Henry Bulwer - Historical Characters

“‘Laissez passer Ch. Maurice Talleyrand, allant à Londres par nos ordres .’

[M. de Talleyrand here repeats what was said by Chénier.]

“Thus I was authorised to quit France, and to remain out of it until the orders I received were revoked, which they never were. But not wishing to prolong my absence, I asked, the instant that the Convention recovered the liberty which had been for a time suppressed, to return to my native land, or to be judged if I had committed any offence that merited exile. My request was granted. I left France then by orders which I received from the confidence of the French government. I re-entered it directly it was possible for me to do so with the consent of the French government. What trace is there here of emigration?

“Well, then, it was I ‘who made Malmesbury, who had been sent about his business by Charles Delacroix, return – not, it is true, to Paris, but – to Lille, the centre of our military Boulevards.’

“What is the truth? On the 13th Prairial, year V., Lord Grenville proposed to enter into negotiation; on the 16th the proposal was accepted; on the 25th Charles Delacroix sent passports to England, and fixed on Lille as the place of negotiation.

“On the 29th Lord Grenville accepts Lille as the place of negotiation, and announces the choice of Lord Malmesbury as the English negotiator. On the 2nd Messidor, the Directory sanctions this arrangement. On the 28th the conferences commence at Lille, and it was not till the 28th I was named minister.

“I am attacked for all the acts of the ex-Directors. My accusers know that, if my opinion differed from theirs, I should not have charged them with errors when they were in place, and still less should I do so now, when they are stripped of power, and that all I desire to remember is their kindness and confidence.

“It is for this reason that in my report to the legislative body I only glanced rapidly over the fact that all that was to be decided relative to Italy and Switzerland, during my ministry, was decided without my knowledge and concurrence. I could have added that, to the changes operated in the Cisalpine Republic, I was entirely a stranger; that, when the citizen Rivaud was sent to that Republic as ambassador, I was asked for letters of credence in blank, and that I only learnt of his mission after it had been in activity. But my enemies do not pause here.

“Ignorance and hatred seem to dispute as to which should accumulate the most falsehoods and absurdities against my reputation.

“I am reproached for not having invaded Hanover: but if I had advocated carrying the war into that country in spite of the neutral line which protects it, how much more just and more violent would have been the attacks on me for having violated that neutrality, and thereby roused Prussia against us!

“Then it is said I should have assailed Portugal! And if I had done so and been opposed by Spain, and thus lost an alliance so useful to us, what reproaches should I not have encountered!

“But I did not sufficiently encourage letters of marque against England. Five hundred and forty-five privateers fell into the hands of the English, from the commencement of the war till the year VI. of the Republic. The number of prisoners in England amounts to thirty-five thousand; these cost fifteen millions to support on an enemy’s territory, and it is principally owing to letters of marque that we owe this result.

“I will say no more; but surely I have said enough to inspire the most discouraging reflections as to that moral disorganization – as to that aberration of mind – as to that overthrow of all reasonable ideas – as to that want of good faith, of the love of truth, of justice, of esteem for oneself and others – which are the distinguishing characteristics of those publications which it is difficult to leave unanswered, and humiliating to reply to.” 36

We find, from the above, that the ex-minister did not scruple to make his defence an attack, and to treat with sarcasm and disdain the party by which he had been ejected; but at the same time that he denounces the follies of the over-zealous Republicans, he declares himself unequivocally for a republic: and justifying what he had done, ridiculing what he had been condemned for not doing, he throws with some address the blame of much that had been done against his opinion on those Directors still in power.

What he says as to the negotiations at Lille shows sufficiently the difficulties, after the 18th of Fructidor, of any peace with England; and a passage that I have quoted, and to which I had previously alluded, bears out what had been said by Chénier as to the famous passport.

In these “Eclaircissements,” however, the ex-minister aimed more at putting himself in a good position for future events, than at referring to past ones.

He would hardly, indeed, have fixed his signature to so bold a publication if his enemies had been firm in their places: but already the Directory was tottering to its fall.

The great evil of any constitution, formed for a particular time and not the result of continual adaptation to the wants of various epochs, is that it is altogether of one character and is almost immediately out of date. The constitution of the Directory, framed after a period of great popular violence and individual despotism, was framed upon the principle of so nicely checking every action in the State, that there should be no honest means for any individual gaining great power or distinction. But when the influence of individuals in a government is over-zealously kept down, the influence of government collapses, and becomes unequal to restrain the agitation of a society more ardent and ambitious than itself.

Thus, during four years, the Constitution of the year III. was preserved in name by a series of actual infringements of it. Now, the Directory checked the councils by transporting the opposition; now, the opposition put down the Directory by compelling an unpopular director to resign his office; and now again, the absence of all laws against the license of the press was compensated for by declaring hostile journalists enemies of the State, and punishing a clever article as an insurrection.

Nor was this all: where civil ability can create no great career a civilian can excite no great enthusiasm. The persons in civil employment had their prestige limited by the same contrivances that limited their power; the nation was fatigued with talkers, for talking had no result: a general alone could strike its imagination, for a general alone was in the situation to do anything remarkable. Each party saw this. The patriots or democrats, represented in the Directory by Laréveillère and Gohier (who had become a Director instead of Treillard); Barras, of no particular opinion, who might be said to represent those generally who were intriguing for place; and Sieyès, the most capable of the executive, at the head of a moderate section, still for maintaining the Republic and establishing order, though under some new form. Sieyès had with him a majority in the Council of Ancients, a powerful minority in the Council of the Five Hundred, and some of the most eminent and capable men in France, amongst whom was M. de Talleyrand.

He sought then a General like the rest, but the choice was not so easy to make. Hoche was no more; Joubert had just perished; Moreau was irresolute; Massena, though crowned by the victory of Zurich, too much of the mere soldier; Augereau, a Jacobin; Bernadotte, unreliable. At this moment (on the 9th October, 1799), Bonaparte landed from Egypt. He broke the quarantine laws, he had deserted his army, but the country felt that he was wanted; and through his progress to Paris, as well as on his arrival there, he was hailed by acclamations.