Historical Characters

III

The just described spectacle was gay, but its gaiety was merely superficial. Deeper seated was the danger I have referred to. The Senate had neither gone to meet the Comte d’Artois nor attended the Te Deum. It might be said that the members of the provisional government had done so; but the absence of the Senate was, notwithstanding, remarked. It was determined not to leave things uncertain, and to have a clear understanding as to whether the Comte d’Artois meant to despise the national authorities, or to submit to them. This question had to be brought to issue with the least possible delay.

The 13th and 14th of April were spent in negotiations. Napoleon was still in France. Two armies had not yet given in their adhesion to the new order of things.

The allies had solemnly declared that the French government should be one chosen by the Senate, and not one chosen by Louis XVIII.

It took, nevertheless, all M. de Talleyrand’s tact and patience to get the Comte d’Artois and the zealots of his party to act with ordinary prudence. An arrangement was at last arrived at in this manner:

The Senate, professing to know that constitutional principles animated the heart of the Comte d’Artois, offered him the Lieutenant-generalship of France.

The Comte d’Artois accepted the post, saying that though he could not take upon himself to sanction the constitution of the Senate, with which he was acquainted, but which had to be considered by the King, he nevertheless felt sure that he could safely affirm that his Majesty would accept the principal features in it.63

The government was thus installed until the arrival of Louis XVIII.; and on the 23rd, M. de Talleyrand signed, under his royal highness’s authority, the treaty which obliged the foreign armies to quit France, and the French troops to quit the fortresses out of France which they still held.

IV

The most urgent foreign question was thus settled; but the permanent condition of internal affairs, though the temporary arrangement I have been describing established something like a principle in favour of a constitution, still depended on the arrangements that might finally be made with Louis XVIII.

M. de Talleyrand, exceedingly anxious on this subject, had sent M. de Liancourt to the King, in the hope that his Majesty would listen and speak to his messenger confidentially. It was true that M. de Talleyrand was warned that the Duc de Liancourt, who had belonged to the Revolution, would not be well received by the monarch of the Restoration, if a certain nobleman, M. de Blacas, was by his side. But the Prince de Benevent treated this idea du haut de sa grandeur.

What! the sovereign who owed him (M. de Talleyrand) his throne; who was at once indolent and ambitious; who knew nothing of the country in which he was to appear, a country in which he had no partisans who could guide him by their counsels or aid him by their influence, and in which were still the sovereigns with whom M. de Talleyrand had been the confederate – would decline to receive a man of the first respectability and the highest birth, universally beloved, because he had taken the same part that M. de Talleyrand himself had taken in the public affairs of former times, and this when the new sovereignty was to be founded on all parties and opinions, and have, moreover, a constitution for its basis; the thing was impossible. M. de Talleyrand replied to the person who gave him this warning —

“The King, you say, will look back on the past, but Nature has placed the eyes of men in the front of their heads, in order that they may look forward.”

Undoubtedly, the warning referred to seemed absurd, but it was correctly given. M. de Liancourt saw “the certain M. de Blacas,” but came back without having seen Louis XVIII.64

In sending the particular person he had selected to Louis XVIII., M. de Talleyrand had the idea of engaging the King at once with the party to which that person belonged, viz., the moderate men of the early Revolution: men who were, by opinion, in favour of constitutional monarchy, but who had been so mixed up with persons of all parties and opinions, as to know all and have friends amongst all. In such a party he saw a centre at which divergent lines might meet – a backbone, to which might be attached the scattered members of the great and varied society out of which a new government had to be constructed. The project was not a bad one, and it is probable that during the first days of an uncertain triumph it would have succeeded.

But the unexpected popularity of his family, the general acceptance of the “white cockade,” the reports of his brother and the ardent Royalists, which did not fail to reach him with suitable exaggerations, and the positive abdication of Napoleon, created a new phase in Louis’s affairs, and hesitating what to do, he determined on doing nothing till he arrived in France.

This was sufficient to show M. de Talleyrand, who did not subsequently forget M. de Blacas, that there would be a court circle in the new reign from which he should be excluded; that the King neither meant to confide in him nor to offend him; that a system was not to be formed; that if he did not break with the sovereign on whose head he had a few days previously placed a crown, he must compromise with that sovereign’s prejudices and favourites. There were not as yet sufficient motives for a rupture. Circumstances would shortly develop themselves, and give many opportunities for a decided course. In the meantime a policy of principle was to be sacrificed to a policy of dexterity.

Had he been consulted, he would certainly not have counselled Louis XVIII., who made a sort of triumphal entry into London on the 20th, to have said he owed his crown to the Prince Regent; putting aside the Emperor Alexander, who was still in Paris, and the Senate and the Assembly, which were the only constituted organs at that time of the nation’s wishes, and the only authority which the French army and the French people would so easily have obeyed. But he met his Majesty at Compiègne, where Louis had determined to stay three or four days before entering Paris and fixing his ultimate resolves. The meeting would have been curious to witness.

Both personages were perfect actors in their way, and each with a pretension to superiority, was determined not to be subalternised by the other. Louis had acted the part of king for some years with the more care and punctiliousness because he was only king in name. Talleyrand had been accustomed from his youth to the highest positions in society; in later years he had been admitted into the intimacy of sovereigns, and been treated by them, if not on a footing of equality, with the highest respect; and he had just disposed of the fortunes of France. The descendant of kings meant to impose the sovereign on his powerful subject at once, with the airs of royalty, for which he was famous. The bishop, noble, and diplomatist was prepared to encounter these airs with the respectful well-bred nonchalance of a man of the world, who knew his own value; and the natural but not obsequious deference of a great minister to a constitutional monarch. It is probable that neither said what he intended to say, or what contemporaries have said for them; but it is reported that Louis gave M. de Talleyrand to understand that, in remaining tranquil and contented until Providence had placed the crown on his head, he had played the proper part of the prince and the philosopher, acting with far more dignity and wisdom than the bustling men of action who had been occupied during this time with their own advancement.

On the other hand, when his Majesty, wishing perhaps to efface the impression of observations that were not altogether complimentary, spoke in admiration of M. de Talleyrand’s abilities, and asked him how he had contrived, first to overturn the Directory, and finally Bonaparte, M. de Talleyrand has the credit of having replied with a sort of naïveté which, when it suited him, he could well assume:

“Really, sire, I have done nothing for this: there is something inexplicable about me which brings ill luck on the governments that neglect me.”65

Finally, as to essentials, the King appears, without entering much into details, to have given M. de Talleyrand to understand that France would have a constitution, and M. de Talleyrand the administration of foreign affairs.

This was all that M. de Talleyrand now expected.

Nevertheless he tried, on a subsequent occasion, to persuade the legitimate monarch that his throne would acquire increased solidity by being accepted as the spontaneous gift of the nation.

A really great man in Louis’s place would probably have provoked a vote by universal suffrage; the mere fact of appealing to such a vote would have attained a universal assent, springing from a universal enthusiasm; and, in fact, such a vote for a king who had legitimacy in his favour would at the same time have renewed the vigour of the legitimist principle.

A very prudent man would not have run this risk; he would have made the most of the vote of the Senate, since it was given, and taken for granted that it was a vote in favour of his race as well as of himself.

A vain and proud man, however, could not so easily divest himself of a peculiar quality which only he possessed. Any man might be chosen king of the French, but Louis XVIII. alone could be the legitimate King of France. This hereditary right to the throne was a personal property. He had claimed it in exile: he was resolved to assert it in power, and when M. de Talleyrand was for continuing the argument, he cut him short, according to contemporaneous authorities, by observing with a courteous but somewhat cynical smile:

“You wish me to accept a constitution from you, and you don’t wish to accept a constitution from me. This is very natural; mais, mon cher M. de Talleyrand, alors moi je serai debout, et vous assis.”66

V

The observation just quoted admitted of no reply. Still Louis had the good sense to see that he could not enter Paris without some explanations, and the promise, more or less explicitly given, of a representative government. Unlike the Comte d’Artois, he felt no sort of difficulty about giving this promise, and was even willing to concert with his minister as to the most popular manner in which he could give the guarantees he intended to offer without abandoning the point on which he resolved to insist.

The first thing, however, to provide for, was a meeting between the sovereign who had taken the crown as a right, and the Senate who had offered it on conditions.

This meeting took place on the 1st of May, at Saint-Ouen, a small village near Paris, where the King invited the Senate to meet him. M. de Talleyrand, on presenting this body, pronounced a speech, composed with much art, and spoke for both parties. He said that the nation, enlightened by experience, rushed forward to salute the sovereign returning to the throne of his ancestors; that the Senate, participating in the sentiments of the nation, did the same; that, on the other hand, the monarch, guided by his wisdom, was about to give France institutions in conformity with its intelligence, and the ideas of the epoch: that a constitutional “Charter” (a title the King had selected) would unite every interest to that of the throne, and fortify the royal will by the concurrence of all wills; that no one knew better than his Majesty the value of institutions for a long time tried happily by a neighbouring people, and furnishing aid and not opposition to all kings who loved the laws, and were the fathers of their people.

A few words from the King, confirming what M. de Talleyrand had said, left nothing to be desired; and on the 3rd of May was published the famous declaration of Saint-Ouen, which, after stating that much that was good in the constitution proposed by the Senate on the 6th of April would be preserved, added that some articles in it bore signs, notwithstanding, of the haste with which they had necessarily been written, and must consequently be reformed; but that his Majesty had the full intention to give to France a constitution that should contain all the liberties that Frenchmen could desire, and that the project of such a constitution would ere long be presented to the chambers.

Louis XVIII., thus preceded, entered Paris amidst a tolerable degree of enthusiasm, and, seating himself in the palace of his ancestors, began to prepare his existence there.

His first thought was to reconstitute his household, and, in doing this, M. de Talleyrand-Périgord was named grand aumonier. The new ministry was next to be formed, and M. de Talleyrand figured as minister of foreign affairs; and was honoured with the title of prince, though he could no longer add to it – of Benevent.

The other persons named in the new ministry, and who afterwards attracted notice, were the Abbé de Montesquieu, minister of the interior, a gentleman of learning and talent, but wholly unused to affairs, and a Royalist as much from prejudice as from principle (M. Guizot, by the way, commenced his career under M. de Montesquieu); and the Abbé Louis, minister of finance, whose financial abilities were universally acknowledged.

But the most important minister for the moment was the minister of the household, “that certain M. de Blacas,” of whose influence over Louis XVIII. M. de Talleyrand had been early informed.

M. de Blacas was one of those gentlemen of the second order of nobility, who often produce on the vulgar a stronger effect as a grand seigneur than nobles of the first class, because they add a little acting to the natural dignity usually attendant upon persons who have been treated from their infancy with distinction. He was middle-aged, good-looking, courteous, a good scholar, a great collector of medals, very vain of his court favour, which was based on his long knowledge of all the moral and physical weaknesses of his master, and with an entire confidence in the indestructibility of an edifice which he had seen, notwithstanding, raised on the ruins of its own foundation.

He had, also, such a confidence in his own capacity that he conceived it impossible for any one but an egregious fool, or a malignant personal enemy, to doubt it.

He concentrated in his hands the King’s resolutions on all affairs, except foreign affairs, which M. de Talleyrand managed directly with his Majesty.

A government was thus formed, and the first duty of that government was to make a treaty of peace with the victorious powers. M. de Talleyrand had, necessarily, the conduct of this negotiation. There were two questions at issue: the one, the arrangements between the European potentates who had to give possessors to the territories they had taken from France; and the other, the arrangements to be made between France and these potentates.

Some persons thought it would be possible to deal with the two questions together, and that France could be admitted into a congress where the special questions of France with Europe, and the questions that had to be decided by the European sovereigns between themselves, could be settled simultaneously.67

But a little consideration will, I think, show that the questions between France and Europe, and the questions between the different States of Europe, which had been in hostility with France, were perfectly distinct.

It would also have been absurd, and consequently impossible, for France to have exacted, that all the matters that had to be arranged as resulting from the late war with France, should be treated in France.

The capital of France was the proper place for treating as to French interests.

The capital of one of the allies was the place where the affairs between the allies were naturally to be discussed. Paris was chosen in the first case, Vienna in the second.

The allies, however, had undoubtedly placed themselves in a false position towards the French nation, and this was felt when a peace with it had to be concluded.

They had declared that they separated Napoleon from France, that they only made war against the French ruler, and that they would give the country better conditions than they would give the Emperor. M. de Talleyrand, therefore, came forward, saying, “Well, you were going to give Napoleon the old limits of the French monarchy, what will you give France?”

The allies replied, as it was certain they would reply, that the promises alluded to were vague, they could not dispose of the property of others; that France had nothing legitimate but that which she held before a predatory succession of conquests; that the allies held, it was true, the conquered territories recovered from the French, but that they could not give them back to wrongful acquirers; that the general understanding was, that France should have its ancient limits, and that when the allies had agreed on the 23rd of April to withdraw their troops from the French territory, it had been understood that this was the territory of ancient France. Anything more was out of the question. M. de Talleyrand, however, obtained the frontier of 1792, and not that of 1790, and in rounding that frontier, added some fortresses and inhabitants to the kingdom of Louis XVI. Moreover, Paris remained the mistress, and was permitted to boast of remaining the mistress, of all the works of art ravished from other nations, being thus, in fact, constituted the artistic capital of the world.

Such a limited result, however, did not satisfy the French people with peace when the horrors of war were over; and we find in various works concerning these times comments on the inconceivable légèreté of M. de Talleyrand, in not procuring more advantageous conditions.

I confess that I think that Europe should never have made compromising promises; and that she should have fulfilled generously whatever promises she had made; but upon the whole France, which in her conquests had despoiled every power, ought to have been satisfied when, in the returning tide of victory, those powers left her what she had originally possessed.

Poor M. de Talleyrand! he carried off all the absurd reproaches he had to encounter with a dignified indifference: even the accusation which was now made against him, of having signed the treaty of April, in which the provisional government, not being able to hold the fortresses still occupied by French troops out of France, with a foreign army demanding them in the heart of Paris, resigned them on the condition that France itself should be evacuated. “You seem to have been in a great hurry, M. de Talleyrand,” said the Duc de Berry, “to sign that unhappy treaty.” “Alas, yes, monseigneur; I was in a great hurry. There are senators who say I was in a great hurry to get the crown offered to your Royal house; a crown which it might otherwise not have got. You observe, monseigneur, that I was in a great hurry to give up fortresses which we could not possibly have kept. Alas, yes, monseigneur, I was in a great hurry. But do you know, monseigneur, what would have happened if I had waited to propose Louis XVIII. to the allies, and had refused to sign the treaty of the 23rd of April with them? No; you don’t know what would have happened! No more do I. But at all events you may rest assured, we should not now be disputing as to an act of the prince, your father.”

Again, when a little after this the son of Charles X. was boasting of what France would do when she got the three hundred thousand troops that had been locked up in Germany, Talleyrand, who had been seated at some little distance and apparently not listening, got up, and approaching slowly the Duc de Berry, said, with half-shut eyes and a doubtful look of inquiry, “And do you really think, monseigneur, that these three hundred thousand men can be of any use to us?” “Of use to us! to be sure they will.” “Hem!” said M. de Talleyrand, fixing the Duc, “you really think so, monseigneur? I did not know; for we shall get them from that unfortunate treaty of the 23rd of April!”

The best of it was that Charles X. had thought this treaty the great act of his life, until his son said it was a great mistake; and he did not know then whether he should defend it in his own glorification, or throw all the blame of it on M. de Talleyrand.

VI

The next link in the chain of events, – a final treaty of peace between France and Europe having been concluded (on the 30th of May), – was the promulgation of the long-promised constitution; for the sovereigns who were still in Paris, and with whom the Restoration had commenced, were anxious to leave it; and they said that they could not do so until the promises they had made to the French nation were fulfilled.

The 4th of June, therefore, was fixed for this national act.

The King had promised, as it has been seen, that the frame of a constitution should be submitted to the Senate and the legislative body.

He appointed the Abbé Montesquieu, whom we have already named, and a M. Ferrand, a person of some consideration with the Royalist party, to sketch the outline of this great work, assisted by M. de Beugnot, an accomplished gentleman, not very particular in his principles, but very adroit in his phraseology; when done, such sketch was submitted to and approved by the King, and passed on to two commissions, one chosen from the Senate and the other from the legislative body, the king reserving to himself the right of settling disputed points.

The result was generally satisfactory, for though the constitution was so framed as to give it the air of being a grant from the royal authority, it contained the most essential principles of a representative government, namely: —

Equality before the law, and in the distribution of taxation, – the admissibility of all to public employments, – the inviolability of the monarch, – the responsibility of ministers, – the freedom of religion, – the necessity of annual budgets; – and, finally, the permission to express in print and by publication all opinions – such permission being controlled by laws, which were to repress or punish its abuse.

There was to be a lower chamber with the qualification for the electors of the payment of three hundred francs, direct taxes; and, for the eligible, of one thousand francs.

The upper chamber was not then made hereditary, though the King might give an hereditary peerage. A great portion of the Senate, the dukes and peers before the Revolution, and other persons of distinction, formed the house of peers. The legislative body was to act as the lower chamber until the time for which the members had been chosen was expired. The senators, not carried on into the peerage, were given as a pension the payment that formerly attached to their function.

The King bargained that the new constitution should be called “La Charte Constitutionnelle;” “Charte” being an old word that the kings had formerly employed, and that it should be dated in the nineteenth year of his reign.

The preamble also stated that “the King, in entire possession of his full rights over this beautiful kingdom, only desires to exercise the authority he holds from God and his ancestors, in determining the bounds of his own power.” A phrase which somewhat resembles one of Bolingbroke’s, who says: “The infinite power of God is limited by His infinite wisdom.”

It cannot be affirmed that M. de Talleyrand had anything to do with the framing of “the Charter,” since Louis XVIII.’s instruction to the commissioners was to keep everything secret from M. de Talleyrand; but it was the sort of constitution he had insisted upon: and thus the Restoration was accomplished according to the plan which he had undertaken to give to it, when he obtained the decrees which deposed the Bonapartes and recalled the Bourbons.

VII

I have said that when M. de Talleyrand created the government of Louis XVIII., he wanted to give it a backbone, consisting of a party of able, practical, and popular men of moderate opinions. But Louis XVIII., as a principle, distrusted all men in proportion to their popularity and ability, his ministers especially. M. de Talleyrand, therefore, was, in his eyes, a person who should be constantly watched, and constantly suspected. Louis XVIII. had also in horror the idea of his cabinet being a ministry, i. e., a compact body agreeing together. His notion as to driving was that horses who were always kicking at each other, were less likely to kick at the carriage; furthermore, he considered that everything which was not as it had been thirty years back was really wrong, though he did not mean to take the trouble of changing it, and that all this new set of persons he had to deal with were coquins– not a gentleman amongst them. That it was proper manners, since they existed, to treat them courteously, and proper policy, since they had a certain power in their hands, to temporise with them; but in his heart of hearts he looked upon them as yahoos, who had got into the stalls of horses, and were to be kicked out directly the horses, strengthened by plentiful feeds of corn, were up to the enterprise. In the meantime nothing was to be risked, so that he sat himself down as comfortably as he could in his arm-chair, received all visitors with an air which an actor, about to play Louis XIV., might have done well to study; wrote pretty billets, said sharp and acute things, and felt that he was every inch – a king.