Henry Bulwer - Historical Characters

This last man, at the time I am speaking of the most powerful member of the Directory, was the sort of person who frequently rises to a greater height in civil commotions than any apparent merit seems to warrant. Clever, without great ability; intriguing, without great address; bold and resolute on any critical occasions, but incapable of any sustained energy; of gentle birth, though not of any great historical family, – he had acquired his influence by two or three acts of courage and decision; and was forgiven the crime of being a noble, in consideration of the virtue of being a regicide. Having been chosen by his colleagues, as the man best acquainted with and accustomed to the world, to represent the government with society, – he sustained this position by easy manners and a sort of court with which he contrived to surround himself; a court containing all the fragments of the old society that were yet to be found mingled with affairs.

In the south of Europe, and in the East, many such adventurers have risen to great fortunes and retained them. In the north, and (strange to say) especially among the changing and brilliant people of France, more solid qualities, and a more stern and equable character, seem essentially necessary for command. Richelieu, Mazarin, Louis XI., Louis XIV., even Robespierre, differing in everything else, were all remarkable for a kind of resolute, every-day energy, for a spirit of order and system which the voluptuary of the Luxembourg wanted. His drawing-room, however, was a theatre where the accomplished gentleman of former times was still able to shine, and his prejudices, though he affected democratic principles in order to shield himself from the charge of being born an aristocrat, were all in favour of the ex-noble. To Barras, therefore, M. de Talleyrand attached himself.

The society of Paris was never more “ piquante ,” if I may borrow an expression from the language of the country of which I am speaking, than at this moment. Nobody was rich. Pomp and ceremony were banished; few private houses were open: a great desire for amusement existed; there were no pretensions to rank, for who would have ventured to boast of his birth? There was no drawing into sets or cliques , for such would still have been considered as conspiracies. People lived together in public fêtes, in public gardens, at theatres, at subscription-balls, like those of Marbeuf, where the grocer’s wife and the monseigneur’s danced in the same quadrille; each being simply qualified by the title of “ citoyenne .” The only real distinction was that of manners. An active, artful, popular man of the world, amidst such a confused assemblage of all orders, bent on being amused, had full play for his social and political qualities. But this was not all; with the taste for gaiety had also returned the taste for letters. Here, again, M. de Talleyrand found means to excite attention. I have said that, during his absence from France he had been elected a member of the National Institute, which owed its origin, as I have noticed, to the propositions he had laid before the National Assembly just previous to its dissolution. He had also been chosen its secretary; and it was in this capacity that he now addressed to the moral and scientific class, to which he belonged, two memoirs: the one on the commercial relations between England and the United States, and the other on colonies generally. There are few writings of this kind that contain so many just ideas in so small a compass. In the first, the author gives a general description of the state of American society, the calm character, the various and peculiar habits, the Saxon laws, and religious feelings of that rising community. He then shows, what was at that time little understood, that the mother country had gained more than she had lost by the separation; and that the wants of Americans connected them with English interests, while their language, education, history, and laws, gave them feelings, which, if properly cultivated, would be – English.

The memoir on colonisation, however, is even superior to the preceding one; it is in this memoir on colonisation that M. de Talleyrand points out – for he even then perceived what has since been gradually taking place – the impossibility of long continuing slave labour or of maintaining those colonies which required it. He foresaw that such colonies existed in the face of sentiments which must, whether rightly or wrongly, in a few years sweep them away. He looked out for other settlements to supply their place; and Egypt and the African coast are the spots to which, with a singular prescience, he directed the attention of his country; whose inhabitants he describes, from their sense of fatigue, from their desire of excitement, and in many instances, from their disappointment and discontent, to be peculiarly in want of new regions of rest, of enterprise, and of change.

“The art of putting the right men in the right places” (the phrase is not, I may observe en passant , of to-day’s invention), he observes profoundly, “is perhaps the first in the science of government; but,” he adds, “the art of finding a satisfactory position for the discontented is the most difficult.

“To present distant scenes to their imaginations, views agreeable to their thoughts and desires, is,” he says, “I think, one of the solutions of this social problem.” 35

In three weeks after the reading of this memoir, M. de Talleyrand accepted the office of minister of foreign affairs.

The immediate cause of his being named to replace Charles Delacroix in this post, used to be thus related by himself: – “I had gone to dine at a friend’s on the banks of the Seine, with Madame de Staël, Barras, and a small party which frequently met. A young friend of Barras, who was with us, went out to bathe before dinner, and was drowned. The director, tenderly attached to him, was in the greatest affliction. I consoled him (I was used to that sort of thing in early life), and accompanied him in his carriage back to Paris. The ministry of foreign affairs immediately after this became vacant; Barras knew I wanted it, and through his interest I procured it.”

But this was not the sole cause of his selection. The state of affairs was at this time critical; the reaction, produced by the horrors of the democrats, became stronger and stronger under a government of indulgence.

In proportion as the ordinary relations of society recommenced, the feeling against those who had disturbed and for a time destroyed them, became more and more bitter. At last the hatred of the Robespierreans verged towards an inclination for the Royalists; and Pichegru, the president of the Assembly of the Five Hundred, and a general at that time in great repute, was already in correspondence with Louis XVIII.

The Directory itself was divided. Carnot, an impracticable man of genius and a violent Republican, sided with the opposition from personal dislike to his colleagues and from a belief that any new convulsion would end by the triumph of his own principles. He carried with him Barthélemy, the successor to Letourneur, who had lost his place in the Directory by the ballot, which was periodically to eliminate it. Rewbell and Laréveillère-Lepaux ranged themselves with Barras, who, satisfied with his position, and having to keep it against the two extreme parties, was glad to get into the ministry, as attached to him, a man of well-known ability and resolution.

Besides, the negotiation with Great Britain at Lille, which not unnaturally followed the defeat of all her continental allies, suggested the appointment of a more distinguished diplomatist than M. Delacroix, who presided at that time over the department to which M. de Talleyrand was appointed.