of the
young debauchee, Talleyrand. Poor and artless, by
splendid presents and brilliant offers their innocence
was soon allured into the insidious snares of se-
duction. In a few months Maria and Amy, the
one aged eighteen, the other sixteen, were likely to

8 MEMOIRS OP

become mothers, and were persuaded by their base
seducer to take some drugs in order to prevent
public shame. Of what ingredients these drugs
were composed is best known to Talleyrand ; but
so dreadful were their effects, that they immediately
deprived Amy of life, and Maria of her reason ;
and the wretched mother accompanied, on the same
day, one of her daughters to the grave and the
other to a mad-house ! So little did she suspect
the real author of her misery, that she continued
to receive, with distinction, the visits of the assassin ;
consulted him as a friend, and revered him as a
benefactor. She had, however, soon occasion to
repent of her simplicity, and to deplore her ignor-
ance. Her third daughter, Sophia, on her fourteenth
birthday, during the carnival of 1770, eloped from
her distressed parent. After much fruitless search,
the police was applied to ; but in such a manner
had Talleyrand planned the retreat of his new
victim that, until midsummer, the police spies
could not find out her place of concealment ; and had
not the female accomplice in whom he trusted be-
trayed his secret, they probably would never have
succeeded.

Among other virtuous persons feeling for the
sufferings and interesting themselves in behalf of the

TALLEYRAND 9

unfortunate Madame Gauchier, the humane and
generous Duke of Penthievre was the foremost ; he
offered a reward of 3,000 livres (^"125) to any
person who should discover the abode of the lost
child. This sum was too strong a temptation for
the woman in whose house and under whose care
the girl had resided in the Rue St. Antoine to
resist ; and poor Sophia Gauchier was taken in
the arms of her seducer. In her room were dis-
covered medicines which, after being examined and
compared with the drugs found in the corpse of
the poisoned Amy, leave little doubt who was the
real perpetrator of that crime ; who, besides, from
juvenile indiscretion, or depraved vanity, had boasted
of his intrigues with the two elder sisters, and
gloried in their ruin, as well as in that of the
youngest. At the recommendation, and under the
protection of the Duke of Penthievre, Sophia was
received in the Convent of the Ursulines, in the
Bois de Boulogne, near Paris; where, notwithstand-
ing the tender attention and religious consolation
of the abbess, she shortly afterwards expired. Her
death was, in two days, followed by that of her
mother, from a broken heart, and the same tomb
contained them both. Talleyrand had hardly finished
the first year of his fourth lustrum when these

XO MEMOIRS OF

atrocious deeds were committed, the perpetration of
which afforded a fatal presage of the cool and deli-
berate crimes since committed by the parricide and
apostate bishop, by the regicide and revolutionary
minister.

When Count de Perigord was informed of his
nephew's consummate infamy, a family council was
convoked: some wished to have the young monster
sent away and exiled to the colonies for life; whilst
others, not to expose the honour of their name by
new atrocities in new climates, proposed a petition
to the King for a lettre-de-cachet. This was obtained;
and in October, 1770, Talleyrand was seized at a
gambling-house in the Palais Royal, and confined
in the Bastille, under the name of Abbe Boiteux.
From this State prison he was in the following
December removed to the Castle of Vincennes,
where he continued in solitary confinement for
twelve months.

Factious, discontented or deluded persons of all
countries have never ceased to declaim against
these sort of arbitrary imprisonments under mon-
archy in France, although they must know that
the ruins of one Bastille have produced hundreds
of Republican State dungeons ; for one individual de-
tained by Royal lettres-de-cachet, thousands have already

TALLEYRAND II

suffered, and still suffer, from the effects of the cruel
mandats (Tarrtt of Republican tyranny. On the I4th
of July, 1789, when a rebellious mob surprised the
Bastille — that is to say, at a juncture when so many
seditious practices, plots, libels and dangers might
have induced the French Government to have had
recourse to that means of repressing its enemies —
there were but five prisoners found in that State
prison ; of these, three were guilty of monstrous
crimes, which, from their nature, were deemed
dangerous to be made public; the other two, had
they been arraigned in a court of justice, would
have been much more severely punished. It was,
no doubt, an abuse to remove them from their proper
judges; but it was an abuse that had not fallen on
innocent victims. Neither these prisoners, nor any that
were confined in other State prisons, dared to make use
of their liberty, of the anarchy that prevailed, or of
the partiality of the National Assembly, to apply for
an enquiry, a legal trial, and indemnification ; al-
though this Assembly encouraged them to do it, by
appointing a committee of lettns-de-cachet, in which
Mirabeau figured as president. Can it be supposed-
that if there had been any innocent persons among
the prisoners who had recovered their liberty, that
the Court would have escaped from being solemnly

12 MEMOIRS OP

accused of the injustice it had committed ? Let
conspirators, innovators, reformers and declaimers
remember this ; and that to the use of lettres-de-cachet,
odious as they regard it, they are indebted for the
existence of their two revolutionary heroes, Mirabeau
and Talleyrand, who, without this ill-timed lenity
of Louis XVI. would, long before the French Re-
bellion, have deservedly expiated their enormities on
a gibbet !

While in prison, Talleyrand, instead of contem-
plating his offences against society with contrition,
employed his innate hypocrisy to contrive some means
for obtaining his liberty. The chaplain of the Castle
of Vincennes visited him in the double capacity of
a comforter and instructor, and was the only person
permitted to visit him; with this priest he regularly
read, prayed, sighed and wept. He often inflicted
severe penances on himself, and even expressed a
desire of entering the order La Trappe, the most
rigid of all monastic institutions. These devout acts
convinced the simple chaplain of a perfect reform,
who, in consequence, assured the Count de Perigord,
in a letter, that " the life of the young Abbe was
not only that of repentance, but of edification."
Upon this assurance the doors of the prison were
opened, and he was sent to finish his studies with

TALLEYRAND 13

the Jesuits of Toulouse, where, in 1773, he was
received a member of the Gallican clergy, by the
famous Bishop Lomenie de Brienne, afterwards so
notorious in the annals of French rebellion for his
religious and political apostacy, under the title of
Cardinal de Brienne, Bishop of Sens.

Very soon after his release, Talleyrand became
a great favourite with Madame du Barry, the mis-
tress of Louis XV., and with other young debauchees
he was the constant attendant at her toilette in the
morning and in her boudoirs in the evening. He
is even said to have been admitted into her private
parties and most confidential coteries ; in one of which
he, by her recommendation, obtained from Louis XV.
two abbeys, worth ^"1,000 per year, and the reversion
of the bishopric of Autun ; or, which is the same
thing, the King's letters patent to succeed to that
see at the first vacancy.

The courtiers who composed the female part of
Madame du Barry's society were both loose in their
conduct and corrupt in their moral and religious
notions. To speak of modesty, to praise virtue and
to extol religion was a certain signal of exclusion
from her court. This woman, who, from the vilest
origin, had become the mistress, and expected to
be the wife of a King, had the audacious blasphemy

14 MEMOIRS OF

often to repeat, "that, next to devotion, she hated
the chastity of her own sex ; and that, so far
as it lay in her power, she should let those feel a
hell upon earth who hoped for a heaven hereafter."
A man of Talleyrand's principles could not, there-
fore, be placed in a circle composed of ladies more
in unison with, or more agreeable to, his own senti-
ments. Here was organised a true community of

•

vice, and a republic founded upon equality of cor-
ruption, fraternity in debauchery, and uninterrupted
liberty in all the pains or pleasures of licentious-
ness and intemperance. At the petits soupers in the
petites maisons, or pavilions, none but the initiated were
admitted; but when once admitted, their refinement
in voluptuousness confused or obscured the light of
reason and silenced the clamour of conscience.

Such scandalous behaviour may be admired, and
such sacrilegious language may please the immoral
and unprincipled French, notwithstanding the warning
and lashes of chastisement they have felt from the
iron rods placed by Providence in the hands of a
Robespierre, of a Marat, of a Barras, of a Bonaparte,
and of other sanguinary rebels. But it would be an
eternal reproach to a loyal English writer to notice
it without reprobation, and without informing his
readers that most of the persons whose example and

TALLEYRAND 15

depravity excite such horror and disgust have, during
the contests of criminal faction since the Revolution,
either perished by their own hands, or by the hands
of each other. And whilst the pure victims of suc-
cessful rebellion have encountered death, not only
with resignation, but with courage, they have shown
themselves as dastardly in their degradation as they
have been vile and debased during their prosperity.
Count du Barry and his wife, Madame du Barry,
were guillotined cursing and struggling with their
executioners ; but the virtuous Louis XVI. and
his immaculate sister, the Princess Elizabeth, died
forgiving their persecutors and praying for their
assassins. They ascended the scaffold to resign life
with the same calm submission to the will of their
Creator as they had descended from their palace to
exchange their crowns for the fetters of rebellion.

Although the measure of Talleyrand's iniquities
seems not yet full, the death of his guilty com-
panions was preferable to his agitated and oppressed
existence. When the whims or passions of his
capricious and unmerciful master command, he is
forced to lay aside, not only understanding, but
common sense. The French slave trembles more at
the frowns of a Corsican tyrant than the Abyssinian
mute at those of a Turkish sultan.

l6 MEMOIRS OF

The favour of Madame du Barry was a sure
letter of introduction to all other gay and fashion-
able companies in the French capital. Talleyrand,
therefore, no longer found it necessary to stoop to
intrigues with obscure mantua-makers. " Duchesses,
marchionesses, countesses, and baronesses were,
according to his modest expressions, dying by
scores in love for him, or quarrelling with emulation
to be the happy mortal that could fix their accom-
plished but volatile beau. During five years, he
said that — noting with mathematical precision his
crimes and his debaucheries — six husbands, from
jealousy on his account, had blown out their brains,
and eighteen lovers had perished in duels for ladies
who were his mistresses ; ten wives, deserted by
him, had retired in despair to convents ; twelve
unmarried ladies, from doubt of his fidelity or con-
stancy, had either broken their hearts, or poisoned
themselves in desperation. All these were persons
of haut ton; and in their number he did not, there-
fore, include the hundreds of the bourgeoises who,
forsaken by him, sought consolation from a halter,
or in the River Seine ! " 1

i See the last-mentioned pamphlet, pp. 28 and 29. The
ab6Ve, though a literal translation, would not have been noticed
had not the author often heard in France nearly the same
absurd expressions of boasts from persons not possessing half
the pretensions of Talleyrand.

TALLEYRAND 17

Foreigners who have not travelled in France,
or who have not had the misfortune to be plagued
with such ridiculous bombast and such impertinent
vauntings of French petits maitres, can hardly con-
ceive an idea of their insufferable and puerile vanity
but by mixing a little with the society of men of
gaiety, who pretend to be the favourites of women,
they will experience, in France, as a reality, what
in other countries must be supposed an improba-
bility as well as an absurdity and disgrace. But
what will surprise a stranger in France more than
anything else, after listening to the jargon of these
amorous gasconaders, he may, upon enquiry, be
convinced that they are very agreeable to the French
ladies ; and, therefore, the most impudently lying
intriguer, or the most indiscreet gallant, is always the
most fashionable, and often the most favoured lover.

In the many pamphlets published against Talley-
rand in the beginning of the Revolution, exposing
his scandalous and anti-episcopal life to public
animadversion, several ladies, yet alive, are men-
tioned, whose morals he had corrupted, whose
favours he had shared, whose money he had bor-
rowed, whose property he had squandered, and
whose husbands, after dishonouring, he had ruined.

In some houses his dignity in the Church, and in
VOL. i 2

l8 MEMOIRS OF

others his wit, procured him admission; but where-
ever he visited, some female or other became the
victim of his artifice and libertinism; and in most
houses he carried on two or three intrigues at the
same time. In the spring of 1780 the young wife of

President de M , his daughter, by a former mar-

riage, and his sister-in-law, who had just left the
convent where she had been educated, were, by
their mutual jealousy and disagreement, all three
discovered intriguing with him. The President, in
consequence, separated from his wife, married his
daughter to his secretary, and obliged his sister-in-
law to take the veil in the convent of the Carmelites
at Lisle, in Flanders. Like a true French intriguer,
the noise this scandal made only served to flatter
his vanity; and after being envied by some, ap-
plauded by many, and reprobated scarcely by any,
he retired for four months to Autun, " in order," as
he said, "that the regret occasioned by his absence
might at his return the more easily procure him
fresh laurels in his campaigns in the Parisian
boudoirs."

In this retreat he was followed, in some weeks,
by the Marchioness de C n, who, under pre-
tence of visiting an estate of her husband's in
Burgundy, expected to give an agreeable surprise

TALLEYRAND ig

to her Ion ami the Bishop. Notwithstanding the
haste she made, she did not find him the staunch
misanthrope of the stoical sect meditating in soli-
tude on the insignificance of human existence, but
the voluptuous philosopher of the Epicurean school,
surrounded with beauties that would not have dis-
graced the seraglio of a pasha. Hardly a woman
of the diocese of Autun, having any pretensions to
beauty or fashion, neglected this opportunity of the
presence of their pastor among them to pay him
their personal devoirs. Their poor husbands, fathers
and brothers could not oppose these dutiful acts of
respect and piety, dictated perhaps by their devotion.
The Marchioness was regarded by those Burgundy
ladies as an intruder, and they in their turn were
treated by her with that easy contempt which Court
and fashionable ladies know how to bestow so well
and so gracefully on those whose education in the
country often makes them equally awkward in showing
their jealousy, in expressing their friendship, or in
publishing their hatred Her pointed sallies and
ready wit soon drove her rivals from the field of
battle, and her triumph would have been complete
had not another more dangerous enemy presented

herself. Madame de M , the separated wife of

President de M , suddenly made her appearance.

2—2

2O MEMOIRS OP

Her sufferings for his sake were claims her seducer
seemed to acknowledge by receiving her with open
arms. The 'Marchioness, instead of combating this
new foe, entered into a negotiation with her, which
was, however, interrupted by the discovery of an
intrigue between Talleyrand and the landlady of an
inn at Autun, called Petit Versailles; and the ladies
had the mortification to find that he had declared
their charms inferior to those of the hostess.

Mortifications and humiliations of this sort French
women never pardon, and the allied ladies instantly
returned to the capital. As soon as they arrived,
the coarse and unseemly taste of Talleyrand was
their sole topic of conversation. They painted his
faithless gallantry and degrading conduct in such
glowing colours that those Parisian ladies who had
to complain of, or who suspected his inconstancy, sent
him letters to forbid him their company; whilst
others still attached to him, wrote that his presence
was absolutely necessary to retrieve his lost repu-
tation.

The revenge of Talleyrand was neither generous,
manly nor gallant ; and though it humiliated his ene-
mies, made him, for the future, the favourite of the
fashionable females, rather through fear of the malice
of his wit than from attachment to his person or

TALLEYRAND 21

from admiration of his conversation. He, therefore,
soon experienced that he was no longer regarded
as the agreeable companion, but ^dreaded as the
relentless satirist of the boudoirs, where restraint
or affectation ever afterwards entered and remained
with him.

Previous to his return, "to clear the ground," as
he is - reported to have expressed himself, he sent to
the old and malignant Duchess de B — vais, an
illiberal and indelicate epigram against his two
female foes. He was well aware of the gratification
he afforded this lady, who, renounced by society
and deserted by her beauty, found no greater
pleasure than to tease, vex and humiliate those
who, from youth or accomplishments, might still
hope for sway in the circle of fashion, and there-
fore, though secrecy was recommended, publicity
was certain.

He was not deceived in his expectations; his
epigram was soon in the hands of everyone, and
everyone knew to whom it alluded, while its effect
was heightened by a feeble attempt at reply, made
by some well-meaning but misjudging friend of the
Marchioness.

Although Talleyrand had the advantage of his
offended mistresses thus far, the means he took to

22 MEMOIRS OF

obtain it were neither honourable nor was his triumph
of long duration, for he was very soon assailed from
a quarter and u» a manner he little expected. The
Marchioness had from his own mouth heard of his
base behaviour to the daughters of Madame Gauchier,
and, after many enquiries, found that their eldest
brother was an adjutant in the Swiss regiment
Chateaux-vieux, quartered at Nancy. By a confiden-
tial person, she informed him of the outrages com-
mitted upon his family by Talleyrand, instigating
him to revenge, and promising all the support in
the power of herself and friends. She advanced him
money to proceed to Paris, where she procured
him lodgings in her neighbourhood. She instructed
him how to conduct himself with caution, yet with
efficacy, and how to punish the offender without en-
dangering his own safety. He accordingly went to
Talleyrand, and, after coolly relating his complaints,
demanded ^"4,000 for not proceeding against him
at the tribunals, or petitioning to his temporal
and spiritual sovereigns the King of France and
the Pope of Rome. Talleyrand, after exculpating
himself as well as he could for this etourderie de la
jeunesse, or indiscretion of youth, as he affected to
term it, offered Gauchier a present of twenty-five
louis d'or, on condition that he would return to

TALLEYRAND 23

his regiment and never more mention this bagatelle.
This offer was, of course, rejected with indignation
and disdain.

From the determined language of the young man,
he suspected, however, some secret instructor behind
the curtain. To disappoint them both, he went to
the War Office, and, under some specious pretext, or
by means of bribes, obtained an order for Gauchier,
enjoining him to quit Paris in five hours and to be
with his regiment within six days. The Marchioness,
with the assistance of her friends, got this order re-
voked ; and the next day Gauchier delivered a petition
to the Pope's Nuncio, informing him that another,
to the same purport, would be presented to the
King.

The good Louis XVI. was not entirely ignorant
of the vicious life of Talleyrand, and it had required
all the influence of his family to obtain from this
Monarch his appointment to the see of Autun; and
they would probably not have succeeded in their
efforts had not this Prince, as religious as he was
virtuous, considered it a duty to do honour to the
presentation of his grandfather by giving it his
approbation. It is not hazardous to suppose that,
if any crimes could be proved to have been com-
mitted by Talleyrand, neither his dignity in the

24 MEMOIRS OF

Church, nor his noble birth, could be expected to
avert public justice or to prevent it from taking its
course. To this he was no stranger, and the com-
munication of Gauchier's memorial from the Papal
Nuncio, therefore, both humbled and alarmed him.
By pecuniary sacrifices he might have hushed this
disagreeable affair, but his extravagance with women,
his profusion with men, want of order in his domestic
concerns, and losses at the gambling-tables, had ex-
hausted all his resources, and he possessed as little
credit as honour or honesty. He sent, however, for
Gauchier, who with much difficulty was persuaded at
last to withdraw the petition from the Nuncio, and
to sign a promise of secrecy and oblivion, and re-
ceived a bond for the sum demanded. Two days
afterwards this young man was taken up dead from
the nets (filets] of St. Cloud, having been robbed,
stabbed, and thrown into the Seine.1

The Marchioness de C n, in advising Gauchier

to ask for a sum of money, knew very well the
deranged situation of Talleyrand's finances; and as

I It is said that the lieutenant of the police at Paris, Lc
Noir, was convinced that Gauchier had been murdered by Tal-
leyrand's valet-de-chambre, Le Flamand. Gauchier's youngest
brother served in the Swiss Guards, and was killed on the
loth of August, 1792, in defending the castle of the Tuileries
against the Parisian rebels and banditti.

TALLEYRAND 25

his ruin was her only object, a bond he would be
unable to pay was the most useful instrument in
her hands, where it had been deposited as a security
for a sum of ^"500, which she lent the young
man to purchase a commission in the dragoon regi-
ment of Schomberg, to the Colonel of which (her
relation) she had given him strong letters of recom-
mendation. All this money, and all these papers,
were probably in Gauchier's pocket when he was
assassinated, as they were searched for in his lodg-
ings without success. His death was first announced
to her in a note from Talleyrand, requesting an
interview, and stating that his information came
from the police. She agreed to his request in hopes
that from his conversation she might find some
evidence to implicate him in Gauchier's murder.
To effect this she took the precaution to conceal
two persons in a closet adjoining her saloon, where
they could see and hear everything that passed.
But she had to deal with a man as artful as he
was unconscionable, as suspicious as he was wicked.
At the three first interviews nothing was expressed
on his part but apologies and regrets for the mis-
fortune he deplored of having given her offence. Not
a word of Gauchier ! except what was contained in
his note. He only hinted, en passant, that " he had

26 MEMOIRS OF

conversed with his friend, the Colonel, to whom she
had recommended the adventurer, and heard from
him of her interesting herself in his behalf, which
occasioned him to mention his untimely death in the
note."

Observing that her reserve decreased as his visits
were repeated, Talleyrand affected more tenderness
than ever, and was gratified by seeing her former
passion for him revive. Again deceived by his
duplicity, a perfect reconciliation took place on her
part ; and, to convince him of her sincerity, she
even went so far, in an unguarded moment, as to
burn before his eyes the bond given to Gauchier.
This imprudent act of kindness, by discovering her
connection with Gauchier, only added fresh fuel to
his former hatred. But, though he had determined
upon her exposure and destruction, he continued to
visit her with seemingly increased affection. Un-
suspectingly, she pressed a serpent to her bosom,
who was only watching an opportunity to sting it
with increased venom, and render the wound he was
about to inflict worse than a death-blow.1

The Marquis de C was twenty-five years

i It is related as a fact that, during the three months the
Marchioness was Talleyrand's dupe, before she became his victim,
•he lent him, upon his parole, £6,000, which he afterwards denied.

TALLEYRAND 2J

older than the Marchioness. He had married her,
not from love or esteem, but because her fortune
was sufficient to pay off the mortgages on his estates.
He was not apt to be jealous, nor did he care about
her intrigues; but he hated publicity, and feared the
ridicule resulting from it. Talleyrand, the better to
conceal his numerous intrigues, had, under the names
of different persons, taken six apartments in different
parts of Paris. His usual place of appointment with
the Marchioness was a first floor in the Faubourg
St. Honor6, hired by his valet-de-chambre, and in
his own name. Knowing, one night, that her hus-
band supped in this vicinity, he carried her there
from the opera. After a short supper, on some
pretext or other, he made an excuse to absent him-
self for an hour. The Marchioness went to bed,
and extinguished the taper, as was her custom, lights
being always in the ante-chamber. As soon as she
was asleep, a person laid himself down by her side.
In the midst of her rest, she was suddenly awakened
by a noise from the street, where some persons were
fighting. The assailant, after being accused of having
wounded his opponent, sought refuge in this house,

This affair occurred ia the month of May, 1783, and the
Marchioness and Talleyrand left Paris for their respective exiles
on the same day, the 2oth.

28 MEMOIRS OF

where he was followed both by the police guards
and by the mob. Under an idea that the assassin
had entered the room where the Marchioness slept,
the door was forced open, and she, together with
her bedfellow, who was no other than Talleyrand's
valet-df-chambre, Le Flamand, was arrested. Her
surprise, her protestations, her tears and her indigna-
tion availed nothing. She was on the point of being
dragged, half-naked, to prison, when her husband,
informed by an unknown hand, of her perilous situation,
made his appearance just a profios to prevent all further
disgrace and iclat. The next day a deed of separa-
tion was signed between the Marquis and his lady,
wherein it was agreed she should receive an annual
pension, and bind herself to travel abroad and not
revisit France during her husband's life. The scandal
of this plot and treachery became too notorious not
to reach the ears of Louis XVI. By his Majesty's
command, Talleyrand, after being reprimanded by the
Pope's Nuncio in the presence of the Archbishop of
Paris, was put under the escort of two gardes de corps,
carried back to Autun, and ordered, under pain of
having his episcopal gown torn off, not to leave his
diocese without the King's permission. His tool and
accomplice, Le Flamand, was shut up in the house of
correction, called Bicltu, after signing a confession of

TALLEYRAND 2g

his guilt, which he said had been perpetrated by the
desire of his master.1

On this subject the Court and the town were
of the same opinion. Both reprobated the man
and abhorred the priest who, under the mask of
friendship and profession of affection, used his
superior understanding and unsuspected art to ruin,
in such an infamous manner, a lady whose greatest
fault was her love for him, and who, had it not
been for his seduction, would never have ceased to
merit the esteem due to an irreproachable life.
Talleyrand was the Marchioness's first and only
lover. He found her innocent, and she did not
long survive her dishonour. On quitting France,
she went to Italy and became a pensioner in a
convent at Pavia, where she died after a residence
of eighteen weeks. Her contrition, her piety and her
death were announced by the Abbess to the Marquis
in terms that will always, in the opinion of the
mild and forgiving Christian, do honour to her
memory. " If her life had been that of a sinner,"

z Le Flamand was, in September 1792, one of the assassins
of the prisoners at Paris, and afterwards an aide-de-camp to San-
terre, and is now a colonel in Bonaparte's service. See Les
Novvelles d la Main, Ventose, year xii., p. 6. Fouquet, Talley-
rand's former tutor, was one of the prisoners murdered in the
Abbey prison, 1792.

30 MEMOIRS OF

according to the words of the Abbess, "her death
was that of a saint."1

It is said that the Marquis sent Talleyrand a
copy of the Abbess's letter, and was answered by
this consummate hypocrite, " that ever since their
separation his prayers for her conversion had ac-
companied her, and he flattered himself with the
hope that they had not been ineffectual. As to
him, all his thoughts were fixed on the other
world ; and his sole study in this should be, for
the future, to set the flock entrusted to his care
examples of devotion worthy the high and holy
dignity with which he had been honoured." Such
was his language to an offended and insulted hus-
band. How widely different from his public life
at Autun, and his private correspondence afterwards
with another mistress of his, the witty, lively and
accomplished Countess of Flahault ! to whom he wrote
from Versailles, under date of the 4th of December,
1787, that "the two years of his exile at Autun were
total blanks in his existence." " Never, however,"
continued he, "was any heart more tender, or more

x It is said that Madame de M died of a broken heart in

a convent at Amiens in the same month that the Marchioness died
at Pavia, and that Talleyrand made another epigram on this
occasion too infamous to be transcribed.

TALLEYRAND 3!

deserving a female friend's consolation for the eternal
ennui it was forced to endure. My disgrace at Court
certainly influenced the behaviour of the females in
my diocese towards me greatly; but this I did not
much regret, for none of them had left any impres-
sion but of disgust." In another letter to this lady
from the same place, dated February I5th, 1788,
he writes: "You ask me where I first became ac-
quainted with the young Baroness? In my cathedral,
my friend! in the confessional, during my late tire-
some exile at Autun. Her ndivet'e pleased me, and
I therefore invited her father, who is a widower and
a true country squire, and his daughter to pass a
few days during Lent in my palace. I asked her,
when alone, if she loved! Without hesitation she
replied, ' With all my heart I love my Saviour ! '
' And do you not love me? ' ' Yes, as His representative
and my guide to heaven !' By such unmeaning non-
sense I easily perceived that nothing was to be done,
or that it would take up more of my time to do
anything than I could conveniently spare. She
finished her Ute-b-t&te by demanding my blessing, and,
taking her breviary from her pocket, asked me to
point out those prayers which were most efficacious
to resist the devil's temptations. This I did; but I
am sorry to say the devil got the better of her,

-2 MEMOIRS OF

and they had not the desired effect ; as I am informed
she married the old Baron only because she was
pregnant by her father's footman."

During his exile, Talleyrand wrote a memorial
against the ex-minister Necker's financial arrange-
ments, which he dedicated and sent to M. Calonne,
who, with great difficulty, procured the King's per-
mission for him to pass some few months in the
capital. A man who deceives or betrays his mistress
can never be faithful to his friend, or grateful to
his benefactor. No sooner did M. de Calonne's
favour at Court decline than Talleyrand libelled
this minister, and published a refutation of his own
memorial. This refutation, though anonymous as
well as the memorial, was his first introduction to
the Necker family, whom he some years afterwards
betrayed, calumniated and deserted m their turn,
when the tide of courtly and plebeian favour ran
strong against them.

In 1787, the well-meaning and patriotic Louis
XVI. convoked an Assembly of the Notables of
his kingdom, an expedient that had often been
resorted to during the reigns of Francis I. and
Henry IV.: but the times were now changed.
These Notables, though nominated by the King,
proved themselves by their conduct to be ignorant,

TALLEYRAND 33

weak, selfish, impolitic and seditious. From the
labours and reports of this Assembly, the nation,
or rather the factious and disaffected, only learned
the alarming deficiency of the old taxes, of which
they all complained loudly; but not one of them had
the magnanimity to propose a certain remedy by
recommending "that neither the Clergy nor the
Nobility should be any longer exempt from the
territorial impost or land-tax." At this period,
Talleyrand was very assiduous in paying his re-
spacts to Louis XVIII., the present King of France
and Navarre, then Monsieur ; but it was particu-
larly about the person of the late depraved and
ill-advised Duke of Orleans that this sycophant was
daily and almost hourly seen, whose confidence he
gained, but whose infamy and destruction he like-
wise prepared.

Both these Princes of the Blood were then popu-
lar, because they both, though from very different
motives, recommended economy as absolutely neces-
sary to restore order to the finances of their country;
and they both blamed the former profusion or
corruption of ministers as the only cause of all
the disasters and the sufferings of the people, as
well as of the embarrassment of their King. The

regular, moral, religious, unambitious and severe
VOL. i 3

34 MEMOIRS OF

Louis XVIII. sincerely wished for a reform, which,
by lightening the burdens of the subjects, would in-
crease their affection for their Sovereign. He loved
his brother and King ; he loved his countrymen and
mankind ; and he possessed a mind too well-informed
not to foresee that, when troubles distracted France,
Europe could not remain quiet. He therefore em-
ployed all his influence to silence murmurs, to calm
apprehension, and to console and relieve distress.
The Duke of Orleans, whose private affairs, as well
as those of most of his associates, were extremely
deranged, was induced to hope that by talking of
reform he might be able to effect a revolution; and,
during that general overthrow, to find an oppor-
tunity of gratifying at once his lust for power and
his love of money, his pecuniary wants and his
unnatural ambition.

By those who, from a knowledge of his character,
observed his conduct, Talleyrand was suspected, after
the resignation and retreat of M. de Calonne, of
having been paid by the Prime Minister, Cardinal
de Brienne, to watch the Parliament, by the Parlia-
ment to watch the Court, and by the Court to
watch both the Parliament and the Prime Minister.
He is said to have professed friendship to the Cardi-
nal, and received bribes from him, at the same time

TALLEYRAND 35

that he was telling his secrets to his rivals, betray-
ing his plans to his foes, and plotting to suppiant
him with his friends. The confidence reposed in
him by Parliament he employed to involve it In
disputes with the Court; and the knowledge he
had of the views of the Court was communicated to
the leading members of Parliament, to make all re-
conciliation impossible, that their mutual animosity
might finally precipitate both in the same gulf. This
abominable treason created a general mistrust, which,
after two years of agitations, confusion and discontent,
obliged the unfortunate Monarch to convoke those
rebels the States-General, to whose crimes the pre-
sent wretchedness of the world may truly and justly
be ascribed, and on whom the curses of the remotest
posterity will inevitably fall.

Although Talleyrand's ambition was now rather
to figure in the cabinet than in the boudoir, he
neglected no occasion to insinuate himself into the
favour of the fair sex. "He wanted," as he wrote

to the Countess of F 1, " one female companion.

whom he could with passion odors as a mistress and
with safety trust as a friend ; who returned his
affection, and was worthy of his confidence ; who
possessed the firm character of a man, with the
amiable meekness of a woman ; who, in being reason-

3—2

36 MEMOIRS OF

able and not passionate, always spoke the language
of passion, but never that of reason ; who united
genius with beauty, but from whose conversation it
could not be inferred that she was aware of either
the charms of her person or the worth of her mind.
All these rare qualities, which I have searched for
in vain these twenty years at Court, in cities, and
in the provinces; in the palaces of the great, in the
hotels of the rich, and in the cots of the humble,
dearest Countess ! I have found united in you. Let
this frank and sincere assurance explain what you call
the enigma of my past inconstancy, and serve as a
pledge for my future fidelity."

After the ages of chivalrous gallantry had been
succeeded by those of indelicate avarice, sensuality
and selfishness supplied the place of love, and women
began to be bought or sold like other commodities.
France, though ever affecting to despise the name of
a commercial country, has long been accustomed, as
publicly as Circassia, to dispose of her female youth
and beauty to infirmity and decrepitude, if recom-
mended by wealth. There, as in most other civilised
nations, innocence is sacrificed at the shrine of
Plutus, and legal prostitution sanctioned by custom,
encouraged by example, and protected by the legisla-
tive as well as by the judicial power. The proverbial

TALLEYRAND 37

licentiousness of both sexes in France originates in
nothing else. When women are certain of not being
beloved, they lose all esteem of themselves. Their
natural sensibility is soon changed into dangerous
sensuality, and they gratify their passions because
they are unable to please their hearts. Such is the
influence of the sexes on each other, that in no
country do we find one corrupt and vicious and the
other moral and virtuous. But the continuance and
progress of depravity may, in a great measure, be
ascribed to men, as possessing most power. Did all
fathers agree in ceasing to usurp an unnatural autho-
rity over their children, but guide instead of com-
manding their choice of partners for life, the whim
or opposition of mothers would avail nothing. Some
indiscreet matches might, perhaps, be concluded ;
but the celebration of nuptials would, in general, be
those of love and affection, and the torch of Hymen
would no more expose to pity or shame human
victims dragged to his altar as criminals to the
scaffold.

According to a calculation in an cxposl of the late
French Minister for the Interior, Chaptal, "from
1792, when the regicide National Convention decreed
its law for easy divorces, to 1802, or during the ten
years' standing of this law, six-eighths of the married

38 MEMOIRS OF

people in the French Republic had taken advantage
of it to break their odious, heavy or troublesome
fetters. This," continues the same minister, " evinces
the necessity of fixing new regulations to put a stop
to the unjustifiable and scandalous tyranny of parents,
and of regulating a new system for the education of
children. When matrimonial infanticides cease, our
tribunals will no longer be shocked by pronouncing
sentences against vindictive parricides." It were to
be wished that France were the only country where
similar laws of divorce produce similar effects.

The knowledge which the author had of the
particulars of Talleyrand's connection with the Coun-
tess of F 1, has induced him to make the above

remarks. This lady's irregularities excite rather com-
passion than censure, being at the age of fifteen
given up to the arms of a husband of fifty, whom
she saw for the first time on the day she was made
his wife. She is descended of noble but poor parents,
who had severely felt the want of fortune, and who
therefore erroneously concluded that riches alone
were necessary for the happiness of their two
daughters. Agreeably to this notion, the eldest first
left the convent, where she had been educated, on
the very morning she was married to the Marquis
of Marigni, brother of the famous Madame de

TALLEYRAND 39

Pompadour, the mistress of Louis XV. ; and the
youngest did not quit the same retreat, or enter
the world at all, till she gave her hand to the

Count of F 1. England is the only country

where pecuniary damages are the punishment of
the adulterer and the indemnity for connubial in-
fidelity. But had an action for crim. con., the
consequence of a similar match, been brought
against the adulterers, an English jury would, no
doubt, notwithstanding the clearness of the proofs
of criminality, have long hesitated in their deter-
mination. If the husband had a right to prosecute
the adulterer in a court of law, who can deny the
justice of the wife's cause, were she to bring an
action for prostitution against her parents, and for
seduction against her husband ? *

The Count of F 1 had in his younger days

not led the most regular life. Being early possessed
of an ample fortune, he denied himself no sort of
pleasure, and was equally voluptuous and dissolute.
Advancing in years, he pretended to be both a

I See Les Miracles Carnales de St. Charles EvSque d'Autun et
Patriarches de la Revolution (Paris, Mercier, 1792). Many of the
particulars related here and in the following pages, concerning

the Count and Countess of F 1, the author heard both from

Talleyrand and from the Countess herself.

4O MEMOIRS OP

patron of men of letters and a savant himself.
Tfiis made him acquainted with the Marquis of
Marigni, who kept an open table, where all
persons distinguished for their learning, or for their
love of literature, were admitted. It was there he
first heard of his wife. Desirous of adding the
ties of consanguinity to those of friendship, he
proposed himself to the Marquis for a brother-in-law,
and in twenty-four hours he was married by Talley-
rand de Perigord, Bishop of Autun. The Count,
more entertained among his books in his private
study than with the harmless sallies of his wife
in her boudoir, left her at full liberty there to
receive the company she liked best.

When Talleyrand meditates the gratification of
his passions, his manners with either sex are in-
sinuating, and his conversation agreeable. Vain of
his birth, and presuming on his capacity, he gene-
rally makes those about him feel his consequence,
and usurps a superiority, always humiliating, and
often insupportable. When, therefore, his behaviour
and language change, and he descends from being
the tyrant to become the companion of his associates
or visitors, let them be on their guard ! In their
number is certainly some person he intends to de-
ceive, to degrade, or to ruin.

TALLEYRAND 4!

Unexperienced and artless as the Countess was,
he had little difficulty in making a favourable im-
pression on her mind. Her husband, for the three
first years of their marriage, seldom saw his wife
but at meals, and not always then ; while Talley-
rand followed her almost as her shadow, amused
her when at home, and attended her abroad, to
church, in her walks, to concerts, to balls and to
plays. Though the motives of the lover are blam-
able, the neglect of the husband was inexcusable.
Talleyrand indeed seduced her from her duty ; but,
according to her own confession, he preserved her
from becoming the talk and scandal of the town
by imitating the depraved examples of many ladies
of her acquaintance and society, who changed their
lovers almost as often as their dress.

Until his wife had been delivered of a son, during
his absence in the country with the Marquis of
Marigni, the Count lived as if he still had been a
bachelor. At his arrival in town, this son was
already christened Charles, by Charles M. Talley-
rand. This haste, and this name, with some other
circumstances, awakened the Count's jealousy, or
rather, alarmed his pride.

The ingenuous young Countess concealed from
nobody that this child was called after, and baptised

42 MEMOIRS OF

by, his father.1 The Bishop, therefore, was desired
to discontinue his visits, and the Count carried his
lady one hundred and fifty miles from Paris, to an
estate, where she continued to correspond with her
lover, who advised her to conceal her chagrin as the
surest means of shortening their separation.

The Count of F 1, entirely engrossed by learned

researches, in conversing with his wife, was agreeably
surprised to discover in her, for the first time after
four years' marriage, not only genius, but a genius
highly improved by reading ; and, upon enquiry, found
that he was indebted to her lover for these and other
accomplishments. This lessened, in his philosophical
eyes, their mutual offence ; and as the Countess, always
guided by Talleyrand, conducted herself so as to re-
gain the confidence of her husband, she was, after

I See La Nouvelle Chronique Scandaleuse, vol. iii., p. 6, and Les
Miracles Carnales, &*., p. 18. This son came over to this country
in 1792, with his mother, and was deaf. By the generosity of
Mr. Burke, Mr. Windham, and other gentlemen, who with so
much humanity interested themselves for the unfortunate emi-
grants, he was taken care of at an emigrant free school, cured of
his complaint, and educated until 1799, when he returned to
France, and by Talleyrand's recommendation was made an aide-
de-camp to Louis Bonaparte, in which capacity he accompanied
him to Berlin in 1800. Count de F 1, trusting to Talley-
rand's spy, Mehe'e de la Touche, was betrayed by him, and

guillotined in 1793. Charles de F 1 is expected to be the

heir to Talleyrand's immense fortune, as an indemnity, no doubt,
for his birth and the murder of his mother's husband.

TALLEYRAND 43

four months' absence, restored to the capital. By
being more prudent or discreet, and by humouring
the Count by associating with him in his favourite
occupation among his books, she imperceptibly ac-
quired useful knowledge, and shortly recovered her
former liberty of associating with her lover, whose
insinuation so gained upon the Count, that, in a few
weeks, he was as much regarded by the husband as
he was beloved by the wife.

The deranged state of Talleyrand's finances, his
passion for gambling as well as for women, brought
him frequently into disagreeable difficulties, and
obliged him to resort to expedients not always
honest or honourable. The first proof he demanded
of the Count's friendship was a loan of ^"2,500, for
the purpose of paying off an execution in his house.
Financial considerations usually accompanied, and were
almost inseparable from, his amorous intrigues. He
had no mistress to whom, or to whose husband, he
was not indebted for pecuniary assistance, whose
purse, as well as reputation, he had not attempted
to ruin. Never delicate in procuring himself money,
it was nothing to him if his mistress, in consequence,
reduced herself to distress ; or if, in supplying his
extravagance, she suffered in her credit and character.
Selfish in love as well as in friendship, if his passions

44 MEMOIRS OF

were satisfied he was indifferent whether his pleasures
were purchased at the expense of the honour of
his mistress or of the happiness of his friend.

The five years before the Revolution which he

passed as the bon ami of the Countess of F 1,

he called sa vie regies, or that period of his life
when he was most regular, having no other known

mistress except the wife of the rich banker, G ,

who died, poisoned either by herself on discovering
Talleyrand's infidelity, after robbing her husband
of ^"8,000 for a promise to serve him, or by
Talleyrand, in order to get rid of his obligation and
to bury his debt in oblivion, or by the husband
from revenge or jealousy. Talleyrand breakfasted
with her on the day of her death, and they were
heard to quarrel. Immediately after he went away
the husband entered, and had some high words
with her. In a quarter-of-an-hour afterwards, when
her maid was dressing her, she suddenly changed
colour, fell down and expired, exclaiming, "Je suis
empoisonnee ! " *

i See La Politique d'un Indigne Perigord, pp. 33 and 34 ; and
La Nouvelle Chreniquc Scandahuse, vol. iii., p. 8. In the note it is
said that the husband by money prevented the police from
enquiring into the particulars of this death ; but that he after-
wards challenged Talleyrand, who refused to fight, and was,
therefore, publicly caned by him in the Rue de Vivienne, near
the Palais Royal.

TALLEYRAND 45

Not satisfied with borrowing, or rather swindling,
money from his mistresses, he had, several years
before the Revolution, associated himself with some
brokers, stock-jobbers and usurers, for the purpose
of making speculations in the public funds, and of
lending money to young spendthrifts, masters of, or
heirs to, large fortunes. But he was yet a novice
among the French financial rogues, who enriched
themselves by using his name and abusing his
connections, and, in leaving him to bear their
losses without sharing their profit, involved him in
fresh debts, according to report, to the amount of
^"50,000. Despised and overwhelmed with debt,
the Duke of Orleans and his party seemed to
be his only resource — a resource that was always
open to political adventurers of vicious propensities,
of desperate fortunes, or of degraded characters.
By engaging in acts and deeds so opposite to
his duty as a prelate, and so disgraceful to him
as a nobleman, he was forbidden the Court and
the presence of his relatives ; and the Revolution
found him equally destitute of property and probity,
with the loss of the favour of his Sovereign, of
the affection and regard of his family, and of the
esteem of every good man among his contem-
poraries.

46 MEMOIRS OF

Many are supposed to be the causes of a Re-
volution in which Talleyrand has played such a
conspicuous part. But its origin, crimes and progress
may, with most colour of probability, be ascribed
to a secret, sophistical and an ti- religious sect, long
nourished in the academies and cities of France and
other continental dominions, connected with numerous
societies through all parts of Europe, meditating a total
or partial abolition of the existing laws, customs and
modes of public worship, and projecting an entirely
new distribution of power among nations, a univer-
sal change of dynasties, with a general overthrow
of all established authorities. The existence and
machinations of such a sect are rendered indisputable
by the researches of Abbe Barruel, Professor Robison
and other modern authors. The writers and reasoners
attached to this sect succeeded in rendering religion
ridiculous, and afterwards odious. From the abuses
of popery, and the personal vices of some priests,
they proceeded to a systematical assault on mysteries
and miracles, and from these to the very existence
of a God. The attack on governments was managed
with more caution, since all nations have prudently
confided to their rulers other powers for suppressing
attempts against their supremacy than those which,
in modern times, have been committed to the

TALLEYRAND 47

votaries of religion. Governments were, therefore,
covertly and cautiously assailed by general declama-
tions in favour of liberty, and on the necessity
of reform, by the ostentatious production of the
offensive parts of modern history, and by continual
contrasts of the present with times past, or the
system under which these speculatists lived with
that of other nations possessed of greater freedom
and less burdens.

In France, the numerous publications of a band
who assumed the title of economists, spread general
discontent, and inspired a great eagerness to increase
the wealth and diminish the burdens of the nation
• by a rigid and indiscriminate saving. Talleyrand
was one of the most subtle and active members of
this sect, which carried, by their exhortations and
essays, schemes of agricultural speculations into the
fields and of commercial and pecuniary fraud into
the cities, rendering the people jealous of every
species of public reward and repugnant to every
mode of taxation. All exemptions were loudly decried,
and the maintenance of the Clergy was considered as
an enormous political evil. Seignorial rights were
reprobated no less as indications of slavery than as
impediments to good husbandry ; and the expenses
of the Court were regarded with peculiar malignity,

48 MEMOIRS OF

as an ostentatious and useless mode of squandering
the treasure of the people.1

The national and hereditary presumption of most
Frenchmen, their overweening but imposing self-
importance, their captivating address, their easy
readiness of repartee, their quick penetration, their
natural and unaffected duplicity, and their artful
flexibility to circumstances, have, ever since civilised
governments agreed to fix laws and rules of etiquette
for a regular communication between the different
members of the European commonwealth, made their
country renowned for able ministers and dreaded for
crafty and immoral intriguers. Spain may be proud
of her Ximenes, and Sweden of her Oxenstierna; but
these kingdoms have since descended from a primary
to a 'secondary rank, and these great statesmen may
therefore be said to have left no posterity ; whilst
Mazarin, Louvois, Fleury, Choiseul, and other suc-

i Since the economists Talleyrand, Rcederer, &c., have
become Bonaparte's titled slaves, commerce and manufactories
are annihilated, taxes increased a hundred-fold, and the expenses
of the mock Emperor, during the first year of his usurpation,
amounted to 3,000,000 of livres more than the expenses of
Louis XVI., his family, and relations, during his eighteen years'
reign ! The lands are cultivated by old men or women, all
young men being sent to the army or navy ; such is the effect
of the plans of innovators. — f-«« Nouvelles it la Main, Frimaire,
year xiii., p. 4.

TALLEYRAND 49

cessors of Cardinal Richelieu in the direction of the
Cabinet of Versailles, have not only prevented the
decrease of the real power and relative influence of
France, but, by a regular, systematic, though often
imperceptible plan, terminated no war, however disas-
trous, but by some direct or indirect advantage. The
Peace of Utrecht, of 1713, settled one branch of the
Bourbons in Spain ; and even the Peace of Paris,
of 1763, was followed by the conquest of Corsica, by
civil commotions in Holland, and by an insurrection
in America; though England, at that time, could
boast of her Chatham, Austria of her Kaunitz,
Prussia of her Frederic the Great, Russia of her
Catherine II., Sweden of her Gustavus III., and
Denmark of her BernstorfF.

These occurrences were chiefly the consequences
of the machinations and efforts of inferior intriguers;
because, after the resignation of Choiseul in 1770,
the ministerial helm of France was in the hands
of ignorant or corrupted courtiers that were often
governed by profligate prostitutes and scandalous
adultresses, their own, or the mistresses of the
enervated Louis XV. The ill-advised, well-meaning
and good Louis XVI., duped by their hypocritical
jargon and patriotic rhodomontade, admitted some of

these subaltern schemers into his councils. They
VOL. i 4

50 MEMOIRS OF

promoted their associates, and the offices of Govern-
ment were soon filled with, and the secrets of State
entrusted by turns to, the political sectaries of a
St. Germain, of a Turgot, of a De Brienne, and of
a Necker, ministers who, as well as Talleyrand,
were impolitic, fanatical, or treacherous economists,
whose maxims were destined to commence their
active and cruel operation during the reign of
the best and most virtuous of kings. It was a
remarkable fatality, that the very virtues of this
amiable and unhappy Prince contributed to his
destruction. Every circumstance of his reign,
which, according to the calculations of probability,
should have given stability to his dominion, tended
to its dissolution and his own ruin. His zeal in
economical reform, while it diminished the State
burdens, and was even supposed sufficient to absorb
the expenses of a war without new taxes, tended
only to weaken his power by diminishing his influ-
ence and removing from the eyes of his vain,
fickle and wicked people the splendid pageantry in
which they so much delighted, while it left unsatis-
fied their extravagant expectations of relief from all
burdens, and authorised them, from a consideration
of what was suppressed, to cavil at that which re-
mained. The American War, in which Louis XVI.

TALLEYRAND 5!

was advised to join and to assist revolted subjects
against their legitimate sovereign, was another mis-
fortune productive of the most calamitous conse-
quences. The command of fleets and armies, in a
contest destined to carry into execution the schemes
of rebellious subjects professedly attempting to found
a republic, in which neither titles, hereditary functions
nor an established priesthood should find a place,
was not given to men of long-tried character and
known alliance, but to individuals whose misconduct
during the German War had rendered them objects
of suspicion, or whose youth and inexperience, joined
to presumption and arrogance, proved them, on their
return, to be turbulent, factious and dangerous.

The Finance department was at the same time
entrusted to the empiric Necker, a French economist,
but an alien to the land, an enemy to its religion,
and a Republican by principles as well as by birth.
He confirmed in an inquisitive and insolent people
the habit of examining by general theories, and by
garbled statements alone, the expenses and revenues
of the State ; and when dismissed, his errors and
his artifices had equally contributed to involve his
successor in difficulty and danger. Thus the Ameri-
can War left France plunged in debt and speculation,
open to all the attempts of financial projectors, the

4—2

52 MEMOIRS OP

reveries of political reformers, and the assaults of
atheistical and republican incendiaries.

When, therefore, the King convoked the States-
General in 1789, everything was in a ferment, and
all the materials ready to produce a total over-
throw; a centre and supplies, the great requisites of
a political faction aiming at important achievements,
were only wanting, and these were found in Paris,
in the wealth, rank, profligacy and turbulence of the
Duke of Orleans. This man, himself a member of
the Royal family, nourished in his heart an un-
natural rancorous antipathy against the reigning
branch. Regardless of character, and yet ambitious
of fame, he was surrounded by Talleyrand, Mirabeau,
Sillery, Sieyes, and other depraved companions and
literary parasites, who led him with rapid steps to
promote the aims of the anti-religious and anti-social
innovators. To the Orleans faction Talleyrand owed
his nomination as a deputy to the States-General,
since called the Constituent Assembly.

After a lapse of one hundred and seventy-five
years, the States-General met at Versailles, on the
5th of May, 1789. The ceremony commenced with
an act of devotion. The deputies, preceded by the
ministers of the altar and followed by the King,
repaired to the temple of the Deity amidst an

TALLEYRAND 53

immense crowd, who offered up vows for the suc-
cess of their endeavours to reform ana regenerate
the State. The splendour and variety of the robes
of the two Orders added greatly to the brilliancy of
the spectacle; for the dignified Clergy were dressed
in a style of grandeur suited to their respective
ranks, being adorned with scarfs, crosses and
crosiers, while the Nobility were decorated, as in the
days of chivalry, with flowing mantles, covered with
lace, plumes of feathers waving in the air, stars
and ribands, calculated to produce a theatrical effect,
and swords glittering with gold and diamonds. Alasl
these Orders little expected or supposed that this
ceremony was their political auto da fe, and that the
faggots of revolutionary incendiaries were already
lighted, and would shortly consume, with their rank,
privilege and property, every person of honour and
probity within their reach in France 1

Having returned to the hall, the King, who was
seated in a magnificent alcove, with the Queen on his
left hand, and the Princes and Princesses of the Blood
around him, delivered an appropriate discourse in a
loud and distinct voice, with all the confidence of an
orator accustomed to address a numerous assembly.
To console the loyal, to confound the disaffected,
and to do honour to the memory of the best of

54 MEMOIRS OP

kings, this speech cannot be too often repeated ; at
least some parts of it should never be excluded by
any autnor writing on the Revolution, faithful to his
God and to his King, who detests rebels, and abhors
regicides. " The day," said His Majesty, " is at
length arrived which my heart has so long panted
to behold ; and now I find myself surrounded by the
representatives of a nation which it is my glory to
command. A long interval hath elapsed since the last
convocation of the States-General; but although these
assemblies have not for some time been held, I have
not been dissuaded by the example of my late pre-
decessors from re-establishing a custom by which the
nation may earnestly hope to acquire new vigour,
and which may be the means of opening to it an
additional source of happiness.

"A very general discontent and a too eager
desire for innovation have taken hold of the minds
of the people, and will end in misleading their judg-
ment if they do not hasten to fix it by wise and
moderate counsels. It is in this confidence, gentle-
men, that I now assemble you ; and I rejoice to
think that the measure has been justified by those
dispositions which the two first Orders of the State
have shown to renounce their own pecuniary privi-
leges. The hope which I have cherished, to see all

TALLEYRAND . 53

the Orders unite and concur with me in wishes for
the public good, will, I am certain, not be deceived.
I have already ordered very considerable retrench-
ments in respect to my own expenses; you will,
moreover, furnish me with your sentiments on the
subject, which I shall receive most gladly; but in
spite of the resources which the strictest economy
can suggest, I fear, gentlemen, that I shall not be
able to relieve my subjects so soon as I could wish.

" The public spirit is in a ferment, but an assembly
of the representatives of the nation will certainly
hearken to no other counsels than those founded on
wisdom and prudence. You yourselves, gentlemen,
have been able to judge on many recent occasions
that the people have been misguided; but the spirit
which will animate your deliberations will also evince
the true sentiments of a generous nation, whose dis-
tinguished character has been the love of their Prince.
I shall banish from me every other sentiment.

" I know the authority and power of a just
Icing surrounded by a faithful people, at all times
attached to the principles of monarchy; these have
occasioned the glory and splendour of France : I
ought, and I ever shall support them. But, what-
ever may be expected from the most tender solici-
tude for the public good, whatever can be asked

MEMOIRS OF

from a sovereign, the sincerest friend of his people,
you may, you ought to hope from me.

"May a happy union reign in this Assembly I
and may this epoch become ever memorable by
the felicity and prosperity of the country! It is
the wish of my heart ; it is the most ardent desire
of my prayers; it is, in short, the price which I
expect for the sincerity of my intentions and my
love for my people."

Such was the patriotic language, and such were
the pure and magnanimous sentiments of a legiti-
mate king born with unlimited power, whom
Frenchmen have barbarously murdered to place his
crown on the guilty head of a foreign usurper and
tyrant, the assassin and poisoner of their country-
men 1 The atrocity and infamy of these two acts
are without parallel in history.

When His Majesty had ended a speech, several
passages of which were received with a marked
applause, the Keeper of the Seals, M. Barentin,
arose and paid many just compliments to the
monarch who had listened to the public voice in
convoking the States-General. He also enlarged on
the advantage of a limited government, equally re-
moved from absolute monarchy on the one hand,
and anarchy and republicanism on the other. The

TALLEYRAND 57

Comptroller-General of the Finances, Necker, suc-
ceeded M. Barentin, and, in a speech of great length,
insisted on the necessity of directing the principal
attention of the Assembly to the state of the
finances, which he allowed to be deranged; but he
at the same time reduced the deficit to ^"2,300,000,
which he affected to consider as a trifle for a great
and opulent nation. His harangue, however, gave
satisfaction to no party. The two first Orders, with
reason, deemed it alike unfavourable to their rank
and their privileges ; and the Third Estate was
astonished that nothing was said of liberty, reform,
and a new constitution ; and all were surprised that,
in respect to the great and important question of de-
liberation by poll, or by chambers, the speech of
Necker was dark and ambiguous.

Although Mirabeau and Necker were irreconcilable
enemies, Talleyrand had the art to remain upon inti-
mate terms with them both. He was the confidant
of the latter and the friend of the former — if men,
plotting the ruin of their country, and of equally
vicious propensities, can be called friends. It was
according to his ideas and advice that the speech of
the Comptroller-General had been worded and com-
posed. As this official discourse was the first blow
aimed at the popularity of this purse-proud man, many

58 MEMOIRS OF

believed, at this time, that Talleyrand had previously
planned with Mirabeau his disgrace and removal from
the head of the Financial department, in hopes of suc-
ceeding to his place ; and when once a member of
the King's council, if he could oblige by his intrigues
M. de Montmorin, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, to
resign an office the aim and ambition of Mirabeau
ever since his nomination as a deputy of the States-
General, it might easily induce him to expect that the
Court, from dread of his eloquence and immorality,
would purchase his talents, or quiet his turbulence by
a place or a pension.

Never did any people, either ancient or modern,
when at perfect liberty to nominate their representa-
tives, select such a set of profligate men as those who
represented the French nation in its several assemblies.
Even many of those who were of respectable families,
and had some property, could otherwise claim no re-
gard for their religious and moral principles, having
professed and published doctrines perverting or under-
mining the faith in a Divinity, and the allegiance
sworn to an hereditary monarch, and having, like
Talleyrand, by their vicious lives proved the sincerity
of their professions. The most impertinent, and at
the same time the most ridiculous pretensions to
dignity and wealth, to authority and advancement,

TALLEYRAND 59

were the printum mobile of all their actions and the
sole aim of all their machinations. As the King
had it not in his power to exalt them all to the
rank and grandeur of princes, ministers, governors,
generals, admirals, bishops, judges, presidents, &c.,
&c., they determined to reduce rank, eminence and
merit to a level with themselves.

Accordingly, the Third Estate began, on the very
day the States-General met, to plan the degradation
of the two first Orders — the natural and exclusive
supporters of the throne and the altar — by forcing
them, contrary to former ancient and invariable
customs, to unite and deliberate with them in the
same hall; or, which was the same thing, to be
governed and dictated to by their vast majority, to
remain mere ciphers in their presence, sanctioning,
without means of opposing, the most dangerous as
well as the most violent determinations. Had they
not been aware their cause would be supported by
many traitorous accomplices, both among the Clergy
and Nobility, whom the Orleans faction had bought
over to their interest, the conspirators would not, at
so early a stage of their proceedings, have ventured
to show so much audacity. But Talleyrand, Sieyes,
Gr6goire and others among the former, and Orleans,
La Fayette, the brothers La Methes, Montesquieu,

60 MEMOIRS OF

with their partisans, among the latter, either betrayed
the confidential discussions of their Orders, or publicly
opposed the wish and resolution of the majority by
joining the seditious Commons. At last, on the 2yth
of June, the faithful minority of the Clergy and the
loyal majority of the Nobles, at the express recom-
mendation of the King, repaired to the hall of the
States-General, now called a National Assembly.

When the Kings of France, Henry IV., Louis
XIII. and Louis XIV., caused a Duke of Biron, a
Prince of Chalais, and a Duke of Montmorency,
after being fairly tried and lawfully condemned, to
perish on the scaffold for conspiracy and rebellion,
they were stigmatised by the factious, discontented
and ignorant part of all nations with the appellation
of tyrants. Few historians, if any, have dared to
declare that these traitors to ' their respective sove-
reigns deserved their fate, or that, by permitting justice
to take its course, these kings and their ministers
most probably prevented a revolution, or at least a
civil war in which thousands must have perished.

Had Louis XVI. followed in 1789 the advice of
his best well-wishers, most trusty counsellors and
most disinterested dutiful subjects, and made a sum-
mary example of twenty of the principal rebels of the
States-General, which he then might have done, an

TALLEYRAND 6l

unjust posterity would doubtless have called him
a tyrfcnt, and the conspirators who suffered would
have been held up to admiration as patriots and
victims to the cause of liberty. By this time we are,
however, too well con vine 3d that such an act of
vigour and justice would not only have preserved his
own life and the lives of his Queen, his son, and
his sister, but would also have prevented sixteen
years of revolutions, twelve years of war and misery
and the loss of millions of lives ; and that these men,
who were then noted as rebels, have by their subse-
quent conduct proved their guilt, and that no punish-
ment inflicted on them could have been too severe.

According to a pamphlet called Les Candidats de la
Potence,1 the following were the persons Louis XVI.
was advised, and even pressed, in June, 1789, to
deliver over to the hands of the public executioner
Samson, as the only means to prevent the ruin of
France :

The Duke of Orleans, guillotined by his regicide ac-
complices in November, 1793.

I Lts Candidats de la Potence, Paris, 1791. In the preface it is
said that it was written by a president of Parliament, and given to
the Duchess of Polignac, who presented it to the King and Queen,
but that both Their Majesties disapproved of it, though it proves
and defends the necessity of such a grand coup d'etat to save
monarchy and France.

52 MEMOIRS OF

The Duke of Biron, after having served the assassins
of his virtuous King, guillotined by them m De-
cember, 1793.

The Duke de la Rochefoucault, in August, 1792,
murdered in his carriage by the side of his wife,
by his new sovereign, the mob.

The Duke of Liancourt, an unworthy and faithless
friend of Louis XVI., now a submissive slave and
debased prefect under Bonaparte.
The Duke d'Aiguillon, starved to death as an emi-
grant in Germany, after betraying his King and
his Order in France.

The Bishop of Autun, Talleyrand de Perigord, who,
after selling himself to, and betraying, all factions,
is now the grand vizier of the sultan of faction,
Bonaparte.

Abb6 Sieyes, who, after repeatedly swearing allegi-
ance to Louis XVI., joined his assassins to
murder him ; and after numerous oaths to liberty
and equality, is now the slavish senator of a
Corsican tyrant, who has annihilated both liberty
and equality.

Abb6 Gr6goire, another apostate priest, who, after
voting for the death of Louis XVI., because kings
were monsters in the political world, is a slave and
senator of Bonaparte, the most ferocious and bar-

TALLEYRAND 63

barous monster either in the political, moral or
physical world.

Marquis de la Fayette, by turns serving and be-
traying his King and the sovereign people, after
eight years' imprisonment and proscription, the pro-
claimer of the rights of man, now the passive
slave of a despicable Corsican adventurer.

The Marquis of Montesquieu, who, after deserting
his King, was deserted and proscribed by the
sovereign people; forced to emigrate, and lived long
enough to see a foreigner the tyrant of France.

The Marquis de Sillery, beheaded in 1793 by his
accomplices of the regicide National Convention.

Count de Mirabeau, who, after conspiring against
the Court, sold himself to the Court, and was
poisoned by the Jacobins, pantheonised by them in
1790, and depantheonised by them in 1793. Marat
succeeded him in the Pantheon; and both their
ashes were afterwards mixed together in the
common sewer of Montmartre at Paris.

Viscount Noailles, deserted his King and benefactor,
and, joining the mob, was proscribed in 1792,
emigrated to England, and was afterwards made
a general by Bonaparte and sent to St. Domingo,
He was killed in an engagement with an English
cutter.

64 MEMOIRS OF

Viscount Custine, a traitor to his King, and in 1793
dragged to execution by the sovereign people, for
whom he had fought and conquered.

Alexander and Charles La Methe, educated at the
expense of Louis XVI., whom they betrayed ;
equally despicable and despised by all parties,
Bonaparte took them into favour and made them
his pashas, under the name of prefects.

La Tour Maubourg, after betraying his King, out-
lawed by the sovereign people, until the Corsican
tyrant of the sovereign people recalled him from
his exile. The general under Louis XVI. is now
a colonel under Bonaparte, formerly a sub-lieu-
tenant under Louis XVI.

Bailly, the Mayor of Paris, guillotined in 1793 by
his sovereign the Parisian mob.

Barnave, guillotined in 1793 for having sold himself
to the Court, after having for years conspired
against the Court.

Petion, starved to death in a wood, after being out-
lawed by the National Convention, which owed its
existence to his crimes and perjury.

The Marquis Condorcet, who, outlawed by Robes-
pierre's faction, poisoned himself when discovered
in 1793.

Robespierre, who, after inundating France with blood

TALLEYRAND 65

and filling her with dungeons and scaffolds, perished
in 1794, in his turn, by the hands of his accomplices
and slaves.

Let any impartial man, after reading through this
list, pronounce and declare if it contains a single
name of any individual whose execution in 1789 would
not have been a benefit to society.1

What can be the reason that, in all countries and
at different periods, when any civil commotions break
out, the same names amongst the discontented and
seditious nobles are usually read or heard of? It
must be ascribed to historians, who, instead of ex-
posing to detestation their crimes, which no rank or
fortune can palliate, represent their conduct as mis-
guided patriotism, and, from a regard to certain
families, conceal truth or render it doubtful. Their
descendants, therefore, think it an honour, and perhaps
a duty, - to be foremost among the discontented or
disaffected, and to continue the hereditary and direct
opposers of the government of their country, however
just it may be. The La Rochefoucaults, the Mont-
morencies, the Birons, the La Fayettes, the Talley-
rands and others are found among the rebels against

i The remarks following each name are not contained hi
the last-mentioned pamphlet

VOL. I 5

66 MEMOIRS OF

Louis XVI. as their ancestors ranked among those
against former kings. Some of this rebellious pos-
terity have already received from the hands of their
sovereign mob a just punishment for the treason
committed against their lawful monarch; while their
accomplices undergo a still severer chastisement, by
being constrained to bow beneath the iron . sceptre
of a contemptible upstart and barbarous usurper,
and in witnessing that rebellion which, to gratify
their ambition and cupidity they began in the name
of liberty, terminated, as such rebellions generally do,
in the most degrading and abject slavery.

The Revolution now began to take a turn which
neither its adherents or opposers expected. The enor-
mous crimes committed not only with impunity but
with audacity, everywhere alarmed the former and
terrified the latter. Talleyrand, however, considered
a total subversion and anarchy as the only means
to arrange his private affairs, and even as an oppor-
tunity to recover a kind of consideration. This made
him declare himself early in favour of the popular
party, and to never desert the Orleans faction until the
Court was under the necessity of buying him over
His name and dignity procured him a certain in-
fluence over some members of his Order, and his
example seduced a great number of the inferior

TALLEYRAND 67

clergy. Though possessing talents and a great facility
in composition, his excessive immorality made him
forget that his continual fluctuation and inconsistency
would finally convince everybody that he knew no
other laws than those of self-interest, and had no
other principles than those that led to make his
fortune, or to obtain advancement.

On the 6th and 7th of July, 1789, he proposed in
long speeches to declare void the contents of the in-
structions which the members of the National Assembly
had received from their constituents. Some few days
afterwards he spoke in favour of comedians, of Jews,
and of the public executioners, to all of whom he
proposed, by a formal decree, to give the rights of
active citizens. On the aoth of August the National
Assembly, according to his motion, adopted an article
which declared all citizens, without distinction or exception,
admissible to public employments; so that a hang-
man might hope to be a chief -justice, and a strolling
player an archbishop. Three days afterwards he
opposed any mention being made of worship in
the declaration of the rights of man, and insisted
that it was only in the constitutional code where
anything concerning the sacred and holy Roman
Catholic religion should be inserted. On the 27th
of the same month, and on the loth of October,

5—2

58 MEMOIRS OF

he spoke for a considerable time on the finances of
France. He acknowledged the necessity of a new
loan, but urged also the spoliation of the estates and
lands of the Clergy, which he insisted was both
just and expedient.

In the conciliabula of the Orleans faction Mirabeau
proposed, and the conspirators agreed, that Talleyrand
should be fixed upon to bring forward in the National
Assembly a motion of confiscation, or to declare the
possessions of the Clergy national property. The
motive which actuated Mirabeau in this instance
was two-fold: by means of one degraded and apostate
prelate he intended to humble the whole body of
the French Clergy ; and by making him the mover
of the question, to silence, if not to remove, the
scruples of a vast majority of the nation, who he
well knew, even in the then perverted state of
France, would look upon such an unheard-of pillage
as nothing less than a sacrilege.

Accordingly, on the 2nd of November, Talleyrand,
with a hypocritical solemnity, ascended the tribune
and produced bis motion. After ten hours of debate
it was carried by a numerous majority ; and the
National Assembly decreed the confiscation and sale
of the property of the French Clergy, notwithstanding
their offer to advance, for the arrangement of the

TALLEYRAND 69

finances of their country, ^"16,000,000 — a sum more
than sufficient to restore the balance and establish
the credit of the Royal treasury.

Foreign nations regarded these great events with
astonishment, but with various degrees of sympathy,
proportioned to the nature of their own government
and their apprehensions of the ultimate result. In
this country the capture of the Bastille,1 the attempt
to establish a free constitution founded on a trial by
jury, and the liberty of the Press, could not fail to
meet general applause. The cruelties which followed
the destruction of that hated fortress, though they
made a strong impression, were generously imputed
to popular error, and rather deplored than severely
censured. But the subsequent plunder and burning
of chateaux in the provinces, and the murder and
even torture of their owners — the first cause of
emigration — could by no arts be so excused as to
obtain the sanction of a humane, generous and free
people.

The pillage of Lhe privileged classes (according

I According to the registers of the Bastille, published in 1789
by the French rebels, there had been confined in that prison, so
decried, only 300 persons in the course of three centuries. During
eighteen months of Robespierre's reign 250,000 persons were shut
up in the State prisons ; and during the five years of Bonaparte's
mild reign the Temple alone has contained 9.500 prisoners I

70 MEMOIRS OF

to the proposal of Viscount de Noailles, and indeed
of all landed proprietors) by the decree of the 4th
of August, and that which followed against the lands
and revenues of the Clergy after Talleyrand's motion
on the 2nd of November, gave alarm to all men who
seriously viewed the nature of property and saw
with how much facility the arguments which ren-
dered that robbery popular might be applied by the
needy, idle and wicked in any country to every kind
of depredation. The abominable occurrences on the
5th and 6th of October, when Louis XVI., his
Queen, children and rektives were dragged from
their palace at Versailles and carried as prisoners
to Paris amidst the mangled bodies and heads of
their most faithful servants upon pikes, were viewed
here with still greater horror and regret. Those
who were content to see the authority of the
French monarch abridged, were shocked at the un-
principled ferocity and brutality with which his de-
gradation to the state of a captive was precipitated ;
nor could all the artifice of palliation, nor all the
untruths profusely published by the perpetrators and
their accomplices in vindication of these events, alter
the well-founded opinion of their moral enormity and
political portent. The opinion, at first rashly and
benevolently entertained, that oppression had driven

TALLEYRAND 71

a loyal and long - suffering people to resistance,
gradually yielded to a conviction of their insatiable
love of blood and plunder; and to a demonstration
that their own complaints and grievances did not
form the ground of their efforts, but that they were
mischievous tools in the hands of a desperate
faction; and that their dishonesty and cruelty
were the principle engines to be used in reducing
the Court and the kingdom to passive subjection,
through the double terrors of poverty and assassina-
tion.

Talleyrand seemed about this period particularly
attentive to the financial affairs of his country, but
he declared himself strongly against the plans pre-
sented by Necker to the National Assembly, instead
of which he recommended State-bills (billets d'/tai)f
This recommendation, notwithstanding the Assembly's
previous and solemn declaration that "the creditors
of State were placed under the protection of the honour
and loyalty of the French nation," was not listened
to, because it could not be expected to meet with
success among moneyed men, who, from the reeking
ashes of their burnt houses, and from the unpunished
pillage of their property, began to know how to
appreciate the protection as well as the honour and
loyalty both of the French nation and its representa-

72 MEMOIRS OF

tives.1 Subsequent events have justified their fears',
since that period the great nation has condescended to
make no less than four fraudulent bankruptcies, to
the detriment and ruin of millions of duped French-
men and deluded foreigners.

Towards the latter part of November, he was
appointed by the National Assembly one of its com-
missioners to examine into the real situation of the
Caisse d'Escompte, or discount-bank, established by
Necker during the American War, and exclusively
favoured by this minister ; and in January, 1790, he
became a member of the Committee of Imposts.
It was he who digested the famous address to the
French nation in February, the same year, which
the National Assembly then ordered to be published,
to remind the people both of what its patriotic
labours had already produced for them and the
grand achievement it was still preparing. This
address is very curious, whether we consider the
subsequent conduct of its author, or the short dura-
tion of all those eternal institutions and philosophical
innovations which were held out as so many in-

z Some of Talleyrand's accomplices proposed, about that
time, to Louis XVI. to appoint the Bishop a minister of the
finances. This Prince answered : " Non ! Talleyrand n'ira jamais
droit I " alluding, no doubt, to his mental perversity, as well as
to his bodily infirmity of being lame.

TALLEYRAND 73

valuable benefits to the nation. During the same
month he was for the first time elected President
of the National Assembly.

The mobs rising everywhere and on every
occasion, and threatening the most frantic violences;
the tumultuous proceedings of the National Assem-
bly ; the seduction of the soldiery ; the undisguised
resistance to authority; and the manoeuvres, clamours,
and calumnies against the King and Queen, may
truly be ascribed to the Duke of Orleans, to Mira-
beau, Talleyrand, and other subordinate agents or
venal mercenaries of the same faction. This is
evident, because when, after the barbarous scenes
at Versailles on the 5th and 6th of October, La
Fayette, by a temporary exertion of firmness, forced
the Duke of Orleans to undertake a journey to this
country, a state of moderate tranquillity imme-
diately ensued, which seemed to augur better days.
But this happy prosprct was again clouded by the
rashness and folly of Bailly, who, in proposing the
solemn foppery of a confederation, revived the means
and motives of insurrection, and afforded a leader
of the principal party a pretext to revisit France.
The day for this confederation was fixed for the
i4th of July, as the anniversary of the taking of
the Bastille. Talleyrand, in his capacity of a

74 MEMOIRS OF

revolutionary patriarch, was entrusted by the muni-
cipality ot Paris to officiate pontifically in the
splendid ceremony on this occasion in the Champ
de Mars. He appeared at the head of more than
two hundred apostate priests like himself, dressed
in white linen and adorned with the colours of
rebellion — the tricoloured ribands. When about to
officiate, a storm of wind took place, followed by a
deluge of rain. A true atheist, he proceeded, how-
ever, in the celebration ot the Mass, without any
regard to an event which many minds would have
considered ominous, and afterwards pronounced a
benediction and consecration on the Royal Standard
of France, and on the eighty-three banners of the
departments which waved around it before the altar
of the country. What a pontiff, what a benedic-
tion, and what an altar I

But even the day of confederation would have
been marked with disastrous events had sufficient
time remained after the return of the Duke of
Orleans. The want of preparation in his party, the
zeal of the deputies of the confederation from the
departments, and particularly those of Brittany, pre-
sented, however, too strong a barrier about the Throne
for a momentary exertion of force to shake it; and
the seduction of so large a body could not be effected

TALLEYRAND 75

without leisure for concerting the means. Besides,
during the Duke's absence in England, several of
his principal agents had either been bought over
by, or were negotiating with, the Court, to desert
if not to betray him. Among the latter was Talley-
rand, who, as nothing had yet been settled with the
Court, could not be much pleased with the sudden
arrival of his patron at Paris, from an apprehension
of losing, in case of a discovery, the wages already
due to his past infamy.

Among other mock ceremonies on the day of con-
federation, Talleyrand administered to the representa-
tives of the people, and to the federal deputies sent
by the departments, a new oath — the fourth within
twelve months — of fidelity to the nation, to the King
and to the law. In this solemn oath, by which the
French bound themselves, the credulous thought they
beheld the return of domestic tranquillity ; but the
more penetrating anticipated only a scene of vast
and unqualified perjury. Some apprehended that the
Sovereign would attempt to regain a portion of the
authority wrested from him; and it was still, with
more reason, dreaded that his ungrateful subjects
would not be satisfied with the advantages they
had acquired. The people heard with distrust the
assurances of the Prince ; and while he was anxious

76 MEMOIRS OP

only to preserve the little power that had been left
him, the multitude were instructed to consider the
rights they had asserted as precarious in their dura-
tion unless fortified with the ruins of the Throne.
The conduct of the people was, however, ungenerous
and illiberal to the highest degree. Louis XVI. began
his reign with the sincere project of effecting a sub-
stantial reform throughout the administration ; and
history will relate with tears that, amidst various
and most terrible scenes of misfortune, he remained
faithful to that project to his last hour, and strove
to realise the fair vision that had sprung from his
excellent heart. Hence his readiness in attending to
the bold plans of improvement proposed by Turgot,
as well as to the brilliant but delusive promises of
Necker. Hence his inducement to convoke the
Notables and the States-General, after an improved
system of administration, maturely weighed and
adopted with ardour, had been drawn up under his
inspection. Hence his voluntary renunciation of
power, his resignation during his sufferings, and his
firmness on the scaffold.

Although Talleyrand was so often occupied with
plots and conspiracies, with pronouncing revolutionary
speeches, with producing revolutionary reports, with
composing revolutionary addresses, and with celebrating

TALLEYRAND 77

revolutionary festivities, he found time enough to in-
trigue with the sex, and to communicate with his

female friend, the Countess of F , to whom he

wrote regularly when he could not visit her. On the
1 5th of July, 1790, she received this letter, written
on the same day at eight o'clock in the morning:

" If you were as much gratified with your place
at the ridiculous ftte of yesterday as I was with
seeing and admiring you where you were seated,
you must have supported the storm and the deluge
with the same philosophy as your friend. Had not
the Duke of Orleans forced me to pass the evening
with him, I intended to have seen you last night,
and to unbosom my mind concerning the occurrences
of this day, which have made so many different and
opposite impressions. For my part, I do not know,
entrc nous, whom to pity the most, the Sovereign or
the subjects, France or Europe. Should the Prince
confide in the affection of the people, he is undone;
and should the people not mistrust the character of
their Prince, torrents of blood will be required for
years to wash off the licentious enthusiasm of a few
months, and the innocent must be involved in the
same ruin with the guilty. In either case the tran-
quillity or liberty of Europe will suffer. Far De it

78 MEMOIRS OF

from me to suspect Louis XVI. of being blood-
thirsty; but a weak king, surrounded with bad
counsellors, easily becomes a cruel one, or, which
is the same, from weakness or seduction, permits
them to exercise cruelties under the protection of
his name and authority. In whatever light, there-
fore, I regard the consequences of the events of
yesterday, I shudder, particularly since my interview
with the Duke. No crimes are too atrocious for
his ambitious and vindictive heart to conceive. For-
tunately for my country, he wants courage and
resolution to execute with his hand the horrid con-
ceptions of his head.

" Mirabeau is now as disgusted with him as I am
myself. We have frequently great difficulty in con-
cealing the contempt he inspires. Sieyes seems,
however, always the same — always cringing, approv-
ing or advising. He is jealous of us and mistrusts
us, but we are too much upon our guard to give
him reason to suspect, before it is ripe, our intention
of leaving him and his hero where we found them.
He asked me, with a sardonical sneer, in the presence
of the whole company, consisting of sixteen, how I
could retain my gravity in performing so adroitly the
buffoonery in the Champ de Mars; and to how
many Christians, among the one hundred thousand

TALLEYRAND 79

spectators, I thought I administered the national
Christian oath. Upon declaring my ignorance, he
said, ' I have made a calculation, and do not believe
they amount to five hundred, including the Duke, you,
myself, and our party.1 To tell you the truth, I
apprehend that he has rather over-rated the number
of the faithful, and, though a philosopher, I deplore the
progress of infidelity among the people. I am of the
same opinion with Voltaire, that, whether we believe
in a God ourselves or not, it would be dangerous to
the whole community should the multitude think
that they can, with impunity and without fear of
punishment in the next world, rob, poison, stab,
hang or behead in this. This anti-social doctrine
is to be dreaded more now than ever, because the
laws are without vigour or support, and the mass of
the people consider themselves above them ; and, what
is most deplorable, it is the interest of the Assembly to
keep up the spirit of this moral and political anarchy.

" I am well aware that it is not quite gallant
to fill with philosophy and politics so much of a
letter from a lover to his beloved; but to whom
can I confide with safety the thoughts and secrets
of my mind, if not to you, who are so much above
the pretensions and prejudices of your sex and the
discretion of mine? Let this be my apology.

8o MEMOIRS OF

" I hope that it did not escape your penetration
to what divinity I yesterday addressed my prayers and
my oath of fidelity at the altar; and that you alone
were the supreme being I worshipped, and ever shall
adore.

" How is it with your embonpoint ? Is your
Charles to have a brother or a sister, or was it
only a false alarm ? Embrace our dear boy. I shall
sup with you, &c., to-morrow. — Burn this epistle."1

The contents of this letter is another proof of
the corrupt levity, social depravity and sacrilegious
profaneness even of the chiefs and leaders of the
French rebellion. The horrors already witnessed will,
therefore, not surprise, but prepare mankind, as long
as a revolutionary government continues to oppress
and mislead Frenchmen, to see or hear of still greater
enormities.

What a religious and moral blasphemy! The
prelate selected to address the Almighty for a whole
people, to implore His blessing on their meditated
regeneration, begins his letter to his mistress with

I See La Correspondence d'Infames Emigres, &c., vol. iv., pp.
ii and 12. In the preface of this work it is said that the pub-
lisher printed these letters by the order of the Committee of
Public Safety, where all the originals were deposited, and might
be seen and compared with the impression.

TALLEYRAND 8l

calling the fete, in which he acted as an envoy to
heaven, ridiculous ; and finishes it by telling the per-
son to whom it was written, and with whom he then
lived in open adultery, that she was his only divinity
to whom all his prayers and oaths were directed,
and the only supreme being worshipped or ever to
be adored by him! How many shocking indignities
are offered to Providence in these few lines! and
the blasphemer not only lives but prospers. But if —

"D'une conduit pure la gloire est immortelle.
Du crime triomphant la honte est e"ternelle."

The labours of Talleyrand in the several com-
mittees were not without their profit. They were
particularly well rewarded when, as a member of
the Diplomatic Committee, he proposed the decree
agreed to by the National Assembly which changed
the family compact between the French and Spanish
Bourbons into a national alliance between the French
and Spanish nations. England was then arming to
defend her just right to Nootka Sound, and de-
manded satisfaction for the violence committed there
on British navigators and traders. Unable, with any
prospect of advantage, to combat this country with-
out the assistance of an ally, the Spanish Monarch,
by his Ambassador at Paris, distributed 2,000,000 of

dollars among the members of the Diplomatic Com-
VOL. i 6

8a MEMOIRS OF

mittee for the renewal and confirmation of former
treaties with France by the National Assembly. Of
this sum Talleyrand shared 100,000 dollars, which,
notwithstanding the several patriotic donations received
by him from the Duke of Orleans, were so far from
sufficient to satisfy his creditors that, to stop a
denunciation of theirs, ready to be printed and
distributed, he was under the necessity of borrowing

the jewels of the Countess of F 1, which he

pawned at the Mont de Piet6 in Paris, in June, 1790,
for ^3,900, where they would have been sold, had
not the Marquis of Marigni, in June, 1791, lent his
sister-in-law money to take them out, as Talleyrand
had entirely forgotten his debt of honour.

This dear-bought decree of the National Assembly
would have been, however, of little benefit to Spain,
had not Great Britain, with her usual generosity,
instead of enforcing her just and reasonable demands,
which she might easily have done, consented to
pacific arrangements. It is true that the unfortunate
King of France had ordered an auxiliary squadron of
forty-five sail of the line to be fitted out at Brest;
but the habits of obedience that had long characterised
the French nation were universally relaxed, the laws
no longer revered, and the duties of subjects to their
Sovereign no more regarded. The contagious spirit

TALLEYRAND 83

of revolt had been communicated to the troops, and
in the intemperance of their civic feasts, and the
seductive appellation of citizens, the sailors as well
as the soldiers had renounced their military fidelity
and discipline. Instead of confiding in their com-
manders, they revolted against them, accusing them
of aristocracy, and of conspiracy against the nation ;
and these absurd and unjust accusations were soon
made the foundation of real injuries. Count Albert
de Rioms had been appointed to the command of the
Brest fleet. But in the arsenals at that port the
spirit of insubordination prevailed no less than in
other parts of the kingdom ; the galley-slaves threat-
ened to fire the store-houses, the sailors derided their
officers and the National Assembly, and, in virtue of
their strength and superiority in numbers, claimed
the right of legislating for themselves. To these ex-
cesses the Assembly opposed only feeble and time-
serving determinations and regulations, and the
Admiral, unable to restore order, being even threat-
ened by the rebellious crews with the then fashionable
lamp-post, was obliged to resign his command. He
was succeeded by Bougainville, but the pacification
that ensued, fortunately for him, reduced his duty
to an attempt of restoring subordination. On this

occasion the National Assembly, to organise rebellion

6—2

84 MEMOIRS OF

in the navy as well as in the army, resolved that
the white flag should be no longer used, but that of
three colours substituted.

Among other revolutionary distinctions now be-
stowed, or rather heaped, upon Talleyrand, was his
election in August as one of the secretaries of the
Jacobin Club, which has since acquired such dreadful
celebrity, and of which the Bishop of Autun was one
of the founders and leading members. The rage for
political discussion had induced some factious members,
in the spring of 1789, to form a society, which they
called Le Club Br6ton. When the Assembly, in
the autumn of the same year, removed to Paris,
it was augmented by all the opposition parties in
that body, and by a great number of political
adventurers, speculatists and economists. They
hired, as a place of meeting, a building formerly
appropriated to the religious order of the Jacobins,
and by that name the society was afterwards dis-
tinguished. Talleyrand was here in his element,
as this club soon became the centre of intrigue and
conspiracy. It maintained extensive correspondence
with affiliated societies in the kingdom, amounting
first to two thousand, but increased during the
reign of Robespierre to forty-four thousand. All
the provincial and affiliated bodies receiving the

TALLEYRAND 85

impulse from the parent society, spread insurrection
and a love of licentiousness throughout the kingdom.
The soldiers were invited to their meetings as the
best school for insubordination, and the officers were
denounced and punished as aristocrats for interposing
their authority to prevent their attendance. By the
Jacobins every measure of the Legislature was either
prepared or resisted ; its way smoothed by petitions
and acclamations, or impeded by clamours, menaces
and riots. The club also maintained a communication
with various foreign societies all over Europe, and by
the secret influence of its members in Courts and
Cabinets, among ministers, generals and courtiers,
and by their public support of most literati, savants,
or other men of letters — in their historical works, as
well as in their political and literary journals — promised
to spread among all classes and in every direction
the contagion of its principles, and prepare mankind
in general to acquiesce in and even applaud the con-
sequences resulting from them. Every principal town
and almost every considerable village in France fur-
nished an association with which the club at Paris
held a regular intercourse. It encouraged denunciation
and offered support ; it listened to complaints and
suggested means of redress; it affected to console
and promised to chastise ; but its language of con-

86 MEMOIRS OF

solation was reserved for those who violated, and its
chastisements directed against those who supported,
the laws.

Although the Jacobin clubs are no longer fashion-
able in France, the spirit of Jacobinism there is not
only sustained but improved. It continues even to
extend its influence and to exert its ravages in most
other States. It is now so perfectly identified with
the Revolutionary Government, whatever appellation
is usurped by its chief — the name of a citizen sans-
culotte, or the title of an Imperial monarch — that both
must rule or perish together. This originates, in a
great measure, from the Jacobin propaganda now
organised into a secret external, as well as an
internal police, its firmest and invariable support.
Both these revolutionary and anti-social institutions
acknowledge Talleyrand as their parent. The plan
he drew for the former in 1789 was improved by
him for the latter in 1799, and the instructions he
composed for the emissaries of the Jacobin pro-
paganda sixteen years ago, with the exception of
some variations which Bonaparte's conspiracy against
all ancient dynasties and lawful governments has
made necessary, serve yet for the agents of the
secret French police. None but Talleyrand, Mira-
beau, and some other principal chiefs, were initiated

TALLEYRAND 87

in the hidden views of the Jacobin propaganda.
Bonaparte, Talleyrand and Fouche are the only
persons at present exclusively acquainted with and
directing the intrigues, plots and crimes of the
agents of the secret French police.

The following curious State paper the author
received, with several others, from a loyal friend at
Paris, who, though figuring at Bonaparte's diplomatic
levees, and from policy partaking of Talleyrand's
official dinners, holds in the utmost detestation these
guilty men ; watches their motions, and penetrates
into their plans ; has temerity enough often to
expose their atrocities, and courage, when occasion
offers, to deliver mankind of its scourge:

SECRET POLICE OFFICE.

Secret Instructions for the Agents of our Secret External
Police, delivered over to them after their examination and
trial have been approved, and after having subscribed the
following Oath:

I, , swear, by everything that is sacred

or terrible, to obey, without hesitation, the orders
transmitted to me from the Office of the Secret Police,

i The author is aware that some instances of atrocity dis-
played in these instructions will appear needless, wanton and
extravagant ; but he has fairly stated their source. For his
own part, he considers them as assimilating perfectly with the
general history of revolutionists, and can hardly doubt their
authenticity.

gg MEMOIRS OF

even were I commanded to stab my father, strangle
my mother, shoot my brother, violate my sister,
poison my wife, or drown my children; to set fire
to churches or orphans' houses, to blow up palaces
or arsenals ; to murder persons chained in the dun-
geons of prisons, or suffering on the sick-bed in
hospitals ; to spare neither age, nor sex, rank, emi-
nence, nor innocence. Should I disobey the orders,
or betray the secrets reposed in me, I consent that
this Oath shall be my death warrant.

(Signed) .

When arrived at your place of destination, wait
on our Diplomatic or Commercial Agents, who will
have orders to protect you, but only as a common
traveller. Try to gain their confidence, and to find
out their real political opinions ; if sincerely attached
to their Sovereign, or tainted with any prejudices
favourable to the Bourbons, write down and report
all your conversations with them ; if they are not
removed in consequence, they must in time be en-
trusted with the secrets of your mission. Then, first,
you can, without indiscretion, unbosom yourself, ask
their advice, and claim their protection to its full
extent.

As we judge proper, and according to the spirit
of the Government, or the prejudices of the nation,
you are to travel in and visit different countries,
either as a military man, an amateur, a savant, or a
merchant, &c. Should it be found necessary, you
must sometimes descend to be an actor, a dancer,
a musician, a quack, a cook, or even a valet.

TALLEYRAND 89

When in a military capacity, your conversation
must often be of battles fought and victories gained,
of fatigues, of marches, and of the pleasures of
encampments ; of duels and deaths ; of wounds re-
ceived, and of foes destroyed. Let your associates or
companions dread you as a spadassin,1 or laugh at
you as a gasconader, but never give them occasion
to despise you as a coward. When an amateur or a
savant, curiosities, antiquities or literature must always
be the subjects of your discourses, and seemingly be
your only thoughts. It is better to be ridiculed as
a pedant than neglected as a dunce, or suspected
as an impostor. When a merchant, trade and
manufactures, commercial speculations or financial
transactions are to be your only visible occupations;
and since, in the character of an officer, you are to
frequent the military parades or reviews, as an
amateur or a savant, museums, learned societies, clubs
and academies will be your resort ; so as a merchant
you are never to miss the exchange, or those coffee-
houses resorted to by commercial men or stock-
jobbers. A portable library, with select books applic-
able to the character you represent, will be given
you. You must not neglect obtaining from them
the information necessary for your station. When in
inferior situations, you shall be amply furnished with
instructions in what manner to perform your parts.

In countries inimical to, or at war with France,
you must pass for an exiled person, a victim of the
Revolution, proscribed by the Emperor of the French

i Bully.

go MEMOIRS OF

and pursued by his vengeance. Though there, as
everywhere else, well provided with pecuniary re-
sources and credit, complain of poverty, suffer from
poverty, and cause yourself even to be imprisoned
for debts as poor. Should not the Government after
all this open its purse, some charitable friend or relation
in France will send you some succour and relieve
your distress, and you are always sure not to rot in
a gaol. To obtain that confidence from interest which
compassion has refused, you may, with an air of
importance, disclose those indifferent secrets given
you to be made public. As the authenticity of your
disclosure will soon be proved from events, you must
say that they are communicated to you by a power-
ful Royal or Jacobin faction in France, of which
you, of course, are one of the principal chiefs. Should
you still not succeed, insinuate yourself by some
small presents, larger promises, or trifling services,
into the confidence of some needy, avaricious emi-
grant trusted by the Government. He will, no
doubt, introduce you into some of the public offices
of State; but should you even then not meet with
success, apply to our Secret Stationary and National
Agent; he will direct you in what manner you
will best be enabled to execute your mission. All
persons not immediately necessary for your purposes,
to whom you have made advances, whom you be-
lieve suspect your conduct, or calumniate your prin-
ciples, or disseminate unfavourable reports concerning
you, must immediately be despatched.

As in all countries you are well provided with
letters of introduction and credit, try to make such

TALLEYRAND gi

use of the former as may render it least necessary
to resort to the latter. In our secret dep&ts of the
principal cities of Europe and America you may,
in making yourself known and in advancing your
authority, obtain as much as required in forged bank-
notes or bills of exchange, in counterfeit gold or
bad silver coins. To avoid suspicion, take care,
however, to draw from your banker the sum neces-
sary for your expenses, but remit in good bills,
according to address, to the Treasurer of our Secret
Police, the amount of what you have taken from
our secret depdts.

In all places we have regular Secret Stationary
Agents born in the country, and they will always be
among the persons to whom you are introduced.
They are, and must remain, unknown to our ac-
credited agents. Engage no person in your service
who is not recommended by them, except the valet-
de-place of the inn where you lodge. This description
of men are usually spies of the police of their coun-
try. By letting them know, with proper discretion,
that you are acquainted with it, and that you have
ample means to reward their services, you may be
enabled to make many useful discoveries, and also
to inspect the actions both of our Secret and Public
Agents.

When among fashionable people, or with persons
of talent, favour or popularity, whose opinions already
influence, or may be expected one day to influence,
the determinations of the Cabinets, or the spirit of
the army, or the public, be very attentive in noting
their words, remarks, and even their very looks, in

ga MEMOIRS OP

order that you may know whether they speak what
they think, or think what they speak — if they are
patriots or enthusiasts, interested schemers or deluded
fanatics. Form your judgment, and act accordingly.
But the example of France must always be held up
as a hope of gaining supremacy for the ambitious,
riches for the covetous, justice for the injured, revenge
for the vindictive, and impunity for all.

Take care on all occasions to speak of the
regeneration of France as beneficial to the universe.
Be attentive on whom this makes the greatest im-
pression, and answer those who complain of the
Revolution as not having realised the prospect and
promises of universal liberty, that the universe
cannot be free before all present sovereigns have
by force been reduced to subjects, and subjects
have been elevated to the dignity of sovereigns.
This the tenets and victories of Republican sans-
culottes were unable to effect ; it must, therefore, be
done by the senatus consultant, negotiation, or treaties
of Republican Imperialists. Announce that the Em-
peror of the French will descend to the rank of a
simple citizen the instant the subjects of all other
countries, in becoming citizens, acknowledge no longer
any other sovereignty than that of the people. Be,
however, careful with whom you converse in this
manner, and avoid either giving offence or inspiring
mistrust. Your own penetration will tell you where
and to whom you may hold such language without
reserve. Should any overtures be made to you in
consequence, let the person be ever so high by his
rank, or eminent for his genius or capacity, decline

TALLEYRAND 93

entering into particulars, and remember that you
must be known as an individual or^ isolated traveller
only. But report to our Diplomatic Agent the over-
tures made, the names of the persons making them,
and your own opinion of them. As your stay in
each place will be but short, you may in company
sometimes hazard your remarks rather freely on
what is spoken of as abuses of authority in the
Government, or what constitutes the complaint of
the people. But always do it with caution, and
invariably finish by endeavouring to impress them
with a sense of the advantages resulting from the
French Revolution having destroyed in France all
power of abuse on one side, and all causes of
complaint on the other.

In whatever country you may happen to be,
you are to watch the presses, the booksellers' shops,
the post offices, the ante-chambers and closets of
the sovereign, the cabinets of ministers, and the
offices and studies of their secretaries. To procure
information, spare no pains, dread nothing, stoop to
anything. The potion or the stiletto, the trinket or
the bank-note, you may use by turns and as occasion
requires. Do not implicitly confide in those persons
you employ ; inspect everything and transact as much
as possible yourself; do not fail to compare their
reports with your own observations ; those who intend
to impose upon you, or who desire to mislead or
betray you, at once despatch.

Do not develop the object of your mission to
the Secret Stationary Agent until it is quite ripe for
execution ; because, when any grand coup d'etat \M to

94

MEMOIRS OP

be struck, he is bound by his oath and duty to
procure, at a moment's warning, whatever succour
or assistance you may require either in men or
money. Should you suspect his weakness, or dis-
cover any treachery or hesitation, take care to be
provided with the most subtle as well as the most
lingering poison, and administer him a dose which
will either put an end to his existence in a few
seconds, or produce a life of misery and painful
death in some months or years, as may best suit
your purpose.

If you are entrusted with real and artificial
diamonds, on your arrival present those who promise
to serve you with the former; but, before your
departure, you must exchange them for the latter,
or the loss will be yours. By means of the passe
partout, or pick-lock keys you carry with you, all
places must be accessible to you; you may, there-
fore, easily penetrate into the apartment where the
Crown jewels are kept, into the cabinet containing
the State papers, into the prince's closet or the
minister's portfolio, into council - chambers, into
treasuries, into public and private banks, into State
prisons, into armouries, store-houses or arsenals.

In removing guilty, dangerous or suspected persons,
in stopping messengers, in appropriating or exchanging
the Crown jewels, in carrying off despatches, in releas-
ing State prisoners, in securing mails, in firing arsenals
or store-houses, take care to be seen as little as possible
by those in whom you are recommended to confide;
but, if once seen by them, never give them time to
betray your confidence by surviving their exploits.

TALLEYRAND 95

By disguise or departure, become invisible as soon
as your designs are executed. Our Secret or Ac-
credited Agents will always be previously prepared
with the necessary passports into any country, and
under whatever name and rank you think safest.
Should you, notwithstanding all these precautions, be
arrested, fear nothing; poison, steel or gold shall
soon remove your gaolers and set you at liberty.

Be very attentive to the lists given you of
persons friendly or inimical to the Emperor and to
France. Neglect no opportunity of converting or
removing the latter, and of indirectly encouraging and
watching the former.

Should any new foes start up among statesmen
or politicians, among military or literary characters,
of ability or firmness, do not give their enmity time
to arrive at maturity, but without waiting for further
orders — strike ! and depend upon protection. On the
contrary, should any new candidates for the Imperial
favour present themselves, inform our Public Agents
of it, and report it to us, that they may be en-
couraged or rewarded as we may think fit.

All persons who, in words, writing or printing,
offend the Emperor, deserve death. In buying up
the edition of the libel or calumny, do not fail to
punish the printer and publisher as well as the
author. Let their agony be long, but their annihila-
tion certain.

You must at all times endeavour to be possessed
of the good opinion of the fair sex, but more par-
ticularly of those who are favourites at Court, or
mistresses of princes or ministers, who have pro-

96 MEMOIRS OP

tensions to wit, adroitness at intrigue, and sense or
capacity to cabal. Be gallant or liberal, gay or serious,
devout or profane, according to the character or
caprice of the persons whose friendship or affection
you wish to obtain, or whose secret you intend to
ensnare, surprise or purchase. Be exceedingly careful
in the advances you make ; but should you suspect
that you have gone too far and entrusted your con-
fidence to an improper person, his immediate death
must repair your error and relieve your fears.

Since, by means of the support, recommendation
and protection you possess, you may enter into the
first or most fashionable circles, and, when occasion
requires it, be both splendid in your equipage and
retinue and profuse in your expenses and manner of
living, you must assume an air of importance — nay,
you must be audacious and even impudent when
circumstances make it necessary : dare to do every-
thing, and fear nothing. Banish awkwardness or
timidity, and let your deportment be always easy
and natural, even in challenging the husband after
seducing his wife, in insulting the father after de-
bauching his daughter, in relating an absurdity, or in
publishing a falsehood. If it is an object of your
views to be loved or admired by women, it is also
necessary that, if you cannot be liked, you must
be feared by men. But those of either sex whom
you can neither intimidate, purchase, or seduce —
remove!

Peruse these instructions so often that they may
be indelibly impressed upon your memory, and then
you may destroy the key of the ciphers with which

TALLEYRAND 97

they are written. All papers of consequence, such
as the copy of your official correspondence, the list
of names, plans of places, and orders, means and
instruments for acting, you must, as soon as you
arrive anywhere, for fear of accident, leave at our
Secret Depots, from whence you may retake them
any hour, day or night.

Any unforeseen or extraordinary occurrences which
may appear to you as useful or advantageous during
your travels, immediately communicate to us, and wait
our further instructions or orders.

Given in our Secret Police Office at Paris.

(Signed) NAPOLEON.
(Countersigned) TALLEYRAND.
FOUCHE.

These instructions of the external secret police
agents are said to differ from those of the Jacobin
propagators only by the Emperor's having substituted
other words in the places formerly occupied by "the
rights of man," by "liberty, equality and fraternity,"
by "the tricoloured cockade," by "the Jacobin cap,"
or by "the tree of liberty," and other fashionable
words of the former revolutionary vocabulary. It is
to be wished, for the happiness of civilised society,
that a day may soon arrive when we shall no longer
hear either of a revolutionary emperor, or of his

secret or privileged revolutionary spies.

VOL. i 7

98 MEMOIRS Ofr

During the whole of the year 1790, and until
September, 1791, Talleyrand continued a perpetual
member of the Jacobin committee for propagating
the rights of man, and inspected and directed all
the secret correspondence carried on in every part
of Europe and America.

Several reports concerning the finances were pre-
sented by him to the National Assembly during the
months of August and September, 1790, in all of which
he strongly recommended the issuing of assignats as
the only means to relieve the burden of the people
and to pay the State creditors. It was not enough
to plunder the Clergy of their possessions; it was
also necessary for the interest and safety of the
chief marauders to admit the greatest part of the
nation to a participation of the plunder. Assignats
were therefore decreed, and the confiscated estates
and lands were to be disposed of and paid for in
assignats. If the National Debt, instead of being
paid off, was increased since this paper-money was
sent into circulation, he and his associates took care
to get rid of their creditors and to appropriate to
themselves large sums besides for future necessities
or excesses. He now intrigued with increasing
activity, and instead of being only a member of the
Financial Committee of the National Assembly, wished

TALLEYRAND 99

to become at once the King's Superintendent of
Finances, as Necker was likely to resign. But neither
his abilities, plots, nor the carte blanche he had the
audacity to offer the Queen, could remove the well-
merited aversion Their Majesties had for his person,
or the contempt they felt for his treacherous and
depraved conduct.

The seizure and sale of clerical property left the
minister of the Christian faith in a state of abject
dependence on those who made no secret of their
hatred and contempt. Not content with the present
plunder, the philosophers and patriots of the National
Assembly sought to render the ministers of religion
contemptible, by subjecting them to a new oath as
cruelly oppressive as it was contrary to their former
engagements and to the duties and rights of the
Gallican Church. It commanded them to become
perjurers and apostates, traitors to their God, and
rebels to their King. Those who refused to subscribe
to their dishonour and perdition were driven forth
with no resource but a sum of ^20 a year, which
was never intended to be paid ; exposed to the fury
of their persecutors as nonconformists, and were, as
the French atheists and rebels called it — refractory.

The cruel decrees of the Legislature, mostly in-
stigated by Talleyrand, had been for some time so

7—2

IOO MEMOIRS OF

replete with tyranny against the Clergy, that the in
tention of reducing them to misery, or exasperating
them to resistance, could not be disguised. After
confiscating their established revenues, laws were
made declaring all benefices elective, admitting all
persons of every sect, even those who were not
Christians, to vote in these elections, and totally
altering the extent and limits of dioceses. The Clergy
respectfully contended that, whatever right the Assem-
bly might claim to their endowments, they could not
assume a dominion over the discipline and spiritual
government of the Church, and therefore demanded
a National Council to decide the points involved in
these decrees. This proposition, just as it was, ex-
cited the indignation of the Legislature. Pretended
conspiracies and insurrections were denounced and
declaimed against with fury. On the 26th of Novem-
ber, after the discussion of a long complaint preferred
by Talleyrand against the virtuous Bishop of Nantes,
the deputy Voidel, a devoted adherent of the Duke
of Orleans, made a report from four committees,
inveighing in shameless terms against the supposed
crimes of the Clergy, proposing a decree by which
all members of the Church should be compelled
to swear adherence and submission to the Civil
Constitution of the Clergy on pain of forfeiting

TALLEYRAND IOI

their livings, and denouncing public and criminal
prosecutions against those who, after refusing the
oaths, should retain their benefices or exercise their
functions. This decree, impiously defended by Talley-
rand, was ably combated by the energetic and lofty
eloquence of Abb6 Maury, by the solid, but temperate
reasonings of Abb6 de Montesquieu, and by the
pathetic simplicity of the Bishop of Clermont. But
as their arguments were answered only by profane
ribaldry or wanton insult, the majority of the Clergy
announced their resolution to take no further share
in the discussion ; and the decree, with another still
more rigorous, proposed by Talleyrand's friend,
Mirabeau, passed the Assembly.

The King had already received from the Pope
a brief, expressing His Holiness's disapprobation of
the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. His Majesty
was too sincerely attached to the forms of Church
government, as well as the substance of Christianity,
to approve of any innovation which the Roman Pontiff
declared repugnant to the Ecclesiastical Constitution.
The Assembly now pressed him to sanction their
decree ; but Louis XVI. refused to legalise the
measure, till the violent party in the Assembly
threatened to renew the outrages of October, 1789.
As the brigands in the galleries thundered with

102 MEMOIRS OP

execrations against the bishops for appealing to the
Pope, and with complaints of the weakness of
Frenchmen who could submit to the veto of a
Transalpine Pontiff, and swore destruction to them
as well as to the Court, the King, on the 26th of
December, reluctantly wrote a long letter to the
Assembly, announcing his acceptance of it. The
infidels and demagogues now triumphed in their
victory over the Church, whose members they had
reduced to the alternative of martyrdom or infamy,
and were highly gratified when, on the ensuing day,
sixty apostate priests or monks took the oaths,
headed by the regicide Abbe Gregoire. To enforce
the execution of their decree with greater certainty,
the Assembly fixed the 4th of January, 1791, as the
day on which every ecclesiastical member of their
body must peremptorily take the oath or resign his
benefice. To inspire them at the same time with
apprehension for their personal safety, on the Sunday
preceding, according to a plan of Talleyrand, the
Orleans faction caused a false copy of the decree to
be posted up in Paris, declaring those ecclesiastics
not complying with its terms disturbers of the
public tranquillity, and, as such, deserving death.
The Bishop of Clermont, desirous by a last effort to
convince the people of the pure and disinterested

TALLEYRAND IO3

intentions of the Clergy, proposed a modification of
the test, but the Assembly refused to admit it.

On the 4th of January, in expectation of the
great event, the galleries were early filled, and the
hall was surrounded with a clamorous and sanguinary
mob. The Clergy attended in their places as willing
sacrifices to the purity of their principles. Some
time was passed in attempting to modify the requi-
sition of the Assembly, by an explanatory decree
proposed by the traitor Gregoire, but it was rejected.
At length the President informed the ecclesiastical
members that he would proceed to call their names,
and that they were bound to answer. The silence
with which the intimation was received lasted some
minutes, and was only broken by the yells of the
people in the galleries, requiring that the non-jurors
should immediately be hung to the lamp-post, or
& la lanterne, the then fashionable cry of French
renovators. When these clamours were with difficulty
appeased, the President began his list with the
Bishop of Agen; and the venerable prelate having,
after long opposition and much abuse, obtained per-
mission to speak, expressed himself in these words:
" I feel no regret for the loss of my preferment ; I
feel no regret for my fortune ; but I should regret
the loss of your esteem, which I am determined to

io4

MEMOIRS OF

deserve. I beg you, then, to believe that it is
extremely painful to me not to be able to take the
oath you require." Several other members of the
Church returned similar answers ; when their enemies,
fearful that so many heroic sentences would convert
the triumph they had expected into a disgrace, made
the President desist from calling the names, and
confine himself to a general summons to the ecclesi-
astics to take the oath or renounce their benefices.
After much delay, this definitive appeal produced
only one instance of compliance in the person of
a curate named Landrin. All the rest, with un-
paralleled resignation and calmness, heard the decree
read which ejected them from their livings for ever,
deprived them of bread, and made them Christian
outlaws in the midst of a nation of atheists and
assassins.

All the bishops, except Talleyrand and two others,
with many thousands of parish priests and curates,
were thus to be suddenly replaced. A new decree
obviated the difficulties thus created, by shortening
the term required by the law for qualifying clergymen
to hold benefices. An unprincipled rabble — the dregs
of infidelity and apostacy — were in this manner put
In possession of the remaining wealth and titular
honours of the Church; while those who had long

TALLEYRAND 105

held these dignities — and by their virtues had gained
the affections of their flock — were deprived of every
resource to support an existence and were threatened
every instant with destruction.

The excessive cruelty of this persecution by
pretended philosophers was deeply felt. Whatever
opinions might be entertained of the Romish doc-
trines, no reasonable man could withhold his detesta-
tion of the iniquity of compelling persons inducted
into an office to renounce it, with all its emoluments,
unless they would take an oath directly repugnant
to every principle which it was essential they should
possess in order to qualify them for that office.
Perhaps the honour, morality and vigour displayed
by the Clergy on this occasion exceeded the expec-
tations of their adversaries. Less energy would
have exposed the whole body to contempt ; but
thus to renounce elevation and submit to poverty
in a host, raised them to the rank of martyrs. The
purity of their principles could no longer be ques-
tioned, and the victorious party foamed with rage
at the eloquent expressions of one of the deputies
among the Nobility respecting the ejected bishops :
14 If they are driven from their episcopal palaces,"
he said, "they will retire to the huts of the religious,
who have been fed by their bounty. If deprived of

IO6 MEMOIRS OK

their golden crosses, they will find wooden ones;
and it was a cross of wood that saved the world.
Let their persecutors pursue their grey hairs even
to this humble retreat — martyrdom will be submitted
to with the same resignation as poverty." But,
independent of its inhumanity to individuals, this
infamous and impolitic decree may be regarded as
one of the principal causes of all those civil dis-
turbances in different parts of France which gave
rise to the Vendean War, and to the numerous atro-
cities perpetrated by Republicans in that loyal and
religious country; and though Bonaparte has com-
pelled the present weak Pope to interpose his au-
thority, the schism between the non-juring and
revolutionary Clergy continues to excite commotions
and to torment the conscience of those who yet
retain any sense of religion.

Talleyrand, to palliate his apostacy, perjury and
intoleration, had, under date of the 2gth December,
1790, published an address to the clergy of France;
and in relating the motives which had engaged him
to subscribe the constitutional oath, he invited all
ecclesiastics to follow his example. This address,
though written with ability, instead of making prose-
lytes, only excited the surprise and indignation even
of his partisans. For a nobleman by birth and a

TALLEYRAND IO7

prelate by dignity not only to be unabashed at his
treachery and degradation, but to glory in his infamy,
and declare himself the hired tool of the vilest and
most abandoned of men, evinces such perversion of
principles or depravity of mind, that the loyal public
did not know whom to abhor the most, the rebel or
the apostate. From that instant he was forbidden the
presence of his relatives, and everybody who loved
virtue or detested vice shut their doors against him.

Such were his public transactions, and such their
effect, which were both known and felt at the time.
But, for contemporaries as well as for posterity, it is
peculiarly interesting to dive into the private views
of persons claiming celebrity to discover those secret
springs which are generally unknown to anybody but
themselves, and to be enabled to judge of the candi-
date for popularity by the professions of the individual
and the confidence of the friend. Under date of the
24th of November, 1790, Talleyrand wrote to the
Countess of F 1:

" I am tired of all this bustle and broil about
the oath exacted by the Assembly. If my comperes
were not fools they would follow my example — think
more of their appetites and comforts in France, and less
of their consciences and duties to Rome. After all the
oaths taken and broken by us, after so often swearing

IO8 MEMOIRS OF

fidelity to a constitution, to a nation, to a law, and
to a king, existing only by names, this last is a mere
mummery, the invention of the Duke of Orleans
to involve the French prelates with Louis XVI.
Thanks to their imbecility or fanaticism, he is disap-
pointed ; he has made no new acquisition, but caused
his poor friends more trouble than he has, or 1 fear
ever will have, it in his power to recompense. I
was closeted last night six hours with him, Mirabeau,
Sieyes and Voidel ; and on my return home I found
a note from L. P.,1 and early this morning went
to meet him. The Court is too late with its offers
to stop or change this affair, which, to its other
curses, adds the torment of forcing me to remain so
long absent from you. I have invited your husband
to dine with me to-morrow; do not fail to be of the
party, otherwise I do not know when I shall see you,
being engaged at the committees to-morrow and the
two following nights. I embrace you and our Charles
affectionately."

On the 5th of January he wrote again to the same
lady:

"Business of great importance to my creditors, as
well as to myself, deprives me of the pleasure of

I No doubt La Porte, the intendant of the King's Civil List.

TALLEYRAND IOQ

passing Twelfth-night with you, as I promised and
intended. Poor kings! their fltes as well as their
reign will soon, I fear, be at an end. Even Mira-
beau apprehends that our strides towards a republic
are too hasty and too violent ; and that before we can
establish a commonwealth,1 fanatics will light their
torches, and anarchists shake their halters, and that
we all shall have narrow escapes between religious
faggots and political lamp-posts. I must, therefore,
arrange my affairs in such a manner as that, in case
of a shipwreck, I may not be left destitute on the
coast where fate may throw me. I am in hopes of
receiving to-morrow a considerable ' sum due to me
from the Duke, which, with what assignats I possess
already, will take me, if needful, from France, and
provide for us abroad. How did you like the farce
of yesterday? The galleries were too crowded to
permit me to speak to you; but did not the hypo-
crites exhibit a masterly performance ? It could not
escape your observation that their speeches were as
studied as their resignation was affected. But the
impression they made prevented me from ascending
the tribune and tearing off their masks. They were
well aware that there was no danger of exchanging

I What a commonwealth, of twenty-four millions of corrupt
people I

HO MEMOIRS OF

their episcopal mitres for crowns of martyrdom, other-
wise the cowards would not have shown themselves
so valiant. 1 am enraged to think how easily they
could make dupes. I dare say they have received
good lessons from the superstitious Capets,1 males
and females, as well as from certain cardinals,
who cannot call patriotism one of their cardinal
virtues. I wish with all my heart both the instruc-
tors and the disciples were at Rome, or anywhere
else but in France, where their mockery of apostles
and martyrs can do no more good to them than their
unfashionable orthodoxy or ridiculous Christianity to
the patriots, many of whom are yet ignorant enough
to believe in the religion of their forefathers. Though
this ridiculous business has given me a great deal of
labour, it has upon the whole been more profitable
than I expected. It has cleared my debts, and, entre
nous> put me in a fair way to be able to purchase the
tiara of France, of Rome, or at least of the Revolu-
tion. On Monday I will sup with you. How is it
with Charles's deafness ? I embrace you both cor-
dially and affectionately. — Burn this letter! Adieu!"

From these letters it is evident that, without any
religion himself, Talleyrand doubted the sincerity of
faith in others; and, as his motives for acting were
I The Bourbons.

TALLEYRAND III

interested and wicked, he could not believe in the
disinterestedness and purity of those whom no
temporal consideration could allure and no revolu-
tionary threats intimidate. He and most of his
accomplices always drew mankind according to their
own model ; and those who deny the existence of
virtue, never resist the temptation of becoming asso-
ciates in guilt. The levity and indifference with
which he speaks of the misery prepared for his
country by the deeds and plots in which he had
such a considerable share, is shocking and dis-
gusting. Amidst all these cruel reflections, he thinks
of no one but himself — except once, by way of
compliment, of his mistress, and the offspring of
their adulterous intercourse. If they, together with
himself, were safe anywhere, he would contemplate
with sang-froid, and perhaps with satisfaction, the
revolutionary conflagration he had lighted consuming
the globe, provided it spared that snug corner where
our philosopher might be planning new devasta-
tions or enjoying the fruits of those he had made
already. By these letters we learn, besides, that
the Orleans faction intended by this oath to raise
fresh recruits for their chief, to support him in
his conspiracy to usurp the throne of his King and
relative, and that among the Clergy, as well as

112 MEMOIRS OF

among the Nobility and the people, they hoped
that everyone who, from depravity or weakness, had
debased or dishonoured himself, who had crimes to
repent and punishment to apprehend, would adhere
to the Duke of Orleans as their preserver and pro-
tector. Bonaparte has since, with more success,
adopted the same plan, and his usurpation and
empire has no other foundation; but it is also to
be remembered that Talleyrand is his principal
counsellor and faithful minister.

During the late debates concerning the Clergy, the
conduct of Mirabeau had been a problem, which
scarcely any of his old adherents, and few of the
King's friends, were able to solve. It is, however,
unquestionable that Talleyrand shared his secrets
and the wages he obtained for deserting his party.
This is certainly the money mentioned in the letter

to the Countess of F 1, of the 5th of January,

1791, and he, therefore, was insincere even in his
seeming trust and pretended sincerity with his bosom
friend. The finances of the Duke of Orleans were at
that time so totally deranged, and his credit so irre-
trievably lost, that he lived merely upon expedients,
and could not, therefore, dispose of any sum of con-
sequence. In fact, the former negotiation between
the popular demagogue Mirabeau and the Court

TALLEYRAND 113

had been successfully renewed, and in consideration
of ^"25,000 cash paid him, and a monthly stipend
of ^"2,080, he became a warm advocate in the cause
of monarchy, and gained the entire confidence of
the King and his most intimate advisers. Accord-
ing to the pamphlet La Faction d'Orleans Demasqu&c,
"Talleyrand received, in one single payment, in
January, 1791, from La Porte, the intendant of the
King's Civil List, the sum of ^"50,000 in assignats.
But both these traitors had a difficult task to perform
in acting with characters equally immoral with them-
selves, and, of course, as suspicious of being betrayed
as they were ready to betray. It had been settled
that Mirabeau should first gradually undermine the
ground seized by his fellow conspirators, and that his
associate should not openly join him before the fire
was ready to be set to the mine and their annihila-
tion inevitable." But as he was sensible that, in the
degraded and enfeebled state to which he had reduced
the Royal authority, no sudden effort of force would
be attended with the desired consequences, he still
proposed to forward his new measures by means of
his popularity, to awe the most frantic of the
revolutionists by threatening to disclose their crimes,
to combine others in his cause by a judicious mixture

of promises and arguments, to secure the fidelity of
VOL. i 8

114 MEMOIRS OF

the army to the Sovereign, or engage the people to
petition for the dissolution of the present and con-
vocation of a new Assembly, on the well-founded
allegation that the existing Legislature had exceeded
the authorities with which it was originally invested,
and, consequently, that its abolitions, resumptions
and regulations were not valid. It was also a part
of this project that the King should leave Paris,
where he was in real captivity, and, putting himself
at the head of his forces, commanded by the Marquis
de Bouille, fix his abode at Montmedy, proclaiming
himself the protector of his people and the defender
of their rights and liberties. The plan was wise,
dignified and moderate ; it proposed no violence
against the Assembly, no proscription of individuals,
no punishment even of perjurers. It could not with
propriety be called a counter-revolution, but a tran-
quil mode of retracting those errors into which
precipitate zeal, scandalous venality, or corrupt
ambition, had plunged the Assembly. Faithful to
his new engagements, Mirabeau saw with regret the
late attacks on the .Clergy; but neither he nor
Talleyrand could openly oppose them, as the dif-
ference between such conduct and that which they
had always before observed would have been too
conspicuous. At first he promised to absent himself

TALLEYRAND 115

from the Assembly for a month; but his sagacity
soon discovered the folly of secession, and he con-
tented himself, when the decrees had passed, with
proposing an address to the nation, which would,
by its excessive violence, have roused every true
friend of the Catholic religion and compelled them
to rally round the altar. Talleyrand approved of this
address; the other demagogues, however, foresaw
this effect, and, though they concurred in the atro-
cious sentiment it contained, referred it back to a
committee.

In the discussion on the laws against emigration,
Mirabeau, invited to the tribune by the applause of
all parties, took a leading part; but Talleyrand
remained silent. The former began his speech by
observing that, within an hour before, he had
received ten notes, one half claiming the perform-
ance of those principles which he had long openly
supported on the subject of emigration; the other
requiring him to agree to what was called the
necessity of circumstances, or, what was the same
thing, to procure the beggarly rebels ot the
Assembly an opportunity to enrich themselves with
the plunder of emigrated men of property. He then
read a page and a half of a letter which he had

written six years before to Frederic William, King

8— a

Il6 MEMOIRS OP

of Prussia, on the day of his accession to the throne,
in which he exhorted that monarch to desist from
enforcing laws against emigration, as derogatory to
liberty, incompatible with justice, and fit only for
those Powers who wished to convert their States
into prisons. After dwelling at considerable length
on these just and liberal sentiments, and proving
their policy by various arguments and examples, he
moved, "that the Assembly, having heard the reports
of their committees, and considering a law against
emigrants incompatible with the principles of the
Constitution, had refused to hear the plan of the
law read, and passed to the order of the day." This
excited great murmurs; but Mirabeau, regardless of
their clamours, again ascended the tribune. Those
who durst not individually attack his arguments, now
endeavoured to drown his voice by repeated marks of
discontent; but suddenly turning towards them with
a look of ineffable superiority and marked contempt,
"Silence," he exclaimed, "silence those thirty voices!"
The factious leaders, apprehensive that he would dis-
close the plots, as well as the number of their asso-
ciation, shrank into immediate silence, and permitted
him to recommend that, if the adjournment were
adopted, a decree should issue for prevention of riots
till its expiration. He had, however, the mortifica-

TALLEYRAND 117

tion to see a contrary proposition of Vernier's adopted ;
and thus a basis was laid for those acts of fraud,
confiscation and tyranny which have disgraced the
French annals, and reduced so many noble and
worthy families to poverty abroad, or to undergo
imprisonments and suffer judicial murders at home,
while upstarts, loaded with crimes and enriched by
plunder, have been enabled with impunity to revel
in their possessions, insult their misfortunes, and pro-
scribe and butcher their persons.

While occupied in the arrangements for carrying
into effect his grand plan for changing the Govern-
ment, Mirabeau was seized with a sudden illness,
and, after enduring for two days the most excruciating
tortures, expired in the arms of Talleyrand, on the
2nd of April, 1791, exclaiming, " J'emporte la monarchic
avec moi : des factieux en partageront les d6bris. Tu
mon ami as trop d'esprit pour ne pas avoir ta part."
When his illness was announced the whole capital
was in alarm, his door was crowded with enquiries,
and messengers from the King himself augmented the
number. His death was ascribed in the proems-verbal,
published by the surgeons who opened him, to the
stoppage of an issue; his heart, they said, was dried up
and his intestines mortified. That he was poisoned was
the then received opinion, and subsequent occurrences,

Il8 MEMOIRS OF

instead of changing, have confirmed it; and it is not
doubted that his most intimate accomplices (a traitor
has no friends) administered the draught which put
an end to his life. Talleyrand and his friend, or
tool, the physician Cabarris, who attended Mirabeau
during his last hours, might easily yet give such
information as would remove all doubts, even with
modern patriots, of the real causes of the premature
death of this their hero. But it is feared that their
secrets will be buried in the same tomb, where, in
1795, were deposited, with his corpse, those of the
poisoner of Louis XVII. An account has, however,
been published of the manner in which Mirabeau
was despatched, and of the party of debauchery at
which he swallowed the deadly dose. "He, with
Talleyrand and four other libertines — each with a
female companion — supped at the Restaurateur
Roberts, in the Palais Royal. In the midst of

their intemperance, Madame le J , the wife of

a bookseller of Paris, and the mistress of Mirabeau,
made her appearance, and, upbraiding him with
all the marks of the most violent jealousy for his
infidelity, insisted upon his leaving the company with
her. After many reciprocal reproaches, she at last
affected to be appeased by the intercession of Talley-
rand, and, taking her place among them, her lover's

TALLEYRAND IIQ

temporary bonne amie was sent away. Excesses of
every kind were then renewed and continued until

four o'clock in the morning, when Madame le J

ordered coffee to revive their spirits. This she had
no sooner given Mirabeau than he complained of
terrible spasms in his chest. In hopes of rinding
some alleviation, he went into a warm bath, where
he took several dishes of milk with cocoa. This
liquor, affording a temporary relief to his complaint,
is said to have prolonged his sufferings, as the
poison drank with the dish of coffee would otherwise,
from its subtlety, have brought on immediate death.
During his short illness, he refused to see Madame

le J , whom he accused of having hastened his

end by her excessive love. After his death, this
woman lived with Talleyrand for some time, but
was afterwards resigned by him to Petion. This
gave rise to the report of Talleyrand having betrayed
to the Republican faction Mirabeau's desertion, and
represented what might be the probable consequences
to persons guilty as they were. This woman was
suspected, therefore, of having, with the privity, and
even at the instigation of Talleyrand, been selected by
Petion, Condorcet. Brissot, Cabarris, and others, to
remove the most dangerous barrier against a general
revolution and a universal republic."

120 MEMOIRS OP

If Talleyrand's letter to the Countess of F 1,

on this occasion, be interesting for the anecdotes it
contains, it is also disgusting for the impious senti-
ments it proclaims. A mixture of profaneness and
sophistry, it paints in the same hideous colours the
friend, the patriot and the bishop, in the unfeeling
individual, in the treacherous associate, and in the
blaspheming infidel :

" April and, at night.

" I was in bed when your servant brought your
letter this afternoon, not from illness but from fatigue,
having passed these last nights with my dying friend
who breathed his last in my arms this morning at
half-past eight o'clock. Dignified during his life, in
death he was sublime. He preserved his senses and
firmness to his last moment. Five minutes before his
final annihilation, he wrote : ' It is not so difficult to
die as we frequently find it to sleep.' Notwith-
standing his excruciating tortures, he often joked
during the night. Once he said to me, ' A propos,
my friend, you are a bishop, and you have forgotten
to sign an absolution for my forty-two years' sins,
when it might perhaps be a pass or a key to enter
the Elysian Fields.' To my assurance that it would
neither satisfy Charon, nor quiet Cerberus, he retorted,
' Then I suppose I shall be obliged to fight my way

*

TALLEYRAND 121

to Paradise as I did to the National Assembly, by
borrowing, cheating, and, above all, by declaiming. If
the saints do not convert me, I shall try to pervert
them, as I have done with our pure patriots. But to
cease joking, I have been employed for some time
in composing a speech concerning successions. The
National Assembly is now occupied in discussing laws
relative to wills. It may be thought curious enough
that a man who has just made his own will should
offer, as his last homage, the opinion he has prepared
on this subject. I bequeath to your friendship the
trouble of reading it in the tribune of the Assembly.1
This I intend to do the day after to-morrow, after hav-
ing previously arranged my own ideas for pronouncing,
at the same time, an apotheosis on my departed friend.
About seven o'clock he spoke rather peevishly to
Cabarris: 'A physician,' said he, 'who attends a
friend r.s a friend, ought to shorten his torments
with a good dose of opium.' He then took my
hand, and, looking at me very earnestly, exclaimed:
1 My friend, I am hastening fast to the place were
I was before I was born, and monarchy departs
with me. Factious persons will tear each other to
pieces for its ruins; you have two much genius
not to get your share.' These were the last words
he was able to utter, though he afterwards made

*

122 MEMOIRS OF

repeated attempts to speak. During his illness he
frequently hinted that he knew that he was poisoned,
and mentioned even the hand that had administered
the draught. I took care, however, to disperse
these gloomy ideas, in which I was well supported
by Cabarris, who proved to his satisfaction that in-
temperance alone had shortened his days. He re-
marked, however, upon this that, though he died
In an enviable manner, surrounded with all the
brilliancy of popularity, he wished the destiny that
made him intemperate had permitted him to expire
on the field of battle, or in the » midst of those
pleasures which had constituted his chief happiness.

" You reproach me kindly for not taking sufficient
care of my own health ; but could I, from any con-
sideration of my own safety, leave a dying friend,
who, though a great character, certainly, entre nous,
was a still greater rascal, and, from indiscretion or
wickedness, or even from malice at my surviving him,
might have discovered secrets which ought, for our
mutual honour, to have perished with him. Merely
for the humour of ridiculing religion in exposing a
bishop, he was capable of playing me such a trick.
Besides, my attention to him, and his confidence
in me, will give me a good share in his immortality.
Yesterday he enquired after you, and asked me if

TALLEYRAND 123

you were not yet cured of the prejudices you had
imbibed in the convent; if you still believed in a
heaven, or feared a hell. * If embrace her for

me, and tell her,' said he:

•Mettons nous au-dessus de toute erreur commune,
On meurt, et sans ressource, et sans reserve aucune.
S'il est apres ma mort quelque reste de moi,
Ce reste un peu plus tard suivra la meme loi,
Fera place £ son tour a des nouvelles choses,
Et se replongera dans le sein de ses causes 1*

Therefore —

Que sur la Volupt6 tout votre espoir se fonde,
N'e'coutez desormais que vos vrais sentiments:
Songez qu'il etoit des amans
Avant qu'il fut des Chretiens dans la monde.

I hope my friend will listen to the advice of a man
whose genius and talents she has so often and so
justly admired.

"Tormented as he was, his presence of mind never
forsook him. The curate of St. Roch wanted yester-
day morning to act with him as another fanatic did
with Voltaire. He admitted, but deprived him of

courage to speak, by repeating these lines, and he

t
went away as he came:

• Fanatiques irrites, armez votre vengeance,
Le trepas me defend centre votre insolence.
Grand Dieu I votre courroux devient meme impuissant,
Et votre foudre en vain frappe mon monument:
La mort met £ vos coups un dternel obstacle I'

124 MEMOIRS OF

"His political creed was of the same complexion
with his religious, and he no more believed in dis-
interested patriotism than in the immortality of the
soul. From what we have seen of some of our
fashionable patriots, I am not at all surprised at his
political infidelity. But if he would not allow probity
to one sex, he likewise denied that yours possessed
what the vulgar call virtue. He confessed, however,
that your vices were so agreeable that they made
your want of virtue amiable, instead of being a re-
proach to you. In such a truly philosophical manner
did he pass his last hours. A time will come when
the expressions and opinions of this expiring hero will
be as religiously collected and preserved as those of
a Socrates or a Seneca. They will serve for moral
texts in the discourses of philosophers, and form sub-
jects for the chisel of the statuary, as well as for the
pencil of the painter."

Such were the private opinions, and such was the
avowed conduct, of the principal French regenerators.
No wonder, therefore, if the world has to deplore so
many barbarities since perpetrated by their accom-
plices, instruments or disciples. These were the men
held out everywhere as the models of patriotism, on
whom German illuminati wrote panegyrics, and to

TALLEYRAND 125

whom English reformers sent addresses; whose cause
was defended in our senate, and even praised in our
pulpits. To strip these monstrous impostors of their
borrowed but imposing garb, and to expose their
native deformity to the general eye and universal
abhorrence, is, therefore, to render a service to
society. This will be most effectually accomplished
by publishing their original and confidential senti-
ments, fortunately preserved by the malicious ven-
geance of ever-relentless factions.

Mirabeau and Talleyrand were both noblemen by
birth, both marked by Nature to inspire mistrust,
both vicious in their youth, corrupt and profligate
in maturity, and in every social relation objects of
horror. Both atheists and apostates, they forfeited
their allegiance to their King to league with rebels,
and betrayed and deserted rebellion to unite again
under the standard of royalty. Mirabeau died before
he was tempted, or had an opportunity, to commit
new treasons. Talleyrand has since served and
betrayed by turns his King and every succeeding
faction. Ambition, avarice and lust were the ruling
passions of both; to gratify which, no infamy de-
terred them, no crime was left untried, and no
excess unpractised. Difficulties could not divert,
nor opposition appal Mirabeau ; but under them

126 MEMOIRS OF

Talleyrand shrank into silence; he, however, as often
attained his object by undermining, as the former
conquered by bold and open assaults. With a genius
that astonished, with abilities that enraptured, with
an enthusiasm that moved, animated and electrified
the hearts of all who heard or beheld him, when
Mirabeau spoke, his audience forgot the scandalous
immorality of his life, the hideous features of his
face and the grotesque gesticulations of his person.
By his activity in the committees and among the
Jacobins, and by the facility with which he com-
posed popular addresses or decrees, Talleyrand was
nearly as dangerous to loyalty and religion when in
his closet as Mirabeau when in the tribune — because
all France could not hear the latter, whereas not only
France, but all Europe, could read the writings of
the former. The death of Mirabeau was regarded
in France as a public calamity; the life of Talley-
rand will, by remotest posterity, be bewailed as one
of those scourges with which, instead of pestilence
or earthquakes, Providence in its wrath sometimes
punishes generations. From the lives of Talleyrand
and his present guilty master, Bonaparte, mankind
has undergone more torments in some few years
than ages had previously endured from devastations
occasioned by the convulsions of Nature, from disease

TALLEYRAND 127

and pestilence, or from the whole catalogue of miseries
by which the human race are afflicted.

The decrees for altering the establishment of the
Clergy had already been put in force. The election
of new bishops and pastors, in lieu of those who
refused to take the oaths, was carried on with great
activity throughout the kingdom ; and the Pope's
decision against the new Constitution of the Clergy
was publicly known. Considerable difficulties arose
in obtaining consecration from a constitutional pre-
late for those who had been newly raised to epis-
copal sees. Even the apostate Bishops of Sens and
Orleans resolutely refused tha office ; but the Bishop
of Autun (Talleyrand), whose conduct had been
always a scandalous, and often an inexplicable
enigma, was not so honest, delicate, or scrupulous.
Having obtained bribes from the Court and from
the Duke of Orleans, and embezzled assignats in
the Committee of Finance, he modestly resigned his
see, after taking the apostate oath, not willing, as
he said, " to have his actions ascribed to interested
motives."

The bishopric of Paris was not at first declared
vacant, because the incumbent, the old and respect-
able M. de Juigne, was out of France; but bis
resolution to be faithful to his God, as well as to

128 MEMOIRS OP

his King, being made known, his see was conferred
on a priest of the name of Gobel, notorious for his
venality, profligacy and ingratitude; but who, in the
present state of the public mind, was thought worthy
of election to three several prelacies, those of the
Upper Rhine, the Upper Marne and the Metropolis.
As he could not retain all, he chose the last, and
was installed with great pomp, receiving canonical
institution at the same time from Bishop Talleyrand
and from the Jacobins of the Paris municipality.
This revolutionary prelate is the person who, on the
7th of November, 1793, at the age of seventy, had the
baseness to declare at the bar of the regicide National
Convention that, " he had during sixty years of his
life been a hypocrite and an impostor in professing the
Christian religion, which he knew had no other basis
than falsehood and error." He lent his cathedral of
Notre Dame for the celebration of a feast to the
Goddess of Reason, represented by a common prosti-
tute, and was one of the first to kneel before this
Republican divinity. It is impossible to decide who
was the viler and more wicked of the two, the
consecrator Talleyrand or the consecrated Gobel.
But, perhaps, no building erected to the adoration
of Our Saviour has been more sacrilegiously polluted
than the French Metropolitan Church of Notre Dame.

TALLEYRAND I2Q

There, besides Talleyrand's consecration, Gobel's in-
stallation, the worship of the Goddess of Reason, and
the blasphemy of theophilanthropists, the apostate
to Christ as well as to Mahomet, the murderer and
poisoner, Napoleon Bonaparte, has lately been crowned
Emperor of the French!

Notwithstanding Talleyrand's plots and acts, the
triumph of the anti-religious party was not yet com-
plete. They saw, with regret and indignation, that the
constitutional, or, as they were more justly called, the
interceding Clergy, were viewed with general contempt,
while the ejected and non-juring priests were every-
where treated with the utmost regard; and the homage
and affection of the pious were manifestly increased.
The Jacobin municipality of Paris forbade the reading
of prayers in any parish church, except by the apos-
tate priests ; and enjoined the convents and hospitals
not to permit the public to attend Divine service in
their chapels. The French reforming philosophers, to
evince their religious as well as political toleration, in-
stigated mobs, carrying rods, to force open the doors of
all these places of worship and to scourge with the
utmost cruelty all the nuns and women whom they
found engaged in acts of devotion. Talleyrand was
then a member of the department ; but neither this
body, nor the municipality, took any effectual measures

VOL. I 9

130

MEMOIRS OF

for restraining these indecent outrages ; on the con-
trary, they encouraged and protected the mobs,
whose insolent brutality soon became so grievous a
persecution as to cost the health of many, and even
the lives of some of the most virtuous and religious
among the sex.

On the 1 3th of April, 1791, the Pope published a
monitory against the Civil Constitution of the French
Clergy, in which His Holiness complained loudly
against the Bishop of Autun as "an impious wretch,
who had imposed his sacrilegious hands on intruding
clergymen," and suspended him from all his episcopal
functions, declaring him excommunicated unless he
recanted his errors within forty days. In return,
Talleyrand encouraged the rabble, now called by the
Parisians " La Secte des Talleyrandistes," to burn
the Sovereign Pontiff in effigy; and on the loth of
June the Legislature passed a decree, declaring all
briefs, bulls and rescripts of the Court of Rome
void in France, unless sanctioned and formally
adopted by the National Assembly. The usual
modes of persecution and calumny were adopted to
change the public opinion on these points, or at
least to suppress the indications of it. While the re-
maining property of the Church was rapidly falling
into the grasp of greedy and corrupt legislators, and

TALLEYRAND 13!

the popular mind was debauched by abject and
absurd idolatry to the principal opponents of the
Christian revelation, reports were assiduously circu-
lated of riots and insurrections formed by the non-
juring Clergy and their partisans in the departments,
and they were falsely accused of inspiring sentiments
equally barbarous and unchristian. Pursuant to a
motion of Talleyrand, the superfluous plate of the
churches (and all plate for Divine service he regarded
not only as superfluous but unnecessary) was ordered
to be coined into money. A most ridiculous decree,
since the chief value consisted in the workmanship;
and the quantity of fillagreed and embossed silver
which in a shrine was considered inestimable, would,
on emerging from the crucible, produce only a few
crowns — sums hardly sufficient to pay for the fes-
tivity of pantheonising (as the revolutionary phrase
was) Mirabeau, Rousseau and Voltaire, which was
decreed by the Assembly, and, in the course of the
year, performed with great pomp. On these occa-
sions Talleyrand had assumed the office of revolu-
tionary grand master of the ceremonies, in exchange
for the worn-out dignity of a revolutionary high-
priest.

Although Louis XVI. had been prevailed on to

sanction the decree respecting the Clergy, he yielded

9—a

jaa MEMOIRS OF

only to the impulse of force; and his conscience
was daily racked with increasing torture by reflec-
tions on the injury he had done to the religion of
his fathers and the cruel violence he saw daily
committed under pretence of giving effect to that
decree. The well-concerted project of Mirabeau for
ameliorating the condition of the King and preserving
the State from subversion died with him, as no in-
dividual could be found capable of acting the ex-
tensive and important part assigned to that great
revolutionist. The project of repairing to Montmedy
was retained till it was encumbered with another
suggested by the Minister of the Foreign Depart-
ment, M. de Montmorin, by which the great Con-
tinental Powers were to form a pretended coalition, to
marshal inefficient armies and wage an imaginary
war, while the King's friends, by their exertions in
all parts of the kingdom, were to sway the public
spirit to an anxious desire of peace, military subordi-
nation, the establishment of the ancient monarchical
constitution, freed from its abuses, and the return of
the emigrants. This plan, which required the com-
bination of an infinity of subordinate circumstances,
the execution of which would have been deranged
by failure, indiscretion or selfishness in any of the
numerous domestic or foreign agents, who must

TALLEYRAND 133

necessarily be trusted and employed, was unfortu-
nately adopted by the King. That time might be
afforded for the necessary negotiations and prepara-
tions, His Majesty informed M. de Bouill6 that his
intention of going to Montmedy was postponed, but
not relinquished.

Since the death of Mirabeau, Talleyrand had
united himself more closely with La Fayette, the two
brothers La Methe, and other ambitious but narrow-
minded partisans of the constituent faction, who, in
the plenitude of their treachery and ingratitude to
their King, wished to tyrannise over France in his
name. This could only be effected by giving him
further mortifications, or by heaping on him unex-
pected indignities; by offering him new insults, or by
inspiring him with real alarm for his own safety, as
well as for that of his Queen, children and relatives.
As a preliminary part of this plan, the exertions of
the demagogues, and of La Fayette and Talleyrand
in particular, were daily directed to the object of com-
pelling the King to attend Divine service and receive
the sacrament from the hands of an apostate priest.
For this purpose the Assembly, the clubs and the
groups in the streets were assailed with perpetual
declamations, and the Jacobin journals were filled
with seditious addresses and profane paragraphs.

134 MEMOIRS OP

La Fayette and Talleyrand, in hopes of accomplishing
this point, carried impiety, insult and ribaldry even
into the Royal Cabinet, while their worthy coadjutors
without — the mob and the National Guards — made the
palace re-echo their songs, threats and execrations.
The people were said to express particular anxiety
that the King should receive the sacrament at Easter
from Talleyrand, or some other priest of the perjured
class. But His Majesty, far from yielding in a point
which tormented his conscience, resolved to follow the
advice of the Bishop of Clermont, given purely on
religious grounds, which was to suspend the Paschal
communion; and to avoid the importunities and acts
of insolence to which he foresaw this determination
would expose him, he resolved to pass that week at
St. Cloud. But on the i8th of April, in the morning,
as soon as the carriages were drawn out, and the
Royal family had taken their seats, they were sur-
rounded by an innumerable mob and banditti, who
clamorously insisted that the coaches should not be
permitted to pass, mingling with their vociferations
the grossest abuse and obscenity, and even insulting
the Queen by acts of horrible indecency. La Fayette
pretended to clear the way; but his troops, of course,
refused to act against the people; and, according to
agreement, he was furiously attacked by Danton and

TALLEYRAND 135

the butcher Le Gendre, who encouraged and directed
the proceedings of the rabble. At last, after enduring
every species of licentious insult during an hour-and-
a-half, the King and the Royal family returned to the
palace, which, notwithstanding all the rhetoric of

•

seditious orators, all the artful sophistry of factions,
and all the misrepresentations of the municipality and
the National Assembly, could not now be considered
in any other point of view than as their gaol. The
King carried his complaints in person to the Assembly,
and persisted in his resolution of visiting St. Cloud;
but the Legislature, though they applauded those
parts of his speech that promised to maintain the
Constitution, and particularly the Civil Constitution of
the Clergy, adopted no resolution for facilitating his
journey, and His Majesty was forced to submit to
the humiliation of renouncing it in silence.

Elated by their triumph, the infidels and factions
renewed their violences against the non-juring priests;
and the King, feeling sincerely for their situation,
accepted, in an evil hour, the tender of counsel and
assistance which was made him by the two brothers
La Methe, whose ignorance equalled their presump-
tion and treachery, and who, therefore, had been
forced to follow the secret guidance of Talleyrand,
not yet personally admitted to the council-chamber

136 MEMOIRS OP

of his outraged Sovereign. Accordingly, to save the
unfortunate ecclesiastics, who appeared to be exposed
to every danger and persecution on his account, he
was persuaded to dismiss them from about his person,
and even to do violence to his conscience by hearing
Mass performed on Easter Day at the church of
St. Germaine Auxerre by an apostate priest. In
compliance with another advice of the same La
Methes, and in contradiction to that of his elder,
more loyal and better friends, he adopted the fatal
and impolitic measure of writing, on the 2jrd of
April, to all his ministers at foreign Courts a letter
of instructions, from the pen of Talleyrand, enabling
them to declare his entire approbation of the Revolu-
tion, his desire to maintain the Constitution, and an
avowal that he considered himself perfectly free and
happy. In vain did M. de Montmorin oppose, by
the soundest reasons, the transmission of this dis-
graceful letter. It was resolved on and executed
too suddenly for his arguments to prevail. The
National Assembly heard it read with expressions of
rapture, and sent, pursuant to Talleyrand's motion
to that effect, a deputation to congratulate the King.
The Royalists, more clear-sighted and more honest,
took no share in these transports ; and the Prince
himself had the mortification, on the very next day,

TALLEYRAND 137

to find M. de Montmorin's prophecy verified, the
enthusiasm of the moment entirely exhausted, and a
party gaining credit by declaring that the professions
were too extensive to be sincere. Thus the dupe of
the perfidy of traitors, and of the plots of intriguers,
the unfortunate well-meaning Monarch, fell a victim
to his own patriotism as well as to his own indis-
cretion.

The visible and great influence which the La
Methes, Talleyrand, and other persons of the ruling
faction had acquired at Court, alarmed even the
Jacobins, who, in consequence, caused a decree to
pass, which, to superficial observers, appeared an
heroic instance of self-denial, but which was in truth
an act of consummate folly, and exposed the kingdom
to inevitable evils. It imported that no member of
the existing Legislature should be eligible to a seat
in the next — a necessary consequence of which was
that those who framed the Constitution would have
no power of explaining or enforcing its laws ; and
all the experience which they had acquired in the
transaction of business was thrown aside in order
to make way for fresh innovators, new speculatists,
new systems, and, of course, new parties, new dangers
and new violence. They also decreed that no member
of any legislative body should accept a place in the

138 MEMOIRS OP

administration till four years after its dissolution. This
latter greatly disappointed Talleyrand, who was now
in a fair way to see his ambition gratified and his
wishes realised in becoming the Superintendent of
the Finances — a place formerly, in France, always
united with that of a Prime Minister.

During these transactions, the rigour of the King's
confinement and the insults he was obliged to sustain
were hourly augmenting. His old friends and faithful
adherents were debarred from his presence, and he
was encompassed with spies, who watched all his
words and actions for the purpose of reporting them
to his disadvantage and furnishing topics of declama-
tion to the demagogues. The new connection into
which he had been drawn with the La Methes,
Talleyrand, and other intriguers was attended with
no good to counterbalance the infinite prejudice it
produced. Their assistance was not sufficiently ex-
plicit, nor their exertions sufficiently decided, to repair
the effects of that consternation which his letter to
the Ambassadors produced in the minds of his friends
in all quarters, to countervail the triumph of those
who hated, or the despair of those who still adhered
to the Crown. The Royalists, in fact, saw their
only resource — the only bond of union which they
could consistently avow — snatched from them by the

TALLEYRAND 139

apparently unsolicited declaration of the King, that
he approved of a Revolution which deposed him,
admired exertions which ruined him, and felt free
in a State where every semblance of liberty was
denied him.

Mirabeau's plan for placing Louis XVI. at the
head of his army to effect a change in the proceed-
ings which threatened to destroy his government, was
still pursued; but circumstances were widely altered
since the period when it was first proposed, and when
it appeared so feasible and proper. The Royal au-
thority was much degraded by repeated shocks; and
those who were, from fear of popular tyranny, pre-
pared to rally round the Throne, differed among them-
selves in almost every principle of government, and
detested each other as much as their common foes,
the Republicans and the Jacobins. The true and
pure Royalists were attached to the old forms with
some new improvements, while La Fayette, Talley-
rand, and other constitutional Royalists were riveted
to the new democratic intrusions. The former con-
sidered all the acts of the National Assembly as en-
croachments which ought to be rescinded; but the
latter thought them all wise and reasonable, and de-
sired only to form a strong mound against further
innovation. No concordant opinions were entertained

140

MEMOIRS OF

on any great or general subject ; and among the
parties attached to the King, a discussion on the
limits of his authority, on the reinstatement of the
Nobility, or on the restoration of the Clergy, would
have given birth to endless diversities of opinion and
inextinguishable feuds. These diversities of opinion
among the King's friends produced great embarrass-
ments in his proceedings ; all concurred in the
necessity of his escaping from Paris, but, as they
agreed in no general view of any subject, each party
presented separate plans. Aftei many delays, the
day of his departure was at length fixed, and M. de
Boulll6 received directions to prepare for the King's
escape and reception at Montmedy. The instructions
were faithfully observed, but the General's situation
was much changed for the worst since the project
was first recommended. The sphere of his authority
was straitened, the number of his troops diminished,
and their fidelity shaken by the removal of old and
introduction of new regiments. When all the pre-
parations were completed and troops ordered to every
station of the journey, the King found it necessary
to postpone his departure four-and-twenty hours. This
delay, besides deranging the modes of proceeding
already fixed, had the further bad effect of render-
ing the execution of the whole plan doubtful, and

TALLEYRAND 14!

introducing an uncertainty into the minds of some
officers, which was productive of great disasters.

At a quarter-of-an-hour before midnight, on the
soth of June, the Royal captives quitted their prison.
La Fayette had visited them at a late hour, and
in crossing the court-yard they met him twice.
Although his conduct suggested some sinister fore-
bodings, the fugitives fortunately, as they thought,
gained their carriages in safety, and passed through
the Port St. Martin to Bond6. At Montmirel the
harness of the King's coach broke, which occasioned
a delay of two hours before it could be repaired ;
and as none of the party thought of despatching a
courier to the next detachment of troops, the
officers stationed at Pont du Somuelles, contrary to
the orders they had received from their General,
quitted their post, and spreading through the other
detachments the report that the King was not to
be expected, proceeded for Varennes. On reaching
St. Menehoud, the King was recognised by Drouet,
the postmaster of the town, who despatched his son
to Varennes. He then permitted the King to depart,
but instigated the people to hinder the dragoons from
following; and his orders were implicitly obeyed. On
his arrival at Varennes, the King was obliged to stop
at the entrance of the town, from a disappointment

1^.2 MEMOIRS OF

in the relays; two gardes de corps were despatched to
seek them, and the Queen herself alighted to gain
information. Drouet, accompanied by one Guilleaume,
had, however, by a by-road, reached Varennes before
them, and prepared measures to restrain their pro-
gress. The Royal carriage was stopped under an
arch by eight or nine men, stationed for the purpose;
and the too humane and good King, having forbidden
all resistance which might occasion bloodshed, was, with
his family, conducted to a neighbouring house, where
the municipality was assembled. The King, instead
of commanding, pathetically expostulated for per-
mission to proceed, with his family, to a place of
safety, but in vain. A loaded waggon was over-
turned on the bridge to prevent him proceeding. The
tocsin rung for ten leagues round ; and legions of
armed peasantry poured in to secure the persons of
the Royal family, whom they guarded with the utmost
vigilance.

Meanwhile, Paris exhibited a scene of consterna-
tion and confusion; every party pursued some scheme
for promoting its own peculiar views, and every in-
dividual felt a portion of the alarm occasioned by a
great and unexpected crisis. La Fayette, after des-
patching his aide-de-camp, M. de Romeuf, in pursuit
of the King, sent for Talleyrand, Barnave and the

TALLEYRAND 143

two La Methes to consult together. The Duke of
Orleans collected round him Sieyes, Sillery, Voidel,
and others his accomplices. The National Assembly
deliberated, the Jacobins trembled and threatened,
and the Cordeliers raved. The parties without doors,
and particularly the new-formed Republican faction,
were employed with great activity in endeavouring
to give a bias to the public mind. The coffee-houses
were generally crowded, and the shops and the
theatres shut. A band, consisting of the dregs of
the mob, paraded the streets, headed by Hebert, the
author and editor of " Pere Duchesne," throwing
down and trampling under foot all signs of the
King and Queen, and all emblems of royalty.
Hand-bills abusing the Royal family were profusely
distributed. A pamphlet entitled Memoires du ci-
devant Rot was hawked in the streets, and numbers
of libels against the unfortunate Queen were sold
or given away in the Palais Royal by the booksellers
in the pay of the Duke of Orleans. The majority
of citizens, however, viewed these proceedings with
apprehension and alarm, which they testified by
repeated enquiries, and by an unusual solemnity and
earnestness of demeanour. The author was at that
time at Paris, and witnessed what he relates. He
has had the misfortune to be present at the horrid

144

MEMOIRS OF

catastrophes of the i4th of July, and of the 5th and
6th of October, 1789 ; of .the federation of the I4th
July, 1790 ; of the insurrection and insult offered
the King on the loth of June ; his imprisonment on
the loth of August ; and the massacres of prisoners
on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th of September, 1792. At
all these periods the Parisian mobs and Jacobin
banditti were insolent, audacious and cruel, because
they were certain of little or no opposition, and
apprehended nothing. But, during the King's jour-
ney to Varennes, few, if any, acts of violence were
offered, and no person lost his life. All parties,
equally guilty and equally treacherous, then sus-
pected each other, and dreaded the return of
order and justice. A rebellious rabble, as well as
rebellious individuals, are moderate and prudent from
dread of punishment, or turbulent and daring from
being certain of impunity. The government that
has authority and means enough to enforce with
vigour obedience to the laws, but neglects it, com-
mits a suicide, and may be justly deemed a social
felo de se.

On the evening of the asrd of June, La Fayeite's
aide-de-camp arrived at Varennes, and the next day
the Royal family — notwithstanding their earnest en-
treaties, and some endeavours of M. de Eouill6,

TALLEYRAND 145

rendered ineffectual by the contrary orders of the
good King — were obliged to accompany him back to
Paris. They travelled by short stages, under the
escort of 6,000 National Guards, who were in their
way augmented to 20,000, including all the dis-
orderly vagabonds that could be collected. The
King and Queen had the mortification of seeing
their faithful attendants arrested, chained and ill-
treated at Varennes ; and in their first day's journey
had the still greater horror of seeing M. de Dam-
pierre, an old nobleman of Champagne, murdered
by the side of their coach for merely endeavouring
to show them some marks of respect. He fell,
pierced with three musket-balls, crying "Vive le
roi 1 " while his assassins, savagely yelling, drowned
his voice with snouts of " Vive la nation ! "

While the Royal captives were thus proceeding
towards the capital, the Assembly was engaged in
receiving deputations and framing decrees. On the
22nd, at ten o'clock at night, the welcome tidings
of the King's arrest reached them, and they im-
mediately decreed that Latour-Maubourg, Petion
and Barnave, all distinguished for their opposition
to the Court, and Dumas, Adjutant-General of the
National Guard, should escort the State prisoners
to Paris. Talleyrand was offered by the Assembly

VOL. I JtO

14.6 MEMOIRS OF

to be one of the deputies entrusted with this
honourable mission; but, for reasons best known to
himself, he declined the honour. On the 25th, the
Assembly was informed that the Royal family
would arrive in the capital between two and three
o'clock in the afternoon, and decreed, in consequence,
that, on their entrance into the castle of the Tuileries,
the King, the Queen and the Dauphin should be
separately guarded, and their declarations heard
without delay, to serve as a basis for the proceed-
ings of the Assembly.

The Royal family in their slow progress to Paris
were surrounded by an immense multitude, and it
was more than once suspected that attempts would
be made against their lives. In the carriage with
the King, Queen, Princess Elizabeth, the Dauphin
and Princess Royal, sat the three commissioners
from the Assembly. This crowd, the heat of the
day, and the dust raised by the guards and the
mob, incommoded them almost to fainting ; but their
complaints excited only derision or insult. On their
arrival in the capital, they were received with gloomy
silence and studied disrespect. An order was
placarded importing that whoever applauded the
King should be bastinadoed, whoever insulted himt
applauded. At his appearance La Fayette called out,

TALLEYRAND 147

"Hats on! Let nobody be uncovered!"1 and, in the
immense crowd, no one person had the courage to dis-
obey. The National Guards were forbidden to present
their arms, and the three faithful gardes de corps who
attended the Royal family in their journey, being
brought into the city, bound and chained to the
coachman's box of the King's carriage, were with
difficulty rescued alive from the Jacobin banditti,
who, after firing at them with pistols and stabbing
them with daggers, attempted, even in the palace
court-yard of the Tuileries, to tear them to pieces.

Since the Revolution, after the murder of Louis
XVI., took a turn unexpected by the conspirators of
different preceding factions, they all, except the
Jacobins, accused each other of the wretchedness of
France, as well as of their private sufferings and of
being the cause of both, in betraying the confidence
of their King with respect to his journey to Mont-
medy. That Drouet, who stopped his Sovereign,
was a tool in the hand of traitors there is little
doubt; but who these traitors were, notwithstanding

x The author saw the Royal captives pass on the boulevards,
and heard La Fayette repeatedly order the people to keep on their
hats. Even hairdressers, who at Paris during the summer walk
without hats, were commanded by him to tie handkerchiefs round
their heads as signs of contempt.

io— a

148 MEMOIRS OP

the researches of able historians, remains still unde-
cided. During the terrible anarchy in 1793 and 1794
and the licentiousness of the Press during the same
period, everything which could expose or inculpate
defeated or rival factions was printed; but on account
of the general league against France and her deso-
lating and anti-social doctrine, all communication
was cut off with other States, and their publications,
though curious and useful (since they contained
authentic materials for writing the history of the
times), disappeared with the party that had made
them public, or, after Robespierre's death, were
bought up by the more' politic members of the
Committee of Public Safety, to preserve intact the
honour and patriotism of the pillars of the Revolution,
or, as they were called, "The Patriots of 1789."
To these occurrences it may certainly be ascribed
that so few of the numerous French works and
pamphlets of these years found their way into this
country. Among these, .^the correspondence captured
in the houses of emigrants during the domiciliary
visits or sequestrations, or; seized among their lug
gage during the campaigns in Champagne and Bra
bant in 1792, and in Alsace and the Palatinate L.
1793, are very interesting, and were printed by the
order, of the Government and threw considerable

TALLEYRAND

I49

light on some catastrophes of the Revolution and on
the conduct of persons who figured in them.

Two letters from Talleyrand to the Countess of

F 1 prove that Louis XVI. was betrayed; that

women about the Queen were the traitors; that La
Fayette, Talleyrand, and the two La Methes, with
Barnave, were in their confidence ; and that these
faithless men — whose object was to utterly extinguish
the influence of the emigrants or true Royalists, and
to force the King to govern for the future according
to their views — were the principal plotters of this
disgrace brought on their Prince, and the dreadful
consequences that have followed for their country
and Europe. The first letter is dated June 2ist, at
six o'clock in the morning :

•• I cannot, as I intended, breakfast with you to-
day. As I supposed last night, the bird is uncaged
and flown. The commander, La Fayette, is waiting
for me, and we shall take such measures, by clip-
ping his wings, as that no future flight can be
apprehended. The Coblentz bird-catchers shall, to
their disgrace and ruin, be forced to acknowledge
our superior adroitness, and experience that it is
more easy to get "in than to get out of our snares.
Do not be uneasy. Paris and the patriots will show
themselves calm and great. In some few days the

150 MEMOIRS OF

Revolution will be perfect. La Fayette sends, pro
forma, a trusty officer in pursuit of the fugitives,
whom, according to our infallible arrangements, he
will find both snug and safe."

The second letter is of the 26th of June :
" Tell Mesdames Campan and Trouin to appre-
hend nothing. If the Queen suspects them and turns
them away,1 their patriotism shall secretly be re-
warded by the Assembly; and they shall, at all
events, be no losers by the great services they have
performed. It was necessary to let Gouvion, the
governor of the palace of the Tuileries, into the
secret ; but, notwithstanding his bluntness, he is dis-
cretion itself. As to La Fayette and myself, we can
have.no doubt or fear; but neither the La Methes
nor Barnave knew by whom the nation was to be
served, though they were well acquainted with our
precautions to prevent the ruin of the patriots and
of the Revolution. Had the Capets agreed to my
plan of retiring to Lyqns, or of La Fayette's to
adjourn to Rouen, they would not have been in their
present dilemma, nor brought on us opposers worse
than those at Coblentz — I mean the Republicans,
whose dangerous activity it requires all our popu-

1 They were chamber-maids to the Queen.

TALLEYRAND JIJI

larity and efforts to combat and to vanquish. Did
I not act well in not accepting of the place of a
deputy to meet the fugitives ? La Tour Maubourg and
Petion, for their brutality, are blamed by all moderate
men and execrated by the staunch Royalists, whilst
Barnave, for his civility, is now suspected by the
patriots, and has been denounced by the Jacobins."

The National Assembly had, according to the pro-
posal of Talleyrand, decreed that the examinations of
the King and the Queen should be taken by com-
missioners from their body; but those of the other
persons arrested, by the commissary of the section of
the Tuileries. The King would not submit to an
examination, but consented to explain the facts re-
ferred to in the decree. He assigned as motives of
his departure the insults to which he had been
exposed on the i8th of April, and the pamphlets
published to excite violence against himself and
family. As these insults remained unpunished, and
he expected neither safety nor common decency

while he remained at Paris, he wished to leave

*
it; but was obliged to quit the palace privately,

and without attendants, because it would have been
impossible to do it publicly. He did not intend to
fly the kingdom, nor had he concerted his plans with
foreign Powers, or with his relations, or any other

152 MEMOIRS OP

Frenchman who had quitted the kingdom. As a
proof that he did not mean to leave France, he
observed that apartments were prepared for him at
Montmedy — a place which he selected because it
was fortified and near the frontiers, where he could
have repelled an invasion, if attempted. He explained
these complaints in the memorial he left behind at his
departure, referring to the manner in which the con-
stitutional decrees had been separately presented to
him; but declared that, having in the course of his
journey found the public opinion decidedly in favour
of the Constitution, he had become convinced how
necessary it was for the prosperity of this Constitution
to give force to the powers established to maintain
public order. The moment he was acquainted with
the public will, he did not hesitate to sacrifice his
own individual feelings and interests to the happiness
of the people; and he would willingly forget the
sufferings and disagreeable events he had experienced
to restore peace and tranquillity to the nation. The
Queen's declaration, which was short, corroborated
in some points what had been explained by the King,
and expressed her firm resolution to accompany him
on every occasion ; but had he designed to quit the
kingdom, she would have used all her influence to
dissuade him.

TALLEYRAND 153

The declarations of both Their Majesties were
composed by Talleyrand, according to their desire,
and for which he received ^"2,500. An equal sum
was promised him and paid him for causing these
declarations not only to be approved by the other
leaders of the Constitutional party, but for persuading
them to accompany their approbation with a threat,
as the only means of averting the design which was
now openly professed of bringing the King and the
Queen to trial. M. de Bouille, who had escaped from
France, also wrote to the Assembly, avowing himself
the only instigator of the journey — a measure which
drew on him the honourable censure of that body,
but did not serve the Royal cause so much as this
brave and loyal warrior expected.

The exertions of the new Republican faction to
procure the King's trial, now gave serious alarm,
not only to the pure Royalists, but to the pretended
friends of the revolutionary monarchical constitution.
At the instigation of the Republicans, addresses and
petitions were daily presented, requiring the King's
deposition, and even his execution. Condorcet,
Brissot and Thomas Paine established a periodical
paper, called Le Republican, in which they boldly
avowed opinions hostile to monarchical government;
but the idea of abolishing the Royal office was not

154 MEMOIRS OP

yet made familiar to the public mind, and they
were answered by Talleyrand, Abb6 Sieyes, and
other writers in the pay of the Court or of the
Duke of Orleans. An opinion more current and
more acceptable, promoted by Talleyrand and Bar-
nave, was, that the King would be deposed, the
Dauphin proclaimed, and a Regent or Council of
Regency established during his minority. The decree
for taking this young Prince's education out of the
hands of his parents and bestowing it on some
persons appointed by themselves, gave a colour to
this opinion ; and the Duke of Orleans recommended
himself to popularity, by renouncing all claim, which
his faction and the Constitution might give him,
to the office of Regent. This proceeding excited
various animadversions. The Duke was known
to be, at the same period, actually plotting to
the King's prejudice ; and it was proved that his
renunciation of the Regency was made in hopes
that the Assembly would call him to the throne,
with which he had been flattered so often by
Talleyrand, Sieyes, Sillery, Petion, and his other
accomplices.

While intrigue was thus busy in every quarter
among the factious and seditious against the unfor-
tunate Sovereign, he, together with his Queen and

TALLEYRAND 155

family, were the victims of increased and unrestrained
insolence. La Fayette, Talleyrand, Barnave, and the
La Methes, the leading members of the Constitutional
faction, regularly met and deliberated. They agreed
that, in order to terrify the King into full obedience,
and to remove the imputation cast on them by the
Jacobins and Republicans of having been accessory
to his escape, it was necessary to watch the Royal
captives with unceasing jealousy and to confine them
with the utmost severity. They were not permitted
either to see, speak or write to each other ; and no
person was allowed to speak to or wait on them, ex-
cept with La Fayette's permission and in the presence
of the officer of the National Guard on duty. Every
hour in the night, as well as day, the sentries placed
in their apartments — even in their bedrooms — were
relieved ; and the prisoners were to answer when
called, to prove their presence. Guards were also
placed on the roof of the palace ; and it was justly
observed of La Fayette that this revolutionary general,
with the office, had acquired the manners of a gaoler
— treating his virtuous and patriotic Prince with the
most brutal insolence, and the Queen and her chil-
dren in such a manner as to rouse indignation and
inspire compassion even in the soldiers about them,
though selected as the most unfeeling of their corps.

156 MEMOIRS OF

To this barbarous conduct of La Fayette, Louis XVI.
ascribed all his future sufferings from his Jacobin
gaolers and sans-culotte assassins. Had not La Fayette
at this period, after carrying his Sovereign in triumph
through the streets of Paris, shut him up a prisoner
in the palace of the Tuileries, the Jacobins would
not, fourteen months afterwards, have dared to drag
him publicly a prisoner from this same palace to the
Temple. Had not La Fayette, in 1791, degraded
monarchy in the person of his King, the Jacobins
would never have had the savage ferocity, in 1793,
after abolishing monarchy, to butcher their Sove-
reign. As this stupid but audacious rebel was
always advised by Talleyrand, and some few other
accomplices like him- — debased noblemen — it is against
him and against them that the curses of mankind
ought to be pronounced for all the misery since
endured. The revolutionary rabble, in imitating the
examples of their revolutionary superiors, surpassed
them indeed in enormities; but this is nothing but
a natural consequence. The virtuous, delicate and
sensible minds of Louis XVI., of his Royal consort,
and of his immaculate sister, the Princess Elizabeth,
endured more from the stings inflicted by the studied
and refined cruelty of La Fayette and his gang, than
from the death-blows they soon afterwards received

TALLEYRAND I«J7

from their successors and disciples, the bloodthirsty
Jacobins.1

The task of framing a report on the events of
the aist of June was referred to the united com-
mittees of the Assembly on the motion of Talley-
rand, who had now ingratiated himself so far as to
be the secret and confidential counsellor of Louis
XVI.; but while they were preparing their opinion
the city was agitated by innumerable pamphlets and
placards, accusations and denunciations. The question
whether the King should be put on his trial occupied
all conversation, and everyone decided on it as his
affection or hatred, his hopes or his fears, his
private judgment or the dictates of his party
suggested. All the debates in the National As-
sembly, though not directly referring to this subject,
were so conducted as to show that it chiefly, if
not solely, engaged the thoughts of the members.
The Royalists were wisely silent on almost every

z The dastardly traitor, La Fayette, is treated by Bonaparte
as he deserves. Last June, after the usurper's emperor-making,
he demanded permission to go to America, which was obtained
upon condition of giving up, for a pension of £250, all his
property to bis son, who is a colonel under the Corsican.
The friend of liberty, and the promulgator of the rights of
man, then withdrew his petition, and declared himself ready
to continue a submissive slave to the upstart tyrant, preferring
bondage and property to liberty and equality. — Lts Nouvelits 4
la Main. Messidor, year zii. No. 3, page 4.

150 MEMOIRS OF

occasion, since their exertions would only have given
additional vigour and popularity to the Republicans,
and, perhaps, disgusted or terrified the Constitution-
alists, who were now bought over, and, therefore,
openly began to espouse the Royal cause. But,
though they were silent in the hall of the Legis-
lature, they published an address to the people,
which produced a powerful effect in favour of their
cause : it was circulated throughout the kingdom,
with the recommendation of 290 of their signatures.
None of them were either placemen or pensioners of
the Court, but none had either been the instigators,
promoters, protectors or accomplices of rebellion.
Their pure, disinterested and spirited loyalty upheld
the undermined and tottering Throne for some few
months longer.

Though the unmerited misfortunes of Louis XVI.
ought to have excited the indignation and roused
to arms all other legitimate princes, no soldier was
ordered into the field, and the Spanish Ambassador
at Paris was the only diplomatic agent who, in the
name of his master, presented a mild, conciliatory note
in favour of the enchained Sovereign. The manner in
which it was noticed by the French rebels was another
serious warning disregarded by kings as well as by their
counsellors. The Spanish note was, without being

TALLEYRAND I^g

honoured with a public reading, referred to the Diplo-
matic Committee ; and according to the report made
in its name by Talleyrand, the National Assembly
treated it with great rudeness and democratical in-
solence, and ordered their Minister for Foreign Affairs
to answer that, " France would never interfere in the
affairs of other nations, nor permit their interference
in hers " ; or, which is the same thing, " whenever a
set of plunderers and murderers in France succeeded
in overturning the lawful government of their country
and elected for their chief the most wicked or bar-
barous of their accomplices, whether a Robespierre or
a Bonaparte, though, by such an outrage, they en-
couraged crimes and rebellion in all other States,
foreign sovereigns are bound xto send new credentials
to their representatives in France, and to salute the
vile and guilty usurper as their equal." This revolu-
tionary diplomacy has since been adopted by Talley-
rand under the Directory, as well as under the
Consulate ; but had sovereigns known their danger
and ministers done their duty in 1791, loyalty and
religion would not have been trampled upon by
rebellion and atheism, and Bonaparte, instead of
audaciously dictating to princes, would have quietly
commanded a company of cannoneers, obeying in a
barrack instead of ruling in a palace.

160 MEMOIRS OP

At length the united committees declaring them
selves prepared, the names of the members of the
Assembly were called over, and the I3th of July
was appointed for hearing the report. On that day
the author of these Memoirs published his first
and youthful mite in the cause of suffering royalty,
in a tract of thirty-two pages, entitled, Le Regne
de Louis XVI. mis sous les yeux de VEuropc, which,
at his own expense, he printed and profusely dis-
tributed.1 He has been happy since to read in
several histories, annals and memoirs of these times
that it is supposed to have produced the most bene-
ficial effects among the members of the Assembly,
and even the public.8

i This, as well as all other publications of the author, either
in English or French, with the sole exception of " The Revolutionary
Plutarch," were printed at his own expense, given away to book-
sellers, or distributed gratis among the people. For this his name
is found upon the list of proscription, but he defies anybody to
find it either on the Civil List of Princes or Republicans. Those
whose selfish hearts judge others according to then: own vile
passions may suspect the existence of disinterested loyalty; but
that man is an infamous calumniator who says that the author
has received from the Bourbon Princes any presents or remunera-
tion for his literary productions more than for his military
exertions. He has served and shall still serve them to the utmost
of his power, but they shall never know who he is before they
are restored to their rank in France.

2 See La Grande Trahison de La Fayette, Bailly, Talleyrand, &*.,
p. 9. In the note it is falsely asserted that the supposed author,

TALLEYRAND l6l

Muguet de Nanthou, reporter from the united
committees, recited all the facts drawn from the
declarations of the King and Queen and the examin-
ations of other persons. He discussed at length the
question whether the King should be brought to trial.
On the first point it was considered as demonstrated
that the whole blame must be ascribed to the Marquis
de Bouille, and, on the other, that both the Constitution
and simple reason proved the negative. This report
was debated with great fierceness during the two
days, in which the Constitutional party would not
press their advantages to the utmost, but indulged
the wild speculations of Robespierre, Petion, Rewbel
and Merlin, and permitted the reading of many
incendiary petitions from the Jacobins and other
anarchists. A decree was at length adopted on the
1 6th, enacting, that if the King, after having sworn
to the Constitution, should retract, or if he should
put himself at the head of a military force, or direct
his generals to act against the nation, or forbear to
oppose any such attempt by an authentic act, he
should be judged to have abdicated the throne and
should then be considered as a simple citizen and

Mallet du Pan, had received 1,000 lords d'or for this tract; and
La Politique d'un infame Perigord, p. 22, states its utility, and that
it was written by a Volunteer Royalist, an English Jacobite.

VOL. I II

l62 MEMOIRS OF

subject to impeachment in the ordinary forms for
all crimes committed after his abdication. Imme-
diately after this decree, which had been penned by
Talleyrand, the Assembly proceeded to the vote on
that relative to the events of the 2ist of June, and
decided exactly in the mode prescribed by the report
of the committees.

So sudden a termination of the question was con-
sidered, and really was, a manoeuvre of La Fayette,
Talleyrand, the La Methes, and Barnave, for pre-
venting, or at least stopping, the efforts of the
Orleans and Republican faction, who were known to
be very busy in plotting among the clubs and the
sections, preparing petitions, arranging deputations
and exciting insurrections. This opinion is confirmed
by the conduct of Robespierre, who, in a transport
of fury, rushed out of the hall of the Assembly, ex-
claiming to the mob that surrounded it : " All is
lost, my friends ; the King is to be restored ! " The
true Royalists, although sensible of the dangers from
which the Royal family had been rescued, were not
entirely satisfied with the termination of the affair,
and that with reason. They saw with just horror a
system established which shamefully proposed, and
supposed as a possible case, the deposition of the
hereditary monarch ; and they were indignant at

TALLEYRAND 163

another decree, by which he was still suspended
from the exercise of his functions until the comple-
tion and acceptance of the Constitution. For the
pretended favourable decree concerning the King's
journey to Varennes, His Majesty signed bans to
Talleyrand, and other French patriots, to the
amount of ^125,000, to be paid by his treasurer of
the Civil List within four months after his restoration
to authority. From this may be concluded that
French patriotism, though a common, is not a cheap
commodity.

The unpaid patriots, or the parties that formed
the minority in the National Assembly, would not,
however, resign the hope of obtaining, through the
medium of the people, some alteration of the de-
cision. In their dens they held councils, and meet-
ings were planned for the purpose of organising an
insurrection, under pretence of preparing a petition.
But in these meetings a schism appeared between
the parties, which afterwards produced important
consequences. Some were anxious to frame the pe-
tition in terms which would favour the abolition of
royalty; but La Clos, a confidential associate and
trusty agent of the Duke of Orleans, proposed a
paragraph which made an opening for the ascension
of his patron to the throne. This addition was

II — 2

164 MEMOIRS OF

objected to by Brissot, and in some copies of the
petition omitted, though it was retained in others.
The paper was drawn up by a committee of the
Jacobin and Cordeliers' Clubs, but copies were sent to
every collection of the mob at Paris, and the next
day was appointed to receive signatures on the altar
of the country in the Champ de Mars. This altar,
erected in the name of public gratitude to Robespierre,
had the following curious inscription :

A CELUI QUI A BIEN MERITA
DE LA PATRIE :

ROBESPIERRE.

To the disgrace of France, and to the shame of
Europe, the throne of Bonaparte is erected on the
same foundation as the altars of his worthy pre-
decessor Robespierre. These two great criminals,
at the period of their elevation equally guilty, could
claim nothing from public gratitude ; but a gibbet
was due to their atrocities by public justice.

The municipality, apprised of the intentions of
the conspirators, issued a proclamation forbidding all
assemblies in groups, and ordered their commissioners
and the Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard
to employ all the means with which the law invested

TALLEYRAND 165

them for the maintenance of tranquillity. The mob
were, however, not to be so deterred. They assembled,
and commenced the day by hanging as aristocrats a
hairdresser and an invalid soldier. Three members
of the municipality who attended were pelted with
stones; and La Fayette's life was endangered by
a pistol which was discharged at him, at a small
distance, by the journeyman printer Brune, at present
Bonaparte's Field-Marshal, and lately his Ambassador
to the Ottoman Porte. This assassin was secured, but
La Fayette, with ill-timed generosity, or rather from
fear and timidity, suffered him to depart, though he
confined several who had been throwing stones —
but they were without arms. The violence of the mob
still increasing, the municipality ordered martial law
to be proclaimed* the red flag was accordingly ex-
hibited from the windows of the Town Hall, and
at seven o'clock in the evening a detachment of
the National Guard marched to the scene of riot.
A violent outcry was immediately raised of " Down
with the red flag ! Down with the bayonets ! "
Stones, and even some discharges of musketry fol-
lowed, when the military were ordered to fire over
the heads of the people. This harmless explosion
only augmented their audacity; but after sustaining
repeated insults and violences, the National Guard

166 MEMOIRS OF

fired with ball, killed and wounded a considerable
number and put the rest to flight.

This was the first time since the Revolution
that the military had not refused to fire on the
people, and the first time the Parisian National
Guard had condescended to disperse riotous or
rebellious mobs. The majority of the National
Assembly heard this exploit reported with infinite
delight, approving the conduct of the municipality,
by whose orders the red flag continued to be dis-
played till the 7th of August. La Fayette, Talley-
rand and the other members of the Constitutional
party pursued their victory by obtaining a decree
against all who should by placards, advertisements,
pamphlets or speeches excite insurrection, murder,
pillage or disobedience to the law, and enacting
that all accomplices should be punished as principals.
This decree, which was a severe libel on all the
previous proceedings of the Assembly, passed with
little opposition. It had the effect of terrifying,
even to a degree of ridiculous panic, some of the
boldest and most forward Republicans. But as it
was followed by no effectual exertion, except the
seizure of a few printing presses, and an order to
arrest some seditious journalists which was never
executed, the clubs soon resumed their meetings,

TALLEYRAND 167

the journalists their audacity, and the intriguers
their correspondence. Long before the red flag was
removed from the Town Hall, the massacre of the
Champ de Mars was pointed out for execration and
vengeance, not against the actors and perpetrators,
but against their then imprisoned victim, Louis
XVI.

That the ruling party was not without their appre-
hensions during this contest with their rivals of the
Orleans and Republican factions, is evident from the
moderation with which they used the advantages
obtained by their victory in the Champ de Mars.
Hitherto, since the Revolution, the aristocrats only
had bled, and the patriotic brigands had, with appro-
bation as well as with impunity, ranged in quest of

•
prey and spoil; but by the late scene, the new and

revolutionary aristocracy had destroyed their own off-
spring— the sovereignty of the people, the rights of
man, and the sacred duty of insurrection, so often
decreed, extolled, promised and proclaimed. The fact
is that, by their own impolitic, unfeeling, scandalous
and dangerous example, they were reduced to the
deplorable alternative of either seeing their revolu-
tionary progeny become parricides, or of becoming
infanticides themselves. They, therefore, did not long
deliberate about the choice ; but even in their chastise-

l68 MEMOIRS OF

ments they showed a paternal tenderness, which they
themselves did not expect to experience had the for-
tune of the day declared against them. Their real
situation, their present intrigues and their future
views are tolerably well explained in a letter from

Talleyrand to his bonne amie the Countess of F 1,

dated July i8th, eight o'clock in the evening:

" You may now send me back the effects deposited
with you. The storm has blown over, and we are
safe. Had not the day been ours, we should sooner
have restored Louis his former power, and trusted to
his clemency, than have entered into terms with our
sanguinary opposers. We have now, at the same
time, got the key to their secrets and to the King's
Cabinet. With the crimes of the former we are as
well acquainted as with the weakness of the latter,
whose authority we shall make use of to keep down
our enemies or to punish them. Last night every-
thing was finally settled and sealed in the Chateau.
Though, in consequence of the absurd decree, we
cannot occupy ostensible and public places, no law
prevents the King from employing us as private
advisers or secret counsellors. The Government will,
therefore, be for the future entirely in our hands.
The General * is to have the Military department ;
z La Fayette.

TALLEYRAND l6g

Le Dauphinois1 that of Justice and of the Interior;
L'Aine,2 the Navy; Le Cadet,8 the Finances; and
the Foreign Affairs are to be directed by me — that
is to say, nothing can be done in these respective
departments without our knowledge or assent. Since
I found out the deranged state of our finances,
which during the present confusion must increase,
I have renounced my former ideas of having any-
thing to do with them. We must now hasten to
finish our constitutional task, which alone can set
our poor prisoner at liberty, or, rather, exchange the
fetters of the nation for ours. Embrace our Charles.
I shall be with you to.-morrow night."

Thus Talleyrand in this letter discloses the secret
and the true motive, of the actions and transactions
of all those men who, with him, raised the standard
of rebellion, whose disinterestedness and love of
liberty excited such a general enthusiasm. They
wanted, at any rate, power and places — whether as
freemen, slaves, or tyrants, was the same to them.
Their country and their countrymen came in for
nothing in their ambitious speculations. They divide
between themselves with more sang-froid the govern-

i Barnave.

9 Alexander la Methe.

3 Charles la Methe.

170 MEMOIRS OP

ment of France than the Roman triumvirs did the
provinces of the Roman Republic. Their King they
regard as a mere tool in their hands, with his rank
and name to impose upon the public; and to whom
they even talk of restoring his lost authority, as the
last resource against contending factions. His suffer-
ings are unnoticed as well as unlamented ; but sooner
than endanger their personal safety, they are deter-
mined to put everything upon a former footing,
notwithstanding all the innocent blood spilt for
liberty, all the fine speeches made for liberty, and
the general overthrow of rank and property decreed
to obtain what they called liberty. From La Fayette
to Napoleon Bonaparte, all the heroes of the French
Revolution have individually shown themselves des-
picable and selfish cowards ; all noble, generous and
patriotic sentiments have been banished from their
depraved minds ; their guilty imagination saw every-
where plots and conspiracies. To preserve their own
dear persons from these supposed attempts, dungeons
have been crowded, scaffolds erected, kingdoms laid
waste, and nations ruined. And, unfortunately, the
world is not now nearer the end of these horrors than
it was sixteen years ago. The infancy of the Revo-
lution has been long, sanguinary and turbulent ; and
it is still in its cradle.

TALLEYRAND 171

When the Assembly thus formally renounced the
sacred duty of insurrection, they resigned their char-
ter of popularity. They proceeded in the completion
of the Constitution beset with general contempt, and
their dissolution was earnestly desired by all parties.
By the Royalists, because it would be the period of
the King's release from confinement and political anni-
hilation ; and by the factions, because it would occa-
sion changes favourable to their projects and plots.
The revision of the Constitution produced long debates,
in which none but the speakers interested themselves.
Talleyrand now spoke often, and always in favour of
the Court, for which he was liberally paid ; but neither
he nor his party, when free from personal dangers,
had sufficient virtue er magnanimity to procure the
King the portion of authority necessary for preserving
the monarchy; nor would the Assembly take any
effectual measures for prosecuting those incendiaries
who were repeatedly denounced for acts of violence
and exhortations to insurrection in the departments.

The mode in which the Constitution was to be
presented for the King's acceptance occasioned the
most strenuous debates, and produced some smart
contests between avowed royalty and republicanism
slightly concealed. When the Assembly, with great
confusion, had completed its readings and revisions,

172 MEMOIRS OF

the new code was presented to the King for his pure
and simple acceptance or rejection. A deputation
of sixty members, one of whom was Talleyrand, waited
on him for this purpose. All comment and explan-
ation being forbidden, he first, on the I3th of Sep-
tember, accepted the Constitution in writing, and then,
two days afterwards, bound himself to maintain it by
an oath. He was now allowed to enjoy a little more
liberty than before; that is to say, he was permitted
to walk in the garden of his palace for a couple of
hours every morning, accompanied and watched by
the officers of the National Guard on duty. This
was, perhaps, found necessary to obviate the charge
of his not being free when he accepted it. As more
Jacobins were in prison on account of the riots in
the Champ de Mars than Royalists in consequence
of the journey to Varennes, La Fayette, out of
tenderness to the fortner, obtained a decree that all
persons arrested should be set at liberty, all legal
proceedings relative to the events of the Revolution
superseded, and the use of passports and temporary
restraints discontinued. Yet, when the King attended
in the hall to take the oath, his coming was preceded
by a debate, in consequence of which the Order of
the Holy Ghost was abolished. The members, instead
of paying the accustomed respect of standing while

TALLEYRAND 173

he spoke, sat down, and his chair was reduced by a
rule to the size of the President's, who sat on a level
with him, and on his right hand. Several other
studied insults, congenial with the unfeeling character
of these successful rebels, were, besides, heaped on
this unfortunate Sovereign.

The new Constitution was a ridiculous system,
neither Monarchical nor Republican, in which, for
want of a blending medium — a permanent aristocracy
— the two extremes could never meet. No authority
was sufficiently established in force, nor were means
left for its maintenance by popular respect. The
people, in the widest sense of the word, were left to
govern themselves ; and all who obtained, even by their
momentary favour, the exercise of temporary authority,
were exposed without protection to the brutalities
which caprice, suspicion or fury might excite against
them. The able and loyal French writer, M. Mont-
joye, gives the following accurate, just and spirited
description of this deformed first-born of the modern
philosophers La Fayette, Talleyrand and Co. :

" Never did the union of folly and madness beget
a more monstrous offspring. This pretended Consti-
tution presented to the eye a misshapen machine,
whimsically composed of an infinity of wheels, with-
out any mutual relation or dependence. Experience

174 MEMOIRS OF

has shown that it was not in the power of man to
put its grotesque springs in motion. The government
framed by these presumptuous legislators was neither
monarchical, aristocratical, nor popular. Their Con-
stitutional Act might at best be considered as the
basis of an anarchical monarchy — that is, a real
chimera, for death and life cannot subsist in the
same body. Had this monster been able to live,
those who begot it took great precautions that it
should be strangled in the cradle. They had taken
from the kingdom its religion; they had annihilated
the public force, disorganised the military, and armed
those who ought to contribute to the exigencies of the
State. And that nothing might be wanting to the
deformity of their work, they carefully destroyed every
barrier which could pjevent the attacks of usurpation
or despotism."

It ought not to be passed over in silence that,
after this chef d'&uvre had been proclaimed at Paris
on the i8th of September, the ensuing Sunday a
grand Te Deum, or "thanksgiving for the end of the
Revolution," was performed in the church of Notre
Dame, where another grand Te Deum, or "thanks-
giving for the end of the Revolution," was again
celebrated with great solemnity on the 2nd of
December, 1804. Talleyrand was present on both

TALLEYRAND

175

these occasions, doubtless with equal devotion, satis-
faction and sincerity; though, during the terrible
interval, from a faithless subject of the patriotic
Louis XVI. he had been transformed into the faith-
ful slave of a barbarous assassin and Corsican tyrant.
Immediately after his acceptance of the Constitu-
tion, Louis XVI., according to the advice of Talleyrand,
in a circular letter, informed all other Sovereigns and
States of this event. Those French diplomatic agents
in foreign Courts who had loyalty enough to refuse
the oath to the Constitution were recalled, and others
appointed in their place. Several foreign Courts
declined admitting these revolutionary emissaries, and
in consequence discontinued all regular and usual

communication with the French Monarch, surrounded

*
as he was with traitors, gaolers and assassins. Indeed,

it could hardly be expected that the other branches
of the House of Bourbon would without indignation
behold the chief of their line detained in unmerited
captivity by his own subjects, and the Princes of the
Blood seeking shelter and soliciting precarious protection
in foreign Courts; or that the Emperor could without
impatience hear of the intolerable indignities offered
by the lowest of mankind to his own sister. Talley-
rand had, therefore, no easy task to conciliate so
many injured parties and such various and opposite

176 MEMOIRS OP

interests. It was become notorious in France that
he as well as Barnave and the La Methes were
secret members of the King's Council. As such
they were denounced by the deputies of the new
Legislature, calumniated by the Jacobins, and libelled
by their journalists. With the activity and plans of
their internal enemies they were too well acquainted
not to fear more from their violence than from the
complaints, representations, and even armaments of
foreigners, with whom the Republican faction neg-
lected no opportunity to embroil France, either by
indirect acts of alarm and provocation, or by a direct
declaration of an intent to produce a universal republic
by a general insurrection.

To establish a commonwealth in France, and to
overthrow all thrones abroad, Brissot and all other
French Republicans declared it absolutely necessary
" to carry fire and sword* into the four corners of the
world," as they expressed it, or, in other words, to
involve all States in warfare with each other, or
against France. Talleyrand was not long without
observing that this opinion had adherents even in the
King's closet, and among those who had hitherto
been firm supporters of monarchical governments.
He remarked that among the Republicans there
reigned not only audacity and personal union, but

TALLEYRAND 177

unity of views — " a total subversion " — whilst the
Monarchists were divided amongst themselves, sus-
pecting each other, acting without plan as well as
without energy, possessing no point round which to
rally in case of attack, and no place of refuge in case
of defeat. Having already deserted his God and his
King to join the Orleans faction, which, in its turn,
he left from avarice, he did not long hesitate in again
betraying his King by going over to the Republicans.

In a letter to the Countess of F 1, of the agth

October, he opens his mind on this subject without
reserve :

" From what I see every day," says he, " I am
convinced of the justness and truth of Mirabeau's last

words. Monarchy is certainly descending with ra-

* *

pidity into the grave; I must, therefore, be careful

not to be buried with it. I have, within these few
days, had several overtures, from the Republicans;
but as I suspected that it was merely to sound the
ground, no notice has been taken of them. I shall,
however, not neglect to render them some services
a promos, which may in time encourage them to speak
out. The next time you see Chauvelin, endeavour
to find out if my suspicions are well founded. I
really think that he is not in his place at Court,
but that the Republicans have placed him there

VOL. I 12

178 MEMOIRS OF

merely to watch the King and those about his
person. But to be well acquainted with his senti-
ments, you must begin with forgetting your own.
Yes! you must seem a convert to republicanism.
Read and quote 'L-e Patriote Frangais,' by Brissot;
' La Chronique de Paris,' by Condorcet ; and even
' L'Ami du Peuple,' by Marat. As he will declare
his surprise at seeing you in such company, you
may say that it is by my desire, being disgusted
with the lukewarm patriotism of the Monarchists.
Take his word of honour not to divulge your con-
versation to anybody. If he keeps his promise, he
will do you no harm ; if he breaks it, he will serve
me, without hurting you. I am much mistaken in
my man if the latter will not be the case. Your pru-
dence will suggest £he propriety of concealing the
above journals whenever La Fayette, Barnave, or
the La Methes pay you any visits. With them, of
course, you must continue as staunch a Constitu-
tionalist as ever."

By the adroitness ol his mistress, Talleyrand soon
came to a good understanding with Chauvelin. The
latter had from his youth been received at Court.
To the bounty of the King both he and his father
were indebted for everything they possessed. Per-
ceiving him to be of a weak and unprincipled character,

TALLEYRAND 179

the Jacobins and Republicans easily and early en-
gaged him to be a spy about the Royal family.
In this Jumourable post he was the more useful to
them because he was esteemed by his Prince as an
inoffensive and safe companion, neither tormented by
ambition nor led astray by cupidity.

Under date the 24th of November, Talleyrand
wrote to the same lady:

"After spending all the morning of yesterday at
Court, Chauvelin and I supped last night at the
Mayor's, with Robespierre, Brissot, Guadet and
Roland. They have communicated their plans to me,
which are well combined, formidable and patriotic.
In return I have promised, and shall be of service
to them, because I am firmly convinced that things
cannot continue as they are. We must either recall
the implacable emigrants or proclaim a republic.
In the former case I have nothing but humiliation
to expect from their injured pride, or persecution
from their unrelenting vengeance. Connected as I
now am, I have, on the contrary, everything to
hope and nothing to fear from the Republicans,
to whom I am, besides, necessary in more respects
than one.

" Petion speaks with great satisfaction, and even
affection, of his reception in London, and of the

12 — 1

l8o MEMOIRS OP

enthusiasm of the English for our Revolution. Theii
determination of breaking their fetters in imitation
of us is decidedly fixed. He is convinced that
England alone contains more real Republicans than
all the other States of Europe together, not only
among the people, but among the Nobility, the
Clergy and the Capitalists, who have unanimously
applauded his zeal and encouraged him to continue
his efforts in the cause of equality and liberty. They
not only devour with avidity all our patriotic tracts
and writings, but cause them to be translated and
gratuitously distributed among the lower classes,
particularly in their populous cities and in their
manufacturing towns. Clubs are as regularly organ-
ised in England, Scotland, and Ireland, as in France ;
and the friends of the constitution there correspond as
regularly as we do here. They talk as loudly of
reform as we do, and use the same means and the
same activity to procure it. Their object is the same
as ours, and their success must be the same. There,
as well as here, some few aristocrats murmur and
tremble, and some bigots sigh and pray; but there,
as well as here, the rights of man and the religion
of Nature will soon triumph, and crush the monster
both of religious and political superstition. He does
not hesitate to affirm that an able minister from

TALLEYRAND igl

France, in whom the English patriots could confide,
would direct their ardour and make the cause of the
friends of liberty of both countries a common and in-
separable one. He predicts that they then will soon
send their George to fraternise with our Louis; that
the tricoloured flag will predominate • at the palace of
St. James as effectually as at that of the Tuileries,
and that Republicans will fraternise equally in both.

"Brissot brought forward a proposal concerning
me, which, if acceded to, will oblige me to go over
to England. Many things are, however, to be pre-
viously considered and arranged ; and as I intend to
pass all the evening of the day after to-morrow with
you, I shall then be more explicit on this subject, and
listen with pleasure to ypur opinion and counsel."

Notwithstanding the reciprocal hatred, the great
differences of opinions, the mutual jealousies, and the
opposite pursuits of the several rebellious factions in
France, they all agreed in considering it absolutely
necessary for the success of their plan of a universal
revolution, previously to involve Great Britain and
Ireland in the same anarchy and subversion of order
which, during three years, had made France so
wretched. Supposing the national character of British
subjects as fickle and vicious, and the individual
characters of British revolutionists as audacious and

l82 MEMOIRS OF

depraved as their own, they did not expect to meet
with any disappointment in their designs. They had
entirely forgotten the difference between the talents,
virtue and patriotism of British ministers, contrasted
with those treacherous, ignorant or weak counsellors
who had prepared or permitted the ruin of France.
The speeches of some members of the English
Opposition, the declamations of reformers at clubs,
and the libels of Paine and of other seditious and
unworthy Britons, encouraged them in this notion.
The factious of this country were therefore applauded
and flattered by all parties in France, by the
Orleanists, by the Constitutionalists, by the Bris-
sotins, by the Jacobins and by the Cordeliers, each
expecting to find in this country a revolutionary
ally in their cause, revolutionary defenders of their
principles, and, above all, revolutionary imitators of
their revolutionary enormities. They hoped to see
here, as in France, palaces reduced to ashes, the
clergy degraded and beggared, and men of property
plundered, proscribed and murdered. Here, as well
as there, they were certain of seeing every bludgeon
transformed into a sceptre, and every sans-culotU
at the same time an accuser, judge and executioner;
to hear of philosophers proclaiming the rights of man
on the reeking ruins of temples, and of patriots

TALLEYRAND I 83

preaching fraternity under the blood-stained lamp-
posts of the sovereign people. In this hope, and in
these expectations, they were not a little emboldened
by Petion's report of his reception in this country.
Two classes of men here formed his exclusive society.
One consisted of ambitious, unruly and scheming
partisans, who envied the rank and power of the
great and eminent ; the other of numerous needy
adventurers, destitute of character and fortune, who
from their shops, garrets and night-cellars sent out
malice, calumny and plots, and who flattered them-
selves with the hope of reaping a golden harvest
from the property of the wealthy and the profits
which industry had bestowed on the labours of the
diligent, quiet, honest *and loyal. The professions
and conversations of these unprincipled villains
Petion concluded were the predominant sentiments
of the British nation, and his erroneous conclusions
were believed by the whole horde of French rebels
as the criterion of the public spirit of Britons.
Hence the many impolitic and audacious insults,
both of the Legislative Assembly and of the National
Convention, who, while expressing a desire of con-
tinuing in peace with Great Britain, applauded and
permitted repeated acts of aggression against her
Sovereign and her Constitution. Hence, when an

184 MEMOIRS OP

obscure party of Englishmen, who met at a public-
house in Frith Street, Soho, and called themselves a
Constitutional Society of Whigs, presented a foolish
address to Louis XVI. and the National Assembly,
promising to risk their lives and fortunes in defence
of France against any despotic powers which might
attempt to enchain the nation, the Legislature received
this proposal "to wage war without the consent of
our Government," with loud applause, and honourable
mention in the prods-verbal^ and communicated it to
the King by a deputation. A written answer was
returned by the President, declaring the treaty in-
violate by virtue, simple as truth, essential as reason,
and complimenting these obscure addresses as the
soundest part of the nation.1 Hence the National Con-
vention afterwards declared that the French nation
would grant fraternity and aid to every person willing
to recover their liberty, and ordered their military
commanders to give assistance to all such people,
and defend those who might have been oppressed in
the cause of liberty. This general proclamation in
favour of rebellion passed by acclamation, and, being
ordered to be translated into all languages, was

I See the Address in Dtbrett's State Papers; in Rivington't Animal
Register. 1701 • and in Bertrand's Annals, vol. ix.. p. 49.

TALLEYRAND 185

particularly addressed to the factious and disaffected
in this country.

During the remaining part of the autumn of 1791,
Talleyrand continued secretly to influence the King's
determinations and to betray the confidence of his
Prince to the Orleans and Republican factions. From
his correspondence, it is evident that he entered into
the views and subscribed to the opinions of their
chiefs, Orleans and Brissot, that foreign war alone
could prevent a civil one, and that hostilities would
preserve and extend, and a long peace destroy, the
Revolution and its promoters, together with their
plans and prospects. Under the disguise of candour
and concord, he, in consequence, did everything at
Court to mislead and to embroil the nation, and to
reduce Louis XVI. to the necessity of provoking or
declaring a war contrary to his wishes, inclination
and interest. The negotiations with the Emperor of
Germany and with several Princes of the Empire
were carried on during the winter in such a manner
that, in the ensuing spring, revolutionary armies could
take the field against neighbours, unsuspicious, and
trusting to treaties, and, therefore, but ill-prepared for
defence, and totally incapable of attack. Confiding
in, because acquainted with, the sincerity and desire
of Louis XVI. to avoid a rupture and to preserve

l86 MEMOIRS OF

the tranquillity of Europe, other States considered
his pacific professions and assurances as their security
against all surprise. From the character of the
persons who had intruded themselves upon the King,
and into his councils, they ought, however, to have
known that this ill-fated Prince would either be
obliged to sign their deceitful despatches, or fall a
victim to an unavailing refusal or resistance. In
either case his personal and Royal virtues could not
be supposed sufficient guarantees for these public
and -political transactions, into which he was forced
by threats, seduced by sophistry, or engaged by
treachery. It should also be remembered that
France herself, if ruled by men of prudence and
humanity, would have remained quiet; her finances
suffering from the same confusion and anarchy that
had destroyed discipline and subordination among
her legions.

Talleyrand wrote to his bonne amie, under date the
loth of January, 1792:

" Narbonne, the War Minister, called on me
yesterday, and was the cause of my not seeing
you, as he remained with me till past eleven
o'clock last night. He gave me a deplorable
account of the discipline of our troops, and of the
situation of our fortresses, arsenals and magazines,

TALLEYRAND 187

very different from that laid before the King and
the Assembly on his return from the visit to our
frontiers. He is totally against a war to be carried
on in the usual manner, but flatters himself with
great success from a sudden excursion into the
defenceless Austrian and German territories by a
numerous body of our National Guards, as well as
troops of the line. He supposes that our revolu-
tionary propagators, and our manifestoes in favour of
liberty, have procured us adherents everywhere; that
revolutions will march with our armies and encom-
pass us with allies wherever we advance.

" The poor Louis has no idea of our warlike
dispositions. Even this morning he told me that he
still hoped that Providence would enable him to
prevent the addition of war to the other scourges
of our days, and this was the object of his fervent
prayers. He mentioned, as a certainty, that the
Emperor of Germany did not intend to trouble the
tranquillity of Europe. This Sovereign has at last,
upon Noailles' 1 repeated demands, sent counter-orders
to the regiments from Bohemia and Tyrol intended to
reinforce his troops in Brabant, Hainault and Flanders.
I was asked to write something in the shape of an
address to the people, to quiet their apprehensions

I The French Ambassador at Vienna,
i

1 88 MEMOIRS OF

from the emigrants and from the German princes.
This I promised to have inserted in the Journal de
Paris. It would be curious enough if my address
met with the same favourable reception from their
adversaries as my speculations on the probable ad-
vantages of an immediate war — which I read to you
last week before inserting them in the Chroniqut de
Paris— obtained from our patriots. I shall do as well
as I can in this business ; but to escape mistrust
and defy treason, I shall inform the Mayor of the
whole, and tell him that, to avoid suspicion at
Court, I could not help accepting this disagreeable
task. In some few days I hope to have Chauvelin
appointed to the Embassy, under my guidance and
inspection. As he will certainly visit you this day,
inform him of it, and of the contents of this letter
except what regards Narbonne's indiscreet communi-
cation."

On the i4th of the same month he wrote a
letter, on a very different subject, to the same lady,
which shows that, notwithstanding the occupation
which his triple perfidy against the King, the Duke
of Orleans and the Republicans, furnished him, he
found leisure enough to engage in intrigues with
women.

"It is true," says he, "that you have been well

TALLEYRAND 1 89

served by your spies. Three weeks ago, at Madame
Stael's, I met ' La Belle Sotte,' as you call her. She
was pleased with my conversation, and I admired
her as I should do Venus of Medicis, or any other
inanimate chef d'ceuvre. If she mistook my surprise
at seeing so much imbecility covered with so highly
finished an etui, for an expression of another kind,
so much the worse for her. She invited me to
breakfast with her, and I have certainly done so,
as you say, four times, and that t&tc-b-Ute. So far
your information is correct ; but when you surmise
that she was with me the two nights that I pretended
to be engaged at the Palais Royal, or at the Mayor's,
either your own lively imagination has imposed on
you, or your spy has robbed you of his wages. She
has never been in my apartments after dark, and I
am never with her but . in the forenoon. As to her
sister, I knew her before I had the happiness of your
acquaintance. Without your claims of friendship and
affection, she has more pretensions than you, and
plagues me with her jealousy and suspicions in a
most unaccountable and troublesome manner. She
has given up to her husband my former correspond-
ence with her, and interrupted my last tite-b-t&U
with her sister by the unseasonable introduction of
I The residence of the Duke of Orleans.

I9O MEMOIRS OF

her brother-in-law. This foolish fellow does honour
to the horned brotherhood, and to his province.
A true gasconader, he spoke of nothing but swords
and pistols— of separation or divorce. As his dear
moitti viewed everything in a serious or rather tragical
light, threatening to poison herself, her husband and
even me if she was not permitted to continue our
intimacy, I, without hesitation, made my retreat,
promising her husband to visit her no more. She
has written to me since, but, according to agreement,
I sent her letter unopened to her husband, who has
obliged her to accompany him to his estate on the
banks of the Garonne. The report of her having
robbed her husband to pay the ^"5,000 I lost in
gaming at the Baroness's is the invention of some
envious, or malicious, rival or enemy. I paid this
debt the next day with assignats, of which you
(from whom I conceal nothing of my political or
financial affairs) shall easily be convinced. Such is
the historical and faithful account of the beginning,
progress, and fall of my empire in the Chauss6
d'Autin. As to her fury of a sister, I have forbid
her my house.

"You see, therefore, that this scandalous intrigue
has neither disgraced me as a lover, nor dishonoured
me as a gentleman. As a minister of peace, I am noi

TALLEYRAND igi

permitted to carry arms, and none but cowards attack
persons disarmed by accident, or by their station.
After this frank explanation, I hope that your door
is no longer shut, and that you are at home when
I call. Remember our Charles, and accept of him
as a mediator for past, a pacificator for present, and
a guarantee against future infidelity. In the burning
of my letters you have only done what I have re-
peatedly desired you. I never doubted that you would
remain an affectionate and sincere friend, though you
might cease to be the tender and complaisant mis-
tress. But it shall never more be my fault if those
two names do not continue inseparable for life. To-
morrow night I shall and will be with you. Embrace
our dear boy.'* »

The place of a French Ambassador in England
had been vacant since the death of the Marquis de
la Lucerne, in the summer of 1791, but the late Se-
cretary of the Embassy, M. de Barthelemy, acted as
a chargt d'affaires. Although he had sworn fidelity to
the late Constitution, his known moderation was,
however, much against his continuance in that capa-
city in this country, where the Jacobins wanted diplo-

f —

matic agents rather to plot and conspire than to

negotiate or pacify. He received, therefore, as a
kind of assistant, or rather a spy on his actions, an

IQ2 MEMOIRS OP

apostate abbe", Noel, who had for some time been a,
Jacobin emissary in Holland, an unprincipled atheist
and an audacious rebel, at once crafty and active in
his intrigues. Here he soon became intimate with
all the factions, directed their manoeuvres, and by
promises and bribes kept up their spirit of sedition.
But as his connections were only among the lower
classes of revolutionists, a gentleman was requisite,
who, from his birth as well as from his public cha-
racter, could claim admittance into superior society,
to hear the opinions and note the actions of persons
of property, eminence and rank. Talleyrand was by
most parties in France considered as a fit subject
for the office of a privileged conspirator in Great
Britain. His talents were known, his principles
avowed, and both were approved among his asso-
ciates. He had just added a fresh sprig to his
literary and political laurels by his fabrication of
a pretended answer of the Grand Vizier to the
British Ambassador at Constantinople, concerning the
offer made by England to adjust, as a mediator,
the differences between Turkey and Russia. This
paper, in its time, made a great noise, and created
no favourable opinion of our Administration, of
which the factious took advantage to publish the
most infamous insinuations against our national

TALLEYRAND jga

honour and dignity. They proclaimed it as authentic,
though justly and officially disowned by our ministers.
This singular note- verbal was as follows:1

"The Grand Signer wars for himself, and for him-
self makes peace. He can trust his own slaves, servants
and subjects; he knows their faith, has experienced
their virtue, and can rely upon their fidelity — a
virtue long since banished your corner of Europe.
If all other Christians tell truth, no reliance is to
be had on England ; she buys and sells all man-
kind. The Ottomans have no connection with your
King nor your country. We never sought for your
advice, your interference or friendship. We have no
minister, no agency, no correspondence with you.
For what reason do ye offer, then, to mediate for
us with Russia ? Why seek ye to serve an empire
of infidels, as ye call us Mussulmans? We want
not your friendship, aid or mediation. Your Vizier,
of whom you speak so highly, must have some
project of deception in view, some oppressive scheme
to amuse your nation, whom we are told are

I See La Faction d' Orleans Demasquee, pp. 40-41. In the note
it is said that Talleyrand boasted to Barnave of having composed
this fabrication in fifty minutes, in the presence of Baron de
Grimen, the late Russian charge d'affaires at Paris. It is added
that Catherine II. rewarded him afterwards for his labours with
a gold snuff-box set with diamonds, worth 1,000 louis d'or.
VOL. I 13

IQ4 MEMOIRS OF

credulous, servile, and adorers only of money.
Avarice, if we are well informed, is your chief
characteristic. You would sell and buy your God ;
money is your deity; and commerce is everything
with your ministry and with your nation. Come
ye, then, to sell us to Russia ? No, let us bargain
for ourselves. When fate has spun out the thread of
our good fortune, we must yield. What has been
decreed by God and the Prophet of men must and
will come to pass. We Ottomans know no finesse.
Duplicity and cunning are your Christian morals. We
are not ashamed to be honest, downright, plain and
faithful in our State maxims. If we fail in war, we
submit to the will of Heaven, decreed from the begin-
ning. We have long lived in splendour, the first
Power on earth ; and we glory in having triumphed for
ages over Christian infidelity and depravity, mixed
with all sorts of vice and hypocrisy. We adore
the God of Nature, and believe in Mahomet. You
neither believe in the God you pretend to worship,
nor in His Son, whom you call both your God
and your Prophet. What reliance can there be
placed on so sacrilegious a race ? You banish truth
as you do virtue from all your conduct and actions
with each other. Read the catalogue of the com-
plaints, manifestoes, declarations and remonstrances

TALLEYRAND 195

of all the Christian kings, monarchs and emperors
who have lived and warred with each other; you
find them all equally blasphemous, equally perfidious,
equally cruel, equally unjust and faithless to their
engagements. Did the Turk ever forfeit his promise,
word or honour ? Never ! Did ever a Christian
Power keep an engagement but while it suited his
own avarice or ambition? No! How then do you
think we are to trust you, a nation, at this moment
— if we are told truth — ruled by a perfidious Admin-
istration, without one grain of virtue to guide the
machine of State ? The Grand Signor has no public
intercourse with your Court ; he wants none, he wishes

for none. If you wish to remain here, either as a

•

spy, or, as you term yourself, an Ambassador from
your Court, you may live with those of other Chris-
tian nations while you demean yourself with propriety ;
but we want neither your aid by sea or land, nor your
counsels or mediation. I have no order to thank
you for you* offer, because it is by the Divan deemed
officious; nor have I any command to thank you for
the offer of your naval assistance, because it is what
the Porte never dreamed of admitting into our seas.
What you have to do with Russia we neither know
nor care ; our concerns with that Court we mean to

finish as suits ourselves and the maxim of our laws

13—2

ig6 MEMOIRS OF

and State policy. If you are not the most profli-
gate Christian nation, as you are said to be, you are,
undoubtedly, the foremost in presumption and effron-
tery, in offering to bring such a power as Russia to
terms, such as you and some other trivial Christians
united fancy yourselves equal to command. We
know better ; and therefore this effrontery of yours
amounts rather to audacity and to an imbecile
dictation, which must render your councils at home
mean and contemptible and your advice abroad un-
worthy of wisdom or attention from any Power, much
less the regard of the Porte, which on all occasions
wherein its ministers have listened to you has ex-
perienced evil, either in your designs or from your
ignorance. His Sublime Highness cannot, therefore,
be too much upon his guard against the attempts
and presumption of a nation so perfidious to the
interest of its subjects. But it is the usual way of
Christian princes to sell or cede over their subjects
to each other for money. Every peace made among
you, as we are informed, is made favourable to the
king that bribes most. The Ottoman Ministry have
too often and too long given ear to European
counsels, and as often as they did so they either
were betrayed, sold or deceived. Away, then, with
your interference for the Porte with Russia ! It has

TALLEYRAND I 97

been your aim to embroil all mankind, and after-
wards to profit by your perfidy. We ask not, want
not, and desire not your commerce, because our mer-
chants have been sacrificed to your double dealings.
You have no religion but gain. Avarice is your only
God; and the Christian faith you profess is but a
mask for your hypocrisy. We will hear no more
from you, therefore you are commanded to make no
reply." 1

Notwithstanding the approbation this performance
procured him among his associates, the Constitution
presented an insurmountable obstacle against his em-
ployment in a public character. It has already been
seen by his letters that, at the proposal of Brissot,
he had for some months been intriguing to procure
Chauvelin the appointment of Ambassador to the
Cabinet . of St. James's, and to accompany him as
an adviser, or, what was the same, to be the real
diplomatic agent, while Chauvelin was only a nominal
one. But by some means or other, Louis XVI. had
discovered that the latter had repaid his benefactions

i This curious paper was even read by a member- of the
Opposition in the House of Commons, on the 2gth of February,
1792, in support of his assertion that, so far from having grati-
fied our Ottoman friends with our efforts of mediation, they
regarded us with contempt and abhorrence I Since the fabricator
is now known, this assertion is at least left unsupported.

ig8 MEMOIRS OF

with the basest ingratitude, and was, in fact, the
dishonourable spy of the Republicans at his Court.
This caused some delay before the King would
nominate him a representative to the King of Great
Britain. Talleyrand writes on this head to his friend
on the 2nd of March :

" The patriots are betrayed as well as the aristo-
crats. I had to-day a long private conversation with
the King, during which I pressed him closely to fulfil
his promise in choosing Chauvelin for the diplomatic
post vacant in England. After a silence of ten
minutes, he asked, with some hesitation, ' Do you
know the man you recommend, and can you answer
for his fidelity?' Upon my declaration in the affirma-
tive, he said, sighing, and with tears in his eyes : ' You
are as much mistaken in him as I have been. He is
the most undutiful, and the most ungrateful of men.
He has long since been sold to my enemies, and has
taken advantage of my confidence in him to injure

*

me and those who are dear to me.' Expressing
my surprise at. such an assertion, and throwing out
some doubts as to the veracity of the information
he had received, he interrupted me, saying, ' I wish
to God that I was misinformed! The perfidy of
this man makes me almost detest my species and
nearly mistrust my own shade. But, unfortunately,

TALLEYRAND igg

I have convincing proofs of his unworthiness.' He
then related several circumstances, with which I was
previously well acquainted, and so are you, commu-
nicated and even exaggerated by Chauvelin in his
report to the Mayor. I then changed my language,
and insinuated that, if such was the case, his presence
at Court must be intolerable ; but since it would be
dangerous to disgrace or expose him publicly, policy
required to have him removed, as if nothing had been
discovered. This could best be done by advancing
him to a distant place, where I should take care of
and even answer for his demeanour, and where, if
he did no good, I could prevent him from doing
mischief. This assertion and observation made great
impression on Louis XVI., who took my hand, with
a frankness and goodness that made me really
feel for his deplorable situation and for the cruel
necessity of sacrificing so good a Prince for the
welfare and liberty of the nation, saying, 'Well, if
you will promise me never to lose sight of his trans-
actions, he shall be my minister in England, under
your guidance and responsibility. Your salary shall
at least be equal to his; and should I live till the
term expires, when you can accept of an appoint-
ment from me, you may depend upon succeeding him.
You may acquaint Chauvelin with his nomination, but

2OO MEMOIRS OF

that it must be kept secret until we see the turn
affairs take with the Emperor, and with the German
princes, whether we are to have peace or war on
the Continent.' I was not much at my ease during
this conversation, apprehensive lest the spy that had
informed against Chauvelin had also denounced me.
I have since seen Petion, and communicated to him
what I had heard. He suspects Danton ; but we
have agreed to let Chauvelin remain ignorant of our
discovery, for fear that this coward may, from real
weakness or pretended repentance, in his turn be
tempted to regain his lost favour and reputation by
deserting us, and disclosing all he knows, and more
than he knows. Should he visit you before he calls
on me, you may tell him the certainty of his promo-
tion ; but be careful not to throw out any hint con-
cerning the other part of the contents of this letter,
which, when you have read, throw into the fire im-
mediately. I expect you and your husband to dine
with me to-morrow, and our Charles is to be of the
party, as Dusseaux has promised to call in the after-
noon and give his opinion concerning his deafness."

Thus the unfortunate Louis XVI., encompassed
by perfidy, disclosed to one traitor the treachery of
another, and made the most criminal and artful of
the two his confidant and counsellor. If the sim-

TALLEYRAND 20 I

plicity of this Royal martyr deserves pity, abhorrence
and detestation are the only sentiments inspired by
the part which Talleyrand acted. In reading it, all
just and impartial men will be convinced that the in-
famous assassins of the National Convention, though
they condemned their virtuous Sovereign, were not
his only and exclusive murderers. Many members
of the Constituent Assembly merit equally to be stig-
matised as regicides, and the blood of innocence calls
as much for vengeance on their heads as on those
of the other rebels who shed it on the scaffold.

About this time the King was forced to select a
new Cabinet 'from among those who had been his
greatest enemies, and formed what is called the
Jacobin Administration. Talleyrand, the La Methes,
Barnave, and other secret counsellors in whom His
Majesty trusted, were, therefore, more consulted than
ever ; but as they were suspected by the Jacobins,
the night was the only time when they dared show
themselves at the Tuileries. Notwithstanding this
precaution, however, both their presence in the
palace, and frequently the very subject of their de-
liberations, were mentioned in the public prints.
This perfidious publicity Louis XVI. ascribed to
the indiscretion of inferior persons about his Court,
though, in fact, it originated from Talleyrand, who

202 MEMOIRS OP

every morning either saw Petion, or sent him regu-
lar reports of what was discussed. Every means,
therefore, employed secretly by the King to avoid
a rupture with the Emperor and the Empire were
communicated to and counteracted by his Jacobin
ministers, who breathed nothing but hostilities, and
employed aft their efforts in rendering an accom-
modation or explanation impossible; and on the 2oth
of March, war was declared against Francis II. as
King of Hungary and Bohemia, not having yet
succeeded his father, Leopold II., as chief of the
German Empire.

At the period when France was thus eager to
rush into war without a motive, anarchy prevailed
in every direction, and no class had sufficient mag-
nanimity to set the example, or sufficient authority
to enforce a better rule and system. The enemies
of the King and Queen had propagated such a series
of fictions respecting their principles and conduct,
that no explanation or evidence of their good inten-
tions could impress on the public a belief of their
inclination to regulate their conduct by the Consti-
tution. They were known to be deeply injured, and
it was perceived that they were not sufficiently de-
graded tamely to endure offensive familiarity and
nauseous insolence. It was, therefore, inferred that

TALLEYRAND 303

implacable revenge and treacherous projects must
occupy their thoughts. These suppositions and these
calumnies continually animated the fury of the
populace. Execrations of the King and Queen
were not confined to select parties or even to
promiscuous meetings; but their very residence was
chosen as the fittest spot for the utterance of the
grossest abuse, and for insulting those who retained
appearances of respect for the King and his family.
These atrocities were feelingly described by the Queen
in conversation with Dumourier : " I am quite dis-
consolate," she said ; " I dare no longer approach the
windows that look into the garden. Yesterday evening,
when I appeared at that opposite to the court to
breathe a little fresh air, a cannoneer of the National
Guard seized the opportunity to overwhelm me with
gross insults, adding, by way of conclusion, * What
pleasure it would give me to have your head stuck on the
point of my bayonet ! ' In this frightful garden you see
in one place a man mounted on a chair and reading
the most horrible calumnies against us in a loud tone
of voice; in another you perceive an officer or an
abbe dragged towards a basin of water, insulted, and
fainting from blows and wounds; and during all this
some play at football or walk about without the least
concern. What a habitation ! what a people 1 "

204 MEMOIRS OP

The members of the National Assembly, at the
same time, disgraced their sittings by outrageous
debates, unmanly reproaches and even manual de-
fiances. Unused to the regulations of superior life,
they knew of no restraining principle but force.
But these tumultuous senators were themselves
under the control of the galleries. For, as they
aimed only at popular acclamation, without any
expectation of respect, they were obliged to submit,
without resistance, to all the caprices of the mob,
who, without ceremony or restraint, overawed, con-
trolled or interrupted their proceedings. The clubs
and the rabble, knowing themselves to be the
sources of popularity and power, and dignified by
abject flatterers with the absurd title of the sovereign
people, knew no bounds to their insolence, and treated
with open contempt every effort of restraining them.
They were submissive only to the mandates of a few
factious leaders, who, by the distribution of money
and liquor, knew how to mould, impel and govern
them. The payment of taxes was entirely super-
seded; convoys of grain and specie, destined for the
supply of distant parts, were stopped and plundered
to satisfy the exigencies or avarice of those who had
been formerly relieved by the bounty of the great.
The freedom of worship was everywhere violated, and

TALLEYRAND 305

highwaymen and house-breakers, under the cloak of
patriots, crowded the high-roads and plundered the
persons and houses of the inoffensive or wealthy,
many of whom they afterwards murdered, hung to the
lamp-post, or quartered, under the pretence that they
were aristocrats. All cash had disappeared, and the
assignats, or Government securities, issued on the
credit of the lands of the Church, already circulated
at a loss of forty per cent. Business stagnated, both
for want of capital, safety and encouragement. Every
reasoning man, therefore, who speculated on the state
of France was convinced that nothing less than mad-
ness could impel a declaration of war amid domestic
weakness, discredit and disorder.

The issue of the first engagement of the revolu-
tionary armies seemed to confirm the justness of their
opinions; they did not perceive the deeply combined
plans of Talleyrand, Petion, Brissot, and other dema-
gogues. To all these the Constitution was odious,
because it retained a King, whom they had resolved
at least to depose, if not to annihilate his authority.
But they were too prudent to let their hatred of the
Constitution appear in their acts. That absurd farrago,
obtained at the expense of so much struggling and so
many sacrifices, was exhibited to the people as a great
acquisition, in rescuing liberty from the hands of pro-

2O6 MEMOIRS OF

tended despotism. A party, neither strong nor respect-
able, composed of those who had been the associates
of the chief framers of the Constitution, were its known
defenders; and the Legislature found it necessary to
swear to its maintenance till common sense was dis-
gusted with their ridiculously repeated adjurations.
The King, they knew, had made the Constitution
his study, and the rule of his practice. This
patriotic Prince had even learnt it by heart, and
applied it to the regulation of all his actions ; yet
the Republicans did not hesitate to raise clamours
against every act of the Sovereign which was
directed by that code. His nomination of ministers,
his conduct with respect to the declaration of war,
his exercise of the power commonly called the veto —
all these were made constant topics of public abuse,
calumny and libels. The defences of ministers,
though perfectly justified by the Constitution, were
not more favourably received by the Assembly; but
it was artfully contrived to praise and swear to de-
fend this ridiculous idol, while every objection to
its existence was studiously accumulated, and the
people impelled to actions and resolutions tending
to its inevitable destruction. Though Talleyrand
and most other rebels of any talents had shared
bountifully of the King's purse, the Civil List was

TALLEYRAND 307

also regarded with peculiar malevolence. The great
nation had learnt maxims of meanness by rote, and
exalted avarice into a virtue. Exclamations against
the enormous revenue reserved to the Crown were
always sure of a good reception, especially when
mingled with the endeavours of those who had
not yet been bribed to prove that liberty was be-
trayed by individuals already bribed out of this
envied Civil List.

Such was the situation of France, and such were

^
the plans of the parties that desolated the kingdom

when, on the ist of May, Louis XVI. publicly
appointed Chauvelin his minister in this country,
and Talleyrand his assistant. He wrote on that
occasion the following letter to our beloved Sove-
reign, the last His Majesty received from this
amiable Prince :

CONFIDENTIAL LETTER FROM THE KING OF THE FRENCH TO THB
KING OF ENGLAND.

PARIS, May ist, 1792.

SIR, MY BROTHER, — I send this letter by M. Chauvelin,
whom I have appointed my Minister Plenipotentiary at Your
Majesty's Court. I embrace this opportunity to express to
Your Majesty how sensible I am of all the public marks of
affection you have given me. I thank you for not having
become a party to the plans concerted against France by certain
Powers. From this, I see that you have formed a better judg-
ment of my true interests, and a more correct opinion of the
state of France. Between our two countries new connections

2O8 MEMOIRS OF

ought to take place. I think I see the remains of that rivalship
which has done so much mischief to both wearing daily away.
It becomes two Kings who have distinguished their reigns by a
constant desire to promote the happiness of their people, to unite
themselves by such ties as will appear to be durable, in pro-
portion as the two nations shall have clearer views of their own
interests. I have every reason to be satisfied with your Majesty's
Ambassador at my Court. If I do not give the same rank to
the minister whom I have sent to you, you will, nevertheless,
perceive that, by associating in the mission with him M. de Talleyrand,
who, by the letter of the Constitution, can sustain no public
character, If consider the success of the alliance, in which I wish
you to concur with as much zeal as I do, as of the highest im-
portance. I consider it as necessary to the stability of the respective
Constitutions, and to the internal tranquillity of our two kingdoms ;
and I will add, that our union ought to command peace to

Europe.

I am, your good Brother,

(Signed) Louis.1

Talleyrand, in a letter to his mistress of the 22nd
of May, containing the copy of the above, writes
that "it was composed by him, and copied, without
any change or remark, by the King, who had now
an unbounded confidence in his fidelity" " I am now so
busy," continues he, " with my preparations, and in
meditating on my several and opposite instructions,
from the Tuileries,1 from the Palais Royal,8 and from

i See La Correspondence d'Infames Emigres, <5<., vol. iv., p. 66.
In a note it is said that its authenticity is verified by Dumourier,
as the then Minister of the Foreign Department

a The King.

3 The Duke of Orleans.

TALLEYRAND 2Og

La Maine,1 that I have only time to pass some few
hours with you this evening, when I shall give you
two different sorts of ciphers for your use in writing
to me, and those different directions for continuing
with safety and without interruption our mutual
correspondence; therefore, take care to be at home
and alone to-night, and give your orders so that
nobody interrupts our tete-a-Ute. Send with the
bearer of mis the ^"20,000 in assignats I deposited
with you, and if you know any capitalists you de-
sire to oblige, tell them that I shall shortly be able
to place their money to the greatest advantage, but
they must determine before the day after to-morrow,
as I then intend to set out for England."

A French author,' on this letter, says that, ac-
cording to notes in the possession of the Committee
of Public Safety, the private instructions from the
King were such as might be expected from this un-
designing Sovereign. In proposing an alliance with
England, Talleyrand and Chauvelin were ordered
" not to listen to any proposals, accept of any plan,

1 Petion.

2 See La Faction d' Orleans Demasquee, 6*., p. 45 tt seq. Lt
Diable Boiteux Revolutionnaire, pp. 24-25, says that Talleyrand, in
going to England, had even offered his services to the anarchists
Danton, Marat and Robespierre, but, after some conferences, they
were not accepted.

VOL. I 14

210 MEMOIRS OF

or enter into any plots of the factious or seditious
in Great Britain that could there bring about those
scenes of horror produced by the Revolution in
France. They were to decline all communication
concerning the affairs of State, except with persons
in official situations. Even if overtures should be
made by any members of the Opposition, they should
prudently, and without giving offence, signify that
without further orders from France they were not
prepared or permitted to hear any suggestions un-
sanctioned by or offensive to the British Administra-
tion. They had a credit for ^"16,000, to pay the
salaries due to the secret agents employed by the
late French Ambassador, and for other occasional
and unavoidable occurrences. They could engage
no new agents at any higher salary than £250,
without first obtaining the permission of the Minister
of the Foreign Department. The strictest economy
was enjoined."

The private and secret instructions of the Duke
of Orleans, written by La Clos, recommended to
Talleyrand " to maintain a good understanding with
the P of , and the members of the Opposi-
tion, and of the Whig Club ; to follow their advice,
and to act according to their intimations and plans.
He was to insinuate to them the probability of the

TALLEYRAND 211

Duke being declared a Regent, or even proclaimed a
constitutional King of the French, in consequence of
the incapacity or perfidy of Louis XVI. In that
event, the Duke promised to assist them with all
his political influence, military forces, or pecuniary
resources, to bring about a change in the English
Administration or Constitution, congenial with, and
favourable to their wishes, wants and ambition.
Should he find them reluctant and mistrustful, he
was, with the assistance of his inferior agents,
to address himself to the popular leaders of the
different clubs and societies; inform them that the
Duke would accept of no other place in the French
Commonwealth than that of an elective President, as
in America; and that they might depend upon his
assistance to establish a republic in England,
formed, as in France, upon liberty and equality.
The Duke gave him a credit for ^"25,000, to be
used according to his own discretion. He was
desired to distribute money among the popular
favourites, for the purpose of celebrating with splen-
dour the glorious epochs of the French Revolution and
other patriotic feasts. He was to pay the expenses
of the journeys in England, or voyages to France, in-
curred by those men, or their agents, for the purpose

of propagation, for information, or from policy."

14— a

212 MEMOIRS OF

Petion's instructions for Talleyrand were composed
by Brissot and Roland. " He was, from these sans-
culottes, provided with a credit of ^"125,000 on the
Treasurer of the Committee of Insurrection, a member
of the Financial Committee of the National Assembly.
This money he was to employ in a manner best
suited to the views and attempts of the English
patriots, either in providing dep6ts of arms and
ammunition, or in rewarding authors for composing
works, sermons, addresses, pamphlets, speeches, songs,
plays, ballads, &c., in favour of liberty and equality.
He was to pay all the expenses of the popular
leaders at their meetings, in taverns, in clubs or
in committees, and what they laid out for their
travelling agents, their correspondents, &c. He was
to encourage the British patriots to enter into a sub-
scription for the expenses which the war of liberty
caused the French patriots in their resistance against
despotism, and on that account advance the principal
ones a certain sum, to be subscribed in their own names,
as an example for others. The most popular men,
who with patriotism possessed talents and probity, he
was to send over to Paris before the I4th of July
(1792), to deliberate in the united Gallo-Britannic
Convention with the French, as the representatives of
the English, Scotch and Irish Republics, on the best

TALLEYRAND

2I3

means to crush everywhere the triple aristocracy of
the Nobility, Clergy and the Capitalists, and to find
out the safest and most expeditious way to plant the
tree of liberty throughout the universe and to erect
the cap of equality upon the ruin of thrones and
altars ! He was ordered to reward with liberality all
agents in the British navy and army who preached
the heavenly doctrine of the Rights of Man and the
sacred tenets of insurrection. He was to spare no
expense in having translated and circulated in all
quarters, barracks and corps de gardes, on board all men-
of-war, and in houses of rendezvous, copies of those
popular addresses and songs that in 1789 electrified
the military in France. He should try to find out
and to instruct some female patriots or enthusiasts
who, from their personal charms, amiable zeal or
natural capacity, could possibly make the greatest
impression among the soldiers and sailors. He was
to employ them constantly, and always to pay them
liberally, either as secret propagators, literary pedlars,
ballad singers, or under any other suitable, unsuspected
and useful avocation. Even those most distinguished
he might establish in purchasing for them those
public-houses chiefly resorted to by the military,
not only in London, but in all seaports or towns
where the garrisons were numerous. Besides the

2X4 MEMOIRS OF

Argus, already in the service and pay of the
French patriots, he was to purchase or set up
other newspapers in London, Edinburgh, Dublin,
Birmingham, Sheffield, Manchester, Glasgow, Not-
tingham, Leeds, Norwich, and other manufac-
turing towns or populous cities. These papers might,
to a certain extent, and when containing anything
particularly striking, be distributed gratis among
the lower classes and in public-houses frequented
by them. These papers are instructed to palliate the
mistaken or exaggerated zeal of some patriots, and
to exculpate the bloody scenes of well-meaning but
misled patriotism; they were to contradict every-
thing published by aristocrats against liberty and
the sovereignty of the people; they were particu-
larly intended to disseminate those opinions which
in France have produced such surprising events and
such fortunate effects. At all times, and on all
occasions, the example of France was to be held
up to admiration and imitation. In this, as well as
in everything else, especially if any depots of arms
and ammunition, &c., are formed, Beaumarchais
would be of great utility and service. As, however,
during the existence of Capet (Louis XVI.) Talley-
rand was to avoid giving umbrage to the English
aristocrats, he was, besides Beaumarchais, Noel,

TALLEYRAND jjjtj

Chaubert, Audibert and Danoux, to employ and
direct in the most perilous enterprises other inferior
English, Scotch or Irish agents recommended to
him by the chief patriots of these countries. Should
he, nevertheless, be discovered or disgraced before
the great blow was struck, he might depend upon
the powerful protection of the patriots in France.
Should the credit he possesses be insufficient for
all expenses, he was to call on those French
patriots in England or Holland who, with the per-
mission of the Republican Executive Council at Paris,
had established manufactories of forged assignats in
these countries, and they would remit to him good
bills to any amount."1

i Some of these French patriots, after the disgrace of their
principals at Paris, from forgers of assignats became staunch
Royalists, and pretended to have been employed by the Bour-
bons and the English Ministry. Among their accomplices and
Talleyrand's most active travelling agents was Achilles Charles
Audibert, from Calais. This man spoke good English, and was sent
with all confidential communications to all the different seditious
societies in Great Britain. When in August, 1792, a convention
was decreed, he went to Calais and got Thomas Paine elected
a member of the French Convention, and in the next month,
after being pelted at Dover, carried this rebel safe to Paris.
There, in conformity to Talleyrand's orders, he joined some other
patriots in the robbery of the King's Garde de Meubles. With
part of this plunder he went to Hamburg in 1795, and com-
menced business as a merchant. In 1799, after taking in several
loyal and rich houses — for the most part English — to the amount

2l6 MEMOIRS OF

The same author remarks: "Such were Talley
rand's adroitness and cunning that, notwithstanding
his activity in England, voyages to France, and in-
trigues with all parties of both countries, he was not
suspected or accused of any double or unfair dealings
until the authority of the King had been annihilated
by the Republicans, the Duke of Orleans disgraced,
and his faction dissolved by them, and in their turn
the Republicans had been proscribed by the Jacobins
and anarchists; or when, from the destruction or im-
potence of his employers, and his own absence from
France with their capitals, secrets and plans, he had
nothing either to hope or to fear from the Reign of
Terror which he, together with them, had prepared."

He had not been in England much more than a
fortnight when, on the 24th of May, he wrote to his
mistress, complaining both of the English democrats
and aristocrats — of the former for their avarice and
want of principle, and of the latter for their haughti-

of £10,000, he made a fraudulent bankruptcy and absconded.
His name, after being burnt by the hands of the common execu-
tioner, is now affixed to the pillory on the 'Change at Hamburg.
This short narrative of one of Talleyrand's agents may justly be
applied to many of them. In 1801 this very villain was again
employed by him and sent to Canada to stir up a rebellion there.
In 1793 he was one of the first foreigners ordered out of this
kingdom after the Alien Bill had passed. — See Let Intrigues de
Ck. M. Talleyrand (Neufchatel, 1801), p. 98.

TALLEYRAND

2I7

ness and want of good behaviour. He found his recep-
tion here very different indeed from what he expected
from Petion's boastings and exertions. Though for-
merly acquainted in France with several English
gentlemen of rank and property, he was, on presenting
himself to them here, either received with coolness,
neglect or contempt. This demeanour he ascribed to
national insolence, pride or ingratitude; but it was a
just and an honourable indignation against a bishop
who had become an apostate, and against a nobleman
who was now a rebel and an associate with the
rabble.

" Either," writes he, " Petion is imposed upon,
or has imposed upon me. By men of birth and
eminence, the French Revolution is far from being
approved, or its chief actors applauded, in England.
It is not comprehended by them ; they see nothing
but its inevitable crimes, and forget its certain and
innumerable future benefits. Was it not known to
me that the English nobility and gentry are as
forgetful and insolent towards foreigners visiting their
country as they are presumptuous and full of im-
pertinent pretensions to civilities when abroad, I
should suppose that the part I have acted these
last three years deserved the disrespect and hauteur —
to say no worse — experienced by me in calling on

2l8 MEMOIRS OF

persons to whom I behaved very differently when
in France.

" If Petion, in his brilliant account of his recep-
tion here, meant his reception among the English
patriots, the society and discourses of these in-
terested and selfish but grave and pedantic raga-
. muffins may please him, being nearly as elegant and
amiable as those he frequented and admired at
Chartres,1 but to me they are intolerably insupport-
able. I am very sorry to say, but so it is, that the
friends of liberty here are of the same description
with most of our own. Pursued by creditors they
are unable to pay, tormented by an ambition they
cannot gratify, or trembling for the laws of their
country which they have offended, they cover them-
selves, their passions, their fears and their sins with
the cloak of patriotism, and speak of reducing a rank
they can never approach, to dispose of a property
to which they have no right, and to protect a Con-
stitution with the ruins of which they intend to
elevate and enrich themselves.

" This language, you may think, is that of an
aristocrat ; but, indeed, since my arrival here every-
thing has concurred to vex, fret and perplex me.

x Before the Revolution, Petion was a ruined pettifogging
attorney of the town of Chartres.

TALLEYRAND 2ig

Of fifty the most popular patriots — the oracles of
newspapers, the toasts of taverns and the heroes of
clubs — who have waited on me, or whom I have met
elsewhere, there was not one who did not begin his
conversation with relating his disinterestedness, prais-
ing his great zeal and extolling his great services in
the cause of liberty, but who did not also finish by
announcing his great distress, complaining of his
great losses and demanding great sums of money.
From what I comprehend of the reports of my sub-
altern agents, the spirit ol avarice and corruption is
very general among the inferior classes of the English
patriots, either because they really are beggars, and,
for want of another, have made liberty their trade,
or on account of their innate and national thirst after
gain, even in the noblest undertaking, or for the most
generous achievements.

"As to the English ministers, they are reserved,
stiff, and distant, either from fear of discovering their
own ignorance or weakness, or from dreading my
penetration, or disliking my principles. Of the Oppo-
sition members I have not yet seen many, and none
without witness. They behave with more cordiality
than ministers, and with less meanness than the pa-
triots. I am, however, told that they are in their
own opinions as consequential, vain and ambitious

22O MEMOIRS OP

as the former, and in their domestic affairs as de-
ranged, involved and necessitous as the latter. The
only consolation I have for these and other unplea-
sant occurrences is, that from my situation and in-
formation I am enabled to speculate in the public
funds with advantage, and, at the expense of this
covetous nation, enrich myself and my friends.1
Should Petion visit you, complain much of not
hearing from me. My letter to him is both short
and laconic. Repeat the same complaint if anyone
from the Tuileries or Palais Royal calls on you. Ask,
with nonchalance, whether Chauvelin has written, and
how he likes his place. He has finished three
letters for France to-day. I am ignorant both of
their contents and to whom they are addressed.
Should I not, before they are sent away, discover
it, in which case I shall add a postscript, you must
try, with the assistance of those trusty and useful per-
sons to whom I recommended you at my departure,
to obtain the necessary intelligence. Our plenipoten-
tiary is certainly one of the greatest fools God ever
created or Nature ever produced ; but asses are often
mischievous, and always more malicious than lions.

x Journal des Jacobins of the I3th July, 1793, states that
from May to December, 1792, Talleyrand gained by stock-
jobbing in Eng'and £82.000.

TALLEYRAND 221

"P.S. — I have just intercepted the letters, and
read them. They were addressed to Roland, La
Porte and Robespierre. Ah, traitor ! he, too, has
his secret instructions, and is audacious enough to
prefer complaints against me for my want of com-
plaisance and generosity towards the patriots, and of
candour towards him. But patience, and, above all,
discretion." 1

This interesting letter requires little or no com-
mentary. It shows that, without any public or
privileged character, Talleyrand here audaciously
violated not only the laws of nations but those of
hospitality, and that, in betraying to rebels the
confidence of the King of France, he conspired here
with traitors against the throne ol the King of
Great Britain. This is the man who, in an official
situation, has lately dared to advise his tyrant Bona-
parte to accuse a Drake, and to seize a Rumbold,

I La Correspondence d'Inf antes Emigres, vol. iv., p. 84 et seq.
By English patriots Talleyrand means the seditious leaders or
members of the Corresponding and other revolutionary societies.
To call a man in France a patriot or philosopher, is now
synonymous with calling him a robber, a murderer and an
atheist ! Every brigand since the Revolution has usurped in
France the name of a patriot or philosopher. An age must pass
away before either of the above words can resume there Us
pristine honour.

222 MEMOIRS OF

as violators of the laws of nations! This is the
grand vizier of a Corsican sultan who has lately
signed an insolent firman pronouncing a political
interdiction and revolutionary proscription against all
British political agents on the Continent, under the
supposition that they corresponded with some loyal
and dutiful subjects in France who are desirous to
restore to the Bourbons their throne, Frenchmen
their honour, rights and liberty, and the world its
long -lost tranquillity, by removing its scourge — a
foreign usurper.

The horrors of the situation of Louis XVI. and
the Royal Family increased about this period daily,
and almost hourly. Their sufferings were not con-
fined to insults from the savage licentiousness of
the multitude: they were even hindered in their own
apartments from receiving those who would have
been agreeable to them, and were compelled to
endure the presence of persons employed as spies
on their conduct who were not even endowed with
sufficient address to conceal their odious mission.
Many of these insults were doubtless contrived in
hopes of forcing the King again to quit the capital,
and, by abdicating the crown, leave the plan of a
new government to the struggle of factions and the
decision of chance. The Jacobins would not in all

TALLEYRAND 22$

probability have impeded his journey, since Petion
and Manuel frequently remonstrated with him on
the dangers he incurred by remaining, and proffered
means of escape. But Louis had studied the Con-
stitution with the honest view of guiding himself
entirely by its sanctions, and could not resolve by
his own act to be anything less than King of the
French. Some measures were suggested, and occa-
sionally practised by his friends, for purchasing,
dividing or misleading his enemies ; but these were
only expedients resorted to for momentary purposes
and abandoned or disclaimed after a short experi-
ment. They were temporary barriers against a
partial irruption, while the swelling tide of Jacobin-
ism, gathering and roaring on every side, threatened
the inevitable destruction of monarchy and the
Constitution.

Either to assist in the new revolution which
Petion and his accomplices were preparing in
France, or to deliberate on the means of effecting
a revolution in this country, several of the factious
English, with whom, during his stay in London,
he had been connected the year before, were, with
their friends, invited by him to Paris, in the
beginning of June, 1792, and Talleyrand had orders
to advance money for the expenses of those who

924 MEMOIRS OF

demanded it. He wrote on this subject to his
female friend, under date the 6th of June :

" Petion has given me a commission which is not
so easy to execute as he imagines. I am to pay
some of the patriots here their expenses to Paris,
where they are convoked to discuss some affairs of
great moment to both countries. Any person may
for £5 travel in the diligence from the English to
the French capital; but though I have offered them
twenty guineas each, they are hot contented. None
will take less than one hundred guineas, and some
even have the modesty to require two hundred.
Most of these patriots are, however, miserable
adventurers or vagabonds, accustomed chiefly to
ramble on foot, or to ride in waggons, and who
never before in their lives possessed ten guineas
they could call their own. By attending to my
duty of economising with the purse of the nation,
I am well aware that I have gained their hatred,
and perhaps the suspicion of the French patriots
of not being hearty in their cause. My country-
men are but little acquainted with the egotism and
avarice of their fellow -labourers of Great Britain.
Rapacious as many of our friends of liberty have un-
fortunately been, they may nevertheless be considered
as perfectly disinterested compared with those of this

TALLEYRAND 325

country, where it may truly be said, ' Point d'argent,
point de patriotisme.' When, after long and disgust-
ing debates, I had been able to satisfy their demands
as to travelling expenses, they insisted on being paid
before they set out all sums pretended to be due to
them for services already performed. Although I
began to be accustomed to their exorbitant charges,
these patriotic bills really went beyond my highest
expectations. One asks fifty guineas for having com-
posed a patriotic hand-bill of sixty lines; a second,
one hundred guineas for having invented ten patriotic
toasts ; a third, one hundred and fifty guineas for
having written twelve patriotic songs; a fourth, two
hundred guineas for three months' expenses at the
theatres to applaud patriotic sentences and airs and
to hiss aristocratic expressions and ' God save the
King'; and a fifth, three hundred guineas for nine
patriotic speeches, which I am almost certain was at
the rate of half-a-crown for each word; with hundreds
of other charges equally impertinent and extravagant.
Being informed, upon my refusal to satisfy these
enormous demands, that these friends of liberty
would make free with their travelling expenses
without leaving London, I was finally obliged to
submit to their patriotic impositions. I must, at the

same time, do them the justice to say that they
VOL. i 15

226 MEMOIRS OF

have not entered into any combination to plunder me,
or if they have, they are as faithless to each other as
they are troublesome to me, because there is hardly
one of them who has not warned me against the
roguish character of his comrades, in such a manner
that I know most of the particulars of their lives,
the secret history of which would form no unfit
addition to the annals of our Bicetre,1 or of their
Newgate.

" You will, perhaps, again say that I have caught
the malady of this country, and ask me why I employ
such infamous men in the honourable cause of free-
dom. But, without spleen, I assert that their moral
depravity and turpitude will no more hurt the cause
of liberty in England than the vices and crimes of
many Frenchmen have injured it in France. Such
desperadoes are absolutely necessary, as the forlorn-
hopes, in convulsions of States. It was neither
Mirabeau, Orleans, La Fayette, nor myself, who, on
the J4th of ^uly, 1789, took the Bastille and cut off
the head of the Governor; nor was it any of us or of
our friends, who, on the 6th of October, murdered the
King's gardes de corps, carried their heads on pikes,

I Bicetre, near Paris, is a prison for all persons judged in-
corrigibly wicked, and a mad-house for persons supposed to be
incurably mad.

TALLEYRAND 227

ate their hearts, and forced the Royal Family, after
witnessing these scenes, to Paris ; but without these
catastrophes and acts of terror, a revolution would
never have taken place, and I, as well as many
other pure patriots, should be now living in gaols, or
already have expired under the gallows. As to my
calling these men the chiefs or leaders of the English
patriots, they are, as presidents, members, or secre-
taries of their secret revolutionary committees, or
as speakers, subscribers, or toast-masters at their
fraternal assemblies or public feasts, the visible ones,
being mostly persons in ruined circumstances ; and
having nothing but lives hardly worth preserving, or
already forfeited, to lose, they present themselves in
the advanced guard to receive the fury of the first
fire of the aristocrats ; but when they have once vic-
toriously achieved their undertakings, and the colours
of liberty are erected on the ruins of the Tower
of London, as well as on those of the Bastille at
Paris, many respectable patriots, now in the rear or
behind the curtain, will step forward and declare
themselves the protectors and restorers of their
country's freedom and of the rights of their country-
men. Everything is indeed ripe for a revolution
here; but as the well-organised slavery of the
English people has very much the resemblance

15—2

228 MEMOIRS OF

of genuine liberty, it requires many more different
manoeuvres here to bring about what the patriots
have agreed to call a reform than were used to
produce a revolution and overthrow in France. To
a people of our quick and lively, amiable and grert
character, the impulse of a moment is sufficient to
effect great changes. But the English, like the
Batavians, must patiently be wound up like clock-
work ; but when once set agoing, they will not stop
till they strike vigorously — and then the devil him-
self cannot arrest them from proceeding to the most
sanguinary extremes, which made Voltaire acutely
write that 'executioners would have been the best
English historians.' •

" I have, at last, ventured to give Petion my
opinion of the English patriots, what may be ex-
pected from their activity here, and in what respects
their presence can be useful in France ; you may,
therefore, inform him, when he sees you, that you
had some lines from me, but that / am already
infected with the English spleen, or that something
vexes me. Ask him if he knows what it is, and
beg him to acquaint you with it, that you may scold
me, or send me some consolation. Should he men-
tion the arrival of the English patriots, invite your-
self to dine with them at his house, and I am

TALLEYRAND 229

much mistaken, whether, with all their vanity,
pedantry and affectation, you will not find them
mere caricatures of those patriots which your
imagination pictures to you as destined by Nature,
education and talents to regenerate mankind.
Remember, however, what I have stated before,
that these patriots are merely clumsy copies, held
out as butts to prevent the valuable originals from
being prematurejy and unnecessarily sacrificed.
When any of the King's,1 or of the Duke's,*
friends call on you, continue to complain of not
hearing from me. Enquire, with unaffected uneasiness,
whether anything disagreeable has happened to me,
or whether I or Chauvelin have written to them, and
how they are satisfied with us. I say this because
Chauvelin is now entirely subjected to my exclusive
dictates, having discovered a part, and obliged him
to give up the remainder, of his secret instructions
from the Court as well as from the Jacobins. I have
in my hands the greatest possible, if not the only
security for the faith of a villain — his ruin. You
may, therefore, communicate, to me without danger
all rumours or reports concerning us both, with your
ideas of removing unfavourable stories and circulating

i Louis XVI.

a The Duke of Orleans.

230 MEMOIRS OF

those which are advantageous to our plans, interest
and mission.

" From want of time and opportunity I have not
yet been able to form any just opinion of the English
ministers. That they possess abilities and honesty I
begin to believe, because their enemies would other-
wise expose both their ignorance and their corruption;
besides, they are too well paid by their country to
be rogues. I think that I have penetrated into the
secrets of many members of the Opposition, and find
that they only want places and pensions to be as
honest and dutiful subjects as the ministers. But in
all countries disappointed ambition, merciless bailiffs,
empty purses, or aching stomachs are terrible incite-
ments to declaim against Courts, to speak of reform,
or to plot revolutions."

A French work, often quoted, thus describes the
arrival of the English and German patriots at Paris,
their acts of patriotism during their stay, and the
patriotic relics they carried away with them at their
departure :

" Since the Constituent Assembly had, just be-
fore the first federation in 1790, put in requisi-
tion the literary adventurers and social outlaws of
every country on the globe to present themselves at
its bar and congratulate it in so many different

TALLEYRAND 331

languages on its glorious labours to restore to
nations their long-lost liberty, a laudable emulation
took place between the constitutional authorities and
the anti-constitutional clubs which should be foremost
in inviting foreign patriots to their fraternal banquets.
English highwaymen, Spanish pickpockets, Italian
galley slaves, and German house-breakers, after
sharing the embraces of our wealthy patriots, soon
via.de free with their plate and their pockets, and
after crowding our patriotic societies, finished by
crowding our gaols, our hulks and our scaffolds.
These palpable errors, instead of correcting the mania
of our revolutionary propagators, served only to in-
crease it, particularly with regard to England and
Germany. In June, 1792, Talleyrand imported from
the latter country an Anarcharsis Cloots; from the
former, numerous patriotic contraband commodities.
The diligences from Calais and from Strasburg were
for several weeks so completely filled with these
votaries of liberty and equality that they literally
groaned under the weight of their patriotic burdens.
Some of them broke down in consequence, and many
valuable limbs of these precious members of society
were injured, and they became pensioners of the great
nation before they had fought for her dearly-bought
liberty. According to the registers of the municipality

232 MEMOIRS OF

at Calais, the patriotic cargo of one single packet-boat
consisted of ten bankrupt merchants, two pilloried
booksellers, and six pilloried printers ; fifteen ex-
attorneys struck off the rolls, twelve friends of liberty
escaped from the hulks, nine active citizens from
Botany Bay, twenty -three released inhabitants of
Newgate and Bridewell, and thirteen coiners from
Rag Fair, amounting, in the whole, to ninety-two
citizens — brothers and friends of our legislators and
clubbists. The importations from Germany were still
more numerous and more select. Not a gaol from
Vienna to Copenhagen, not a university from Pres-
burgh, in Hungary, to Kehl, in Holstein, but fur-
nished some of their philosophers as representatives
to the great nation, either in citizens oppressed or ill-
used by the tyrant laws of their respective countries,
or in half-learned pedants or pedantic sophists who
had clearly proved the uselessness, and even dangers,
of all laws, human or Divine."

Some of these friends of liberty, after their arrival
at Paris, were billeted on wealthy aristocrats, others
on aspiring sans -culottes, some in the rich suburbs of
St. Honor6 and St. Germain, others in the poor and
patriotic suburbs of St. Antoine and St. Marceau,
some with the gay ladies of the Palais Royal, others
with the grave magistrates of La Marais; several

TALLEYRAND 333

chosen revolutionists, especially recommended by
Talleyrand, were lodged with our grave Mayor,
the honest Petion himself, at the head-quarters of
insurrection, conspiracy and rebellion. All their
names in a few days decorated the bloody pages
of the list of Jacobins and Cordeliers. At both
these clubs they were received, ' applauded and
admired, though they could not pretend to the
gift of tongues — hardly any of them understanding
or speaking any other than their native language.
A specimen of the degraded situation of France at
that terrible period, and of the success of imposture,
impudence and fanaticism, the following faithful and
not exaggerated anecdote evinces : " On the lyth
of June1 several foreign patriots of different nations
dined with Danton ; at six o'clock in the evening they
adjourned to the Club of the Cordeliers, their spirits
exhilarated with the fumes of champagne from the
cellars of the Duke of Orleans. One of them,
an Irishman, who had a great opinion of his elo-
quence and of his perfection in the French language,
ascended the tribune with intent to move the
immediate deposition of the King, which was then
the order of the day in the National Assembly
as well as at the clubs. The day was very hot
and the club unusually crowded; and, as he was

234 MEMOIRS OF

decorated with a woollen cap, he perspired profusely.
Being not only awkward in his manners, but
disfigured in his person, he rather excited pity and
disgust than laughter or curiosity. He began, how-
ever, boldly in French, « Fr£res et amis ! ' (brothers
and friends), but these were the only words that
could possibly be understood by the audience, the
remainder of his speech being neither French nor
English, but a jargon unintelligible, most probably,
even to himself. Notwithstanding this dilemma, he
occupied the tribune for nearly an hour; but, as he
took care to heighten his voice in exclaiming
' Liberty ! liberty ! ' every four or five minutes, or
as often as he saw the galleries were inclined to
murmur, he went on, uninterrupted with anything
but 'huzzas!' and 'bravoesl' When ascending the
tribune, the president, the butcher Le Gendre, gave
him the fraternal hug, and honourable mention was
made 01 his speech in the proces-verbal. But to
crown the whole, a matron in the gallery, an active
female citizen who kept a brothel in the Rue du
Th6atre Fra^ois, publicly invited the strange citizen
and his countrymen to her house. Her patriotic offer
was accepted with loud acclamations ; and, upon
the motion of Hebert, the Club of the Cordeliers
with unanimity decreed that the female citizen,

TALLEYRAND

Bertrand, had deserved well of her country for her
hospitality."1

For several days afterwards, and until the firmness
of Louis XVI. on the soth of June had disappointed
their united machinations, these foreigners wandered
about the streets of Paris with their red caps, instead
of hats, to the amusement of the sans -culottes and
to the scandal of the good and loyal. The principal
object of their extraordinary convocation was to agree
on a plan of a universal republic; and these vaga-
bonds had the audacity to deliberate on and to settle
the future governments of their respective countries,
as if deputed with the general approbation and un-
limited power of all the people upon earth. Previous
to their departure they made some inestimable collec-
tions of revolutionary relics, which, no doubt, still
decorate the dens, night-cellars or garrets of patriotic
amateurs or sainted patriots. Some loaded their knap-
sacks with chains, keys, stones, or bricks of the

I In a note in La Faction d 'Orleans Demasquie, p. 57, the
author says: "It would b_ave been curious to know what recep-
tion a French patriot would meet with were he to attempt, in un-
intelligible English, to harangue a society of English patriots of
the Whig or other clubs, at the London Tavern or at the Crown
and Anchor, for an hour's time? Most probably, in less than
five minutes, they would have silenced him by throwing him
through the window into the street, as he deserved. Even the
English patriots have more sense than oars I"

236 MEMOIRS OF

Bastille; others carried away with them branches of
the first tree of liberty — the hairs of the poisoned
Mirabeau and of the murdered garde df corps of the
King. The staunchest of them bought, at a great
price, and brought home with them, a part of the
pickled heart of Flessiere, the provost of the mer-
chants, and the dried ears of De Launey, the governor
of the Bastille. All, even those who had no change
of linen, were provided with changes of red caps and
national cockades, and had been presented with the
newest editions of the Rights of Man and with the
new catechism of the Jacobin propaganda.1

Though Talleyrand had agreed to the necessity
of murdering the King, he strenuously recommended
that the crime should be perpetrated by the sudden
stab of an individual assassin, and not by the judicial
sentence of a national tribunal. He had converted
to the same opinion the English patriots who went
to Paris, and they, in their turn, under expectation
of preventing future generations from celebrating
King Louis' martyrdom in France, as this nation
does King Charles's in England, gained over Petion,

i In another note of the last-named work it is stated that " the
English as well as the German patriots, as an evidence of their
patriotism, travelled home the whole way from Paris with red
caps on their heads, to the no small entertainment of postillions
and chamber-maids."

TALLEYRAND 337

Brissot and other Republican leaders. This regicide
act could, agreeably to their views, best and safest
be committed in the confusion of a popular com-
motion, which was therefore resolved on, and the day
fixed for the aoth of June. Four days before, the
workmen of the suburbs of St. Antoine and St.
Marceau had announced it by a petition to the muni-
cipality requesting leave to assemble in arms, and,
accoutred as they were when they took the Bastille
in July, 1789, to present petitions to the Assembly
and the King. This proposal was negatived as re-
pugnant to the Constitution ; but the Jacobin Club,
abetted by Petion and Manuel, resolved that the
petitioners should assemble in defiance of contra-
diction. This tumultuous rising was also the grand
effort of all the factions, and was prepared with all
their art and exertion. The walls were covered with
placards grossly abusing the Royal Family. A public
dinner was given in the Champs Elysees, where the
Prussian Baron Cloots presided, and the actor
Dugazon sang songs to prepare the people for the
destruction of the King. Gorsas, the editor of a
Jacobin journal, in the service of Brissot, and a secret
agent of Talleyrand, declared that on that day the
sovereign people must plant in the gardens of the
Tuileries, as the tree of liberty, an aspen instead of

238 MEMOIRS OF

an oak; and the apostate capuchin Chabot harangued
for three hours in the Church of the Foundlings,
exciting the people to insurrection ; while Santerre
was equally busy in the suburb St. Antoine, and other
persons in various other districts of Paris. On the
morning of the 2oth, Petion sought to avoid respon-
sibility by going to Versailles, under pretence of show-
ing that place to his guests, the English patriots.
Roederer, the general secretary of the department,
announced to the National Assembly that 100,000
persons, in military array, who were collected on the
site of the Bastille, encouraged by the presence of
three members of the Legislature and the inactivity of
the municipality, intended, after presenting a petition
in that hall, to repair to the Palace of the Tuileries ;
and he requested the enforcement of the law by
prohibiting the admission of armed petitioners.

During the debate the mob required admission,
and obtained it by promising that they would leave
their petition with the Assembly and not proceed to
the Palace. One Huguenin,1 formerly a provincial
lawyer, and at that time married to a woman who
kept a house of ill fame, read the petition, which was

I This Huguenin made himself the mayor of the insurgent
municipality on the loth of August, 1792, and during a fortnight
plundered ^250,000 hi the palaces of the King and of the emigrated
nobles. He is now one of Bonaparte's privy counsellors, and big

TALLEYRAND 239

replete with threats and invectives against the King
and Queen, and declared that the sovereign people
had risen to avenge their outraged majesty, and blood
must flow before the tree of liberty would flourish
in peace. Two hours were then occupied by the
petitioners marching through the hall. They were
a motley and squalid band, drawn from all the
receptacles of beggary, idleness, prostitution and
infamy in Paris, armed with pikes, rusty swords, pick-
axes and clubs. This miserable battalion consisted
of coal-men, chimney-sweepers, shoe-blacks, wharf-
porters, negroes male and female, and women of the
lowest and most abandoned class. They carried en-
signs, with inscriptions denoting sanguinary ferocity,
occasionally intermixed with coarse ribaldry. Some
were inscribed, " Tyrants, tremble ! or be just and
repair the liberties of the people," " Louis, the
sovereign people are tired of suffering — tremble,
tyrant, thine hour is come ! " and " Thou Austrian
wh— — e, Marie Antoinette, we want thine head on
a pike." One man had a reeking human heart stuck
on the point of a sword, inscribed, " The heart of
an aristocrat " ; one carried ragged breeches on a

wife has her grand routs frequented by all the fashionables, even
the Imperial Corsicans. By other plunders, he is now enriched to
the amount of £600,000. — Les Nouvelbs d la Main, Brumaire, year 13.
No. iii

240 MEMOIRS OF

pike, inscribed, " Libres et sans-culottes," while
others stuck on their arms pieces of bread, cheese
and other food. At the close of the procession, a
pair of colours, with the inscription " Death to all
aristocrats ! " were presented to the Assembly, and
were graciously received.

On leaving the polluted hall of the Legislature
the mob divided into three bodies, headed by the
bankrupt brewer Santerre, by the swindler Saint-
Huruge, and by the prostitute Theroigne de Men-
court. Regardless of their promise, they proceeded to
the Palace. The King, who had from a window
observed their proceedings, repaired to a chamber
called the CEil - de - Boeuf, the door of which was
immediately assailed with various engines, and, among
others, with a dismounted cannon, which was carried
upstairs by main strength and used as a battering-
ram. The Swiss Guards were preparing to shed
their blood in an unavailing defence, but the King
commanded them to desist, and calling four grena-
diers to support him, unbarred the door, and pre-
sented himself to the furious multitude. His friends,
fearing he would be borne down by the rapidity and
violence of the rabble, placed him in the recess of a
window. The mob was so numerous and poured in
so rapidly, that no one could effect any premeditated

TALLEYRAND 2^1

purpose ; but after venting a portion of fury in words
and menacing gestures, was obliged to give place to
others. Yet many pointed insults were offered. Le
Gendre, the butcher, sallied into the room, at the
head of a new division of rabble, uttering threats,
and accosting the Monarch in the language of the
shambles : " Monsieur," said he, and seeing the King
surprised at this new style, he repeated it: "Yes,
Monsieur, listen to us — yes, Monsieur, it is your duty
to listen to us; you are a traitor; you have always
deceived us, and deceive us still; but take care of
yourself, Monsieur, the measure is full, and the
people are tired of being your dupes." After this
harangue, one of the mob presented a bottle and
desired the King to drink the health of the nation,
which he immediately did; another, evidently in
liquor, and hearing the King say that the nation had
no better friend than himself, required him to prove it
by putting on the red cap; and on his consenting,
two of them placed it on the top of his hair, for it
was too small for his head. The King yielded to
this indignity under a firm persuasion that, had he
resisted, the drunken man would have plunged his
pike into his bowels. No doubt can be entertained —
indeed, it is avowed by writers of every party — that
the intention of the insurgents was, as has already
VOL. i 16

242 MEMOIRS OF

been stated, to assassinate the King. But, although
the most infamous libels were hawked about and sold
at a low price in the gardens of the Palace, and
the most treasonable and inflammatory falsehoods
scratched and chalked on the walls, the work of
murder was left incomplete, and his virtue, for the
last time, triumphed over the plots of his enemies.

As usual, since the Revolution, great part of the
popular rage was directed against the Queen. On
the first alarm she caught up the Dauphin in her
arms and ran towards the CEil-de-Bo2uf, but the
mob had already blocked up the passages ; she was
stopped in the council-room by General \Vittinghoff,
and the minister La Jarre, who formed a feeble ram-
part of the council-table, behind which they placed
the Queen, the Dauphin, the Princess Royal, and all
the ladies who refused to quit her side. There the
Queen was obliged to remain during the whole of
these horrible scenes, agonised by a knowledge of
the King's dangers, and a helpless auditor of the
incendiary and obscene reproaches which wretches of
the lowest class seemed unwearied in repeating. The
Dauphin, like his father, was disguised in the blood-
coloured emblem of licentiousness ; and the Queen
was compelled to submit to the same disgrace. Marie
Antoinette displayed that noble contempt of death

TALLEYRAND 243

which distinguished the King. She was desirous to
send back a body of grenadiers whom he had
detached for her protection, but they persisted
in obeying their first orders. At length Santerre
forced his way to the place, and snatched the
red cap from the Dauphin, exclaiming, " The child
is smothered ! why is this cap left on his head ? "
and then, in a low but distinct voice, added to the
Queen, " Madam, you have very awkward friends ;
/ know those who would serve you much better" That
brigand, too, wanted to share with Talleyrand and
other traitors the King's bounty of his Civil List
and to add corruption to his other enormities.

The behaviour of the King's sister, the Princess
Elizabeth, was in perfect conformity with that of
her august relatives. She followed the King to
the CEil-de-Bosuf, where the mob, thinking she was
the Queen, loaded her with insults and threats. Some
of her attendants attempting to explain the mistake,
"For God's sake," she said, "do not undeceive them;
is it not better they should shed my blood than that
of my sister ? " In the whole course of the day
she never left her brother's side, nor ever lost her
presence of mind.

The National Assembly, which had risen imme-
diately after the departure of the mob, resumed

16— a

244 MEMOIRS OF

their sitting in the afternoon; they treated with
rudeness, and frequently interrupted those members
who described in terms of just indignation the
atrocities which were committed in the Palace ; but
at length they deputed twenty-four members to
express their solicitude for the King's safety. The
deputation reached him with difficulty, and, when the
mob, grown languid by the repetition of insults, no
longer showed a formidable aspect, offered to protect
him and share his dangers. The King said he was
in the midst of his people, and feared nothing.
While the deputies were fruitlessly endeavouring to
disperse the mob, Petion, at six o'clock in the
evening, arrived at the Palace, and with the most
perfect composure, he advanced to the King, saying,
" Sire, I was only this moment informed of your
situation, but you have nothing to fear." " Nothing
to fear!" replied the King with indignation; "the
man whose conscience is pure and free from
reproach can never fear. Here, my friend," he
added, taking the hand of a grenadier and pressing
it against his bosom, " feel ! and tell that man if my
heart beats faster than usual." The mob had fre-
quently pressed him with furious acclamations to
sanction two unconstitutional decrees, and recall the
Jacobin ministers, but he replied, " I shall do what

TALLEYRAND 345

I consider right; this is not the moment for you to
ask, or for me to grant favours." Convinced that
the insurrection would not produce the expected
advantages, Petion said, " Citizens, you have now
made your desires known to the hereditary re-
presentative with the energy and dignity of a
free people who understand their rights. The King
is at present acquainted with, and will undoubtedly
pay proper regard to the intentions of the sovereign.
You ought now to retire with calmness and decency
that your intentions may not be calumniated." The
obedient sovereign rabble immediately filed off
through the King's apartments; at nine the Palace
was cleared.

Talleyrand was acquainted within forty-eight
hours in London, with the miscarriage of the
attempts of the regicides at Paris, and in the bitter-
ness of his disappointment wrote to his female friend
on the 23rd :

" Your courier of the aoth preceded the one from
the minister by two hours. Both arrived yesterday in
the evening, when I least expected them, and
brought the most unlooked-for, unaccountable and
incomprehensible information. So certain was I of
success that, being indirectly accredited to the
Court of a Monarch, I had for decency's sake

246 MEMOIRS OP

already bespoken a mourning -dress for what I
supposed the departed French monarchy. In what
manner did Petion, Roland, Brissot, Condorcet,
Manuel, and the whole pack of French and
English patriots, follow our plans, and read my
explanation, to commit such foolish and unwarrant-
able blunders ? Were Louis XVI. now well-encom-
passed and advised, he might obtain a most exem-
plary revenge, and adjourn the French Republic
for many years. It seems that all the firmness and
consistency was on that day reserved for the Court,
and that all its former folly and weakness had
smuggled themselves among the ranks of the people,
or entered the hearts and bewildered the brains of
their leaders. What ! forty thousand patriots masters
of the Palace for ten hours and not continue so for
ever! It is, and will remain, an incomprehensible
mystery to me. I have been up all the night,
ruminating with Chauvelin how to conduct ourselves
here ; what to say to the British ministers, or to
the King of Great Britain ; what to write to Orleans,
to Petion, to the French ministers and to the King
of the French. Our situation, by this absurd and
impolitic bustle, is rendered extremely critical and
unpleasant. What confidence will the English
Government attach to our assertions after this in-

TALLEYRAND 347

trusion of an armed force into the habitation of
our Chief Magistrate? And what dependence will
the English patriots place in our future promise of
a universal republic, when they come to France,
as it were, merely to witness the first disgrace that
the French patriots ever experienced? If I tell
them that the laws will soon force an executioner
to strike the blow the assassins refused, they will
not believe me, and they are in the right.

" I was this moment interrupted by the arrival
of other despatches with a letter from Louis him-
self, in which he announces his firm determination
to punish those public functionaries who were not
at their post or who had neglected their duty on
the 2oth. This we have orders to declare publicly
whenever any questions are put to us relative to
the late events. He expects La Fayette, but pre-
sages too much from the presence of a man of
his weak character, who possesses neither the talents
nor the principles of a General Monk. Were order
once to be restored, he would sink into a merited
oblivion and a well-deserved obscurity. This truth
he is aware of, and knows that it is only in con-
tinuing to be the faithful subject of the sovereign
people that he can be anything. Should he come
to Paris, it is to revive his dying popularity more

248 MEMOIRS OP

than to revive the expiring monarchy. The advice
of the La Methes to try to procure some official note
from this Court reprobating the popular excesses
against the King and his family is inconsiderate. It
cannot be demanded, and if demanded will not be
complied with, as it would be an attempt to interfere
in the internal affairs of France, which we have so
often and so justly declared to foreign States that we
would never permit. As I have no time to write, in-
form them of this observation.

"The calumny of my enemies that I use the
credit I have from the patriots at Paris on houses in
this city to speculate to my private advantage and
neglect their interest, certainly originates from the
malignity and vengeance of the English patriots, and
will die away at their departure, which cannot be
distant, as their brilliant campaign must be nearly at
an end. I have written four lines of consolation to
the Mayor, and six words to the Duke. I pity
neither of them for having suffered themselves to be
outwitted even by the Court. Inform nobody, except
the La Methes, of your having heard from me, or that
you have written to me. This unfortunate failure has
created a disagreeable sensation in this country even
among those who wish well to the Revolution. The
reports of my agents are unanimous on this subject;

TALLEYRAND

249

one of them even heard a famous member of the
Opposition say this morning that ' Two or three more
such ill-conducted attempts would force the friends
of liberty here to disown those in France.'"

Petion stated the events ol the aoth in a speech
at the National Assembly made up of gross falsehoods
and of those fallacious equivocations which prove more
thorough depravity of mind than is demonstrated by
the most flagrant falsehoods. "Everything," said he,
" indicates the greatest tranquillity. Persons, property
— all were respected. What has happened ? The
people were passing through the Tuileries, when
several citizens proceeded to the King's apartments ;
they insulted nobody, nor had the King any reason to
complain ! " Such was the detestable attempt of this
public functionary to palliate a premeditated, forcible
irruption of forty thousand people into the private
apartments of the Sovereign, so as to make it appear
the accidental intrusion of several persons who were
passing through the Tuileries, but who insulted no
one, and gave the King himself no right to com-
plain. The Assembly loudly applauded this infamous
harangue, and closed the sitting at ten o'clock with-
out expressing the slightest disapprobation of the
events of the day.1 But although the legislative

I See " Biographical Memoirs by Adolpnus." vol. i., p 67 et seq.

250 MEMOIRS OF

body was so easily satisfied, as Talleyrand had appre
bended, the public in all parts of the kingdom ex-
pressed the highest indignation. That part of the
populace at Paris which had not been actively
engaged in the insurrection, mingled with their in-
vectives against those who excited it expressions of
admiration at the firm and noble conduct of the King
and his family. The National Guards seemed also
to partake in the general remorse, by their honest
and effectual efforts to prevent armed and seditious
collections of the people. The King increased these
favourable impressions by a judicious proclamation
denouncing the conduct and views of the factious,
asserting his own resolution not to be impelled by
force to the adoption of measures which he considered
repugnant to the public interest, and declaring that
if they who wished to overthrow monarchy had need
of one crime more, they might commit it.

This proclamation produced a general sensation in
favour of the King, but its desponding teims were
truly indicative of the state of his mind. He gave
way to gloomy forebodings, frequently perused the
history of our Charles I., and wished only to die by

In these well-written and impartial Memoirs, the characters of La
Fayette, Petion, Brissot and other notorious rebels are drawn
with a masterly hand, and well worthy of attention.

TALLEYRAND 351

the hand of an assassin, that the nation might not
be stigmatised for his murder. He rejected all pro-
positions for effecting his escape, lest his family
should fall victims to the popular fury — a thought
he could not endure, though he would have been
himself a willing and contented sacrifice.1 To
counteract the probable effect of the public feeling,
the Jacobins endeavoured to keep up an active
solicitude respecting the two unsanctioned decrees,
and the Assembly rendered ministers responsible for
the refusal of the sanction. Contradictory opinions
were advanced with great acrimony, and the contest
of parties appeared to be equally balanced ; but the
Jacobins had the unrivalled advantage of posting in-
flammatory placards, terrifying the tranquil or timid
out of the Assembly, and procuring daily deputations
with incendiary petitions. Many loyal addresses were
also forwarded from departments and municipalities ;
but the arrival of a fresh gang of Marseillais brigands
gave increased spirits to the Jacobins and presaged
final success to their efforts.

At this crisis intelligence arrived that the armies
had learnt with lively indignation the occurrences of
the aoth of June, and that several battalions had only

I See Bertrand's Private Memoirs," vol. ii., p. 296 et aq.

252 MEMOIRS OP

been restrained from repairing to Paris and chastising
those who had insulted the King, by La Fayette, who
promised to be the bearer of their sentiments and en-
force them in the Assembly. As Talleyrand predicted
in his letter, the King and his friends could expect,
or if they expected, would experience, no favourable
effect in consequence of the mission of this General.
After pronouncing a speech at the bar of the Assembly,
he wanted both presence of mind to urge the con-
sideration of his message and resolution to appeal
against the indecency with which he was treated.
The populace, who had paid him some marks of
respect on his arrival, now burnt him in effigy ;
while from the tribunes of the Jacobin and Cor-
deliers' Clubs denunciations and ludicrous invectives
were showered on him in abundance. Disappointed,
derided, and trembling for his safety, this rash and
shallow adventurer quitted Paris without gaining
either the slightest advantage for himself or the
King, but by his temerity and weakness added to the
resources as well as to the insolence of traitors and
conspirators.

Though it might be supposed that Talleyrand's
time was now pretty well taken up with political
schemes and machinations, his private correspondence
proves that his intrigues with women continued as

TALLEYRAND 353

usual, and had even come to the knowledge of his
Parisian and political mistress. He wrote to her
under date July and :

"As I have been silent about Narbonne's frequent
visits to you, and your still more frequent trips to
the Bois de Boulogne, I was rather surprised that
you should upbraid me for my Ute-a-Ute with Madame
de N and Lady A , as you call her. Ac-
customed to the society of women from my youth,
and to divert my mind after hard labour or study
with their lively sallies, you could not expect me to
renounce them here, where I am almost worn out
with vexatious affairs, and, because I could not con-
verse with you, see in private no other person of
your sex. These pretensions would be ridiculous on
your part and insupportable on mine. But I wrong
you — you have too much sense to give way to such
extravagant ideas. Let me, therefore, consider what
can be the real cause of this petty but adroit sortie!
Shall I explain it to you? Yes, I must, that you
may be convinced, for the hundredth time, of its
being out of the power of women, with all their
natural cunning and hypocrisy, to impose upon me.
You had heard of the orders I received from the
King to come over to France, and that this voyage
agreed with the wishes of my other constituents.

254 MEMOIRS OP

You concluded, In consequence, that I should soon
arrive, and when arrived be informed of your many
private conferences with several active citizens, as a
Narbonne, a Sartine, &c. To be beforehand with
me, you accuse me of infidelities, of which you
cannot be certain, concluding from my silence
that your manoeuvres, marches and counter-marches
are unknown to me. You might, however, have
guessed, from your having spies about me, that I
might also in my turn not be entirely without
some intelligence concerning you. What would
you think of my discretion were I now to tell
you, from hour to hour, from day to day, and
from night to night, those whom you have admitted
and those whom you have excluded from your bou-
doir ; those you have visited, and by whom you have
been visited ; whom you met five times in six days
in the cottage at the Bois de Boulogne; your
rendezvous in the private box at the Opera, at
your milliner's, on the New Boulevard, at the
Vauxhall d'Et6, &c.? Thank me, therefore, for my
good-natured silence, and cease your grave airs, and
our peace is concluded before hostilities have com-
menced. To convince you, also, of the sincerity of
my offers of reconciliation, and that my complacency
is as great as your curiosity (between you and me

TALLEYRAND 355

jealousy is out of the question), I will let you know

that Madame de N was my acquaintance at

Versailles, where we were neighbours; and that
now, when at leisure, I merely pay her a few
attentions to console her for the absence of her
valiant husband, encamped, with the other defenders
of the altar and the throne, somewhere in Germany,
on the banks of the Rhine. The person you call

Lady A is the daughter of an honest Swiss

merchant formerly settled here, who, after two bank-
ruptcies, went to make his fortune in India, leaving
his wife and child to shift for themselves. The
latter, of course, accepted of the brilliant offers of

Lord A , and lived with him two years, until he

had squandered away a great part of his property in
gambling and could no longer keep her in the
same extravagant style as before. Since that period
she has had several lovers, but, as she speaks good
French, I have agreed to pay her one hundred
guineas per month for her friendship and the political
services and information she may afford me. Being
a woman of abilities and acquainted with several
persons in credit at Court, she procures me much
useful intelligence which I could obtain in no other
quarter. I can, therefore, in conscience, do no less
than place this monthly stipend to the account of

256 MEMOIRS OF

the nation as secret-service money. Let this remain
entrc nous, but I hope that this confidence will re-
move your anxiety about my general intercourse
with females, as reported to you. At my age, and
with my experience, a man must be mad to ruin
himself with women. She wished to accompany
me to Paris, but she requires some years' more ex-
perience before I dare introduce her into that vast
field of intrigue ; I leave her, therefore, during my
absence under the trusty care of our Secretary of
Legation, Rheinhard, one of the most phlegmatic
Germans I ever met with, though he is not without
talents.

"One of my English patriots, just returned from
Paris, has this instant left me. If all his patriotic
countrymen possessed the same enthusiasm which he
does, a Republican fraternity would soon be estab-
lished between France and England, and the Channel
exist no longer, or be dried up. He speaks with
rapture of what he has seen and experienced, and is
confident of bringing about a revolution here, as
soon as a republic is proclaimed in France. He
ascribes the late disappointment to want of energy
in Santerre and Huguenin. Being ordered by the
insurrection committee at Paris on an expedition to
Yorkshire and to Scotland, I was obliged to advance

TALLEYRAND 357

him one hundred and fifty guineas, though I am
thoroughly convinced that he was paid all his ex-
penses before he left France. He showed with
ecstasy his red cap, and the tricoloured cockade,
and intends to buy and distribute many dozens of
them during his journey, which will probably extend
as far as Ireland, as I want a trusty and active
person there; and he has obtained the entire con-
fidence of our principal patriots. Inform Petion of
these particulars, but let nobody else know that I
have written to you. In four days I will set out
for France, and this will, therefore, in all probability,
be the last letter you will receive from me before
I see you. Embrace our dear boy. I have con-
sulted one of the first surgeons here, who gives me
hope that, in following his prescription, the deafness
will be cured."

On the 7th of July, Talleyrand left London for
Paris, where he arrived on the nth. The period
of the second confederation now approached, and it
was rendered additionally alarming by the arrival of
large bands of F6der6s from the departments, who
were selected from the most furious or fanatical
members of clubs, and presented petitions of the
most inflammatory and unconstitutional tendency,
opening avowing their determination of dethroning

VOL. I 17

258 MEMOIRS QP

the King, and demanding his immediate trial and
death. Among these men, r those called the Mar-
seillais F6d6r6s particularly distinguished themselves
for their violence and sanguinary threats. They
were headed by some revolutionists from that city,
but otherwise consisted chiefly of Corsican criminals,
released from the galleys at Marseilles ; or of Pied-
montese vagabonds or brigands, engaged in the service
of the conspirators by the promise of pillage. A plot,
formed by Santerre, to murder the Queen was also
betrayed, and the assassin arrested, but rescued by
his party. The public were kept in alarm by
reports of conspiracies to be executed on the day
of confederation. The barracks of the Military
School were searched on account of this suspicion,
and the troops of the line compelled to leave Paris.
The people were even agitated by a report that gun-
powder was deposited under the altar to blow up the
National Assembly in the act of taking the oath,
and were only undeceived by an examination on the
spot. Talleyrand was present, but did not officiate at
the ceremony of this confederation, which, though
loaded with several new burlesque pageantries, was,
however, on the whole, quiet and orderly. The Royal
Family were placed in a balcony covered with crimson
velvet, which gave rise to some petulant exclamations

TALLEYRAND 2«g

from the mob ; and the cries of " Vive le Roi ! *
were drowned with " Vive Petion ! " " Vivent les
Jacobins I" "A bas le veto!" The King, however,
taking the oath on the altar, instead of remaining
in his place as on the former occasion, completely
gratified the populace, and he quitted the Champ de
Mars amidst loud and general acclamations. But the
very next day the F6d6res again petitioned for the
deposition of the King, and declared their fixed
determination to adopt no part of the Constitution
but the Rights of Man; and to throw a veil over
that, they required, also, the convocation of the
primary assemblies, at which all but mendicants
and vagrants should vote, for the purpose of fixing
the number of representatives competent to form a
national convention and of confirming the deposition
of the King.

Of all the factious and conspirators then at Paris,
Talleyrand had the least to apprehend from a new
revolution. If the Royalists had been victorious,
he was safe, his treachery being unknown to his
Prince; and if the Orleanists, or Republicans, got
the better of their opponents, the services he had
rendered them, at the expense of his duty to his
Sovereign, promised him a reward instead of pro-
scription. He hastened back, however, to England,

17 — 2

260 MEMOIRS OF

and landed at Dover on the 2ist of July, where he
wrote to his mistress on the same day :

" Though labouring under a severe indisposition, in
consequence of a boisterous passage, I shall endeavour
to forget the pains of my body in confiding to my
friend the troubles of my mind. I have certainly
seen the last King of the French for the last time !
This event, you will say, is what I have long wished
for. True. But I expected some sort of government,
either a dictatorship or a republic, to be prepared
to succeed immediately, whilst I have found no plans
for the establishment of a new system, though I
have been so long plotting the destruction of the
old one. Of this improvidence anarchists, destitute
of virtue and patriotism, will take advantage. They
will wade through seas of blood, and through ruins
of cities and towns, of trade and agriculture, to a
tyranny which (unless circumstances should happen,
of which there is not the most distant probability)
must necessarily cause the dissolution of civilised
society. In that vortex of confusion and crimes,
what patriotism can be safe, and what innocence
respected ? Who can prevent our countrymen from
butchering each other in civil wars? or what means
have we to oppose to foreign enemies who, after
vanquishing our divided forces, will partition our

TALLEYRAND 26l

country, and dispose of Frenchmen — like the un-
fortunate Poles — to proud, unmerciful, or tyrannical
neighbours ? These ideas are gloomy, and I sin-
cerely wish they may prove erroneous; but, for my
part, I would this moment rather inhabit the forests
ot Africa and America, than France. On one hand
we see the King deserted by those who ought to be
his friends, and deprived of his authority, a willing
sacrifice to his earnest endeavours to preserve the
Constitution ; the Duke of Orleans determined to
annihilate the throne, without the means of raising
a new fabric on its ruins ; whilst Petion, Brissot,
and their partisans are without any other union of
views than the removal of Louis XVI. ; but they
all mistrust each other, and, as far as they have
let me into their secrets, these Republicans have not
yet agreed to declare France a republic. Have I not
reason, therefore, to be alarmed whilst everything is
left to chance and nothing is fixed ? The destiny of
France has (compared with that of other great States)
hitherto been singularly prosperous. This is my only
consolation for her present critical situation, and my
sole hope that she will escape the present numerous
internal and external dangers which now threaten an
almost inevitable ruin. I think myself, however, ex-
tremely fortunate in having a plausible pretext for

2&2 MEMOIRS OF

being absent; and I conjure you, should any proposal
for recalling me come to your knowledge, to endeavour
to dissuade it, or let me know it in time, that I may
prepare some excuse for not obeying, which I am
resolved to do, let the consequences be what they will.

"The contents of this letter I intended to com-
municate to you in person before I left Paris; but
on the day of my departure, when I promised to call
upon you, Petion remained with me until eleven o'clock
at night; nor did he quit me before he saw me into
my carriage on my return — whether from suspicion, or
merely from attention I am at a loss to divine ; but I
trust, through my friend's ingenuity, to be able to
solve this perplexing mystery. You must be more
regular and more particular in your letters than for-
merly. The times are much altered for the worse.
Spare no expense in couriers or for private informa-
tion. From the great fermentation among the people
at this momentous crisis, something terrible may
daily be expected; you will, therefore, easily judge of
my impatience and anxiety to hear from you.

"I have now brought over with me (with the
exception of ^"50,000 laid out in national property) my
whole fortune. As I employed a man in whom I do
not much confide to procure me bills on London,
this precaution of mine may come to the ears of the

TALLEYRAND 263

patriots, and incur their censure. Should this be the
case, you may say that this operation was merely a
financial speculation, in consequence of the lowness
of the Exchange, and that I intend to remit my
money over again and deposit it in our Funds when
the Exchange becomes more in our favour, which must
happen when the patriots have seized on the govern-
ment and begin to display their usual energy."

The faction which had so long agitated the
capital was, at this period, less interested in
opposing the efforts of an external enemy than in
procuring the downfall of the Royal power, against
which their animosity daily increased. Their private
councils were turbulent and uncertain, and their
mutual rivalry was with difficulty prevented from
producing open hostilities. The contempt of the
public for their characters and proceedings prevented
any general exertion in their behalf; and, although
delusion and calumny had rendered the people
indifferent to the fate of the Royal Family, the
faction could obtain no strenuous indications of
favour, except from hired mobs, prompted petitioners
and their own immediate dependents and expectants.
Such were at once their malice and their impo-
tency, that they seriously discussed the propriety of
murdering one of their own friends, and imputing

264 MEMOIRS OP

the crime to the Court, in order to excite the In-
dignation of the people. The Feder6s from the
departments were less than three thousand in number,
but, as they formed the chief hope of the party,
they were detained in Paris, contrary to a decree of
the Assembly, directing them after the confederation
to repair to the camp at Soissons. These vagabonds
petitioned the Assembly to suspend the executive
power in the person of the King, to discharge the
staff and other military officers appointed by him,
to change the judicial bodies, to impeach La Fayette
and to punish all persons suspected of aristocracy.
This insolent attempt of a handful of provincial
adventurers to legislate in all matters civil and
military for the whole kingdom, occasioned some sur-
prise ; but the Assembly, though they did not comply
with the unwarrantable demands of the petitioners,
basely invited them to the honours of the sitting.
To procure a decree of forfeiture of the crown was
the general aim of all the members forming the
popular junto, but their ulterior projects, as Talley-
rand remarked in his letter, were widely different.
Some thought of establishing a Council of Regency
during the minority of the Dauphin, and ruling the
realm by their influence in the Legislature ; a second
party hoped to make the Duke of Orleans Regent, and,

TALLEYRAND 265

by moulding him to their will, to govern in his name ;
while a third party, too low to expect influence at
Court, too limited in talents to gain ascendency in
the Legislature, and too recently introduced to hope
for authority with the Duke of Orleans, concealed
their views with cautious mystery, intending to make
the utmost advantage of any change, but at all
events to maintain their influence with the rabble, by
whose means they could, at all times, render them-
selves formidable and dreaded. Such were t! e infa-
mous monsters in the shape of men, who, on the
loth of August, overturned, in four hours, a throne
which had withstood the shock of fourteen centuries;
who directed the murder of prisoners on the 2nd, 3rd,
and 4th of September; and who, on the 22nd of the
same month, polluted with plunder and stained with
blood, became the founders of the French Republic.

As soon as the fatal catastrophe of the loth of

n

August was known in this country, our Court wrote
to Lord Gower, the Ambassador at Paris, expressing
the King's deep affliction at the extent and deplor-
able consequences of the late disturbance, both on
account of his personal attachment to Their Most
Christian Majesties and his earnest desire for the
tranquillity and prosperity of a kingdom with which
he was on terms of friendship. As the exercise

266 MEMOIRS OP

of the executive power had been withdrawn from
Louis XVI., Lord Gower was directed to leave Paris,
as his credentials could be no longer valid, and as
that step appeared most conformable to the neutrality
hitherto observed. But in all conversations he was
directed to declare that His Majesty intended to ob-
serve the principles of neutrality in everything regard-
ing the internal government of France ; nor did he
conceive that he departed from that principle in
manifesting, by every means in his power, his solici-
tude for the personal safety of Their Most Christian
Majesties and their family, hoping they would be pre-
served from every act of violence, the commission of
which could not fail to excite sentiments of universal
indignation throughout Europe.1

In answering this note, Le Brun, the new Minister
for Foreign Affairs, expressed polite regret at the re-
solution to remove the Ambassador; but that feeling
was abated by the renewed assurance of neutrality,
which was the result of an intention wisely con-
sidered and formally expressed by His Britannic
Majesty not to meddle with the interior arrange-
ments of the affairs of France. The Minister then
dwelt with admkation on the efforts of the English

X See "Rivington's Annual Register for 1792," part ii.t p. 326.

TALLEYRAND 267

nation in favour of liberty, and the unalienable
sovereignty of the people; and declared that the
French nation had good grounds to hope the British
Cabinet would not, at this decisive moment, depart
from that justice, moderation and impartiality which
it had hitherto manifested.1

No official statement mentions that Lord Gower
left any chavgi d'affaires behind him at Paris, nor that
our Government appointed any diplomatic agent there
as its representative to the self-created Executive
Councils. Talleyrand, however, in a letter to his
mistress, sends private information to Petion of a
gentleman indirectly accredited to them by our
ministers. He writes, under date the gth of Sep-
tember :

" According to Petion's confidential request, I
send you all the particulars I have been able to
collect concerning the person indirectly accredited to
our Provisional Government by the English Ministry,
and of which you must not fail immediately to
transmit him a copy. Mr. Munroe is a Scotchman
by birth, and was formerly a captain in the 4ist
Regiment of Foot, from which, about three years ago,

i See " Rivington's Annual Register for 1792," part ii., p. 326;
•• Marsh's History of the Politics, &c." chap. ix. ; and " Bertrand's
Annals," vol. ii., p. 335.

268 MEMOIRS OF

he was obliged to sell out, having involved himself
in some pecuniary difficulties by marriage with a
lady of noble family, but of no fortune, by whom
he had several children. In 1790, during the in-
surrection in Brabant, he went to Brussels, and was
made a major in the Britannic legion of the patriotic
army. It is also supposed that he was there em-
ployed secretly by the English Government to report
the occurrences during the campaign, and to watch
both General Koehler, an English officer, but com-
mander-in-chief of the patriots, and Colonel Gardner,
the British agent to the patriotic Belgic Congress.
After the Austrians had defeated the patriots, and
their troops were disbanded, he returned to England,
but was, together with General Koehler, soon again
employed by the British ministers in a military-
political mission to Turkey. When at Constantinople
he disagreed with Koehler, and in consequence re-
turned home early last summer. He is a man of
parts, but has never hitherto shone in any political
transactions or negotiations, and is therefore deemed
a better officer than diplomate. My opinion is that
he has instructions rather to watch our military
movements and undertakings than to penetrate into
the views of our Cabinet. Indeed, as true friends
of general freedom, the members of our Executive

TALLEYRAND 26g

Council act with a justice, candour, frankness, and an
openness of heart worthy their situation, principles,
and professions, in a manner that leaves no secrets
to be discovered, even by the most subtle agent!
As to his political principles, though he has served
among patriots, I am told that he is a moderate
aristocrat, and, though not rich, of a character not
to be tempted with money. But as he is still young,
and has lost his wife, some of our young, amiable
and rich female sans-culottcs might, at least without
danger, lay siege to his heart, and Venus may,
perhaps, conquer in the field where Plutus would be
sure of a defeat. Everything considered, I strongly
recommend that no other than female agents should
be employed about him, being brave as well as dis-
interested. I have hitherto been unable to procure
any of his ciphers. As he seems in a fair way of
becoming a rising favourite with the English minis-
ters, advise Petion to treat him with distinction.

"From Petion's last letter, I apprehend that a
coolness or mistrust subsists between him and some
of the new ministers, which prevents me from com-
municating this intelligence to Le Brun, or to himself,
in the usual way, to be laid before all the members
of the committee. You must find out the cause of
this ambiguity, and inform me of it in your next.

27O MEMOIRS OP

But what can be the reason of your long silence?
I have not heard from you these ten days — a period
so interesting to all friends of liberty, and so terrible
to all its enemies. I am greatly mistaken if the
late acts of vigour at Paris have not made every
prince tremble upon his throne, and every aristocrat
turn pale with disappointment, rage or terror. A
few more such dreadfully glorious examples, and
Liberty and Equality will then shed their benign in-
fluence over the universe, and the world contain a
race of brothers. I supped last night at the Scotch

Lord M Id's, in Great George Street, not far

from St. James's, where the party — all aristocrats,
though plagued with the infection which the vicinity
of Courts always introduces — seemed panic-struck and
ready to capitulate with the sans-culottcs. They had
read in a ministerial paper called The Times, a full
account of the late noble scenes in and near the
prison (sent, no doubt, by some secret British agent,
being rather exaggerated), and were so petrified with
horror that they looked as if uncertain whether their
own heads were still on their shoulders. They seemed
ready to sacrifice their ridiculous rank, their puerile
decorations and their usurped property to preserve
their petty, insignificant, useless existence, and to
want only the word of command for subscribing,

TALLEYRAND 271

on their knees, their oath of allegiance to their
natural sovereign — the sovereign people !

"I repeat again, and you may tell it to Petion,
that the patriots must continue to reign by terror
if they desire their names to be handed down to
posterity with those of Brutus, Gracchus, Publicola
or Cato of antiquity. When once liberty and equality
are peaceably placed, not on thrones or altars, but in
the bosoms of all people, and of all classes of people,
then clemency may, with honour and safety, become
the order of the day I "

The period so interesting to all the friends of
liberty, and the acts of vigour which Talleyrand
mentions with so much encomium and satisfaction,
were the terrible and savage massacres of prisoners
during the and, 3rd and 4th of September. Petion,
Danton, Marat, Manuel, Mehee de la Touche, and
other rebels of the same description, needy them-
selves, and surrounded by rapacious adherents, found
but little satisfaction in the power they had usurped
since the loth of August, and which might not be
permanent ; they, therefore, formed plans of numerous
imprisonments, and a massacre which might enrich
them and all their dependents. The decrees of
the Assembly for imprisoning priests and suspected
characters, for domiciliary visits, and for establishing

272 MEMOIRS OF

a revolutionary tribunal, which tried criminals for
treason against the nation, were all favourable to
this new conspiracy, the parties of which loaded them-
selves with the spoils of such as could compound
by means of gold for their safety, and glutted their
vengeance or forwarded their political projects by the
sacrifice of others. Many were carried to prison with-
out the allegation of any crime but their property,
talents and loyalty. Arrests were executed in all
quarters- — in houses, streets, squares, gardens, churches
and theatres. The hackney coaches, soldiers and
officers of justice were all employed in taking persons
into custody and conveying them to prison. The
priests and ex-nobles were told they would be trans-
ported to the coast of Africa. Danton obtained lists
of the prisoners, and Petion or Manuel daily num-
bered the victims, encouraging them to collect their
property by an ambiguous declaration that they
would be liberated on the 2nd of September. That
day was fixed on for the muster of the new levies
in the Champ de Mars, whence they were to march
in a body to meet the Austrian and Prussian in-
vaders in Champagne. In the course of the day
alarming reports were circulated and fatal jealousies
excited. It was asserted that the Prussians, having
taken Chalons, were within ten leagues of Paris.

TALLEYRAND 373

They were to be joined by an immense body in the
departments, and reinforced by a party in the capital,
who, as soon as the new levies had left the city,
would rise, open the prisons, murder the patriots
and one-tenth of the citizens, release the Royal Family
and reinstate the King in his pristine power. At
one o'clock the cannon of alarm was fired, the
tocsin sounded, the barriers were shut, and the
country proclaimed in danger. The citizens, panic-
struck and torpid with surprise, retired to their
habitations; while a prepared band of assassins went
to the various prisons, where they butchered one by
one the ex-nobles, the priests, the Swiss officers, and
all other arrested persons. They instituted in each
prison a pretended court of justice, composed of self-
constituted judges, chiefly brigands under the hand
of justice or escaped from the galleys, many of whom
could not read. These ruffians ordered the execution
of almost every person brought before them; and it
was the melancholy employment of those confined
and expecting their fate to examine the various modes
of receiving the stroke of death, and calculate in
which position it appeared to give least pain or
occasion the smallest struggle. The sentence of
acquittal pronounced in favour of a few was drowned
in the yell of the exterminators around the doors,
VOL. i 18

274 MEMOIRS OP

and they, too, were inhumanly slain. The terrors of
some who attended as witnesses overcoming their
presence of mind, they were murdered amongst other
victims.

These horrible scenes continued three days, and
though some attempts were made in the National
Assembly to arrest their progress, the number of
individuals concurring in particular parts of the trans-
action prevented any general exertion. Petion and
Roland made no vigorous representations, because
they rejoiced at the extermination of priests and
nobles. Brissot forbore exerting himself, because
some personal enemies of his own were confined,
and he hoped they would be numbered among the
killed. Tallien and Manuel, who were sent with
other members of the Commune to stay the hands
of the assassins, rather encouraged and justified than
impeded them. Mehee de la Touche and Marat paid
the assassins for their patriotism ; and Danton, when
application was made to him, answered, "The devil
take the prisoners ! what care I for their fate ! " nor
did the work of slaughter cease till the objects of
vengeance no longer existed. Amid these horrible
transactions, acts of heroic virtue beamed forth on
the part of the sufferers, which afford some relief to
those who peruse the dismal annals of that period.

TALLEYRAND

275

The priests bore their fate with such fortitude and
resignation as to call to mind, in a corrupt age and
atheistical nation, the genuine portrait of the primitive
martyrs. Many individuals exhibited heroic courage,
and none acquired more admiration than two young
ladies named De Sombreuil and Cazotte, who, after
receiving several wounds, rescued their fathers by
interposing their own persons to shield them from
danger. On the other hand, the murderers displayed,
not only an unrelenting ferocity, but a sedate malig-
nity, generally only acquired by veteran practice.
Faint gleams of generosity distinguished one or two
from the rest; but hacking and hewing dead and
living bodies with blunt instruments, tearing out en-
trails, drinking and smearing themselves with human
blood, and parading the city with heads and hearts
on pikes, were the characteristic employments of these
bloodthirsty savages, while the Government permitted
30,000 National Guards to rest upon their arms with-
out offering the slightest resistance.

The Princess de Lamballe was one of the victims
whose fate was particularly commiserated. Safe in
England in the spring of the same year, the author
of these Memoirs was honoured and entrusted by the
late unfortunate Queen of France to deliver her a

letter of recall from a friend, not of command from a

1 8— a

276 MEMOIRS OP

sovereign. She made no hesitation in obeying what
her heart desired more than her duty dictated, although
she foresaw and foretold that this return to France
would be fatal to her. Being confined in the prison of
La Force after the loth of August, she was brought
before the tribunal of assassins established in the
prison, and on nobly refusing to take the oath of
hatred to the Royal Family — her relatives — was bar-
barously butchered, and her body mangled and ex-
posed in a manner too indecent and too horrible for
description. Her head and heart — the one stuck on
the point of a sword, and the other on a pike — were
carried in a sanguinary procession to the Temple, for
the purpose of terrifying and insulting the Royal
captives. The King and Queen were prevented from
seeing the horrid spectacle, though not from hearing
the tumult and abuse of the rabble. One of the
commissioners on duty announced the Princess of
Lamballe's murder in terms so brutal that the Queen
fainted away, and even the good King, forgetting his
usual patience, expressed his feelings in terms of in-
dignation.1 The number of persons killed in Paris

I See "Journal de Clery," p. 25 et seq., and "The Revolu-
tionary Plutarch," vol. iii., p. 183, note. The Princess de Lamballe
was one of the most amiable, accomplished and beautiful ladies of
her age— a Princess of the blood of the House of Sardinia, wt
sister-in-law to the late Duke of Orleans.

TALLEYRAND 377

alone is computed at about 8,000, all unarmed,
and no exertion made on their behalf in any
quarter.

Those horrid deeds were the "dreadfully glorious
examples," which Talleyrand in his letter recom-
mended to be repeated, and "the noble scenes" which
he jocosely states to have frightened the English
aristocrats — scenes regarded even in France with such
abhorrence that each victorious faction has ever since
reproached and accused their rivals or opponents of
being the contrivers and executors of them, and for
that alone representing them as deserving the indig-
nation and chastisement of their contemporaries. Were
it, however, possible to discover the secret sentiments
of each man of each party figuring in the blood-
stained annals of that awful period, it is not hazarding
too much to suppose that every faction furnished
some direct or indirect accomplices or abettors ;
because when once a man forgets his duty, breaks
his allegiance, and becomes a rebel, the step to ass-
assination is but short, and when self-interest, venge-
ance, or ambition invites, easy and alluring. Who
would have suspected that Talleyrand — a nobleman,
a bishop, a man of erudition and of talents — could be
guilty, not only of approving, but of commending these
enormities, had not his own correspondence proved it ?

278 MEMOIRS OF

Round Bonaparte's person, in Bonaparte's family,1 in
his senate, in his council of state, legislative body, and
tribunate ; among his grand officers of state, and of the
legion of honour; among his field marshals, generals,
ambassadors, judges and prefects, are numerous in-
dividuals accused by public opinion, and incontestibly
proved by authentic documents, to have been among
the most active Septembrists, or butchers ; or among
the still more guilty — those who encouraged, misled,
directed and paid the assassins, and afterwards shared
the spoils of the victims, while falsely disclaiming all
knowledge of the perpetrators, or hypocritically blaming
them for these unheard-of atrocities. Whether welter-
ing in the bloody mire of the early days of the re-
bellion, or cringing in blood-stained palaces round
an infamous Bonaparte; whether denying in the
National Convention the existence of a Divinity, or
kneeling in Notre Dame before the Pope as the Vicar
of Christ ; whether erecting altars to a Marat or
thrones to a Bonaparte ; whether extolling the virtues
of the Creole Empress of the French, or singing
hymns to the creole Empress of the Haytians, revo-
lutionary Frenchmen are the same — the most guilty,

z See in " The Revolutionary Plutarch," the Lives of Lucien
Bonaparte and General Murat, &c.

TALLEYRAND 2yg

abandoned, debased and despicable of all beings that
disgrace the human species.

If Talleyrand rejoiced here at the horrors com-
mitted in France, his mistress and correspondent,
who was an eye-witness of what he only knew from
reading reports, felt differently, and did not think
herself even secure from the popular fury, though
acquainted with, and under the protection of several
of the principal chiefs of the ruling brigands of the
day. This is evident from his last letter, written in
this country to that lady under the date of i8th of
September :

" How ridiculous your panic, and how unfounded
your alarm ! connected as you are with the purest and
staunchest patriots, how cr.n you apprehend that the
proscription of persons of your cast will ever extend
to you ? Your sex, your services, and your patriotism
— all assure your safety. I thought you had more
firmness and better judgment — more confidence in
my friendship, and less suspicion of the morality of my
correspondents. You never were more necessary at
Paris for my interest than at this momentous crisis;
nor did I at any time less desire to see you in
London. But as I must conclude from the contents
of your letter that terror has entirely bewildered your
senses, I have written both to Petion, that he may

2$O MEMOIRS OP

procure you a pass for this country, and to Cabanis,
to let you assume in the pass the name of his
wife, and Charles, that of his son. This last pre-
caution I am certain was unnecessary ; but to quiet
your troubled imagination, I have resorted to it as
an infallible expedient for preventing any interruption
in your voyage, Cabanis being intimate with all the
members of the new Commune, and having openly
declared himself in favour of the late necessary re-
volution. But before you quit Paris, I think it my
duty to inform you that, in coming here, you expose
yourself to witness a repetition of what you, with
such fear, have seen in France within the last
three months. Everything here is ripe, and every-
body here is prepared, for an insurrection and for
an overthrow. The Government is intimidated; the
Opposition intriguing; the aristocrats disunited, trem-
bling, and thunderstruck; the patriots firm and active,
and the people discontented or disaffected. After
this information, go on if you think proper with
your plan of coming over here, but do not accuse
me afterwards should you repent of your rashness.
Your husband is in the right to disapprove it, but
he is in the wrong not to convince you of your
error. Before you receive this letter I suppose that
France is decreed a republic, and of course a govern-

TALLEYRAND 381

ment fixed, which will possess power enough to put
a stop to the anarchy of which you complain so
bitterly. You will, therefore, have nothing more to
dread from what you call a licentious populace,
particularly as the most dangerous enemies of liberty
and equality are already removed. The fate of
Louis XVI. and his family cannot long influence or
interest the public, since their treason against the
nation is, or will soon be, made evident. The
foreign armies will never dare to advance so far as
Paris ; but were they imprudent enough to penetrate
so far, they will be cut off to a man, and their
ruin be a signal for the Low Countries, for Ger-
many, and for Holland, to join with France and
England in annihilating tyranny and establishing
universal liberty. I do not speak this from mere
suppositions, but from intelligence obtained from
various quarters, and of which I have no reason
to doubt the authenticity. Should you, notwith-
standing, persist in leaving your country, I would
advise you to go to Switzerland in preference to
England. There you might continue your corre-
spondence with me here, as well as with our friends
at Paris, and be, besides, vastly useful in plans
of propagating the rights of man on the other side
of the Alps, where the friends of liberty are both

aSa MEMOIRS OF

numerous and enlightened, and from whom overtures
have been made to me that may ultimately be of
great consequence to France — but it is not yet the
time to disclose them. Consider all these circum-
stances before you set out ; but believe me also sincere
when I declare that nobody could be more happy in
embracing you than your affectionate friend, who
will, in the meantime, have everything ready prepared
for your reception here, and who will use every
endeavour when you are once here to make your stay
as agreeable and safe as possible. I do protest that
the representations I have urged against your leaving
France are dictated entirely by consideration for your
happiness and comfort ; but you are, and with me
always shall be, respected as an independent mistress
of your own actions; and my heart, as well as my
arms, shall at all times, in all circumstances, and in
all countries, be ready to receive you. Try to calm
yourself enough to be able before your departure to
find out the present situation of parties in France,
and whether their rivalry originates in disguised
ambition or in misconceived patriotism. Are Petion,
Brissot, Condorcet, Roland, Manuel, and the Girondists
always united in views ? What are the real plans of
the Duke of Orleans? He has lately been ill advised,
or rather, betrayed; he is dishonoured, and his pre-

TALLEYRAND 283

tensions irreparably lost. Are not Robespierre, Danton,
Sieyes, and Marat now his principal counsellors? or
have they only used him and his former rank and
property to advance their own interest and to diminish
that of their opposers ? What is become of La Clos,
of Sillery, and of his wife Madame Genlis ? have they
deserted their patron, or has he disgraced them ? To
what party are the Generals Dumourier, Luckner,
Kellerman, Custine, Biron, Montesquieu, and Dillon
attached ? What is the opinion of the patriots, of
the people, and of the troops concerning these
military characters? Do the ministers still act in
unison together, or between what parties are they
divided? Is there any talk of a new change in the
Ministry, and who are supposed to be going out,
or who intriguing to get in? How is the public
spirit in general ? Are emigrations still as numerous
to Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Spain as to
England? Though most of these queries have
already been answered or explained to me by other
correspondents, I trust so much to your penetration
and judgment, when not terrified, that I must hear
your sentiments before I am satisfied.

" I entreat you to speak seriously to Petion about
my repeated demands of being discharged from all
pecuniary transactions with the English patriots.

284 MEMOIRS OP

They worry me almost to death with their excessive
and impudent extortions, and deprive me of that
composure and serenity which is necessary to trans
act those other delicate affairs with which I am
entrusted. But yesterday I had several fresh proofs
of their rapacity and impositions. It had some time
ago been agreed in our committees, in hope of
encouraging some wealthy friends of open revo-
lution in this country to open their purses,
that subscriptions for assisting France in her war
against despotism should be advertised as already
begun by certain individuals, patriots in our pay,
who were to obtain, and who have already obtained
from me, the sums subscribed in their names.
This manoeuvre is not only politic, by convincing
the people of France that they have numerous ad-
herents in this country who approve of all the late
changes, who support their cause, and who are
ready to imitate their example^ but also advan-
tageous, in making the patriots here know their
friends from their enemies, many persons having
come forward who, from their affluent situation in
life and high rank in society, were never thought
friendly to a reform which must subvert all unnatural
property as well as level all unnatural distinctions.
It disseminates a desire and spirit of innovation

TALLEYRAND 385

among the lower classes, and diverts the attention of
ministers from more serious and dangerous under-
takings ripening for a sudden explosion. Thus,
had the English patriots acted honestly, no money
would have been lost, but much might have been
gained by France; I, therefore, did not hesitate to
advance to each patriot who waited on me, a smaller
or larger sum, according to the recommendation of
the executive committee, which he previously pre-
sented. Judge, after this, of my surprise when last
Saturday morning the treasurer called on me for the
payment of these subscriptions, the patriots having
only set down names, and pocketed the money.
Upon my declaration of what had occurred, he laughed
in my face, saying, since that was the case I might
look upon the money as gone. As he was obliged
to settle his account with the bankers on that day,
I could not, without exposing him, or creating sus-
picion, avoid paying it down again. This immorality
is so much the more blamabie as — to encourage the
lower classes to give their mite to our struggle for
liberty — the sums subscribed were purposely small.
You may relate this circumstance to Petion, assuring
him at the same time that, from what I have seen of
these patriots, the riches of France, England, nay, of
all Europe, will not be sufficient to gratify their

286 MEMOIRS OP

avidity. When I say these patriots, I mean the
Scotch and Irish as well as the English. Although
they disagree on account of national prejudices, in
the chapter of rapacity they are truly brothers.
Beaumarchais, who has known the patriots of these
islands ever since the American War, makes the
same complaints. He thinks their love of money
more innate than their love of freedom, or, rather,
that they are attached to the latter only because
without it they could not satisfy their longing for
the former, either in financial, commercial or political
speculations.

" From your repeated assertions that this nation is
thought the most generous in Europe, having more
public establishments to relieve suffering humanity
than are found in all other States together, and
the only one where real industry and modest
merit make their sure way to affluence and ad-
vancement, I suppose your ideas of Great Britain
either romantic, or that you have swallowed a good
dose of the fashionable Anglomania. If no people
are more generous, no other people have so many
newspapers to make the world acquainted with their
generosity ; none have more taverns, where the stupid
or indolent rich man may pass away some heavy
hours of his dull existence, figuring as a bene-

TALLEYRAND 387

factor at the expense of a few guineas, and grati-
fying at the same time his ostentation and vanity,
his desire of company, or his passion for con-
viviality. The industrious man, it is true, may claim
assistance from some societies encouraging and re-
warding his labour and assiduity, but only in the
same manner as other societies encourage informers
to detect frauds, to prevent swindling, or to pursue
house-breakers. As to the advancement of modest
merit, here as well as everywhere else, if supported
by protectors it may rise ; but if too honest to
intrigue, or too timid to demand; too elevated to
descend to cringing, or too proud to stoop to
flattery ; too loyal to serve the views of parties,
and too patriotic to become the tool of ministers, it
will pass a life of expectations, of disappointments,
of distress, and of obscurity. Neither my numerous
occupations, nor my short residence here, has hitherto
enabled me to draw conclusions from my own ob-
servations on this subject; I speak, therefore, merely
from what I have read. But everybody may be
convinced, in perusing the lives of English authors,
poets, and other men of genius and eminence, that
nowhere has merit been less rewarded, or had more
to suffer from neglect, contempt, and poverty. Of
those whose works, in doing honour to their country,

288 MEMOIRS OF

have instructed or delighted their contemporaries,
many have finished their painful career of glory in
hospitals or gaols; some have been starved to death;
others, more impatient, or preferring a shorter exit,
have resorted to poison, or to a halter, to pistols,
or to daggers. Do not believe, though I detest this
nation, that I am exaggerating. When you come
here I shall put books into your hands, wherein you
may read the lives of these men. I will afterwards
accompany you to Westminster Abbey, where you
may admire their epitaphs, and contemplate their
monuments. 'Epitaphs! monuments I* you exclaim,
' what a contradiction ! ' Yes, the very same un-
generous and unfeeling vanity that shortened the
existence of these men of merit, paid the sculptor
for recording their worth, in hopes of preserving their
own worthless names from a total oblivion — for
they always take care to have engraved by whom
these monuments of tardy national gratitude were
erected. Here ignorance, illiberality or arrogance
may, therefore, if provided with wealth, purchase at
no very dear rate a share of the immortality due to
meritorious characters, who had deserved so well of
their country, but to whom their countrymen, as well
as their country, had refused a morsel of bread, or
the common wages bestowed on the mechanic and

TALLEYRAND 289

day labourer. Suspecting you to have more curiosity
to see England than disgust at residing in France,
I have entered into all these particulars, in expec-
tation that my complaisance will diminish, if not
remove, your an ti- patriotic prejudices in favour of
this country. — Write to me when the day of your
departure from Paris is fixed."

On the 3oth of September, the Countess of F 1,

accompanied by her son, arrived in England with a
pass of the municipality of Paris as Madame Cabanis.
It was fortunate for her that she disregarded both the
opinion of her husband and the representations of her
lover. Notwithstanding what the latter said to the
contrary, she would otherwise, in a few months, have
ascended the same scaffold with the former.

Having so lately left France, and being provided
with so many active and initiated correspondents
everywhere, Talleyrand could not plead ignorance of
the real situation of affairs in that country. In his
letter of the 2ist of July — the day he landed at Dover
— he declared in positive terms his intention, let the
consequences be what they might, not to return
during the then unsettled state of parties. His argu-
ments to persuade his mistress to continue at Paris,
as his last letter evidently proves, were neither disin-
terested nor liberal. A surmise subsists, also, that

VOL. I 19

2QO MEMOIRS OF

he was actuated by other motives, too improbable
and too shocking to be imputed to any man who
had not, like Talleyrand, long renounced all virtuous
and honourable sentiments, who, to accomplish his
ambitious designs, or to indulge his vicious propen-
sities, had from his youth respected nothing either
sacred or respectable. He is stated to have just
then formed an acquaintance with a young emigrant
lady in London, who, to acquired accomplishments
and natural beauty, united some wealth, and had the
prospect of possessing still more. If the revolutionary
assassins at Paris had, therefore, despatched a lady
whom he employed rather as an agent than loved as
a mistress, who, when in London, could be of little
service in his political plots, who might impede his
new intrigue, and, perhaps, one day proffer some
claims to his purse, they would have served, instead
of distressing him.

Some few days after it was known here that
Dumourier had successfully intimidated the late King
of Prussia from undertaking any further offensive
operations in Champagne, Talleyrand sent Le Brun,
the Minister for the Foreign Department in the
Executive Council, a confidential letter too interest-
ing not to deserve the serious perusal and considera-
tion of all true Britons. It evinces the same design

TALLEYRAND 2gi

to surprise and overcome this country by an invasion
before the last war commenced, as since the last
Peace of Amiens was concluded. Considering the un-
prepared and insecure state in which we then were, the
numerous revolutionary incendiaries that disseminated
anarchical and subversive principles everywhere, the
tumultuous behaviour and discontent of the lower
classes, and the agitation which Great Britain shared
with all other nations of Europe, it was fortunate,
indeed, that the insidious and treacherous counsels of
Talleyrand had not the same influence in the deter-
mination of the National Convention as in those of
Bonaparte. This confidential letter is dated London,
October loth, 1792 :

"CITIZEN MINISTER, — Permit me to request the
favour of you to communicate to the other members
of the Executive Council some remarks concerning
the real and relative situation of Great Britain and
Ireland. I am well aware that many of them have
not escaped your wisdom and penetration, or theirs ;
but, knowing also the numerous and various occupa-
tions which must divert and divide your attentions,
and being upon the spot, I think it my duty to
enter into some details, though my capacity is far
from being equal to my patriotism and zeal to serve
the cause of liberty and equality.

2Q2 MEMOIRS OF

" That in the British nation the far greater part
of the inhabitants call loudly for a reform, and
desire a revolution which may establish a common-
wealth, is undeniable ; but the British patriots
possess neither our activity, our disinterestedness,
nor our energy, philosophy, or elevated views; and
they have not yet been able to acquire, for a sup-
port and rallying point, tht majority in the Legislature.
They may, however, and they certainly do, intend
to resort to arms in support of their petitions for
reform and their attempt to recover their lost
liberties. But as long as the strength and re-
sources of the present Government continue unim-
paired, they may distress it, and even shake it,
but I fear, without aid from France, they will be
unable to change or to crush it. The ministers
even expect to be reinforced with the interest and
talents of all those violent alarmists, terrified or
seduced by the eloquent sophistry of the fanatic
Edmund Burke, who will add additional weight to
the scale of the English aristocracy.

" Everything indicates that the King of England
will not long continue his present system of neu-
trality. All the colonels have lately received orders
to hasten the completement of their regiments.
Several more ships have just been put into com-

TALLEYRAND 393

mission. A report is prevalent of the militia being
directly called out. Societies against Republicans and
levellers are talked of as encouraged by Government,
and the ministerial papers are instructed to hold
a language insulting to the French Republic and
hostile to our present Government. I have also
obtained intelligence from a most authentic source,
that immediately after the arrival here of a courier
from Lord Elgin at Brussels, with the information
of the Duke of Brunswick's retreat from Champagne,
fast sailing cutters were sent to the East and West
Indies with instructions for their respective governors
to prepare for hostilities, and, in the meantime, to
intrigue with the disaffected in our colonial pos-
sessions for their surrender to Great Britain the
instant of a rupture being announced.

"Is it, besides, probable that England will remain
neutral, without interference, should the efforts and
valour of our armies be crowned with success ? Or,
if encountering defeats, will she not take advantage
of our disasters by dividing our spoils with our foes?
We have it this moment in our power to command
not only the neutrality of Great Britain and Ireland,
but, if it be thought politic, to form an offensive
and defensive alliance with the English, Scotch and
Irish commonwealths, established by our arms and,

2Q4 MEMOIRS OF

therefore, naturally connected with the French Ra
public by the strongest of all ties — a common
interest, a common danger, or a common safety.

"According to the enclosed extracts of the last
returns sent to the War Office, the regular troops
in England do not amount to 20,000 men complete.
Of these 8,000 are in or near London, 1,500 at Ports-
mouth, i, 800 at Plymouth, 1,100 at Dover, 900 at
Chatham, 1,800 at Sheerness, Tilbury Fort, and other
places on the banks of the Thames. The remainder
are quartered either in some manufacturing towns
where insurrections are apprehended, or in the several
seaports, and so dispersed that in no part do 1,000
men garrison the same place.

" By the last official return from the executive
committee, you see that England alone contains
166,000 registered patriots, of whom 33,600 may be
provided with firearms from our dep6ts, and the
remainder in four days armed with pikes. Our
travelling agents assure us that, besides these, as
many more are ready to declare themselves in our
favour were we once landed and able to support
them effectually.

" In Scotland there are no more than 9,500 regular
troops, of whom 5,000 garrison Edinburgh, where
Government apprehend an insurrection during an

TALLEYRAND 2Q5

approaching fair in the latter part of this month;
2,200 men are quartered at or near Glasgow, and
the rest form the garrisons in some small forts or
seaports. In the same country the last official return
makes the patriots amount to 44,200 registered, and
double that number who, from different motives, have
not yet dared to declare themselves.

" In Ireland the regular troops amount to 10,400
men, and the registered patriots to 131,500, who
expect to be joined by almost every Roman Catholic
in the island should anything be undertaken by us
for their deliverance from their present oppressive
yoke.

" All these encouraging circumstances duly con-
sidered, my humble proposal is that our fleet at
Toulon, now nearly ready for sea on an expedition
in the Mediterranean, after taking on board 20,000
or 25,000 men, and arms for 100,000 more, change its
destination, pass the Strait of Gibraltar, and land in
Ireland as an ally of the numerous oppressed patriots
in that country. These forces are at present more
than sufficient to deprive Great Britain for ever of
that important island, or, at least, to enable us to
keep it as a dep&t during the war, and a security for
her neutrality in case our attempts to revolutionise
her should not meet with an equal success.

MEMOIRS OF

" I am, however, not too sanguine in my ex-
pressions or expectations when I assert that at this
period, even in England and Scotland, we shall meet
with less resistance and fewer obstacles than many
may suppose, if we are only discreet, prudent, and,
above all, expeditious.

"At three times in forty-eight hours we may,
without opposition, land 50,000 or 60,000 men in
twenty or thirty different points, under the names
of emigrants, and seize on the principal dockyards,
arsenals and naval stations. With the assistance of
our numerous secret adherents we may even occupy
London itself, and, what is certain and may be depended
upon, our landing will be the signal for a general
revolt. The Government, terrified by invaders from
abroad and harassed by insurgents in the bosom of
the country, without confidence in its troops or re-
liance on the fidelity of the people, would never,
with its trifling forces, be able at the same time to
repel an enemy and quash rebellion.

" Once masters of the principal seaports, with the
British navy in our power, we may easily obtain from
France what succour we judge necessary. As pro-
clamations in the name of the sovereign people in
France as an ally of the sovereign people in Great
Britain and Ireland will precede our marches, after

TALLEYRAND 2g^

*

being dispersed at our landing, I cannot be mistaken
in my hope of a revolution being effected now in this
country much quicker than in 1688. Nay, I am
positive that not so many weeks will be required to
change this monarchy into a republic as it has re-
quired years since the Revolution to produce the
same change in France. Even in those regiments
on which Government most depends, disaffection has
crept in. In the Guards some officers of rank have
already openly avowed their attachment to our cause,
and among the men a fermentation has been created
that must be useful to our views.

'•Great Britain has at this time no other Conti-
nental allies than Prussia and Holland. From the
spirit and patriotism of our troops, and from the
abilities of our generals, the bondage of the latter
country must soon cease, and its resources, with
those we already command, will enable us to prevent
the King of Prussia, and all other despots, from
assisting the King of England.

" Should, Citizen Minister, this plan obtain the ap-
probation of the Executive Council, no time is to be
lost in carrying it into execution and in informing
me of its determination, that the patriots here may
be prepared to rise at a moment's warning and unite
with us in our glorious undertaking of delivering

298 MEMOIRS OF

the world from the double tyranny of religion and
monarchy.

"But if, unfortunately, any unforeseen or, to me,
unknown reasons or impediments prevail to prevent
it from being carried into effect, pardon me when I
fear that centuries will elapse before another such op-
portunity offers to France to seize on Ireland, to
invade England and Scotland, and with their riches
and power maintain an undisturbed sway over the
universe, in proclaiming a universal republic.

" Health and fraternity,
(Signed) " CH. M. TALLEYRAND." »

Thus this unprincipled man, now Bonaparte's con-
fidential counsellor, advised, and even entreated the
invasion of this country during the period of a most
profound peace, notwithstanding that our Govern-
ment, with its usual liberal policy — disregarding the
daily provocations of French revolutiorists — had just
then, by filling their granaries, saved them from
starving, and by permitting our manufactories to

i See Les Intrigues dtt Ch. M. Talleyrand (Neufchitel, 1801),
p. 124, &c.; and La Faction d'Orleans Demasquee, p. 104, &c. The
author of the last publication states that it was with the per-
mission of Collot d'Herbois that he copied this confidential letter
in the archives of the Committee of Public Safety. It is men-
tioned in the Act of Accusation against the Brissot faction,
October, 1793.

TALLEYRAND 2QQ

supply their arsenals with arms, enabled them to
resist and repulse the combined forces of Austria,
Prussia, and the emigrants! The treacherous olive-
branch of peace held out by revolutionary Frenchmen
is more to be dreaded by all loyal Britons than their
armed banditti encamped quietly opposite our shores,
and their armed flotillas flying along their own coast.
It is a cruel truth, that "as long as France is
tyrannised by revolutionary usurpers, the only and
exclusive safety of the British Empire is in war."

This confidential letter, according to Talleyrand's
desire, was laid before the Executive Council by
Le Brun. After long discussion, it was communi-
cated to the Diplomatic and Military Committees,
together with the opinions of each minister. Thomas
Paine and other English patriots then at Paris were
consulted by the members of the committees, but
"were against all foreign succour to establish liberty
and equality in Great Britain and Ireland, the native
friends of freedom being very numerous there, and
more than sufficiently strong of themselves to erect a
republic on the ruins of monarchy." Carnot, then a
member of the Military Committee, warmly recom-
mended the adoption of Talleyrand's proposal, and
even drew a plan for the intended invasion of these
islands. He was, however, overruled by the majority,

300 MEMOIRS OF

upon a declaration of the Diplomatic Committee that it
was so certain of a revolution in this country within
six months that it was then negotiating an offensive
and defensive treaty with the leading patriots of
England, Scotland and Ireland. In 1794, when
Thomas Paine, from a worthy representative of the
French people, became a prisoner, with all other
British subjects in France, his sentiments, on this
occasion, were made the grounds of an accusation,
prepared against this infamous traitor, as high treason
against the cause of liberty and equality, "which the
gold of Pitt had bribed him to desert." Had Robes-
pierre reigned some few weeks longer, regicide French-
men would have punished this outlawed rebel for his
treason against England.

In another letter to Le Brun, of the I5th of
November, Talleyrand deplores that this his proposal
had not been accepted. He suspects some of the
English patriots of infidelity, and others of being luke-
warm or terrified, as the English Government had
caught the alarm, and were preparing extensive de-
fensive measures against the friends of liberty. He
declines the offer of being accredited abroad as a
public diplomatic agent of the French Commonwealth,
being convinced that he could be of more service were his
name upon the list of proscribed emigrants than were it

TALLEYRAND 30 I

to appear officially as employed and trusted by the
Government of this country. Nowhere could he be
of greater utility than in Great Britain, but then he
must reside there as an emigrant, and as a person
disaffected and disgraced, who neither can nor will
return to France during a republic. He desires,
therefore, that a decree of banishment may, under
some pretext or other, be pronounced against him by
the National Convention. He concludes with de-
claring that, if the English patriots continued their
present inactivity for a month to come, all their
future efforts will be vain, the aristocrats of rank as
well as of property beginning to rally with cordiality
round the throne.

In the following month, according to Talleyrand's
desire, an Act of Accusation was decreed against him
by the National Convention, and his name was placed
amongst those of the loyal emigrants. The discovery
of this intrigue explains the reasons both of his past
equivocal conduct and of his present elevation.

The female emigrant, already mentioned, with
whom Talleyrand had formed an intrigue that aug-
mented his chagrin on the arrival of the Countess of

F 1 in this country, was no other than his present

wife, then residing here as Madame Grand. Con-
cerning this lady, Lieutenant Nath. Belchier, of the

302 MEMOIRS OF

Royal Navy, has favoured the author with^the follow-
ing interesting circumstances, inserted here in the very
words of this gallant and loyal officer:

"In August, 1792, after the massacre of the loth,
Madame Grand made her escape from France, after
seeing her porter, a Swiss, murdered under her
windows. In her flight she left everything to the
mercy of the Republicans, and landed at Dover with
her maid, a few changes of linen, and not more than
a dozen louis d'or in her pocket. It was in this place
I became acquainted with the lady and her misfor-
tunes, and learned that the national seal had been
fixed on her property and placed at the disposal of
the nation.

" Madame Grand had been married to a Mr.
Grand, an Englishman, in the East Indies, but from
some serious disagreement had parted without a
divorce. It was, therefore, thought possible that her
claims as a British subject might be attended to,
and the seals taken off. On this errand, a Mr.
O'Dwyer and myself set off for Paris, invested with
full powers by Madame Grand, at a time when
strangers of every nation were leaving it as fast as
possible. Luckily for the object of our mission, the
name of an Englishman was then a passport of pro-
tection through France, and my then situation in

TALLEYRAND oOo

the English navy, though but that of a midshipman,
I believe was of service. However, after some trouble
the seals were removed from her house in the Rue
de Mirabeau, Section de Mirabeau,1 from her cabinet,
escritoire, &c., &c., and we were desired to inform
her that she might return without being called to
account for her flight. This was not enough. It
was not the intention of Madame Grand to return,
but to get as many of her effects into England as
possible, and to remain there until affairs might take
a turn in her favour. We therefore resolved, at any
risk, and in the face of a decree denouncing under
penalty of death any person found transporting the
current coin or plate out of the Republic above
the value of ^4, to save for her the whole of her
portable property. On the igth of September, about
seven o'clock, we left Paris with her plate, mostly
gold, valued at ^"3,300; jewels, at ^"12,500; besides
^"2,100 secured in belts about our persons, and
actions or demands on the Caisse d'Escompte for
/"8,ooo more, which, I should suppose, were of but
little use. After much trouble and constant danger

z This street and section was called so after Mirabeau,
who died there.' It has since had other names after other
popular revolutionary brigands, but it is now named Rue de
Mont Blanc, Section de Mont Blanc, in commemoration of the
seizure of Savoy in time o/ peace.

304 MEMOIRS OP

of being discovered, we arrived on the 25th, with
the whole, at Dover, and delivered to Madame
Grand the wreck of her fortunes, refusing every
pecuniary recompense whatever, she paying our
expenses only, which amounted to about £60. I
can lay my hand on my heart and say that the
part of this business I undertook was from no other
motive than that of rescuing a beautiful, suffering
Royalist from distress ; and, though at that time
not possessed of £10 in the world, I rejected every
offer of reward, thinking I had a sufficient one in
the contemplation of what I had done I was then
about twenty-one years of age.

" Madame Grand honoured us with two other
commissions equally dangerous. The first was to
call on Madame Champion, then living concealed in
Boulogne at a hairdresser's in the Rue de Capucin,
to enquire if she had any commands for Paris. This
lady gave us letters for her husband, the ex-minister,
then outlawed by the Convention and a price set
upon his head. We visited him in his hiding-place,
and received papers from him for Madame Cham-
pion. Though utter strangers, I am proud to say
he seemed conscious we would not betray him; it
was enough that we were Englishmen. The second,
which we had likewise the good fortune to accom

TALLEYRAND 305

plish, was to assist the escape of Madame Grand's
friend, Madame Villmain, from Abbeville. We dis-
guised her in sailor's clothes, and conducted her
safely to England; but I am sorry to say this lady
soon after returned to France, in hopes of sending
from thence assistance to her friends at Coblentz,
when she was detected and guillotined."

In the summer of 1798, the author was released
from prison in France, where he had gone to claim
his property, which had been sequestered since the
war. He was then often invited by Madame Grand
to her villa near Montmorency, twelve miles from
Paris. Here he met Talleyrand and most of the
foreign ambassadors to the late Court of Luxem-
bourg, and, as a curious coincidence, intending to go
to England, was asked by this lady, who had procured
him a pass from a neutral minister, to bring over
with him on his return back to France these very
jewels and other valuables that Lieutenant Belchier
had, with so much risk and disinterestedness, saved
in 1792, but which were then deposited in the Bank
of England. His voyage was prevented by a new
imprisonment, and, of course, he could not oblige
Madame Grand, who frequently declared that "the
debauchee Talleyrand was the last person upon earth

she should like for a husband.*1

VOL. i 3°

306 MEMOIRS OF

While Talleyrand was thus intriguing with women
in England, and plotting with rebels in France, his
Sovereign and benefactor, Louis XVI., after enduring
accumulated horrors in the dungeons of the Temple,
was, after a mock trial, barbarously sent to the
scaffold by the regicides of the National Convention.
Such was the end of the best and most virtuous
King that ever reigned over the depraved French
people. His character has been justly descanted on
in the most glowing colours by his affectionate
subjects, and no part of their eulogies is deficient of
foundation. Even most of his enemies, in the midst
of a studied system of calumny, have been obliged
to acknowledge his virtues. His whole conduct
proves that he had no fear for himself ; his only
terrors arose from the probability of shedding the
blood of his subjects in civil war. His constancy
and resignation from the time his trial commenced
till the moment which terminated his existence, forms
a picture of excellence almost surpassing humanity,
and demonstrates the transcendent benefits of that
religious purity which takes the sense of shame from
premeditated ignominy, which deprives cruelty of its
venom, and death of its sting.

On the 23rd of January, 1793, the murder of the
King of France was known in London, and Talleyrand,

TALLEYRAND 307

with all other loyal men, put on mourning, and pre-
tended to shed crocodile's tears. The following letter
written to Le Brun on the same day, at six o'clock
in the evening, shows how sincere his affliction was :
"The death of Capet has overwhelmed George
with terror, his ministers with fear, and the aristocrats
with consternation, whilst the patriots rejoice that the
world is plagued with one tyrant less. According to
your desire, Citizen Minister, I shall cause to be
inserted in the Argus and in the Courier those articles
which you sent me ; and my agents are already ordered
to disseminate that the tyrant's artificial firmness in
his last moments was the consequence of hope being
held out to him of being respited on the scaffold, or
that the people would not suffer his execution. A grand
Council of State is convoked for to-morrow, and I
am informed that the question of peace or war will
then be decided. I am glad that you approve of
Chauvelin's official correspondence. If we can only
cause the British Government to be regarded as
aggressors, we have left a door open for the Opposition
to perplex ministers with their attacks and reproaches,
and for the patriots to keep up the spirit of disaffection
and mutiny among the people, and even to increase
it on account of the new burdens which new expenses

must require. It was, however, fortunate for us that

20 — a

308 MEMOIRS OF

we have been able to embroil matters so far that it
will be a difficult task, even for the most profound and
able statesman, to find out on what part of the laws
of nations these acts were considered as equivalent to
a declaration of war. I was more than once afraid
that, in answer to our protest against the Alien Bill,
ministers would have said that such a Bill in fact
existed in France these last four years, as since the
Revolution no British subject was safe in travelling in
France if not provided with a pass, contrary to the
Treaty of Commerce of 1786; fortunately they either
did not know, or forgot this circumstance.1

"Thanks to the decree against me, I am now
well received everywhere, even among those who
lately would hardly speak to me. With all other

z That this article of the Commercial Treaty was violated as
early as in July, 1789, the author can prove by a pass for himself
and five servants, who, with him, were British subjects. It is signed
by La Fayette, as Governor of Paris, and by De la Salle, the
second hi command, and dated July 2ist. Intending to visit an
estate in the south of France, La Fayette advised him not to set
out without this patent of French liberty, which he was obliged
to exhibit no less than eighty-four times between Paris and
Avignon. In descending the River Sadne, from Chalons to Lyons,
he saw fourteen chateaux in flames, one of them belonging to
Count de Perigord, Talleyrand's uncle ; and on its banks the
patriotic incendiaries were, with sang-froid, dividing the plate and
other spoils. Several English families were detained in Burgundy
and Dauphiny for want of passes.

TALLEYRAND

defenders and avengers of the throne and altar, I
intend to put on mourning, to pray, to sigh, and
even to weep with them, should it be necessary and
possible. This pantomime my enemies in France,
who are not in our secrets, will, no doubt, regard as
a real and natural performance. I trust, therefore, to
your friendship and patriotism to explain to the
members of the Executive Council and of the com-
mittees, my behaviour, in a manner that I may not
fall a victim to my endeavours to serve the friends
of liberty and equality. Should Chauvelin be forced
to quit this country, depend upon it my zeal and
patriotism shall always remain the same and un-
interrupted. As, however, he is rather indiscreet, I
should wish, Citizen Minister, that you would seriously
inform him of the consequences, and, if you mistrust
him, even cause him to be shut up in solitary con-
finement, at least as long as I am to reside in this
country. I continue always in the same opinion :
without any signal defeat of their countrymen, the
patriots here will have a better chance of succeed-
ing during a peace than during a war. Should,
therefore, the latter be at present inevitable, let us
make it as short as possible.

"This letter is private and confidential, from a
friend to his friend, not from a secret agent to

3IO MEMOIRS OF

a minister in place. Have, therefore, the goodness
to destroy it after its perusal.

" Health and fraternity,
(Signed) " CH. M. TALLEYRAND.

"P.S. — Late last night we received some in-
telligence which made us detain the messenger for
twenty-four hours. You will now see by Chauvelin's
official despatch, that he is ordered to depart from
England before the ist of next month. This decisive
step evinces that the English Cabinet is deter-
mined upon war, and that ministers are acquainted
with the danger of a longer peace. May we not
still contrive some means to prevent hostilities, and
at least to gain time ? Command me at all times
and on all occasions.

••London, January 24th, 1793.

(Signed) "Cn. M. T."

The gloom and consternation which overspread
Paris on the perpetration of the greatest of national
crimes, was increased by the shutting of the barriers,
and a domiciliary visit, so rigorously executed that
six thousand persons were reported to have been
arrested as emigrants. The people saw themselves
about to plunge into a general and unfounded war
with all Europe, while no adequate pretence of

TALLEYRAND jU

Injury or promise of advantage was held out to
them as a motive. Great efforts were made to
render Brissot and the war faction popular, yet the
other party did not venture to exhibit a promise
of peace, but, on the contrary, seemed inclined to
cover France with blood, and the rest of Europe
with ruin. The inhabitants could not but feel that
their ease and property were sacrificed by individuals
whom they did not respect, to schemes which they
did not comprehend, and which did not promise
either success or advantage. Yet the citizens at
Paris were quiet, and exhibited the stupefaction of
extreme terror, not daring even to express grief at
the crimes that defaced their country; overawed by
a few bold brigands, who insulted, enchained and
robbed them while they boasted of restoring free-
dom, and taught the people, from whom every other
exclamation would have been treason, to shout in
praise of liberty and equality, amidst beggary,
famine, gaols and scaffolds. War without was
eagerly sought; anarchy and rebellion raised their
heads in the departments ; and in the Convention
opposition was conducted with the avowed design
of bringing the vanquished party to an ignominious
death.

In the recent conquest of Austrian Flanders and

312 MEMOIRS OF

Belgium by Dumourier, the neutral governments of
Europe could discern no cause for hostility. The
incursion was not even sufficiently alarming to forbid
an expectation that the Emperor would be able in
another campaign to recover the territory so suddenly
wrested from him ; but the attitude of France to-
wards the conquered people excited sensations widely
different. To possess a country in a military manner
was usual, and could occasion no complaint ; but the
novelty of pretending, in right of conquest, to emanci-
pate the sworn subjects of a throne from their oath
of allegiance, to change their political relation by
conferring on them new rights, of which they could
not be deprived, even in the event of their being re-
conquered— these were innovations in the received
customs of warfare, and contrary to the laws of
nations, that gave alarm and rendered governments
who were not disposed to hostility jealous and
terrified, lest the system of unprovoked aggression
should be extended to them, and the new project of
calling on subjects to revolt and change their form of
government, under the protection of French arms, put
in practice to their destruction. Great Britain had,
from the beginning of the Revolution, kept cautiously
aloof from every connection which could engender
suspicion or create a probability of a war with

TALLEYRAND 313

France; and, at the time of Lord Gower's quitting
Paris, the unequivocal declaration of the minister Le
Erun, in the name of the Executive Council, proved
the equity of her conduct. That of the French, on
the contrary, had in many trifling points been replete
with circumstances of offence, which a jealous nation
or captious administration might have inflamed into
causes for war; but the British Government, instead
of strengthening the means of hostility, disbanded
part of its forces both by sea and land, and reduced
the taxes. The King, in compliance with the wishes
of the* French Government, forbade all his officers
from entering into the service of the allies, and used
every other exertion consistent with his dignity to
evince his good faith in the maintenance of neutrality.
Did any previous doubt exist, Talleyrand's correspon-
dence has removed it, in evincing clearly that the
English Government was, notwithstanding, beset with
the very arts and means which had been employed to
overthrow the throne of France. Clubs were formed
with executive and corresponding committees, pro-
fessedly for legal, but indisputably for revolutionary
purposes ; emissaries in French pay were travelling
round the country propagating anarchical principles;
seditious publications were disseminated with art and
activity; and it was found necessary, on the 2ist of

314 MEMOIRS OF

May, 1792, to issue a proclamation for restraining
these attempts against our Constitution.

While the predominating party in France could
not but perceive the solicitude of the British Govern-
ment on this subject, and while the most violent of
their revolutionary rulers acknowledged the upright
conduct of the British Administration, every en-
couragement and liberal pecuniary succours were
afforded to those whose principles and behaviour
were hostile to the Cabinet of St. James's. Every
deputation recommended or paid by Talleyrand, or
breathing sentiments destructive of the British Con-
stitution, was hailed with triumph, and complimented
as the sound part of the nation; while British subjects,
noted only for their hatred and treachery to their
native Government, were sought out and acknow-
ledged as French citizens, and selected as the fittest
to occupy places in the National Convention. So
active was the impulse given by these and other
more clandestine — though no less effectual — encourage-
ments to seditions in all parts of the British Empire,
that the King was under the necessity to convoke
Parliament at an earlier period than he had originally
intended, to call out the militia, and adopt other
measures for the internal defence of the kingdom.
The decree of the igth of November, 1792, holding

TALLEYRAND 315

out the protecting hand of France to insurgents of
all nations, and the application of it ostentatiously
made to Great Britain by the favourable reception
of deputations of English rebels negotiating for
French fraternity, indicated with indisputable pre-
cision the inimical views and treacherous plots of
all parties in France against our country. To
these numerous acts of indirect hostility against
Great Britain were added direct attacks on her
ally. When Dumourier had completed the con-
quest of the Austrian Netherlands, the National
Convention decreed the invasion of that part of
Flanders belonging to the neutral States of Holland,
and the prosecution of a war against that unoffend
ing country was one of the ostensible views of
this General's late visit to Paris. As the politics
of the Dutch were divided between the contending in-
fluences of an English and a French party, strenuous
remonstrances were necessary from the British Am-
bassador to excite a spirit of resistance against
French aggression, favourable to the liberty of both
countries, and consistent with ancient as well as
recent treaties. Meanwhile, active^ proceedings were
adopted in the Convention and in the French clubs
to inflame the public mind against Great Britain.
Haughty enquiries were made respecting the political

316 MEMOIRS OF

tendency of Acts passed by the British Parliament,
for enabling the Government to insure its tranquillity
by dismissing suspicious foreigners from its shores,
and to restrain the devices for involving its com-
mercial credit with that of France, by prohibiting
the circulation of assignats. The hostile intentions
of France could no longer be denied by any true
Briton, nor could the Cabinet of St. James's mistake
the source of those internal agitations which were
instigated and kept up in many parts and threatened
the welfare of the State. The most respectable per-
sons in the metropolis expressed to Government both
their fears and their devotion to the cause of the
country; and at length, our patient endurance being
exhausted, Chauvelin, the unaccredited representative
of French regicides, was ordered to quit the kingdom.
The National Convention did not, however, await the
intelligence of this event before they carried their
hostile intentions into effect. In this single object
both parties in this assembly cordially joined; and
on the ist of February a long and calumnious report
by Brissot was followed by a unanimous decree that
the French Republic was at war with the King of
England and the Stadtholder of the United Provinces.
Consistently with the insidious form of this declar-
ation, and according to Talleyrand's advice, in order

TALLEYRAND 317

to afford the factious in each country a pretext to
believe that the people were precipitated into a war
against their interests, and merely to gratify the
ambition of their rulers, a mockery of negotiation
was practised by sending emissaries and intriguers
to England, who demanded to be received as agents
of the French Government, though furnished with
no authentic credentials, nor invested with any
efficient power.

On the 2gth of January, 1793, Talleyrand wrote
again to Le Brun :

"This, Citizen Minister, will in all probability be
the last letter you can receive from me in a direct
way, as I am informed by one of our agents that,
notwithstanding my mourning, the English ministers
both watch and suspect me. In the Privy Council,
which determined the order for Chauvelin's leaving
this country, it was discussed whether this order
was not to extend even to me, as moved by the
privy counsellors of the alarmists' party, who con-
tinue the fanatical and irreconcilable foes of all
French patriots. Fortunately, Pitt and Grenville de-
clared for an adjournment, on account of my pro-
scription in France, and from being informed by
several respectable emigrants that I 'sincerely re-
pented of the part I had taken in the Revolution.1

318 MEMOIRS OF

Yet my situation is critical, and you cannot be too
careful in writing to me. I do not think it safe, as
you propose, to trust any longer to the Countess of
F 1, nor wish you to go on with our correspon-
dence under her cover, she being at this moment
jealous of some other connections I have formed,
and the British Government cannot be unacquainted
with our mutual attachment at Paris. I shall always
write to you under the name you mention, to the
care of the house of Maetzlars at Frankfort, or to
Madame La Roche 1 in Switzerland. You may, at
least once in a month, send me your orders addressed to
Madame Grand, whose friendship I possess, and who
is too stupid (trop bete) to suspect anything. Besides
this and the four addresses Chauvelin and I have
agreed to, and which he will communicate to you,
you may direct letters to Thomas Smith, Esq.,
Cannon Coffee-house, Jermyn Street; or to Signer
Sellini, Orange Coffee-house, Haymarket.

" I have now changed all the houses and places
of rendezvous where I hitherto saw the English
patriots and heard the reports of my agents ; among
the former I continue to see and correspond only
with three, their principal leaders — one for England,

1 In Lts Intrigues du Ch. M. Talleyrand, <5<., p. 152, it i» stated
that this lady's real name was Rochechouart.

TALLEYRAN'D aiQ

one for Scotland and one for Ireland; of the latter,
Audibert and several others have, since the Alien
Bill, already been ordered out of this country, and
I employ now, no more than five, of whom three
are natives, besides the Prussian Counsellor of
Legation,1 who is sincerely a friend of France and
an enemy of Great Britain. Reduced as you find
the establishment, yet the expenses are increased,
as I am obliged to take so many precautions, to
pay largely, and at a higher rate than before; having
also, to avoid suspicion, taken a house at Kensington,
where expenses are higher than in London, but
where, at the same time, my actions may, as I
desire, be more easily inspected by the spies set
about me. These are the principal causes of the
great credit I have asked for on bankers at Ham-
burg, Frankfort and Basle; but, Citizen Minister,
you may rest assured that the strictest economy
shall, on my part, be observed with the money of
the nation, and nothing be squandered away un-

X Lts Intrigues du Ck. M. Talleyrand, <§<., p. 160. This
Prussian Counsellor's name is Theremin. After being a spy
here during the war, when peace was signed between Prussia
and France he went to Paris and wrote a libel against this
country, for which he was made a French citizen. The Direc-
tory employed him to embroil the States of Wurtemburg with
their Prince ; and Bonaparte made him, in 1799, a Prefect

320 MEMOIRS OF

necessarily. Beaumarchais has refused me any
further advances until his accounts are settled by
the Executive Council, having, as he says, laid out
in purchase of arms for the patriots and our troops
^25,000 more than he had credit for, and on which
account he is much distressed by his creditors here;
he writes to the Minister of the War Department
on this same occasion.

"The zeal, though not the number, of patriots
here increases, and almost every day the Press
evinces their activity. They suppose still that they
may produce a revolution without foreign assistance,
but they are also convinced of their error in not
pressing last October the acceptance of the plan I
then had the honour of presenting to you. As
I suggested, they have now agreed to unite the
cry for peace with that of liberty, and to inspire
everywhere, and by all means in their power, a
wish to see an end of this unnatural war. In this
they are ably supported by some members of the
Opposition, who, perhaps from different motives, try
to make the war unpopular in hopes of turning
out the ministers, and of succeeding them. The spirit
among the troops is net quite so favourable to our
designs as three months ago, but some severe defeats
will soon change it, although the removal of several

TALLEYRAND J21

patriotic officers has certainly hurt the cause of liberty
in the army."

Talleyrand continued to correspond with Le Brun,
and to inform him of the success of his intrigues and
plots in this country, until this minister shared the
disgrace of the other members of the Brissotine
faction. The credit on several foreign houses was
then withdrawn, and the Committee of Public Safety
considered him in no other light than as an emigrant.

His correspondence with the Countess of F 1 was

then published, and even his official or confidential
letters to Le Brun were shown in the National Con-
vention, and were permitted to be copied by several
persons, who have since printed them. This impolitic
behaviour of the members of the committee originated
from the enmity of one of them, Collot d'Herbois
(formerly a strolling player), who suspected Talleyrand
of having prevented Louis XVI. from appointing him
a Minister of Justice in 1791, a place for which he
was then insolently a candidate. That our Govern-
ment had no knowledge of Talleyrand's perfidy is
judged from their permitting him still to reside here.
The accusations and denunciations of the French
Jacobins against pretended agents of Pitt at Paris
were, therefore, either false, or the British Ministry
were not faithfully served by them. The female

VOL. I 21

322 MEMOIRS OP

Intriguer, Madame La Roche, who was then at Lau-
sanne, obtained, however, regularly from him some
gratuitous intelligence, which she communicated to
Carnot, who afterwards favoured his return to France
and his promotion by the Directory. Even when, in
1794, he was sent away from England, and went to
America, he did not cease writing to her. Among
other papers procured by him that accompanied his
petition to be struck out of the list of emigrants was
a certificate of civism, signed by this woman.

When Talleyrand heard of the arrest of Le Brun,
he immediately employed out of the secret service
money a sum sufficient to purchase, at Amsterdam,
American stock to the amount of 150,000 dollars.
Fearing that the jealousy, hatred and mistrust of the
. victorious faction would get the better of their policy,
he took care to rob the plunderers in France suffi-
ciently to live independently in America should any
discovery force him from Great Britain. Though
possessing, besides this money, several large sums
deposited under different names in our Funds, he used

the Countess of F 1 with ingratitude perfectly

suitable to his selfish and cruel character. By the
murder of her husband, this lady had lost all her
property and all hope of any assistance from France.
Thus circumstanced, and having, besides herself, their

TALLEYRAND 923

son to support, she justly addressed herself to him
for some part oi what was due to her for former
pecuniary sacrifices. With his usual artful hypocrisy,
he wished to persuade her that, by unsuccessful
speculations and gambling in our Funds, he was
nearly ruined. Either from a thorough knowledge of
his unfeeling heart, or from a real belief in his false
assertion, she applied no more to him, but to her
own talents, and wrote a novel called " Adele de
Senange," which, by a generous subscription among
the English nobility and gentry, produced her five
hundred guineas. When Talleyrand had sailed for
America, she intended to reside, for economy, in
Switzerland, and for that purpose went over to
Holland. In August, 1794, the compiler, just re-
leased from a French prison, met her by accident
at Utrecht. There she related to him the above
particulars 'and that she had passed several weeks
at Brille, where she had been recommended to the
English Agent. She spoke in high terms of the
English nation, and of the delicacy which attended
the generosity of the higher classes of this country in
their behaviour towards the emigrants. She repeated
several anecdotes on this subject; among others, one
which occurred during her stay at Brille. Being

invited to dine one day at the English Agent's, she

21 — a

324 MEMOIRS OF

found there, among other persons of distinction, Lord
Elgin, and the Earl and Countess of Besborough.
The Agent, not the most refined in his sentiments,
treated her, indeed, hospitably; but it was easy to
observe, and she felt that he was acquainted with
her penurious situation. This could not escape the
penetrating eye and the noble mind of the amiable
Lady Besborough, who, when sitting down to dinner,

insisted upon the Countess of F 1 taking the

place of honour, which had been marked for and
offered to her by the Agent. This tender, but at
the same time expressive politeness, had the desired
effect. From that day more regard was shown the
unfortunate wanderer, so much the more consoling to
her as the progress of the French arms detained her
longer in Holland than she first intended, and obliged
her finally to retire to Altona, near Hamburg, in-
stead of continuing her journey to Switzerland. How
easy it is for those whose birth and affluence have
never been insulted or injured by the savage hands
of rebellion, to confer comfort on those who have
nothing left of their birth but a rank they cannot
support, or of their affluence but a remembrance of
property they expect never more to possess ! To
truly honourable minds not yet sunk to a level with
their circumstances, the delicate politeness of the

TALLEYRAND 325

Countess of Besborough must be preferable to any
pecuniary gift she had in her power to bestow.
What money can relieve a heart pierced with the
poisonous arrow of contempt, while suffering un-
merited misery ?

When Talleyrand was ordered to quit England,1
his first accomplices, La Fayette, the two brothers
La Methes, and La Tour Maubourg were confined
at Olmutz, in Bohemia, or at Spandau, in Prussia.
In every part of Europe the Constitutional rebels
were as much detested by all loyal men as the
Jacobin regicides. He had, therefore, no other alter-
native left than to cross the Atlantic. Some other
of those traitors who, in 1789, revolted against their
King, had since, in the name of the sovereign people,
been proscribed by the Jacobins, and, to save their
lives and preserve their ill-gotten wealth, had emi-
grated and settled themselves in the United States
of America. He found there, in consequence, a
number of his former associates, with whom he
immediately entered into an association for reforming

i When Talleyrand left this country, he pretended to be in
great distress. He sold his library, and borrowed money for his
voyage. This is, however, a common manoeuvre of French spies.
Mehe'e de la Touche caused himself to be arrested and sent to
Newgate for ten guineas, at a time when he, according to his
own avowal, possessed a credit for £1,200.

3^6 MEMOIRS OP

and regenerating that country, after the manner of
France. Fortunately for the citizens of America,
their Presidents, at this period, were enlightened
patriots, and not fanatical revolutionists — too inde-
pendent to suffer themselves to be seduced by the
stolen gold of French emissaries, too penetrating to
be deluded by the sophistry of French intriguers, and
too loyal to approve innovations which, in bringing
certain wretchedness on present generations, leave
behind them no prospect of any advantage to pos-
terity. Talleyrand and the other revolutionary
propagators were, therefore, warned to desist from
their attempts, if they wished to avoid that punish-
ment the law inflicted on conspirators. The over-
throw of Robespierre, of which information then
arrived, more than the admonitions of the Govern-
ment, made them cease their revolutionary manreu-
vres in America, to turn their thoughts and schemes
again towards Europe.

A treaty between England and America, at the
period of Talleyrand's arrival, was negotiating. His
former hatred against this country had almost
increased to rage by the late order he received to
depart. He, therefore, employed all his political
talents to retard its progress, and all his art and
machiavelism to prevent a fortunate issue. He had

TALLEYRAND 337

frequent intercourse with Mr. Jefferson, and several
other Americans who occupied situations under
Government, or who were members of the two
Houses of the States — men, either attached to the
French Republic from principle, or bought over by
gold, or whose unnatural malevolence towards Great
Britain was so illiberal and impolitic as to prefer
risking the ruin and destruction of the honour and
prosperity of their country by adopting the revolu-
tionary policy of France, to its glory, advantage,
preservation and safety in concluding a treaty with
England. As he announced and presented himself
everywhere as the bosom friend of La Fayette, to
whom many Americans believed themselves in some
measure indebted for their independence, he suc-
ceeded in his intrigues against this Empire to a
much greater extent than could have been expected
from a proscribed emigrant, and one who was
despised throughout Europe. If he failed in his
wishes by the treaty being carried through, signed,
and ratified, he created, however, great opposition in
its different stages, and threatened that, whenever he
should have any influence in the French councils, the
Americans should repent of their imprudence and
obstinacy, as he could prove that this Act was con-
trary to treaties already subsisting with France — a

328 MEMOIRS OF

threat he took care some years afterwards to have
carried into effect, by the seizure of American vessels
and property to an immense amount.

After the death of Robespierre, the surviving
members of the Constitutional and Orleans faction,
who mostly resided in or near Hamburg, united their
talents and machinations to change the French Re-
public into a constitutional monarchy. They invited
Talleyrand to join them in their labours, which he
did the more willingly, as he disliked the Americans
as much as he detested the English. In July, 1795,
he landed on the banks of the Elbe, where he found,
and was hailed by, the brothers La Methes, the Duke
of Aiguillon, General Valence, Madame Genlis, and
some other of his former accomplices. They in-
stituted a revolutionary committee, having for its
object to extend the horrors of the French Rebellion
to Great Britain, Ireland, and the North of Europe,
in a manner that, when they returned to France,
where they hoped to rule quickly under a consti-
tutional king of their own making, the convulsed
state of other nations would prevent their tranquillity
from being interrupted by domestic rivals, and their
usurped authority from being attacked by enemies
from abroad. Talleyrand seemed sincerely to enter
into all their views, and was entrusted by them to

TALLEYRAND

329

correspond with Barras and other leading members
of the National Convention. He acted, however,
with them, as he had already done with Louis XVI.,
Orleans, and Petion. He served them as long as
he could serve himself by it, but deserted them the
instant his connection with them was no longer profit-
able to his purse or alluring to his ambition. On the
2nd of September a memorial was presented to the
Convention, in which he enumerates "his great
achievements in the cause of liberty and equality,
and demands, therefore, to have the decree of accu-
sation against him cancelled, and his name struck off
the list of emigrants, as both these acts took place in
consequence of his own desire, to be so much the more
useful in his secret mission in London." His petition
was taken under consideration, and assented to on the
4th of September ; but he was the only member of
the Revolutionary Committee of the North to whom
this assembly conceded such a favour.

He was happy to see his former friend, the

Countess of F 1, who still resided at Altona;

but she received him, as he merited, with a silent
coolness, which mortified his vanity and presumption
more than he would have been humiliated by de-
served upbraiding, destitute as he was of all honour-
able sentiments. The Counteso treated him no other

330 MEMOIRS OF

than as a disagreeable intruder or a common visitor,
Upon his enquiry after their son, she answered, in
the presence of several persons, "Sir, you never
had a wife ! and a mistress becoming a mother by
you, in loving her child, must abhor his father.
When once really known, you can inspire no other
sentiments than those of abhorrence." With his
usual presence of mind, he addressed himself to the
company: "My friends," said he, "do not be alarmed;
this is only a severe fit of jealousy, and these fits,
you know, neither kill women nor are disagreeable
to men."

Among persons to whom he had been introduced
since his arrival in Germany, was the Baron de

S , married to a beautiful niece of the Prince

de H , who had sent her, in the beginning of

the Revolution, to France, to be educated there
under the inspection of Madame Genlis.1 If her
French education had not improved her notions of
moral duties, her husband, by the lessons of German

i Madame Genlis has been rather unfortunate with her pupils.
Everybody at Paris knows the pure life of her daughter, Madame
Valence ; her [niece De Sarcy, married to Mr. Mathieson, was
divorced from him to marry her gallant ; Mademoiselle de L.,
married to the Marquis St. P., had three children during his
emigration ; and did Pamela make her husband happy ? See
Mon Sejour en Alltmagne (Basle, 1800), p. 49, note.

TALLEYRAND 33!

sophists — his instructors— had also imbibed principles
as dangerous to society as they were incompatible with
the happiness of individuals. Ambitious, but not in-
terested, motives guided him when he concluded this
marriage. Possessing a princely fortune, his vanity
was flattered in being able to boast of a wife related
to a Prince of one of the first houses in Germany.
Of this he informed his lady on their wedding-day,
and added that, as he desired not to be interrupted
in his future intercourse with persons of her sex, so
he left her at perfect liberty to choose the company
of those gentlemen who were most agreeable to her
inclinations. She was not quite eighteen when she
heard such language from her husband, who, the
next day, presented her, as a playfellow, a Prussian
sub-lieutenant of her own age, the natural son of a
nobleman in the vicinity. Thus circumstanced, if she
fell a victim to seduction, she was previously the
victim of imprudence, of neglect, and of indifference.
Although her frailties are not to be commended,
the conduct of her husband is unpardonable. Had
he encouraged in her sentiments of virtue, she might
have continued a life of chastity. His guilt is evi-
dent ; hers, the moralist will deplore, and the Christian
pity and forgive.

Her intrigue with this young officer was no secret,

332 MEMOIRS OF

and when delivered of a daughter she ingenuously
told everybody that he was the father, even in the
presence of her husband, who did not appear offended.
Before she had the misfortune of Talleyrand's ac-
quaintance, this was the sole instance of any im-
proper connections or irregularities of which she was
accused. Her genius was as justly celebrated as her
beauty was admired; but her foible was to prefer the
praise conferred on the eminence of the former to the
compliments bestowed on the perfection of the latter.
This weak side was soon discovered by this veteran
seducer, who took advantage of it, to his disgrace,
but to her perdition. She had a select library, where
he requested and obtained free admittance. He there
wrote in her favourite book — Rousseau's " Eloisa " —
some flattering verses, which she answered ; and, as
he expected, an amorous intrigue was the conclusion
of a literary correspondence. Not content with gain-
ing her affection, he determined to tyrannise over her
inclinations; and, what is most surprising, he met
with success. Yes, a man of forty-one, ugly and de-
formed, had the art to compel an accomplished young
lady of twenty-one to discard a handsome young
officer of her own age, who was her first, and, for
three years past, had been her only lover!

Not many weeks passed away before she repented

TALLEYRAND 333

of her sacrifices and suffered for her inexperience. A
relative of hers, some years older, of an amiable and
irreproachable character, and married to a nobleman
of an eminent station in that country, often saw
Talleyrand at her house, but always with an undis-
guised aversion. He, in revenge, resolved to conquer,
humiliate and ruin this rebel female, who no sooner
remarked his assiduities than she seemed to soften
into submission. Her intent was, however, only to
expose the infamy of the intriguer and to preserve
her relative from his snares for the future. She as-
sented, therefore, to a surrender, as soon as he could
prove that he had no other mistress. To effect this
purpose he began to quarrel with his bonne amie about
her former lover, of whom, though now excluded from
all tete-a-Utes in her boudoir, he pretended to be jea-
lous. To remove this bone of contention, she obtained
for the officer an order from his colonel to join his
regiment immediately, at a distance of nearly 400
English miles ; but an illness, the consequence of
sincere, but disappointed love, did not permit him to
obey. Talleyrand, in the meantime, procured several
pressing invitations from the nobility and gentry in
the neighbourhood, which gave him an opportunity
to absent himself. He had already, before his depar-
ture, begun to act the moralist, and in reprobating

334 MEMOIRS OF

himself for what had passed, desired her to restore
the father of her daughter his health with her affec-
tion. When at a distance, he repeated in letters what
he had expressed in his conversation. Her answers
evince a vigorous, but agitated mind, feeling the
pangs of a slighted attachment, or suffering from in-
jured pride and humbled vanity.1

"At three o'clock in the afternoon.

"I could not begin my letter this morning — I
was in a situation which made it utterly impossible
for me to write; besides, I had conceived a plan
which I wanted previously to execute, and it is done.

"All my pleasing dreams of happiness are for
ever fled ! I dared still once more flatter myself
with the idea that I could be happy! It was a
folly 1 I ought to have known that happiness was

I In the publication called Mon Sejour en Alltmagne, supposed
to be written by Ch. Villars, now a member of the National
Institute, most of the particulars of this infamous intrigue are
found. These the author, in his travels through that part of
Germany, has since heard confirmed by the female relation of
the unfortunate victim of Talleyrand's art and perfidy. By that
lady he was favoured with these original and last letters of
her friend. They were written, with several others in his
possession, to Talleyrand, some days previous to the fatal
catastrophe, and cruelly given np by him in expectation of
augmenting the enormity of his past guilt by another seduction
and another adultery. The author obtained permission to pub-
lish them, with due discretion to the high relatives of the

TALLEYRAND 935

not my lot in this world! I wished to enjoy the
peace of content, and of those pure pleasures destined
only to be the recompense of virtue. How extrava-
gant was the idea! I am well punished for it — and
by whom? By him who had created this too flat-
tering hope — by him who inspired my soul with this
expectation — by him whom I supposed able to restore
me my long lost happiness ; that internal calm ; that
esteem of myself; in fine, everything that my un-
fortunate destiny has caused me to lose.

" Oh ! Charles ! I utter no reproaches ; I have
none to utter. I am unhappy, more unhappy than
I have ever been ; but I reproach no one but myself
for what has passed, which I am not able to undo !
Nevertheless, it is true, if I merit my sufferings, I
do not merit all that your letter contains; no! God
is my witness, I did not merit it. To tell thee what
this cruel letter has made me endure — alas ! it is

injured party, and he hopes that he has made a proper use
of this condescension.

As these letters necessarily lose by a translation, copies of
the originals in the French will be found in an appendix to
this work, one of them in a fac-simile. When it is remembered
that this was not her native tongue, her talents must be
applauded, whilst her errors are lamented. The purity of
language equals her elegance of expression, and her strength
and fluency of thought. She wrote English, Italian and German
with equal accuracy.

336 MEMOIRS OF

impossible. I was raised to the height of felicity
by that I received from thee yesterday ; to-day, I
am in the depth of misery.

" From what has passed, I deserve to be judged
in this manner — I deserve, from what has passed,
this terrible punishment ! but the great God, who
reads my inmost mind, knows that love, at present,
has purified my heart ; that I have revived, more
than ever, the ardent desire of being prudent and
virtuous. Yes ! God knows, that, by your assistance,
by my true, tender love, by my excess of love for
thee, I hoped again to become what — with a mind
formed for virtue — by the most unforeseen fatality,
I, unfortunately, had ceased to be. I fondly hoped
to have found in my darling lover a tender and
indulgent friend, who, for the future, would serve
me as a guide, who would offer me an assisting
hand, to lead me back to the paths of virtue; and
this assisting hand, alas ! is now about to plunge me
into an abyss ! To enter upon a reformation, it is
necessary to regain some esteem of oneself; it is
necessary, as you made me perceive, that, notwith-
standing my past errors, I have within me a desire
and capacity of doing good, which, thanks to love
and friendship, can enable me to repair partly what
has passed. And yet, in your last letter, you tell me

TALLEYRAND

337

that my character is altered — you tell me that I am
a sensual woman, who cannot live without a lover,
who is only governed by her desires. You say that
I love the young man, and that, therefore, my love
for you is a mere jest, and that I countenance you

only to make the world forget my intrigue with .

Is this the manner in which you humble and degrade
me ? in which you judge thoss sentiments — so pure,
so true — which animated my love for thee? Oh! my
God ! how have I deserved this humiliation ?

" Consider what may be the consequences. It is
of thee that I have learnt that my reputation was
entirely lost; but your esteem, your good opinion
remained and consoled me. At present I know that
you no longer esteem me; nay, that nobody esteems
me. You have debased me, even in my own opinion.
Were I, therefore, a woman influenced exclusively by
her appetites, as you believe, you have removed
the only barrier which hitherto prevented me from
gratifying my passions. Despised by everybody —
despicable in my own eyes — you expose me to the
danger of becoming so more than ever! But no!
one sentiment revives me — it is that, notwithstanding
my past errors, 1 am much better than you think. I
am not, as you suppose, governed by my senses. My
imagination and my head are much more ardent and

VOL. I

22

338 MEMOIRS OF

powerful than they, and everything which I have
done is rather to be ascribed to an error of judgment
than the dictates of my feelings. A great desire of
pleasing is my principal fault. The real stumbling-
block to me is vanity; but my true and tender love
for thee had preserved me from it for the future.

44 With regard to the young man, I had explained
to you the origin and particulars of my connection
with him with the most perfect sincerity, as you
requested, and I proposed. * * * *

********
********
In fine, to speak a sincere truth, instead of loving
him more than you, I feel at this very moment that
I love thee more than I ever loved any being upon
earth; and that in renouncing thee I renounce my
sole felicity; and, nevertheless — yes, nevertheless — oh!
my God ! I see that I must renounce thee — I see it
with despair — my hand trembles while I tell it; my
heart is near breaking, and my eyes are dim with
tears — I must renounce even theel But do not
imagine that it is to connect myself with the young
man. Nol I renounce even him, and this is no
no sacrifice for me; no, I can have no more to do
with him. ******
********

TALLEYRAND 339

" I do not speak in this manner to regain thee

no, Charles! I am convinced that I give up my
greatest happiness ; but as you judge me, I can here-
after be only your friend. * * * *
********
********
Notwithstanding what I have said, and what I might
say, you would not believe that my intercourse with
the young man has ceased — and these doubts — I
cannot endure them ; in fine, I must submit to my
fate — the felicity of a true, pure, and tender love
I cannot expect — fortunate, if one day, for all my
present sufferings, you can regain a better opinion
of me. This winter I am to pass far from you.
Oh 1 my God ! after such pleasing expectations, why
am I condemned to such a misfortune?

" The only object of my present desires is, that
you will consent to what I propose, which will make
me less unhappy. Come here, but come as a friend;
do not lose sight of me a single instant ; constantly
observe my conduct; observe all my actions, and
during all the time you will find that I avoid him,
and that I can even remain without appertauu'ng to
you, the object of all my tenderness; then, perhaps,
you will finally avow that I am not the slave of
my senses, and I may then hope to enjoy happiness

22 — 2

340 MEMOIRS OF

in future. But if you will not remain with me as A
friend, then I do not know what to do, because I
must not, I cannot, I will not be your mistress
until the moment when, with the most perfect con-
viction, you can say, 'Cordelia, I was unjust towards
thee — you are not the slave of your senses, you are
again worthy of all my tenderness and confidence.'
Without waiting for the departure of the mail, I
have found an opportunity to forward this letter.
For pity's sake answer me, and say whether you
will accept my proposition, which is my only hope.

" I conjure you to answer me by the courier who
brings you this letter. Can you read this letter ?
I was so distressed while I wrote it that it is
hardly legible. Address your letter, by the bearer
of this, to my husband, and rest assured that, not-
withstanding the direction, nobody but myself will
open it."

In this letter — an answer to Talleyrand's complaint
of want of sincerity — this lady was induced to stoop to
a falsehood, in hopes of preventing the inconstancy of
her seducer. From the day she was connected with
him, all intimacy ceased with her former lover. Of
this he was well convinced, but, wishing to begin
a new intrigue, he not only had cunning enough to
make her believe that his desertion was her fault, but

TALLEYRAND *jj

that she deserved his reproaches, and was unworthy
of his attachment. Either in denying or accusing
herself of a double intrigue, he was sure of succeeding
in his plot. In the former case, he would again
declaim against her infidelity, and in the latter, tor-
ment her duplicity. Whatever, therefore, the final
issue might be, he would enjoy the barbarous triumph
of having degraded her in her own eyes, after having
dishonoured her in the opinion of the public. Her
agitated state every line of her correspondence evinces ;
but her next letter shows that her health had been
impaired from her affliction, as much as her feelings
had suffered from her sensibility:

"Monday.

"Yesterday I would not take the drugs which the
physician had prescribed. ' Alas ! ' said I to myself,
1 of what use are all those remedies ? the source of my
malady is in my heart.' My husband, however, com-
pelled me by his reiterated instances. I do not know
whether it be the effect of the prescriptions, or if
nature, exhausted, has overpowered my grief, but
last night I got some hours' rest, and I rose this
morning at my regular time, instead of being under
the necessity, as I was yesterday, of remaining the
whole day in bed. When I awoke this morning, I
was at first quite confused ; I had not a single distinct

342 MEMOIRS OF

sentiment of what, for some days past, has made me so
miserable; but my sad ideas, my cruel remembrances
returned but too soon. Oh ! Charles ! how could you,
in exchange for my tenderness, further condemn me
to wretchedness? Why do you debar yourself from
a happiness so easily obtained ? Alas ! cannot the
sentence you have pronounced be recalled? No, it
cannot! because — I repeat it again — it requires a
heavenly power to enable you to read my heart, to
enlighten you, that you may distinguish truth from
falsehood ; you alone cannot do it — I see it too well —
you cannot believe the unfortunate Cordelia was sin-
cere. Perhaps you conclude her artifice truth, and her
truth falsehood. What did I in writing those fatal

letters ? Oh I Charles ! why, at , where I was

so sincere, did you refuse to believe me? Why then
those cruel doubts, so afflicting to me? Your doubts
— your suspicions frequently troubled me, even in
the midst of happiness: in the moments when I felt
myself most happy you threw out hints and made
use of expressions that wounded my soul most

cruelly. At , oh! God! where I enjoyed so

great felicity, you were the cause of many and
bitter tears. Do you remember it, dear and cruel
friend? I said to myself that we should never be
perfectly happy if I did not succeed to inspire in

TALLEYRAND

343

you a confidence equally necessary in love as well
as in friendship. I would purchase this confidence
at any rate. It was this desire that gave me the
fortunate idea of accusing myself. ' He will not
believe me,' said I to myself, ' before I acknowledge
myself culpable. My seeming sincerity will finally
procure me his confidence, which is to me an abso-
lute want.' Nevertheless, I could not persuade myself
to let you suppose that I divided my favours. This
was the cause of my demanding your advice when
I had no need of it. I should have said, afterwards,
that I had followed it, and I hoped that, having
finally removed your suspicions by my confessions,
you would for the future think me sincere. I was
far from expecting that you would advise me to
renounce yourself. Having received that fatal letter
which showed how wrong my calculations were;
having, by a falsehood, destroyed all my happiness,
I was reduced to despair, not knowing what to say
or to do. Should I tell you the truth ?— that I had
related a falsehood in these imaginary avowals? I
dared not : you would take it for a new artifice. To
avoid this appearance, I imagined it would be best
to inform you of my conversation with the young
man— a conversation that took place long ago. Now,
though too late, I return to truth, but I am per-

344 MEMOIRS OF

suaded it is in vain ; you will never more believe
me. In writing to you the second of these two
letters, my heart was so oppressed — as if I had
a presentiment of their consequences, although I
persisted in these as the only means to appear
sincere with you. It is thus I have caused my
own wretchedness; but I am not the sole cause
of it. Oh! Charles! your suspicions, your unfortu-
nately cruel mistrusts have had the greatest share !
I should be less miserable were I alone the only
sufferer; but oh! you! — oh! you! my well-beloved,
for whom no sacrifice would be too great for me,
whose content I exclusively meditated. Oh! Charles!
you partake the horror of my destiny; and we could
both be so happy ! Everything else was in our
favour; but with all that I dare not hope any more.
What will your letter of Thursday contain ?

"Charles, I am possessed of more sang-froid to-day
than yesterday. I am always melancholy, miserable
beyond expression ; but what I say is dictated by re-
flection, and / persist to tell you : if you do not assent
to the last favour I have to ask of you — if you intend
to leave me without seeing me, then, forgetting every
tie that should restrain me, I will set out — I will
follow you everywhere. I can forsake my child, my
husband — I can forego everything for thee; but to

TALLEYRAND 045

remain without having seen you— to remain a victim
to my horrid despair, it is beyond all human power
to support. God knows I cannot endure the very
thought.

" Charles ! Charles I have pity on me ; do not
sacrifice me to misery, despair and remorse. Ob !
Charles! a woman who loves you with the sincerest
affection — a woman who has nothing to reproach her-
self with towards you, but with having once used an
artifice with an intention that was not criminal, does
she merit to be condemned to eternal wretchedness?

•

If such is your determination, and if it is irrevocable,
then pray to God that he may soon finish the de-
plorable existence of the unfortunate Cordelia I"

The husband of the lady whose seduction Talley-
rand now laboured to effect, being neither a convert
to the precepts of German philosophy nor an admirer
of the tenets of French morality, was affectionate in
his family, strict in his religious and regular in his
social duties; he injured no man, and would, there-
fore, probably not patiently endure unprovoked offence
from others. Occupying besides an eminent situation
in his own country, his resentment for any outrage
offered to his bed could not fail to be certain as well
as severe. To give so much the greater Iclat to
his gallantry, or rather to prevent vengeance and

346 MEMOIRS OF

justice from overtaking him, Talleyrand, who now
had obtained permission to return to France, told
his new mistress that he proposed to carry her to
that land of infamy and licentiousness, though, in
fact, he only intended to carry her away from her
home, expose her, ruin her, and then, perhaps, leave
her on the frontiers of her country a prey to dis-
honour and want. This is the journey mentioned
and dreaded by poor Cordelia in the foregoing and
following letters, because she supposed it to have
no other object than what he had written to her,
that " he was going to travel to try to forget his
love for her" — a sentiment of which she had made
herself unworthy, but from which he, nevertheless,
was the greater sufferer. The idea of having, by
her imprudence, both lost a lover to whom she was
still strongly attached, and made him unhappy by
his attachment to her which he could not remove,
increased her own torments and hastened to close
the scene of his villainy.

" Sunday.

" The day of your departure from is, then,

fixed; you are going to remove far away from me,
and that without having seen me. Having received
this news, it is time for me to write to you for
the last time, on a subject of such importance to

TALLEYRAND 34.7

our happiness. It will cost me great efforts to write
to you as calmly as is necessary. In spite of all
my endeavours to govern myself, my hand trembles
and my ideas are confused. Charles! I repeat it —
it is for the last time I shall attempt to address
myself to your heart; if it is in vain, I condemn
myself to silence; I submit to my destiny— -decided
by you. 1 beg you to read what I am going to
tell you with attention — read it often, and do not pro-
nounce your sentence hastily.

" Yet I hope nothing from this letter — no ! no !
I have nothing to hope ; your resolution is, no doubt,
not to be shaken. Yes, I perceive, more than ever,
that you are resolved to break those affectionate ties
which united us, which made us so happy. I shall
endeavour to examine with sang-froid the reasons
which have induced you to take that fatal deter-
mination. Were not the happiness and honour of
Cordelia your first and principal motives? Yes,
these were the tender, the honourable and the pure
motives that induced you to make a sacrifice, to
which you will perceive that I also shall submit.
I respect your intentions — but take care, Charles 1
that you have not made a wrong calculation; take
care, in wishing my felicity, that you do not bring
about my destruction ; take care, in spite of your

34$ MEMOIRS OF

praiseworthy intentions, that one day you may not
have the most cruel reflections preying on your mind ;
take care, when you might have made me both
happy and respectable, that you alone are not the
author of my misery, and, in desiring to restore me
to the path of virtue, that you do not irremediably
force me into the road of perdition ; take care that
you do not hurry me into a most awful futurity !
Your advice is excellent, your moral lessons are
pure — but, alas! it is too late for me to follow
them. Charles! Charles! a violent and invincible pas-
sion consumes me ! You tell me that I am to search
for happiness by fulfilling the duties imposed on me
as a wife, as a mistress, and as a mother! The last
title I acknowledge, and shall try to observe its
commands ; but for those of a wife and a mistress,
I acknowledge them no longer. I protest that it
is totally impossible that I should ever have anything
more to do with the young man. In a connection
between us I see no advantages either for him or
for me; and did they even exist, my heart revolts
against them. Besides, I do not see that any duty
urges me to keep up our acquaintance. Is it on
his account ? our characters are too opposite to
assimilate and to agree. He will suffer for a moment
in resigning me for ever, but he will retrieve his

TALLEYRAND 349

happiness. As to Julia ! my child has no interest
that can oblige me to assent to a continuance of
our connection. God forbid that she should ever
know him to be the author of her existence. With
regard to myself, if all these reasons did not exist to
dissuade me, I should never more have any connec-
tion with him. I cannot, therefore, as you conclude,
find any comfort or consolation in a union founded
upon duty, because I know no such union.

" I must, then, remain afflicted and isolated, de-
voured by an incurable passion. Reproaching myself
that I might have been happy; tormented by un-
availing regrets and desires — my youth, my health,
my life will fade away. But this is not the greatest
evil to which you expose me. If, in order to extricate
myself from an insupportable situation ; if, to drive
away consuming thoughts ; if my soul, having lost
that serenity it enjoyed in a prosperous state; if, in
fine, I run the risk of becoming one day more des-
picable than ever — Charles 1 it will be entirely owing
to you. But if, on the contrary, I could have lived
with you, oh ! I should have become so prudent,
that you might, notwithstanding my past errors,
have judged me worthy of you. Then — then first
should I discharge the duty of a wife and a mistress
with rapture, and to its full extent, because love

350 MEMOIRS OF

would then have made the exercise of virtue easy.
Oh 1 my God I Charles ! will you not pity me ? You
fancy that what you are doing is for my welfare ;
but you deceive yourself, and I am the victim of this
cruel mistake. But, perhaps, it is on your own ac-
count that you wish to see an end of our connection.
Do you think me unworthy of you ? — or do you sus-
pect that I partake of happiness with anybody else ?
Oh ! Charles ! if I have been unworthy of thee, I will
devote my whole life to repair my faults. Pardon
me, generous man, tender and sensible friend ! For-
give what has passed, and put me into a situation to
efface it by a contrary conduct in future. Convince
yourself, by never leaving me, that you have no part-
ners in my favours. I promise you always to remain
under your eyes whilst you are with me, and, for
any short journeys, I could undertake them with
you. Pray do not refuse to convince yourself of
everything ! Oh 1 make me not miserable I

'* Pray listen to me 1 If it is in vain to ask you
to pass the winter with me — if you have absolutely
condemned me to that sacrifice — then do not complete
the measure of my sufferings, but remain in some
place in the neighbourhood not too distant from this.
I solemnly swear that, without your permission, I will
not visit you. At least, in the first outset, do not

TALLEYRAND 35 j

remove too far; try to gain time to reflect on every-
thing more calmly. No! it is impossible that your
mind can possess sufficient tranquillity to estimate
exactly our mutual situation. If you act rashly — and
when my happiness was in your power, if my ruin
were the inevitable consequence of your resolve —
could you ever forgive yourself?

" Only for this winter — and afterwards you can
carry me away with you far from hence. Then I
know nothing that can prevent me. Only for this
winter — and you may observe everything yourself; or
can you for your satisfaction invent any expedient to
send the young man entirely away, when he is a
little recovered? Find out that expedient to restore
me, Charles — to restore me felicity. No I I cannot
live without you. In vain have I made every
possible effort with myself. Take care — I repeat it
— not to prepare for thyself eternal repentance.

"At least, as a last favour, do not travel too far
from hence — I could never support it.

"You can hardly read this letter; but it informs
you, better than any description of mine, how my
health is. I can hardly hold the pen in my hand.
You will, perhaps, even accuse me of being the
cause of my own illness; you will tell me it is my
duty to take care of myself. Alas! I wish nothing

352 MEMOIRS OP

better, but God knows that I have done everything
that could be done; but, in spite of myself, I am in
a most shocking state, from which you alone can
relieve me.

" Adieu ! Charles ! I shall not afflict you any more.
I have for ever done speaking to you of my dreadful
sufferings. Vain words will no longer inform you of
them ; but one day you will be acquainted with
them, in consequence of the terrible effects they
have produced with regard to me ; but I promise
you solemnly never to mention them more.

"Adieu I Charles I adieu! you are then going to
leave me! Be happy! Cordelia will do everything
in the world not to interrupt your happiness. You
shall hear no more of her sad sorrows! Adieu! my
dearl — my best beloved 1 — my all I adieu! adieu I **

END OF VOL. I

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