Why Talleyrand?

For the second time I've been asked what it is about M. de Talleyrand I find attractive, so that I blog under his name. It’s a little surprising given Talleyrand’s reputation that the question isn’t asked more often. But perhaps not so many people know who he was anymore. A little of it is in my profile, but I’ll try to explain more fully.

My identification with Talleyrand is lighthearted, not as serious as my questioners have feared. He is not a hero or anything of the kind. I certainly do not aspire to grow more and more like him.

It’s just that one day in the early 2000s I was working on my doctoral thesis, which has to do with a theological issue in the eighteenth century. This inevitably involved a lot of reading and thinking about Enlightenment figures. Talleyrand appeared on my horizon. I realized then that while he was no angel, much of the gossip on which his reputation was based was not true (though some of it was). At the same time, I noticed certain common threads between his life and mine. It was just a quick, appreciative thought: I could sympathize with him and even understand  him, while acknowledging his flaws (and my own). He’s stayed with me ever since.

The Bonapartist sympathies of those who contributed most to forming Talleyrand’s reputation also help explain it. Few can admire both Napoleon  and Talleyrand. One or the other has to be a scoundrel. Thinking as I do that  the peace of Europe is of more value  than the glory of France, I take Napoleon for the scoundrel. Talleyrand did as much as any other one person to derail Napoleon’s warmongering. If you revere Napoleon’s memory or identify him with French glory, this looks like treason. Otherwise, not so much.

I do not intend to defend Talleyrand against every accusation. He was, by some modern lights and some in his own time, both venal and sexually undisciplined. It doesn’t help many feel better that in these ways he was fairly normal for his class, only he didn’t pretend to keep his vices secret. In his favor, we can say that he did a great deal of good for Europe with the wealth he pursued and acquired. And we can also say that his romantic involvements, especially from middle-age on, were almost exclusively  “affairs of the soul,” as David Lawday puts it. Even in his youth he didn't get around enough to justify fully the reputation he has for it.

Talleyrand had principles, and he was almost unerringly guided by them. The accusation that he was unprincipled, already leveled during his lifetime, was always groundless. It merely showed his accusers did not understand or share his principles. He was committed to the interests of France first (even when this meant subverting a particular government, or four); he was committed to a peaceful, prosperous, civilized Europe. He believed many things could be achieved by intelligent talk, and many more by intelligent silence.

There is much more, but this is enough for now.

David Lawday's Napoleon’s Master is a good recent guide for those who are interested in reassessing Talleyrand with the Bonapartist blinders off.