175. Talleyrand
After an interval of roughly half a year, Talleyrand came to Brussels once again, a French-speaking city of dazzling beauty. Here, from language and writing to urban architecture, public spaces, and the daily habits and dress of ordinary people, there was little difference from any other great French city.
Talleyrand’s first visit to Brussels had been in June of this year, when he came as André’s personal envoy. In the City Hall on the left side of the Grand Place in the city center, he held a secret diplomatic meeting with the Governor of the Austrian Netherlands, Duc de Teschen—one conducted without any written memorandum. After a round of bargaining filled with noble etiquette and false smiles, the two sides quickly reached a ceasefire agreement for sixty days, including the exchange of gold for prisoners of war.
Soon afterward, Talleyrand was summoned back to Paris. After a private discussion with the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Champbonneau, he decided to accept the invitation of the Constitutionalists’ cabinet and take the post of ambassador of the Kingdom of France to the United Provinces. For that purpose, Talleyrand even paid a special visit to André, explained the causes and circumstances, and obtained André’s understanding.
Yet who could have imagined that, in a mere two months, France would be turned upside down. The seemingly powerful Constitutionalists’ cabinet fell rapidly. Core figures of the constitutional monarchists—among them Marquis de Lafayette, General Kléber, Judge Larive, Bailly, Barnave, the Lameth brothers, and Comte de Narbonne (the latter several being “voluntary” exiles)—as well as their families or their lovers, were all “packaged up” by André and expelled abroad.
On August eleventh, the Palais des Tuileries was stormed by the Paris crowd manipulated by the Jacobins. Swiss Guards and conservative nobles lay dead everywhere, and the royal couple became prisoners under revolutionary guard. Before long, the Legislative Assembly’s committee for foreign affairs sent an official dispatch to the ambassador in the Netherlands, far away in Rotterdam, ordering Ambassador Talleyrand to return at once from Rotterdam to Paris to report in person. This was because certain deputies publicly accused the diplomat of having, under instructions from the former King Louis XVI, secretly purchased arms for the Swiss Guards who were holding the Tuileries.
The shrewd Talleyrand naturally would not walk into such a trap, nor would he wait to be dragged back to Paris in chains. He chose flight. After handing the embassy keys to an aide for safekeeping, he left Rotterdam under cover of darkness. He had originally intended to take ship to London and lie low for a time. Yet he did not expect Colonel Penduvas of MI6 to intercept him on the docks and secretly bring him to an estate outside Reims.
There, Talleyrand lived again for a period with Comtesse de Flahaut and their illegitimate son, Charles. Only after Duc de Brunswick and his Prussian corps laid down their arms did André give the order to summon Talleyrand—who had remained under soft detention—and assign him a special diplomatic mission to Vienna, going in the guise of an émigré noble officially wanted by the National Convention.
When the Bishop of Autun attempted to declare his loyalty to André, the dictator said with indifference,
“There is no need, Monsieur Talleyrand. You are loyal only to yourself; you will have loyalty for no one. We all know it. But it is no great matter. Human nature is evil, and in any case hard to measure. I only need you to do the work. If one day you grow tired of it, you may do as you did last time and resign to me in advance. Afterward, even if you return to the Royalist Party or the Constitutionalists, it is all the same. But I must emphasize this: while you are within the André faction, you must not betray it. Remember—this is a contract, a sacred legal contract, one that even I cannot lightly violate or alter.”
At present, among the professional diplomats of the André faction, there were only the ambassador to Britain, Chauvelin, the ambassador to Denmark, Barthélemy, and the ambassador to the Netherlands, Basseville. Yet none of these three could spare himself to go to Vienna. The British front was plainly the highest priority, while the ambassadors in Denmark and the Netherlands would carry out André’s strategic intentions toward the two Low Countries in 1793 and 1794. Thus, in the end, the only candidate was Talleyrand, Comte—standing right before André, after a long period of soft detention.
In André’s view, it was necessary to use an unofficial and secret channel to convey a positive signal to Vienna’s powerful decision-makers at Schönbrunn: Reims was not Paris, and the mild and accommodating André was not the radical and brutal Jacobins; he was willing to coexist amicably with the monarchs of Europe.
Naturally, this signal could only be grasped implicitly, never spoken aloud. In any public setting, André, as a revolutionary, would firmly deny it.
This was precisely what Talleyrand excelled at. He possessed an unmatched bearing and grace of the highest nobility. He spoke with humour, loved to craft witty remarks and aphorisms, and held an irresistible allure for great ladies. He was sharp-minded, keenly observant, and had extraordinary comprehension. On the one hand, he could easily see into another’s inner world; on the other, without revealing the slightest expression, he could conceal his own true thoughts with flawless ease.
As for loyalty, it was a noble sentiment Talleyrand had never possessed. The root of it lay in his eighth year, when he broke a leg and lost the right of inheritance. After that, his loveless parents sent him to a monastery. Yet André came from a later age, and was accustomed to introducing a corporate mode of operation into the civil administration then taking shape. Thus he did not much mind Talleyrand’s earlier habit of changing sides. For a useful piece on the board, André only drew the red lines for him—do not cross them. As for the rest, the Military Intelligence Office would watch.
In October, Talleyrand’s private journey in Vienna proved highly productive, especially his success in winning over the former Austrian chancellor, Prince de Kaunitz-Rietberg. This caused many nobles in Vienna to begin changing their view of Andréan France, and at the very least to regard the northern French commander as a dissenter within the Jacobins, or a moderate.
On this basis, André instructed Talleyrand to return to Belgium in the capacity of a French diplomat, to station himself in Brussels, and to serve as the victor’s representative in negotiations with the peace envoys of the German states. At the same time, Penduvas, now promoted to General, would once again act as Talleyrand’s deputy.
In truth, Talleyrand enjoyed such work immensely. Each morning he would leave the bedchamber of some Marquise or Comtesse, dress under the attendance of numerous servants, place a powdered wig upon his head, knot a cravat high about his throat, climb into a carriage that had once belonged to the Habsburg family itself, and ride to the Grand Place in central Brussels.
On the right side of that square stood the Brussels City Hall, majestic and imposing, a classic complex of old Flemish Gothic architecture. From late October onward, the entire north wing of the Brussels City Hall—three floors and more than one hundred rooms of all sizes—became the offices of Envoy Talleyrand, with gendarmes posted at the entrance.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Each time Talleyrand stepped down from his carriage, crossed the marble paving before the City Hall, and entered the semicircular vestibule, he would assume the posture of a conqueror and strike the floor with his cane until the sound echoed thunderously. When he strode eagerly past the waiting hall, nearly half a room of German envoys would rush out in a swarm, greeting the haughty French noble in hopes of obtaining a private audience with the northern dictator’s envoy.
Under normal circumstances, Talleyrand would ignore them and go straight to his office on the second floor—unless a German envoy quietly slid a purse of gold florins into his palm. Only then would he adopt a genial expression and invite the envoy upstairs for “detailed talks.” Yet the talks generally produced no substantive content, because everything had to follow a tempo André had set in advance. That included spreading the “rumour” that André would enter a political marriage with a certain German sovereign.
If Talleyrand, whether deliberately or inadvertently, neglected this point, Penduvas—the dictator’s loyal hound—would remind him from the side. Thus, Talleyrand, who took money and delivered little, was often bitterly hated by the envoys of the smaller German states.
A Belgian magnate named Michel-Jean Simon once drew a vivid portrait of Talleyrand:
“I find him seemingly ambitious, wishing to inspire awe through cautious words and a profound expression. My first impression was that he was cold and taciturn, attentive to what others said. His somewhat plump face seemed a symbol of indolence, while his deep masculine voice stood in sharp contrast to his appearance. He keeps a certain distance from people and rarely states his view openly unless he has first secured sufficient personal advantage.
“He is accustomed to a didactic manner, a chill politeness, and close observation of people’s expressions. All of this forms a defensive wall around his diplomacy. Yet among myself and a few intimate friends, he can remove the mask. Then he appears casual, warm, and refined, trying to please others; he becomes amusing, and one can tease him for sport.”
Talleyrand’s corrupt practice of exploiting his office was also observed by Penduvas, who held no small amount of hard evidence. After repeated warnings failed, the head of Section Six of the intelligence bureau wrote a letter to his superior, reporting Talleyrand’s conduct in Brussels in full detail to the Command Headquarters. Yet André did not punish Talleyrand for it, and did not blame Penduvas for meddling; he handled the matter quietly.
In André’s eyes, diplomacy was inherently a process of deception and intrigue. A person who was too upright would instead be unable to manage the tangled international relations of eighteenth-century Europe. The outstanding diplomats of this era—Kaunitz, Talleyrand, and Metternich—were all cut from the same cloth: men who lied without blinking and cheated without remorse.
Thus Comte de Talleyrand continued to dance as he pleased and ride as he pleased. To that end, he even deliberately set up a large mirror not far from General Penduvas’s office, so that he could admire his nearly perfect noble posture each day. On either side of the dressing mirror stood a plump statue of Cupid.
In fact, Talleyrand’s office was not large, yet it could be described as delicate, elegant, and pleasing. If one opened the window, one could see the City Hall garden. The marble floor was covered with a warm cashmere carpet; the large desk and the sofa were both made in Italy. On both sides of the fireplace there were glass-paneled doors. The left one led directly to the garden below and was generally used to bring in foreign agents whose visits could not be exposed; the right one opened into a smaller room, with space only for a bed and a tea table, used for Talleyrand’s midday rest.
Usually, before ten o’clock in the morning, Talleyrand would hastily deal with the official documents delivered by the secretariat. Under normal circumstances, he would glance once, sign, and be done—so that he could free more time in his office to plot, to gather wealth, and to receive guests.
Now the guest seated before Talleyrand was Belgium’s super-rich magnate, Comte Michel-Jean de Simon. Without question, that comte title had been bought with money. Since the death of Maria Theresa, the Habsburgs had begun to imitate the Bourbon monarchy, tacitly allowing insolvent and ruined nobles to sell titles in secret—provided a certain sum of tax was paid to Schönbrunn.
Unlike other pot-bellied nouveaux riches, the forty-two-year-old Comte de Simon seemed to possess, by nature, an air of noble elegance. This was because his main business was the production and sale of luxury goods, which required him to spend years in Paris or Versailles dealing with nobles great and small.
After the incident of Louis XVI’s flight, Simon decided to leave turbulent Paris and return to his hometown of Brussels. Besides his dwindling luxury trade, the Simon family owned several commercial banks across Belgium, multiple coal mines throughout the Namur region, and a fleet of ships that ranged across the Atlantic and along inland rivers.
Simon came to Talleyrand for one purpose: he wanted to purchase steam merchant ships of the Meuse No.1 type—vessels that were not constrained by weather and could carry Namur steam coal day and night to Sedan in exchange for large quantities of Reims francs. Since the Parisians set off the French Revolution, the luxury business had collapsed, and commercial banks, under the pressure of war, suffered as depositors rushed to withdraw and convert into gold; their performance was likewise no longer what it had been.
After hearing from Envoy Talleyrand that Marshal André planned, beginning next year, to purchase millions of tons of coal from the Namur area each year, the Belgian comte understood at once that spring had returned to his family’s business. For this, he first bribed the lame noble with twenty thousand francs, and then, for the trivial price of one franc, took the initiative to assume the renovation project of the Belgian governor’s palace.
In fact, this governor’s palace had originally been built by the Spanish, and in the sixteenth century became a Habsburg royal residence in Belgium. More than ten years ago, it had been given to Duc de Teschen and his wife as their residence, where they raised Archduke Charles of Austria, and it served as the Austrian Netherlands’ governor’s palace. Even the most conservative estimate for a full renovation was five hundred thousand francs. This was clearly Comte de Simon’s method of currying favour with André, for this palace—once inhabited by Spaniards and Austrians alike—would become the residence of the northern French dictator in Belgium, and the future seat of the Belgian administrative region.
According to the Command Headquarters’ plan, the Belgian administrative region would encompass nine provinces, including Lys, Escaut, Dyle, Deux-Nèthes, Basse-Meuse, Gueldre, Sambre, Jemappes, and Luxembourg, with Brussels still as its capital. It was called an administrative region rather than a traditional governorate because revolutionaries had to remove terms tinged with colonialism. Yet in many eyes, this Belgian administrative region was little different from the former governorate of the Austrian Netherlands: the French marshal had driven out the Austrian duc and moved into the “Belgian palace” himself.
After André received Talleyrand’s report of the Belgian magnate’s request, and after he learned from the gendarmerie of Comte de Simon’s family background and political leanings, he quickly approved the sale of the steamships. After all, steamships were not something only the French could build in Europe; British manufacturing strength was even greater. If not for fierce opposition from Britain’s shipping consortium, perhaps the Thames would already have been filled with steamships years earlier. Thus, after Meuse No.1 appeared, André no longer intended to keep production and sales entirely in his own hands. He encouraged clients to buy, though only those French, Belgian, and German buyers who had aligned themselves with the André faction.
Today, Talleyrand gave Comte de Simon the formal reply: Marshal André had approved the Simon family’s purchase of three steamships; moreover, the family’s coal concession in the Namur region would be extended through 1795.
Overjoyed, Comte de Simon at once pulled Talleyrand along to the construction site of the Brussels palace to the southeast of the city. After more than a month of renovation, the vast Baroque palace was gradually regaining its former dignity and splendour. The marble exterior and interior were filled with reliefs; the decoration followed the style of Versailles, adorned with large frescoes and crystal chandeliers; it contained lavish banquet halls and elegant reception rooms, and displayed an array of Eastern and Western artworks, ancient furniture, and exquisite carpets of every kind.