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Talleyrand
Unique in his own age and a phenomenon in any, Charles-Maurice, Prince de Talleyrand, was a statesman of outstanding ability and extraordinary contradictions. He was a world-class rogue who held high office in five successive regimes. A well-known opportunist and a notorious bribe taker, Talleyrand's gifts to France arguably outvalued the vast personal fortune he amassed in her service. Once a supporter of the Revolution, after the fall of the monarchy, he fled to England and then to the United States. Talleyrand returned to France two years later and served under Napoleon, and represented France at the Congress of Vienna. Duff Cooper's classic biography contains all the vigor, elegance, and intellect of its remarkable subject.
375 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1932
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Duff Cooper
28 books12 followersAlfred Duff Cooper, 1st Viscount Norwich, GCMG, DSO, PC
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May 10, 2016
Talleyrand was the greatest statesman of his age, and his age was one of the most dangerously eventful in Europe's history. Such was his renown as the archetypally cunning diplomat that when his death was reported in 1838, the reaction of Metternich, his Austrian counterpart, was: ‘I wonder what he meant by that?’
The story is probably apocryphal, but it's revealing. No one knew how to read Talleyrand, and history's verdict on the great man is still not in. Above all, he was a survivor: almost the only person to make it through France's numerous state shake-ups in one piece, from the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century, through the days of the Directorate and then the Consulate, the Napoleonic takeover and the proclamation of Empire, the Restoration of the Bourbons, and finally the July Monarchy in the 1830s. None of these regimes was known for its leniency towards predecessors, and yet Talleyrand didn't just survive every coup and revolution (he was behind several of them), he actually maintained a steady rise in power and influence.
So people cannot decide what to make of him. Either he was a brilliantly adaptable politician whose skills and experience made him impossible to ignore, even by those who would have liked to exclude him from power; or, he was the worst kind of opportunist – ‘a byword for tergiversation’, in Duff Cooper's wonderful phrase – who ditched his principles time and again in order to save his own skin.
This biography is broadly sympathetic – indeed when you read it, it's impossible not to like the man. No fan of hard work, Talleyrand looked down on younger, more zealous colleagues, and took the view that a diplomat's main job was to develop a refined sort of laziness and to excel in conversation. He was a product of that extraordinary French eighteenth century, when ‘such conversation as was then audible in Paris had never, perhaps, been heard since certain voices in Athens fell silent two thousand years before’. Talleyrand was always the wittiest and most intelligent man in any room. One contemporary describes him as
He emerges from this book as a sort of aristocratic French Blackadder – witty, brilliant, dissolute, and quite prepared to be unprincipled if necessary. But this is unfair. Talleyrand may not have been willing to die for his principles – ‘nor even suffer serious inconvenience on their account’, as Cooper says – but he did have them. Cooper argues convincingly that there was a set of core beliefs to which he held throughout his whole career, beliefs which often made him unpopular with those in power. Prime among them were a desire for peace rather than conquest, and a commitment to constitutional monarchy. The former explains why he abandoned Napoleon. The latter is even more interesting, because it provides – if you're so minded – a justification for his other changes of allegiance: he supported the Revolution because the monarchy was not constitutional, and he supported the Restoration because the revolutionary government had shown that it did not have the ‘legitimacy’ of monarchy. (Hence his lifelong admiration for Britain, where he thought the perfect balance had been struck: a legitimate king whose power was held in check by a healthy parliament.)
All of this meant that he often acted for the interests of a peaceful Europe even when this ran counter to the wishes of the French government that he was currently serving. Sent by Napoleon to negotiate with Alexander I of Russia in 1806, Talleyrand simply told the tsar to refuse all of Napoleon's demands: ‘Sire, it is in your power to save Europe […] The French people are civilised, their sovereign is not. The sovereign of Russia is civilised and his people are not: the sovereign of Russia should therefore be the ally of the French people.’
Talleyrand was first published in 1932 and doubtless modern historians have moved the scholarship forward somewhat; nevertheless, it's very difficult to imagine this being done any better. Cooper writes beautifully, with a flair for efficient throwaway remarks of the kind modern historians shy away from now: he credits his readers with the intelligence to understand when he is speaking in generalisations for the sake of advancing an argument. He has a great turn of phrase, too. When Fanny Burney and her friends get to know Talleyrand during his exile in London, Cooper summarises the experience like this:
The idea cannot be captured more perfectly or economically. So I liked Talleyrand very much, and I liked Talleyrand very much too. He was the man still standing when the smoke cleared, the man not guided by stern morals but by practical genius and a love of the joys of civilisation that only peace can provide. ‘To the gospel of common sense he remained true.’ And although the few principles he did stick to were not always popular, they've become crucial to the Europe of today. Talleyrand may have played the long game, and enjoyed himself along the way, but in the final analysis he got it right.
(Dec 13)
The story is probably apocryphal, but it's revealing. No one knew how to read Talleyrand, and history's verdict on the great man is still not in. Above all, he was a survivor: almost the only person to make it through France's numerous state shake-ups in one piece, from the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century, through the days of the Directorate and then the Consulate, the Napoleonic takeover and the proclamation of Empire, the Restoration of the Bourbons, and finally the July Monarchy in the 1830s. None of these regimes was known for its leniency towards predecessors, and yet Talleyrand didn't just survive every coup and revolution (he was behind several of them), he actually maintained a steady rise in power and influence.
So people cannot decide what to make of him. Either he was a brilliantly adaptable politician whose skills and experience made him impossible to ignore, even by those who would have liked to exclude him from power; or, he was the worst kind of opportunist – ‘a byword for tergiversation’, in Duff Cooper's wonderful phrase – who ditched his principles time and again in order to save his own skin.
This biography is broadly sympathetic – indeed when you read it, it's impossible not to like the man. No fan of hard work, Talleyrand looked down on younger, more zealous colleagues, and took the view that a diplomat's main job was to develop a refined sort of laziness and to excel in conversation. He was a product of that extraordinary French eighteenth century, when ‘such conversation as was then audible in Paris had never, perhaps, been heard since certain voices in Athens fell silent two thousand years before’. Talleyrand was always the wittiest and most intelligent man in any room. One contemporary describes him as
lounging nonchalantly on a sofa…his face unchanging and impenetrable, his hair powdered, talking little, sometimes putting in one subtle and mordant phrase, lighting up the conversation with a sparkling flash and then sinking back into his attitude of distinguished weariness and indifference.
He emerges from this book as a sort of aristocratic French Blackadder – witty, brilliant, dissolute, and quite prepared to be unprincipled if necessary. But this is unfair. Talleyrand may not have been willing to die for his principles – ‘nor even suffer serious inconvenience on their account’, as Cooper says – but he did have them. Cooper argues convincingly that there was a set of core beliefs to which he held throughout his whole career, beliefs which often made him unpopular with those in power. Prime among them were a desire for peace rather than conquest, and a commitment to constitutional monarchy. The former explains why he abandoned Napoleon. The latter is even more interesting, because it provides – if you're so minded – a justification for his other changes of allegiance: he supported the Revolution because the monarchy was not constitutional, and he supported the Restoration because the revolutionary government had shown that it did not have the ‘legitimacy’ of monarchy. (Hence his lifelong admiration for Britain, where he thought the perfect balance had been struck: a legitimate king whose power was held in check by a healthy parliament.)
All of this meant that he often acted for the interests of a peaceful Europe even when this ran counter to the wishes of the French government that he was currently serving. Sent by Napoleon to negotiate with Alexander I of Russia in 1806, Talleyrand simply told the tsar to refuse all of Napoleon's demands: ‘Sire, it is in your power to save Europe […] The French people are civilised, their sovereign is not. The sovereign of Russia is civilised and his people are not: the sovereign of Russia should therefore be the ally of the French people.’
Talleyrand was first published in 1932 and doubtless modern historians have moved the scholarship forward somewhat; nevertheless, it's very difficult to imagine this being done any better. Cooper writes beautifully, with a flair for efficient throwaway remarks of the kind modern historians shy away from now: he credits his readers with the intelligence to understand when he is speaking in generalisations for the sake of advancing an argument. He has a great turn of phrase, too. When Fanny Burney and her friends get to know Talleyrand during his exile in London, Cooper summarises the experience like this:
Prim little figures, they had wondered out of the sedate drawing-rooms of Sense and Sensibility and were in danger of losing themselves in the elegantly disordered alcoves of Les Liaisons dangereuses.
The idea cannot be captured more perfectly or economically. So I liked Talleyrand very much, and I liked Talleyrand very much too. He was the man still standing when the smoke cleared, the man not guided by stern morals but by practical genius and a love of the joys of civilisation that only peace can provide. ‘To the gospel of common sense he remained true.’ And although the few principles he did stick to were not always popular, they've become crucial to the Europe of today. Talleyrand may have played the long game, and enjoyed himself along the way, but in the final analysis he got it right.
(Dec 13)
November 7, 2016
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, the renegade, married Bishop of Autun, Prince of Benevento, Prince of Talleyrand of largely infamous renown. His name, where it is still known, is likely to call up images of what some thought to be his spirit animal, the snake, or perhaps just the snake charmer. He is best known as the remarkable survivor of five straight French regimes, and not the relatively kind ones where you got to rusticate in the country when you fell out of favor. These were the years of Louis XVI, Danton, Marat, Sièyes, Fouché, Napoleon and the Ultras, and aside from the two years of the Terror which he largely spent abroad in England and America, he was rarely out of government service the whole time. By reputation, he was considered a man without honor by many, the untrustworthy minister who was nonetheless recalled and recalled again to serve the French government, whomever might be at its head. His most famous and unambiguously triumphant episode: the astonishingly favorable outcome of the Treaty of Paris, followed by the Congress of Vienna, at which, despite the return of Napoleon and the slight…. interruption of Waterloo, he was able to obtain for France a still almost unbelievably favorable settlement and return her to the status of a Great Power. This allowed the completely exhausted and occupied country to maintain her borders and visited punishment largely only on the conqueror, rather than on the people who had supported him (again, incredibly, even after the Hundred Days!). Later on, through his time at the London Embassy, he was also a large player in ensuring that the question of Belgium, one of the major mistakes of the Congress, was peacefully fixed and resolved, and helped ensure that war did not break out once more.
And yet, despite these amazing feats, his negative reputation remains. The clever Talleyrand, certainly. But more importantly, the man who stood for nothing- who changed his opinions and advice to suit his masters, who was just as happy serving the good king as the ambitious conqueror. The man who who was only out for himself and his own survival- oh, remarkably good at it, one must give him that, but still, not one that anyone, in fact, from any faction would trust farther than they could throw him.
But why? Surely whatever faults he may have had, his accomplishments and many years of government service (and remember this is centralized France we speak of) must outweigh them. You would think this would especially be the case as passions faded and the practical results of his work became more evident, especially as his memoirs were released and the Second Empire came to a close, that it would be time for the revisionist biography. But, as of 1932, that had not occurred.
Cooper’s reasoning for writing this biography lies there. At one point in this biography, Cooper reminds us of the politics of historians in France. At least into the early 20th century, they tended to fall into one of three camps- Republican, Royalist and Bonapartist. Perhaps even more so than most countries, the story of France’s 18th and 19th century history depends on where your sympathies lie- whether we can hear tears over the wheels of the tumbrils or only the iron march of justice or perhaps only a faraway prophecy of the Savior to Come. Talleyrand was the firm disciple of none of these camps and thus, points out Cooper, he has not “yet found his defender in France.” Duff Cooper, a diplomat, politician and historian himself, takes up his sword here to become his defender in their place with what seems to me to be a great deal of sympathy towards one that I believe he considered a colleague of sorts that he had a right to analyze like he would analyze the work of any other counterpart, based on his own experience in the field. (I would like to do him the credit of saying that Cooper states his bias straight out as he remarks that he is “an Englishman who believes that Talleyrand was a true patriot and a wise statesman to whom neither contemporaries nor posterity has done justice”.)
Thus, Cooper dedicates his history of Talleyrand to refuting, or at the least complicating the negative reputation that generally attaches to Talleyrand. His major means of doing this is through defending him from the biggest charge made against him: that he was a man of inconsistent or non-existent principles who cared only for his own survival and acted accordingly. He does this by stating, consistently, that he argued, from 1789 to the 1830s for a policy that was marked by moderation, conciliation and the desire for domestic and foreign peace. He believed in constitutional monarchy and freedom of the press and in reconciling the old guard and the new revolutionary spirit, and said so on many occasions.
Cooper admits that Talleyrand would not die for these principles. He was willing to state them, argue them, make the best case possible for them. But he would not fall on his sword if they were not obeyed. But nonetheless, he maintains that each time he was asked for his advice or given the opportunity to state his views, he held to these same principles, whether in the last days of 1789 or throughout Napoleon’s mad expansionist period.
An example is an episode where he is rather prophetic about the fates of both Prussia and Austria which were to eventually follow later in the century, in part due to their crushing treatment at the hands of Napoleon . As a demonstration of Talleyrand’s policy of conciliation, peace and moderation, he accurately analyzed the weakness of the Austrian empire and wrote Napoleon, after both Ulm and later Austerlitz, that “Such a power is necessarily weak [Austria}, but she is an adequate bulwark against the barbarians and a necessary one. To-day, crushed and humiliated, she [Austria] needs that her conqueror should extend a generous hand to her and should, by making her an ally, restore her to confidence in herself, of which so many defeats and disasters might deprive her forever… To-day more than ever I date to consider it the best and wisest policy.” Napoleon ignored his advice, and ignored similar advice given about the likelihood of the lessons that Prussia was likely to draw from their treatment in defeat and indeed, his blunt statement that so crushed a country could never be an ally. Talleyrand attempted to rein in the worst of Napoleon’s excesses, and various statesmen attest to him being the voice of reason at this time. In addition, within a year he resigned from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, unable to bear supporting Napoleon’s endless ambition and ever-changing policy, especially when he would no longer listen to his advice. Therefore, in actuality, we have a man who consistently spoke his unpopular truth to a man who many considered the modern Caesar and was ready to argue away some of Napoleon’s desire for the spoils of victory.
Beyond his defense of Talleyrand’s consistency in arguing for moderation, conciliation and peace, one interesting feature of the biography is that his defense is remarkably tailored to the audience he seems to have in mind- that is upper class Englishmen with some experience with government. Thus it is no surprise to find that Talleyrand is endowed with all the virtues that that audience could be counted upon to appreciate, and many opinions that were likely to endear him to that particular crowd. For instance, one argument that returns again and again is that Talleyrand was an Anglophile. Indeed, beyond that that he always believed that France and England were natural allies. He points out each time that Talleyrand strove for an Anglo-French alliance (which he maintains was one of those “consistent principles” that was nearly as important to him as general European peace) and spends a great deal of time on Talleyrand’s time as Ambassador in London. He further more reports the favorable impression that he made on various famous English of the time, men and women his audience would have recognized-Aberdeen, Lord Grey, Lord Holland and Wellington himself. It also probably did not hurt that he intimates that the French never recognized Talleyrand’s worth, but Englishmen were smart enough to do so- so hah!- those ungrateful, wrong French need to be tutored by England once more. In addition, he takes every opportunity to position Talleyrand as a graceful, aristocratic survivor of the 18th century, a species which was thought of at the time in England with nostalgia by many in the upper class: the time before the storm and the scare, when conversation was an art and the rabble hadn’t a thought in their heads of such horrid things as revolution and demanding their rights. There are a legion of anecdotes contained here that serve no other purpose but to illustrate Talleyrand’s inborn class and grace and his ability to strike the sort of pose that aristocrats liked to believe that aristocrats have always struck. Finally, he makes frequent off-hand asides that his audience is meant to understand with a small smirk and a knowing nod of the head. You know, the sort of joke that comedians make that starts, “You know how when….” except rather than detailing a character from the metro, the characters he expects us to recognize are types that you are likely to see about an embassy or an upper-class drawing room- or at the very least in a book that anyone sitting in either of those locales would have read. He expects his audience to have the same base that he is working from. Again, it is a defense of a colleague (I don’t care how long in the past it was- this is a man who could blithely write that “Pitt received him and was as stiff as only Pitt could be,” of the English Prime Minister of two centuries previously- as if he had just gone to his house for tea the previous day).
Indeed, to that end, it was interesting to me how much of his defense ultimately rested on the fact that Talleyrand was, after all, incredibly good at his job. Reading this from modern-day, it sounds as if Talleyrand would have made an incredibly successful consultant of the Booz Allen type. Another major way that Cooper defends him is to state over and over again that Talleyrand gave the best advice to whoever asked it of him, whether royalist conspirator or Napoleon himself, whether to members of the Directory or to the restored Bourbons. For example, when he was asked if the Empress should leave Paris when the allies were marching on it before the formal capitulation of the government- he said no, that it would indicate the surrender of Paris and “throw away the game with good cards in hand.” He said this despite the fact that he supported the royalist cause at the time and had done for some time. This advice was ignored and the Empress left Paris, but nonetheless he gave the best advice possible at the time for Napoleon’s position. Cooper writes:
“When he was asked afterwards why he had given advice, which, if it had been followed, would have proved injurious to the cause which he already secretly supported, he replied that his credit at the time stood so low that he knew that he had only to advise one course for the opposite to be adopted. This was an ingenious explanation of his conduct, but it is permissible to believe that in giving it he was doing himself, as not infrequently, less than justice. He may have doubted whether his advice would be followed, he certainly wished no good to the Napoleonic regime, but when required to deliver an opinion on a question of policy, he probably preferred to give the opinion which he really held, and which also was the wisest counsel in the circumstances. All through the previous year whenever Napoleon had asked for his opinion he had given it honestly, advising the Emperor to make the best peace he could, although with little expectation and less desire that such advice would be followed. Although his conscience troubled him little, there exists such a thing as professional pride, and it must have afforded him some consolation to feel that the advice which he had given was always sound and that those who refused to follow it were the architects of their own misfortunes.”
Now tell me: Hand this to a bunch of career diplomats and government servants and politicians. How many of them do you think can maybe recognize some part of that scenario?
In the end, then, it is a fairly able defense. His writing is remarkably authoritative, his narrative runs smoothly for the most part, and his general insights about politics, in-depth analysis of each political situation Talleyrand deals with and finally his determination to point out what seems to be fairly obvious bias on the part of many of Talleyrand’s contemporaries makes the reader apt to want to believe him. However, I should point out a few flaws: For those looking for a particularly scholarly biography, you will not find it here. You will cringe with his frequent, lordly assumption of how people “must” have felt (with sometimes little textual evidence to support it) or how Talleyrand must “doubtless” have proceeded due to some motive that he never wrote down. Also, while his citations of primary sources are frequent and impressive, they are embedded like anecdotes in the narrative and there are no footnotes or endnotes to be found where we might go look up a quotation for ourselves. In addition, despite his indignation about the biases of Talleyrand’s contemporaries, he does not hesitate to assassinate the character of many of Talleyrand’s accusers himself. There is a general tone of “Well this mean old man said this horrid thing about Talleyrand, but he was a mean old man who was just jealous of him anyway,” about a lot of his refutations of others. And due to his lack of citations or in-depth review of the history of many of these people he mentions, I am unable to judge whether Cooper is making this up as he does how Talleyrand “doubtless” must have felt on several occasions. Finally, during what were actually Talleyrand’s surprising amount of years away from the center of power, Cooper has a tendency to wander about quite a bit with his narrative and go out of his way to point out Talleyrand’s relevance by taking us through a sequence of barely related anecdotes about interesting personages he met along the way. Sometimes amusing, but I think lengthened the book unnecessarily for what seemed to be the purposes of providing character witnesses for Talleyrand.
Ultimately, I think of his biography in the same vein that I do Nancy Mitford’s biographies. The tone is nearly the same. The writing is just as divinely sure of itself, his advice and opinions as magisterial as only an English politician and diplomat who grew up under Victoria’s empire and owned a quarter of the globe could be. There is no suggestion that he might not know something, not a hint of qualification or ambiguity. Where Cooper defends Talleyrand, he has his back 100%. Where he is willing to condemn him, he says so straight out and wastes no more than a few sentences on it.
And his writing- I really cannot emphasize enough how excellent his writing is. Aside from that wonderful tone I mentioned above which just makes me smile every time, he is really a master of character sketches. I met many characters here I had never heard of before, and after usually less than one page of description on Cooper’s part, I never felt the need to read another word about them again. One of my favorite examples:
“A brave and loyal messenger was needed who would carry through the line defended by Napoleon’s army to the allied statesmen and if possible to the Bourbon Princes themselves… Such a man was available in the person of the Baron de Vitrolles, one of those faithful and fearless supporters of the old order, whose belief in the righteousness of their cause was as sincere as their religion, and whose services were as valuable in moments of crisis as they were embarrassing after the victory was won. The Baron had already fought for the cause, but this was his first introduction into the world of high politics and he has left us in his memoirs the impression that it produced on him. He was naturally alarmed at the prospect of negotiating with statesmen whose names were already famous throughout Europe, but the more he saw of them the less he thought of them, and it appeared to him that both Talleyrand and Fouche were rather lacking in intelligence as neither of them seemed to have a clear idea of exactly what he wanted. Politics are indeed a simple science to honest souls like the Baron de Vitrolles, who believe that all solutions of the problem save their own are wrong and who are prepared to die for their cause.”
(Aside: On top of everything else that's great about it, does this remind anyone of a certain bombastic PM-to-be? Come on! Get way harsh about it. Put WWI center brain. People could still be snotty about Churchill in 1932- and were. It probably isn't a comment, but it totally could be, right??)
Cooper also takes periodic time out to express his own views on various subjects, usually, again, in a pleasing and interesting fashion. There is a lovely and somewhat astonishing- when considered in its parts- description of time passing in England that he gives just as Talleyrand arrives in the country to begin his ambassadorship in 1830:
“It was a very different country that this lover of England was revisiting in 1830 from that which he had left in 1794. Never perhaps have thirty-six years effected so complete a change in the outward aspect and inner mind of a whole nation. It is hardly too much to say that the complete process of alteration from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century had taken place in that period. He had known the London of Horace Walpole and he came back to the London of Charles Greville. When he was last there Pitt and Fox had been at the height of their powers; now the young Disraeli was already older than Pitt had been when he became Prime Minister and the young Gladstone was coming of age. He had left the London of knee-breeches and powdered hair and he returned to the London of frock-coats and top-hats. White’s Club, down steps of which he would have been kicked as a rascally Jacobin in 1794, elected him an honorary member. The famous bow window had been built over the steps in the interval and had already seen its greatest days, for the brief reign of Brummel was over and the dandies of the Regency were no more. Boswell had been alive when he was last in London. The whole life-work of Keats, Shelley and Byron had taken place during his absence and this, the year of his return, the first publication of Tennyson saw the light. Those who were alive at his first visit could remember the reign of Queen Anne, those who were alive at his second could live into the reign of George V.”
In the end, whether Cooper offers the best factual account of Talleyrand’s life or not- and really for a biography published in 1932 I don’t know how we can’t expect a certain amount of his facts and interpretations to be quite dated, as indeed they are- he is really just, I must say once more, a pleasure to read. Think of it as a well-written collection of sometimes amusing, sometimes quite serious short stories, a “based on a short story” tale written by someone with a sure hand who has taken up his pen to defend a friend. On this basis, I have no flaws to find or criticism to offer. Eighty years later, still a job very well done indeed.
And yet, despite these amazing feats, his negative reputation remains. The clever Talleyrand, certainly. But more importantly, the man who stood for nothing- who changed his opinions and advice to suit his masters, who was just as happy serving the good king as the ambitious conqueror. The man who who was only out for himself and his own survival- oh, remarkably good at it, one must give him that, but still, not one that anyone, in fact, from any faction would trust farther than they could throw him.
But why? Surely whatever faults he may have had, his accomplishments and many years of government service (and remember this is centralized France we speak of) must outweigh them. You would think this would especially be the case as passions faded and the practical results of his work became more evident, especially as his memoirs were released and the Second Empire came to a close, that it would be time for the revisionist biography. But, as of 1932, that had not occurred.
Cooper’s reasoning for writing this biography lies there. At one point in this biography, Cooper reminds us of the politics of historians in France. At least into the early 20th century, they tended to fall into one of three camps- Republican, Royalist and Bonapartist. Perhaps even more so than most countries, the story of France’s 18th and 19th century history depends on where your sympathies lie- whether we can hear tears over the wheels of the tumbrils or only the iron march of justice or perhaps only a faraway prophecy of the Savior to Come. Talleyrand was the firm disciple of none of these camps and thus, points out Cooper, he has not “yet found his defender in France.” Duff Cooper, a diplomat, politician and historian himself, takes up his sword here to become his defender in their place with what seems to me to be a great deal of sympathy towards one that I believe he considered a colleague of sorts that he had a right to analyze like he would analyze the work of any other counterpart, based on his own experience in the field. (I would like to do him the credit of saying that Cooper states his bias straight out as he remarks that he is “an Englishman who believes that Talleyrand was a true patriot and a wise statesman to whom neither contemporaries nor posterity has done justice”.)
Thus, Cooper dedicates his history of Talleyrand to refuting, or at the least complicating the negative reputation that generally attaches to Talleyrand. His major means of doing this is through defending him from the biggest charge made against him: that he was a man of inconsistent or non-existent principles who cared only for his own survival and acted accordingly. He does this by stating, consistently, that he argued, from 1789 to the 1830s for a policy that was marked by moderation, conciliation and the desire for domestic and foreign peace. He believed in constitutional monarchy and freedom of the press and in reconciling the old guard and the new revolutionary spirit, and said so on many occasions.
Cooper admits that Talleyrand would not die for these principles. He was willing to state them, argue them, make the best case possible for them. But he would not fall on his sword if they were not obeyed. But nonetheless, he maintains that each time he was asked for his advice or given the opportunity to state his views, he held to these same principles, whether in the last days of 1789 or throughout Napoleon’s mad expansionist period.
An example is an episode where he is rather prophetic about the fates of both Prussia and Austria which were to eventually follow later in the century, in part due to their crushing treatment at the hands of Napoleon . As a demonstration of Talleyrand’s policy of conciliation, peace and moderation, he accurately analyzed the weakness of the Austrian empire and wrote Napoleon, after both Ulm and later Austerlitz, that “Such a power is necessarily weak [Austria}, but she is an adequate bulwark against the barbarians and a necessary one. To-day, crushed and humiliated, she [Austria] needs that her conqueror should extend a generous hand to her and should, by making her an ally, restore her to confidence in herself, of which so many defeats and disasters might deprive her forever… To-day more than ever I date to consider it the best and wisest policy.” Napoleon ignored his advice, and ignored similar advice given about the likelihood of the lessons that Prussia was likely to draw from their treatment in defeat and indeed, his blunt statement that so crushed a country could never be an ally. Talleyrand attempted to rein in the worst of Napoleon’s excesses, and various statesmen attest to him being the voice of reason at this time. In addition, within a year he resigned from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, unable to bear supporting Napoleon’s endless ambition and ever-changing policy, especially when he would no longer listen to his advice. Therefore, in actuality, we have a man who consistently spoke his unpopular truth to a man who many considered the modern Caesar and was ready to argue away some of Napoleon’s desire for the spoils of victory.
Beyond his defense of Talleyrand’s consistency in arguing for moderation, conciliation and peace, one interesting feature of the biography is that his defense is remarkably tailored to the audience he seems to have in mind- that is upper class Englishmen with some experience with government. Thus it is no surprise to find that Talleyrand is endowed with all the virtues that that audience could be counted upon to appreciate, and many opinions that were likely to endear him to that particular crowd. For instance, one argument that returns again and again is that Talleyrand was an Anglophile. Indeed, beyond that that he always believed that France and England were natural allies. He points out each time that Talleyrand strove for an Anglo-French alliance (which he maintains was one of those “consistent principles” that was nearly as important to him as general European peace) and spends a great deal of time on Talleyrand’s time as Ambassador in London. He further more reports the favorable impression that he made on various famous English of the time, men and women his audience would have recognized-Aberdeen, Lord Grey, Lord Holland and Wellington himself. It also probably did not hurt that he intimates that the French never recognized Talleyrand’s worth, but Englishmen were smart enough to do so- so hah!- those ungrateful, wrong French need to be tutored by England once more. In addition, he takes every opportunity to position Talleyrand as a graceful, aristocratic survivor of the 18th century, a species which was thought of at the time in England with nostalgia by many in the upper class: the time before the storm and the scare, when conversation was an art and the rabble hadn’t a thought in their heads of such horrid things as revolution and demanding their rights. There are a legion of anecdotes contained here that serve no other purpose but to illustrate Talleyrand’s inborn class and grace and his ability to strike the sort of pose that aristocrats liked to believe that aristocrats have always struck. Finally, he makes frequent off-hand asides that his audience is meant to understand with a small smirk and a knowing nod of the head. You know, the sort of joke that comedians make that starts, “You know how when….” except rather than detailing a character from the metro, the characters he expects us to recognize are types that you are likely to see about an embassy or an upper-class drawing room- or at the very least in a book that anyone sitting in either of those locales would have read. He expects his audience to have the same base that he is working from. Again, it is a defense of a colleague (I don’t care how long in the past it was- this is a man who could blithely write that “Pitt received him and was as stiff as only Pitt could be,” of the English Prime Minister of two centuries previously- as if he had just gone to his house for tea the previous day).
Indeed, to that end, it was interesting to me how much of his defense ultimately rested on the fact that Talleyrand was, after all, incredibly good at his job. Reading this from modern-day, it sounds as if Talleyrand would have made an incredibly successful consultant of the Booz Allen type. Another major way that Cooper defends him is to state over and over again that Talleyrand gave the best advice to whoever asked it of him, whether royalist conspirator or Napoleon himself, whether to members of the Directory or to the restored Bourbons. For example, when he was asked if the Empress should leave Paris when the allies were marching on it before the formal capitulation of the government- he said no, that it would indicate the surrender of Paris and “throw away the game with good cards in hand.” He said this despite the fact that he supported the royalist cause at the time and had done for some time. This advice was ignored and the Empress left Paris, but nonetheless he gave the best advice possible at the time for Napoleon’s position. Cooper writes:
“When he was asked afterwards why he had given advice, which, if it had been followed, would have proved injurious to the cause which he already secretly supported, he replied that his credit at the time stood so low that he knew that he had only to advise one course for the opposite to be adopted. This was an ingenious explanation of his conduct, but it is permissible to believe that in giving it he was doing himself, as not infrequently, less than justice. He may have doubted whether his advice would be followed, he certainly wished no good to the Napoleonic regime, but when required to deliver an opinion on a question of policy, he probably preferred to give the opinion which he really held, and which also was the wisest counsel in the circumstances. All through the previous year whenever Napoleon had asked for his opinion he had given it honestly, advising the Emperor to make the best peace he could, although with little expectation and less desire that such advice would be followed. Although his conscience troubled him little, there exists such a thing as professional pride, and it must have afforded him some consolation to feel that the advice which he had given was always sound and that those who refused to follow it were the architects of their own misfortunes.”
Now tell me: Hand this to a bunch of career diplomats and government servants and politicians. How many of them do you think can maybe recognize some part of that scenario?
In the end, then, it is a fairly able defense. His writing is remarkably authoritative, his narrative runs smoothly for the most part, and his general insights about politics, in-depth analysis of each political situation Talleyrand deals with and finally his determination to point out what seems to be fairly obvious bias on the part of many of Talleyrand’s contemporaries makes the reader apt to want to believe him. However, I should point out a few flaws: For those looking for a particularly scholarly biography, you will not find it here. You will cringe with his frequent, lordly assumption of how people “must” have felt (with sometimes little textual evidence to support it) or how Talleyrand must “doubtless” have proceeded due to some motive that he never wrote down. Also, while his citations of primary sources are frequent and impressive, they are embedded like anecdotes in the narrative and there are no footnotes or endnotes to be found where we might go look up a quotation for ourselves. In addition, despite his indignation about the biases of Talleyrand’s contemporaries, he does not hesitate to assassinate the character of many of Talleyrand’s accusers himself. There is a general tone of “Well this mean old man said this horrid thing about Talleyrand, but he was a mean old man who was just jealous of him anyway,” about a lot of his refutations of others. And due to his lack of citations or in-depth review of the history of many of these people he mentions, I am unable to judge whether Cooper is making this up as he does how Talleyrand “doubtless” must have felt on several occasions. Finally, during what were actually Talleyrand’s surprising amount of years away from the center of power, Cooper has a tendency to wander about quite a bit with his narrative and go out of his way to point out Talleyrand’s relevance by taking us through a sequence of barely related anecdotes about interesting personages he met along the way. Sometimes amusing, but I think lengthened the book unnecessarily for what seemed to be the purposes of providing character witnesses for Talleyrand.
Ultimately, I think of his biography in the same vein that I do Nancy Mitford’s biographies. The tone is nearly the same. The writing is just as divinely sure of itself, his advice and opinions as magisterial as only an English politician and diplomat who grew up under Victoria’s empire and owned a quarter of the globe could be. There is no suggestion that he might not know something, not a hint of qualification or ambiguity. Where Cooper defends Talleyrand, he has his back 100%. Where he is willing to condemn him, he says so straight out and wastes no more than a few sentences on it.
And his writing- I really cannot emphasize enough how excellent his writing is. Aside from that wonderful tone I mentioned above which just makes me smile every time, he is really a master of character sketches. I met many characters here I had never heard of before, and after usually less than one page of description on Cooper’s part, I never felt the need to read another word about them again. One of my favorite examples:
“A brave and loyal messenger was needed who would carry through the line defended by Napoleon’s army to the allied statesmen and if possible to the Bourbon Princes themselves… Such a man was available in the person of the Baron de Vitrolles, one of those faithful and fearless supporters of the old order, whose belief in the righteousness of their cause was as sincere as their religion, and whose services were as valuable in moments of crisis as they were embarrassing after the victory was won. The Baron had already fought for the cause, but this was his first introduction into the world of high politics and he has left us in his memoirs the impression that it produced on him. He was naturally alarmed at the prospect of negotiating with statesmen whose names were already famous throughout Europe, but the more he saw of them the less he thought of them, and it appeared to him that both Talleyrand and Fouche were rather lacking in intelligence as neither of them seemed to have a clear idea of exactly what he wanted. Politics are indeed a simple science to honest souls like the Baron de Vitrolles, who believe that all solutions of the problem save their own are wrong and who are prepared to die for their cause.”
(Aside: On top of everything else that's great about it, does this remind anyone of a certain bombastic PM-to-be? Come on! Get way harsh about it. Put WWI center brain. People could still be snotty about Churchill in 1932- and were. It probably isn't a comment, but it totally could be, right??)
Cooper also takes periodic time out to express his own views on various subjects, usually, again, in a pleasing and interesting fashion. There is a lovely and somewhat astonishing- when considered in its parts- description of time passing in England that he gives just as Talleyrand arrives in the country to begin his ambassadorship in 1830:
“It was a very different country that this lover of England was revisiting in 1830 from that which he had left in 1794. Never perhaps have thirty-six years effected so complete a change in the outward aspect and inner mind of a whole nation. It is hardly too much to say that the complete process of alteration from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century had taken place in that period. He had known the London of Horace Walpole and he came back to the London of Charles Greville. When he was last there Pitt and Fox had been at the height of their powers; now the young Disraeli was already older than Pitt had been when he became Prime Minister and the young Gladstone was coming of age. He had left the London of knee-breeches and powdered hair and he returned to the London of frock-coats and top-hats. White’s Club, down steps of which he would have been kicked as a rascally Jacobin in 1794, elected him an honorary member. The famous bow window had been built over the steps in the interval and had already seen its greatest days, for the brief reign of Brummel was over and the dandies of the Regency were no more. Boswell had been alive when he was last in London. The whole life-work of Keats, Shelley and Byron had taken place during his absence and this, the year of his return, the first publication of Tennyson saw the light. Those who were alive at his first visit could remember the reign of Queen Anne, those who were alive at his second could live into the reign of George V.”
In the end, whether Cooper offers the best factual account of Talleyrand’s life or not- and really for a biography published in 1932 I don’t know how we can’t expect a certain amount of his facts and interpretations to be quite dated, as indeed they are- he is really just, I must say once more, a pleasure to read. Think of it as a well-written collection of sometimes amusing, sometimes quite serious short stories, a “based on a short story” tale written by someone with a sure hand who has taken up his pen to defend a friend. On this basis, I have no flaws to find or criticism to offer. Eighty years later, still a job very well done indeed.
March 7, 2025
Change = Consistency.
I have been meaning to read the book for years, with my deep interest in the Napoleonic period and after having some of my favourite historians Andrew Roberts and Simon Sebag Montefiore both highly recommend it. I can say two things about it: I’m glad I now have read it and it does live up to the hype. Alfred ‘Duff’ Cooper, 1st Viscount Norwich was a diplomat and politician in his own time in the early twentieth century - a contemporary of Sir Winston Churchill, so on some level I was already quite familiar with him. So when I finally turned to his work I was pleasantly pleased. ‘Talleyrand’ is truly a masterfully written biography of one of history’s most enigmatic and influential diplomats, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord. First published in 1932, the book remains a compelling portrait of a man who not only survived but thrived through the turbulent political shifts of the French Revolution, the Napoleonic era, and the Bourbon Restoration.
In this book Cooper, brings both admiration and insight to his subject. He presents Talleyrand as a pragmatic survivor, a man whose apparent cynicism masked a deep understanding of power and human nature. The book highlights Talleyrand’s role in shaping modern diplomacy, showing how he navigated shifting allegiances with a mix of charm, intelligence, and ruthless self-interest. Cooper’s writing is elegant and engaging, filled with sharp character sketches and vivid historical context.
While the biography is highly readable, it is not without its biases. Cooper is clearly fascinated by Talleyrand’s brilliance and wit, often excusing or glossing over his opportunism and moral ambiguities. However, this does not detract from the book’s overall impact. Talleyrand remains a classic work that brings one of history’s great statesmen to life, offering both entertainment and insight into the art of diplomacy. One of the stand outs for me is that Talleyrand was perhaps more consistent in his thinking than would appear on the outside. He was a Royalist and also a man of the Catholic faith, both of which streamed through his whole political thinking. Of course he was a survivor, but he wanted what he thought would be best for France under a stable non-despotic monarchy. He saw through Napoleon, which is why he considered behind his back. As he turned older his consciousness about being a married bishop came more clearer and although he never wanted to go into the church he did take it seriously. A lover of women his whole life he had many complicated relationships with them and his family, such as his nephew who was his heir, but also lived with his wife after they were estranged.
For those interested in history, politics, or the complexities of statecraft, Cooper’s ‘Talleyrand’ is a rewarding and enjoyable read. Talleyrand does not get the credit he deserves in the modern age, one who saved crowns and helped bring down Napoleon. However, Cooper’s work has survived which means Talleyrand will also. A great piece of literature.
I have been meaning to read the book for years, with my deep interest in the Napoleonic period and after having some of my favourite historians Andrew Roberts and Simon Sebag Montefiore both highly recommend it. I can say two things about it: I’m glad I now have read it and it does live up to the hype. Alfred ‘Duff’ Cooper, 1st Viscount Norwich was a diplomat and politician in his own time in the early twentieth century - a contemporary of Sir Winston Churchill, so on some level I was already quite familiar with him. So when I finally turned to his work I was pleasantly pleased. ‘Talleyrand’ is truly a masterfully written biography of one of history’s most enigmatic and influential diplomats, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord. First published in 1932, the book remains a compelling portrait of a man who not only survived but thrived through the turbulent political shifts of the French Revolution, the Napoleonic era, and the Bourbon Restoration.
In this book Cooper, brings both admiration and insight to his subject. He presents Talleyrand as a pragmatic survivor, a man whose apparent cynicism masked a deep understanding of power and human nature. The book highlights Talleyrand’s role in shaping modern diplomacy, showing how he navigated shifting allegiances with a mix of charm, intelligence, and ruthless self-interest. Cooper’s writing is elegant and engaging, filled with sharp character sketches and vivid historical context.
While the biography is highly readable, it is not without its biases. Cooper is clearly fascinated by Talleyrand’s brilliance and wit, often excusing or glossing over his opportunism and moral ambiguities. However, this does not detract from the book’s overall impact. Talleyrand remains a classic work that brings one of history’s great statesmen to life, offering both entertainment and insight into the art of diplomacy. One of the stand outs for me is that Talleyrand was perhaps more consistent in his thinking than would appear on the outside. He was a Royalist and also a man of the Catholic faith, both of which streamed through his whole political thinking. Of course he was a survivor, but he wanted what he thought would be best for France under a stable non-despotic monarchy. He saw through Napoleon, which is why he considered behind his back. As he turned older his consciousness about being a married bishop came more clearer and although he never wanted to go into the church he did take it seriously. A lover of women his whole life he had many complicated relationships with them and his family, such as his nephew who was his heir, but also lived with his wife after they were estranged.
For those interested in history, politics, or the complexities of statecraft, Cooper’s ‘Talleyrand’ is a rewarding and enjoyable read. Talleyrand does not get the credit he deserves in the modern age, one who saved crowns and helped bring down Napoleon. However, Cooper’s work has survived which means Talleyrand will also. A great piece of literature.
June 18, 2021
I found this a rather peculiar biography. The author is most worshipful of his subject – and very chauvinistic (it was written in the 1930s).
Talleyrand definitely lived during interesting times – the French Revolution, the Napoleonic era, and the post-Napoleonic era. He was born in 1754 and died at the age of 84 in 1838.
During the French Revolution Talleyrand fled to England and then to the United States. The author never gives us any indication of the quality of Talleyrand’s ability with the English language.
Talleyrand was often the French Minister for Foreign Affairs. We do get much on his character which could range from opaque to cutting witticisms. He loved to play cards and as the author continually reminds us, he was very much the ladies’ man – even into his old age. Today he would likely be considered a sexual predator.
He managed not only to survive, but thrive, through many different forms of government (some of his compatriots were far less successful). He had various titles and the author confused me at times by referring to the current or past titles of Talleyrand (I thought I was reading of another individual). There is considerable name-dropping which irritated me.
This is about the elites of Europe; there is nothing on how the majority of the populace lived in poverty and ignorance. In the pages of this book, it would seem that the aristocracy never even thought of the vast destitution surrounding them as their carriages rolled by the streets where the heaving masses of struggling people lived.
My interest in the book started to diminish after the end of the Napoleonic era.
Talleyrand definitely lived during interesting times – the French Revolution, the Napoleonic era, and the post-Napoleonic era. He was born in 1754 and died at the age of 84 in 1838.
During the French Revolution Talleyrand fled to England and then to the United States. The author never gives us any indication of the quality of Talleyrand’s ability with the English language.
Talleyrand was often the French Minister for Foreign Affairs. We do get much on his character which could range from opaque to cutting witticisms. He loved to play cards and as the author continually reminds us, he was very much the ladies’ man – even into his old age. Today he would likely be considered a sexual predator.
He managed not only to survive, but thrive, through many different forms of government (some of his compatriots were far less successful). He had various titles and the author confused me at times by referring to the current or past titles of Talleyrand (I thought I was reading of another individual). There is considerable name-dropping which irritated me.
This is about the elites of Europe; there is nothing on how the majority of the populace lived in poverty and ignorance. In the pages of this book, it would seem that the aristocracy never even thought of the vast destitution surrounding them as their carriages rolled by the streets where the heaving masses of struggling people lived.
My interest in the book started to diminish after the end of the Napoleonic era.
March 14, 2020
This is another from my 'While On Strike, Read Books That Have Been Lent To You' project, and a thoroughly entertaining experience it was too. Duff Cooper writes with enthusiasm and panache, well-suited to the extraordinary figure of Talleyrand. This man had the distinction of serving successive French governments from 1789 until 1834, when he was 82 years old. To recount his career is to trace the constitutional transformations of France across half a century. His incredible ability to survive and thrive when so many died or fled is quite unparalleled. Cooper thus treats him with a tone of admiration for his achievements, while also conceding that he was in many ways terrible. Talleyrand was consistently and flagrantly corrupt, deriving a massive fortune for himself and his family from his political posts. He was also profligate, much inclined to gamble, and a serial womaniser. However, many men could be labelled the same, yet only he also exercised such consistent power during six different regimes. It's also impossible not to enjoy his sarcastic comments, which Cooper gleefully quotes a great many of. Here are my favourites:
Of course, Talleyrand wasn't merely a wit. He was a skilled and subtle political operator, who liked to employ women as his go-betweens and deftly managed some extremely difficult negotiations and people. Cooper identifies him as both profoundly self-interested and attached to a specific political vision, which changed remarkably little over the decades. This was based upon a France at peace with the rest of Europe, in economic partnership with Britain, and ruled by some sort of constitutional monarchy that allowed popular political involvement. It is curious to consider that his political survival may have actually have depended not only upon his skills, but also his independence of opinion. Cooper repeatedly shows that Talleyrand did not fall under the spell of any ruler he served, not even the personality cult of Napoleon, and always had an excellent sense of when to get out. This seems especially clear during negotiations between Napoleon and Emperor Alexander of Russia in 1808, which Talleyrand managed:
So was he a man or principle or not? It's a complicated question without an easy answer. I did sometimes wonder if Cooper was perhaps making Talleyrand seem more cool and competent than was reasonable, while also enjoying this sort of thing very much:
Similarly, it's hard not to admire this:
Throughout his life, Talleyrand made an impression on other political notables. While in exile in America, he befriended Alexander Hamilton. In his later years, he knew and influenced Lamartine, who was active in the 1848 revolution, and Thiers, who brutally suppressed the Paris Commune in 1870. While serving the Ancien Regime, Directory, Consulate, Empire, Restoration Monarchy, and Second Restoration, he obviously worked with the rulers and notables in each. His perennial presence as Minister for Foreign Affairs shows a remarkable continuity amid decades of considerable upheaval. Cooper also credits him with prescience, painting him as both a man of his own time and one able to foresee where things were going. Having not read a biography of Talleyrand before, although I'd definitely come across him in French histories, I did not hold any definite view of him, positive or negative. This biography treats him as one deserving of rehabilitation, who history has treated unfairly:
Given that the biography was first published in 1932, such a statement is of historical interest. After the Second World War, have French historians continued to be dismissive? I'd be interested to read a more recent biography of Talleyrand for comparison. However this one was an excellent introduction and it's not difficult to see why it became a classic. The thrill of an adventure story is elegantly combined with astute scholarship and quotation from primary sources. Talleyrand looks out from the page as a vivid, impressive, difficult, and important figure. Not only was I fascinated by his life story, but my fascination with French history during the Revolution and beyond was reignited by reading it.
One day Mirabeau was descanting upon the particular qualities which a minister in such circumstances should possess, and had enumerated nearly all his own characteristics when Talleyrand interrupted with, "Should you not add that such a man should be strongly marked by the small-pox?"
[...]
On one occasion he read a long paper explaining this novel system of worship to his colleagues. When he had concluded, Talleyrand remarked, "For my part I have only one observation to make. Jesus Christ, in order to found his religion, was crucified and rose again - you should have tried to do as much."
[...]
So [Napoleon] contented himself with repetitions of the scene of January 1809, calling Talleyrand a traitor to his face and threatening to shoot or hang him. After one of these scenes Talleyrand's comment to the assembled courtiers was: "The Emperor is charming this morning."
[...]
On another occasion when the Emperor Alexander [of Russia], referring to the King of Saxony, spoke bitterly of, "those who have betrayed the cause of Europe", Talleyrand replied with justice, "that, Sire, is a question of dates."
[...]
On hearing somebody remark that Chateaubriand had grown very deaf, Talleyrand observed, "He only thinks he is deaf because he can no longer hear anyone talking about him."
Of course, Talleyrand wasn't merely a wit. He was a skilled and subtle political operator, who liked to employ women as his go-betweens and deftly managed some extremely difficult negotiations and people. Cooper identifies him as both profoundly self-interested and attached to a specific political vision, which changed remarkably little over the decades. This was based upon a France at peace with the rest of Europe, in economic partnership with Britain, and ruled by some sort of constitutional monarchy that allowed popular political involvement. It is curious to consider that his political survival may have actually have depended not only upon his skills, but also his independence of opinion. Cooper repeatedly shows that Talleyrand did not fall under the spell of any ruler he served, not even the personality cult of Napoleon, and always had an excellent sense of when to get out. This seems especially clear during negotiations between Napoleon and Emperor Alexander of Russia in 1808, which Talleyrand managed:
This was treachery, but it was treachery upon a magnificent scale. Of the two Emperors, upon whose words the fate of Europe depended, Talleyrand had made one his dupe and the other his informant. He was playing a great game for a vast stake, and although he never lost sight of his private interests his main objective was never personal or petty. [...] Talleyrand did care for the preservation of Europe; was quite clear in his mind as to how that object was to be achieved, and in order to achieve it he risked everything. As it proved he had six years to wait for his reward and he was no longer young. If we compare his conduct towards Napoleon with that of the majority of his supporters, including the Marshals, who all deserted him when it was manifest to the world that he was a broken man, and who for the most part owed everything to him, we shall find it less easy to condemn the politician who turned against him at the height of his power because he could no longer approve of his policy.
So was he a man or principle or not? It's a complicated question without an easy answer. I did sometimes wonder if Cooper was perhaps making Talleyrand seem more cool and competent than was reasonable, while also enjoying this sort of thing very much:
All that day Talleyrand remained at home playing whist, piquet, and hazard. Every quarter of an hour a messenger arrived with the latest intelligence. As the news came in he smiled but made no comment, continuing his game without interruption. He always arranged to spend the day of a coup d'état as comfortably as possible.
Similarly, it's hard not to admire this:
Talleyrand did not share Napoleon's fondness for work. Naturally lazy he pretended to be lazier than he was and made a principle of never performing any task himself that could possibly be delegated to another. [...] This love of idleness, partly natural and partly affected, he was prepared to defend as the wisest policy for a diplomatist. He discouraged excessive zeal even in subordinates. [...] This deliberate manner of conducting business was really of service to Napoleon, who, working with lightning rapidity himself, was often glad to find that instructions which he had given with too little consideration had not been acted upon several days later, whereupon he was already prepared to cancel them.
Throughout his life, Talleyrand made an impression on other political notables. While in exile in America, he befriended Alexander Hamilton. In his later years, he knew and influenced Lamartine, who was active in the 1848 revolution, and Thiers, who brutally suppressed the Paris Commune in 1870. While serving the Ancien Regime, Directory, Consulate, Empire, Restoration Monarchy, and Second Restoration, he obviously worked with the rulers and notables in each. His perennial presence as Minister for Foreign Affairs shows a remarkable continuity amid decades of considerable upheaval. Cooper also credits him with prescience, painting him as both a man of his own time and one able to foresee where things were going. Having not read a biography of Talleyrand before, although I'd definitely come across him in French histories, I did not hold any definite view of him, positive or negative. This biography treats him as one deserving of rehabilitation, who history has treated unfairly:
The French have long memories; for them politics are the continuation of history. Royalist, Bonapartist, Republican - most French writers belong to one of these categories. Talleyrand belongs to none of them and has therefore never found his defender in France. Yet it is not for the French to decry him, as for every change of allegiance that he made was made by France. Not without reason did he claim that he never conspired except when the majority of his countrymen were involved in the conspiracy.
Given that the biography was first published in 1932, such a statement is of historical interest. After the Second World War, have French historians continued to be dismissive? I'd be interested to read a more recent biography of Talleyrand for comparison. However this one was an excellent introduction and it's not difficult to see why it became a classic. The thrill of an adventure story is elegantly combined with astute scholarship and quotation from primary sources. Talleyrand looks out from the page as a vivid, impressive, difficult, and important figure. Not only was I fascinated by his life story, but my fascination with French history during the Revolution and beyond was reignited by reading it.
February 25, 2025
Talleyrand is Duff Cooper’s much-admired look at the life of the famed French diplomat Charles-Maurice, Prince de Talleyrand-Perigord. Cooper’s book is not an academic biography; it is best described as an extended biographical sketch which makes the most of Cooper’s broad knowledge of French history and mastery of stylish English prose.
An excerpt from near the end of the book provides a testament to Talleyrand’s life and work and a fine example of Cooper’s writing style:
Sir Harold Nicholson wrote “If biography is to be defined as the history of an individual conceived as a work of art, then Mr. Duff Cooper’s book would serve as an exhibit.” I concur and award Cooper’s Talleyrand a strong Four Stars.
An excerpt from near the end of the book provides a testament to Talleyrand’s life and work and a fine example of Cooper’s writing style:
The French have long memories; for them politics are the continuation of history. Royalist, Bonapartist, Republican – most French writers belong to one of these categories. Talleyrand belonged to none of them and has therefore never found his defender in France. Yet it is not for the French to decry him, for every change of allegiance that he made was made by France. Not without reason did he claim that he never conspired except when the majority of his countrymen were involved in the conspiracy. Like France he responded to the ideals of 1789 and believed in the necessity of the Revolution; like France he abominated the Terror, made the best of the Directory, and welcomed Napoleon as the restorer of order and the harbinger of peace: like France he resented tyranny and grew tired of endless war and so reconciled himself to the return of the Bourbons…Constitutional monarchy, the maintenance of order and liberty at home, peace in Europe, and the alliance with England, to these principles he was never false – and he believed that they were of greater importance than the Kings and Emperors, Directors and Demagogues, Peoples and Parliaments that he served.
Sir Harold Nicholson wrote “If biography is to be defined as the history of an individual conceived as a work of art, then Mr. Duff Cooper’s book would serve as an exhibit.” I concur and award Cooper’s Talleyrand a strong Four Stars.
July 26, 2007
An almost effortlessly excellent biography by an author you've never heard of. Duff Cooper, an English aristocrat and diplomat in the 1920s, first published Talleyrand in 1932. Charles-Maurice, Prince de Talleyrand, was the most gifted statesman of his time – surviving Louis XVI, the French Revolution, Napoleon, only to dominate the Congress of Vienna. He was also a rogue, a club-foot, a connoisseur of wealth and women, and a great wit. Cooper does him justice, telling his story with verve and imagination.
You can't help feeling that this biography was a labor of love – by a brilliant amateur admiring a master. If you have a feeling for European history, or a taste for lost classics, pick this up. Grove Press did us a great favor by giving Talleyrand a second life.
You can't help feeling that this biography was a labor of love – by a brilliant amateur admiring a master. If you have a feeling for European history, or a taste for lost classics, pick this up. Grove Press did us a great favor by giving Talleyrand a second life.
November 26, 2021
The “great man” approach to history looks to be falling out of fashion, which has to be a net positive development overall. But there will be some collateral damage, including a likely fall in readership for classics like this.
In many respects this is a wince-inducing book when read through an early twenty-first century lens, including as it does large dollops of misogyny and casual racism. It is also conceited, with Duff Cooper clearly wishing to draw attention to various perceived similarities between his subject and himself, much like Boris Johnson when he pretends to write biographies of people like Winston Churchill.
But for all its flaws, this is a riveting read and one that you feel captures something of the essence of Talleyrand and the times he lived in (as well as Duff Cooper and the times he lived in) even if half the anecdotes in it are almost certainly complete bollocks.
In many respects this is a wince-inducing book when read through an early twenty-first century lens, including as it does large dollops of misogyny and casual racism. It is also conceited, with Duff Cooper clearly wishing to draw attention to various perceived similarities between his subject and himself, much like Boris Johnson when he pretends to write biographies of people like Winston Churchill.
But for all its flaws, this is a riveting read and one that you feel captures something of the essence of Talleyrand and the times he lived in (as well as Duff Cooper and the times he lived in) even if half the anecdotes in it are almost certainly complete bollocks.
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September 6, 2012I really enjoyed this examination of Talleyrand from an early twentieth-century viewpoint. Even the errors of fact are in tune with what little was understood about the man, who had stipulated that his memoirs must not be published for thirty years after his death. Unfortunately, the executors all managed to die off, one after another, shortly before the date, with the result that Talleyrand's memoirs did not appear until nearly at the end of the nineteenth century--and because they turned out to contain little of the salacious detail people had hoped for, they immediately pretty much sank into obscurity.
I wish my French was good enough to read his thoughts as he wrote them. But it isn't, so I read around him, so to speak; my interest in the guy began decades ago when I became aware that his name popped up during the Ancien Regime, during the Revolution (in fact, during the several stages of it), during Napoleon's time, and after. How had he managed to survive--to flourish? When I delved into the Congress of Vienna and read about Talleyrand representing France--the defeated enemy--and causing everyone to shift paradigm from allies against France to 'let's design a balanced Europe' I began looking for stuff from my limited vantage.
Duff Cooper's book is satisfying in that Cooper understood diplomacy and statesmanship of that period. It's an elegant, leisurely read. Let me leave off with a nifty quotation"
It was a very different country that this lover of England was revisiting in 1830 from that which he had left in 1794. Never perhaps have thirty-six years effected so complete a change in the outward aspect and in the inward mind of a whole nation. It is hardly too much to say that the complete process of alteration from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century had taken place in that period.
He had known the London of Horace Walpole and he came back to the London of Charles Greville. When he was last there Pitt and Fox had been at the height of their powers; now the young Disraeli was already older than Pitt had been when he became Prime Minister, and the young Gladstone was coming of age.
He had left the London of knee-breeches and powdered hair, he returned to the London of frock-coats and top-hats. White's Club, down the steps of which he would have been kicked as a rascally Jacobin in 1794, elected him an honorary member. The famous bow window had been built over those steps in the interval and had already seen its greatest days, for the brief reign of Brummel was over, and the dandies of the Regency were no more.
Boswell had been alive when he was last in London. The whole life-work of Keats, Shelley, and Byron had taken place during his absence, and in this, the year of his return, the first publication of Tennyson saw the light. . .
I wish my French was good enough to read his thoughts as he wrote them. But it isn't, so I read around him, so to speak; my interest in the guy began decades ago when I became aware that his name popped up during the Ancien Regime, during the Revolution (in fact, during the several stages of it), during Napoleon's time, and after. How had he managed to survive--to flourish? When I delved into the Congress of Vienna and read about Talleyrand representing France--the defeated enemy--and causing everyone to shift paradigm from allies against France to 'let's design a balanced Europe' I began looking for stuff from my limited vantage.
Duff Cooper's book is satisfying in that Cooper understood diplomacy and statesmanship of that period. It's an elegant, leisurely read. Let me leave off with a nifty quotation"
It was a very different country that this lover of England was revisiting in 1830 from that which he had left in 1794. Never perhaps have thirty-six years effected so complete a change in the outward aspect and in the inward mind of a whole nation. It is hardly too much to say that the complete process of alteration from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century had taken place in that period.
He had known the London of Horace Walpole and he came back to the London of Charles Greville. When he was last there Pitt and Fox had been at the height of their powers; now the young Disraeli was already older than Pitt had been when he became Prime Minister, and the young Gladstone was coming of age.
He had left the London of knee-breeches and powdered hair, he returned to the London of frock-coats and top-hats. White's Club, down the steps of which he would have been kicked as a rascally Jacobin in 1794, elected him an honorary member. The famous bow window had been built over those steps in the interval and had already seen its greatest days, for the brief reign of Brummel was over, and the dandies of the Regency were no more.
Boswell had been alive when he was last in London. The whole life-work of Keats, Shelley, and Byron had taken place during his absence, and in this, the year of his return, the first publication of Tennyson saw the light. . .
August 26, 2016
I read this as much for the author and the age it was written as for the subject matter, and I was not disappointed.
Talleyrand was brilliant, creative, sarcastic, adaptable, lazy and politically flexible. Cooper paints a sympathetic picture of a politician whose career spanned five regimes at a very brutal time in french politics.
Fascinating
Talleyrand was brilliant, creative, sarcastic, adaptable, lazy and politically flexible. Cooper paints a sympathetic picture of a politician whose career spanned five regimes at a very brutal time in french politics.
Fascinating
July 28, 2019
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord was a famous diplomat, infamous womanizer and alledged turncoat. He helped shape the politics of France during its most tumultuous years - starting with the Ancien regime, through the French revolution and the autocratic rule of Napoleon, ending his career in 1834. His legacy is therefore mixed and at first sight it seems as though one would need to be a Machiavellian figure in order to survive that long. Was he a libertine par excellence his critics want to portray him as?
Duff Cooper paints a picture of a vivacious and capable statesman who is not without faults but whose talents more than make up for them. Cooper writes in a relaxed and witty British way which makes the prose much more entertaining. Talleyrand, according to Cooper, was a man who was quite reserved and calculating. Talleyrand was born in 1756 into a noble family and came to age in a time before the revolution. “Never before, perhaps, and never since has a society existed so well equipped to appreciate all the pleasures both of the senses and of the intellect. […] It was a period of feverish excitement, of daring speculation, of boundless hope” writes Cooper in a rather romantic fashion. One indeed wonders if all this ‘feverish excitement’ was what brought about the revolution, the war and all the carnage that followed in the first place.
Talleyrand, despite suffering from no spiritual proclivity, became an abbot (as this was a natural career for a nobleman in those days). Given his later reputation for licentiousness, the way of the cloth was not the way for him. He instead spent his time at the monastery reading (but unfortunately Cooper gives no insight as to which books nor is reading referred to later). But ultimately found politics to be the only sphere where he could combine his intelligence and ability to charm people.
Coopers elegant prose gives the reader a soft push into the world to which Talleyrand belong. He uses his way with words to charm people and convince them of his views. He often uses women as tools for efficient diplomacy. He stays in France during the revolution but ultimately leaves for Great Britain and then the US. After a year he returns to France, gets a job in government and once the time is right, aids Napoleon in his ascendancy to the highest echelons of power. “Talleyrand did not share Napoleon’s fondness for work. Naturally lazy he pretended to be lazier than he was a made a principle of never performing any task himself that could possibly be delegated to another.” (p. 98)
I became interested in Talleyrand as a result of reading Paul Johnsons book “the Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830”. Johnson makes the case that the congress of Vienna set the stage for the progress which was to follow. Why is it that two worldly statesmen such as Metternich and Talleyrand could accomplish such a feat as the congress of Vienna? Although Talleyrand wasn’t the philosopher who saw ideals sub specie aeternitis, he wasn’t a mere libertine either. "Born in the middle of the eighteenth century he was free from the narrow nationalist spirit which was beginning to grow up, and the idea of conquest made no appeal to his practical, peace-loving intelligence. He was intimately acquainted with the map of Europe which he wished to preserve and not to destroy." (p. 141) If one is to judge just from Coopers book the impression of Talleyrand is a conservative with a liberal bent. He tries – to the best of his ability – to impress liberal values on the governments which he served. But to do this one has to occasionally be cunning.
I find myself in complete agreement with the evening standard which described the book as: "exquisite prose, political experience and decadent wordliness... Duff Cooper's perennial work has stood the test of time". The book is however from the 30’s which means that perhaps views of Talleyrand has changed over time. If you are interested in the history of France then this book is definitely worth reading.
Duff Cooper paints a picture of a vivacious and capable statesman who is not without faults but whose talents more than make up for them. Cooper writes in a relaxed and witty British way which makes the prose much more entertaining. Talleyrand, according to Cooper, was a man who was quite reserved and calculating. Talleyrand was born in 1756 into a noble family and came to age in a time before the revolution. “Never before, perhaps, and never since has a society existed so well equipped to appreciate all the pleasures both of the senses and of the intellect. […] It was a period of feverish excitement, of daring speculation, of boundless hope” writes Cooper in a rather romantic fashion. One indeed wonders if all this ‘feverish excitement’ was what brought about the revolution, the war and all the carnage that followed in the first place.
Talleyrand, despite suffering from no spiritual proclivity, became an abbot (as this was a natural career for a nobleman in those days). Given his later reputation for licentiousness, the way of the cloth was not the way for him. He instead spent his time at the monastery reading (but unfortunately Cooper gives no insight as to which books nor is reading referred to later). But ultimately found politics to be the only sphere where he could combine his intelligence and ability to charm people.
Coopers elegant prose gives the reader a soft push into the world to which Talleyrand belong. He uses his way with words to charm people and convince them of his views. He often uses women as tools for efficient diplomacy. He stays in France during the revolution but ultimately leaves for Great Britain and then the US. After a year he returns to France, gets a job in government and once the time is right, aids Napoleon in his ascendancy to the highest echelons of power. “Talleyrand did not share Napoleon’s fondness for work. Naturally lazy he pretended to be lazier than he was a made a principle of never performing any task himself that could possibly be delegated to another.” (p. 98)
I became interested in Talleyrand as a result of reading Paul Johnsons book “the Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830”. Johnson makes the case that the congress of Vienna set the stage for the progress which was to follow. Why is it that two worldly statesmen such as Metternich and Talleyrand could accomplish such a feat as the congress of Vienna? Although Talleyrand wasn’t the philosopher who saw ideals sub specie aeternitis, he wasn’t a mere libertine either. "Born in the middle of the eighteenth century he was free from the narrow nationalist spirit which was beginning to grow up, and the idea of conquest made no appeal to his practical, peace-loving intelligence. He was intimately acquainted with the map of Europe which he wished to preserve and not to destroy." (p. 141) If one is to judge just from Coopers book the impression of Talleyrand is a conservative with a liberal bent. He tries – to the best of his ability – to impress liberal values on the governments which he served. But to do this one has to occasionally be cunning.
I find myself in complete agreement with the evening standard which described the book as: "exquisite prose, political experience and decadent wordliness... Duff Cooper's perennial work has stood the test of time". The book is however from the 30’s which means that perhaps views of Talleyrand has changed over time. If you are interested in the history of France then this book is definitely worth reading.
October 17, 2020
This was one of the first biographies I ever read. Highly recommended by my teacher. It is good, but not as good as it appeared to me nearly half a century ago. For one thing, the book is too short. 490 pages in my edition but it seems as if everything is barely touched. We get all the main events the Revolution the Restauration the 100 days. But I did not get the feeling that I was witnessing history being made.
Really satisfying were the last few chapters. When comparatively not so much happened in his life. Will the former bishop find his way back to church on his death bed?
Maybe one should read a modern biography if there is one.
7/10
Really satisfying were the last few chapters. When comparatively not so much happened in his life. Will the former bishop find his way back to church on his death bed?
Maybe one should read a modern biography if there is one.
7/10
August 29, 2015
I first read this at school as part of the background reading necessary for the European History A Level syllabus and found it both immensely useful in giving context to the diplomacy underpinning European history from 1815 until 1914 and a pleasure to read per se. I re-read it a couple of years back and still found pleasure in both the subject and the writing.
June 13, 2022
I was amazed at the neglect Talleyrand suffered in childhood. Ironically, had he born into poverty instead of aristocratic wealth, he would probably have been far better treated – at least emotionally.
He was surely the most brilliant diplomat of his or possibly any age. The favourable terms he obtained for France in the 1803 Treaty of Amiens were a diplomatic master stroke. He knew it – but he also knew it wouldn’t last. From 1807 he became convinced Bonaparte was a menace to the peace of Europe and sought to destroy him. For this, many French persons would consider him a traitor, but if he was right – and it seems obvious to me that he was – then this was a form of deeper patriotism. He was also on the side of the angels when it came to Polish independence – a cause in which he sincerely believed. Yes, he took bribes for it, but when Bonaparte refused to grant it, he returned the money.
I liked the anecdote about Thiers, who complained that whenever he tried to talk politics, Talleyrand turned the subject onto women. “But,” said Talleyrand, “women are politics.”
Bonaparte’s famous screaming rant at Talleyrand – where he called him “shit in a silk stocking” in public – was met by Talleyrand with a calm imperturbability which is very much to his credit, and shows up Bonaparte for the ill bred yob he was. His apparent laziness was an aristocratic affectation which many others have admired and tried to emulate (including Harold Macmillan). Everything he did was carefully choregraphed political theatre – up to and including his extraordinary death bed scene, when he delayed signing his reconciliation with the church until the last minute, and turned his hands over to receive the holy oil of the last rites on their backs and not the palms – a deliberate detail to remind the anointing priest that he had been consecrated a bishop. This gesture – made at the very gate of death – was not only pulling rank, but also reminding all the onlookers at his very public death bed that as far as he was concerned he had won the game and had no regrets.
I cannot say I admire Talleyrand, not exactly – he was, after all, both spectacularly financially corrupt and an enthusiastic adulterer. And yet there is something utterly fascinating about his life and character. This is a superbly well written biography which I greatly enjoyed.
May 16, 2017
Talleyrand is not a name as well known as Napoleon. Yet, this man lived in a very politically unstable time in France, surviving five straight regimes, securing an influential position for himself in various times of turmoil and travelling to various parts of the world to logically influence emperors, kings and politicians. This diplomat, whom I consider to be a genius, was able to win the hearts of his enemies partly through charisma, but mostly through wisdom, clemency and good humor. This is a man who orchestrated the rise and fall of the Napoleonic regime, as well as other significant political events. Yet, he always remained true to himself and followed his original ideals to the end, i.e. peace in Europe, freedom of press and lighthearted appreciation of life. Kant once said that "science is organized knowledge, but wisdom is organized life." Talleyrand exulted this conviction throughout his long and saturated life.
This book is a gem to anyone who wishes to chart the systematic decisions influential people make, anyone who wants to get to know the real orchestrator of French politics before, during and after the revolution, anyone who wants to absorb himself in the daily life of a great man. This book is written with flair, similar to the French fashion of the time, and ease to make you, the reader, wish you knew this man. It truly changed my perspective on life.
This book is a gem to anyone who wishes to chart the systematic decisions influential people make, anyone who wants to get to know the real orchestrator of French politics before, during and after the revolution, anyone who wants to absorb himself in the daily life of a great man. This book is written with flair, similar to the French fashion of the time, and ease to make you, the reader, wish you knew this man. It truly changed my perspective on life.
July 20, 2015
Though this biography of Talleyrand is more that seven decades old, it is still readable and has lessons to teach us. Though Talleyrand was a wiley schemer, he did hold all of his career one constant diplomatic principle--that peace in Europe was beneficial for Western civilization (of which France was a part.) In keeping to this principle, he betrayed Napoleon by telling the Russian emperor what the French emperor was going to do--and how to check Napoleon's diplomatic manipulations. At the time Talleyrand was Naploeon's foreign minister. It took amazing gall and courage for Talleyrand to betray his master but he knew that peace in Europe depended upon amazing acts. Napoleon was no longer waging war for any greater reason than that he enjoyed it. The French emperor had to be stopped. Talleyrand undermined Napoleon from within his government.
Talleyrand teaches that principle is sometimes greater than nationalism. This lesson is no less timely now than it was in his lifetime.
Finally, it was difficult tracking Talleyrand's love-life. Like many important men of his time he had mistresses and a wife. It was at times a strain to understand the French culture of this time that mixed mistress and wife. The idea of commitment and fidelity seemed alien to this age.
Talleyrand teaches that principle is sometimes greater than nationalism. This lesson is no less timely now than it was in his lifetime.
Finally, it was difficult tracking Talleyrand's love-life. Like many important men of his time he had mistresses and a wife. It was at times a strain to understand the French culture of this time that mixed mistress and wife. The idea of commitment and fidelity seemed alien to this age.
June 23, 2020
I finished this biography of Talleyrand and I can honestly say this could be one of the greatest biographies I have ever read. The Prince was a fascinating character. A priest who flaunted the church’s rules to philander and marry. A statesman who was feared and distrusted, but still employed by three kings and Napoleon. He never betrayed his core beliefs, even working against his own government when their nationalistic policies went against his own. He worked his entire life to preserve peace amongst a fractured Europe and he died surrounded by family and admirers. The author Duff Cooper tracks the journey of this legendary diplomat and I could feel the emotional highs and lows as if I was there. His description of his dying days led me to mourn his passing for an hour as I sullenly walked around the house of my girlfriend’s parents. It also triggered a semi-related reflection about the celebrity culture of then and now, with my nostalgia thinking of the great men and women of the past who were thinkers, writers, and orators. How we have mainly “circus” celebrities now. People whose fame comes from the glamour of the entertainment industry and whom overshadow those trying to implement real change across the world.
June 27, 2017
Talleyrand was a fascinating character. He was a highborn aristocrat but also one of the key players in the French Revolution (until he had to run for his life at any rate). He managed to serve the Bourbons, the Republic (in its various iterations), Napoleon, the Bourbons again... always at the highest level and always without losing his head. He was corrupt and slippery, shifting his allegiance more often (and ultimately with more success) than Alcibiades and always demanding bribes like a Tammany mayor. But at the same time, Cooper argues, he always worked, well, not hard exactly, but with his brains and wit to help his country and to help Europe. He was disloyal to his political leaders, but ultimately loyal to France.
Napoleon famously said that Talleyrand was a "turd in silk stalkings," and this is an easy judgement to make, but Cooper is very sympathetic and gives a more nuance portrait of this important statesman. Very good.
Napoleon famously said that Talleyrand was a "turd in silk stalkings," and this is an easy judgement to make, but Cooper is very sympathetic and gives a more nuance portrait of this important statesman. Very good.
September 13, 2022
Brilliant!
Both the man and the book.
Talleyrand not only managed to survive through five regimes throughout the French Revolutions without losing his head, but was also a prominent and moving force in those regimes.
He was a defrocked priest, an adulterer and a bribe taker but also intensely loyal to all he cared about, both people and ideas.
He never betrayed the ideals he believed in.
That France needed a strong, stable, Government. That France should accept it’s natural borders and not invade other countries for sport or spoil.
And that France and Europe benefited from committed Allies and peace.
His political ideas were always a step ahead of those around him and leaders ignored his advice to their peril.
Both the man and the book.
Talleyrand not only managed to survive through five regimes throughout the French Revolutions without losing his head, but was also a prominent and moving force in those regimes.
He was a defrocked priest, an adulterer and a bribe taker but also intensely loyal to all he cared about, both people and ideas.
He never betrayed the ideals he believed in.
That France needed a strong, stable, Government. That France should accept it’s natural borders and not invade other countries for sport or spoil.
And that France and Europe benefited from committed Allies and peace.
His political ideas were always a step ahead of those around him and leaders ignored his advice to their peril.
January 22, 2014
A British diplomat writing about one of the greatest of the ilk. Talleyrand emerges more altruistic than in other contemporaneous studies — in the Vincent Cronin biography of Napoleon, for instance, he is villified. But the style is fast without being hurried and the characters are alive. A further insight into the role of mistresses and courtesans in a time when clever women were barred from professional life but had strong influence.
July 2, 2011
Diplomatic services of the late 18th and early 19th century are not much different from today. This was a topic that I thought would be boring, but Duff Cooper has written an excellent book. The man in question has probably helped make this exciting, but a good job well done by Cooper. I would highly recommend this book.
December 9, 2015
This very charitable memoir requires the reader to have a good understanding of the history of revolutionary and post-revolutionary France. The prose is quite striking and the subject would approve of its quick flourishes and decisive wit.
March 25, 2018
2.5
For a biography about a man as interesting as Talleyrand, it is rather boring, I'm afraid.
For a biography about a man as interesting as Talleyrand, it is rather boring, I'm afraid.
Read
April 23, 2024I forgot to log this last year--it rips. so so funny, both as a biography of the biggest weirdo in Napoleon's circle and a biography of British aristocracy telling stories about the world.
March 30, 2024
Absolute banger - diplomacy should be like all this again
April 20, 2021
One of the best books I've read - Talleyrand was referred to by his contemporaries as "the last of the Giants", and after reading this book, it would be difficult to overstate his influence on the modern world.
Coooer has produced an eloquent biography that contains everything you need to allow you to admire and understand Talleyrand, while ensuring you don't get bogged down in the details.
Coooer has produced an eloquent biography that contains everything you need to allow you to admire and understand Talleyrand, while ensuring you don't get bogged down in the details.
June 28, 2021
Very good biography of Talleyrand. I'd read about him many times in other people's biographies but this was the first I'd read dedicated to him. It was very well written and covered the highlights and didn't get bogged down in minutiae. I'd highly recommend it to anyone wanted to understand the great diplomat but not read a dissertation on him.
June 27, 2025
Great book dissecting the mind and man behind French policy for the better half of 50 years. Talleyrand’s legend, though largely overshadowed by Napoleon, leaves him as one of the great men of history, one of nature’s noble men. Today’s men of state would do well to learn of this man’s life - both his successes and shortcomings - and the character of the mind behind it.
Regality contrasted with hedonism, charisma with haughtiness, eloquence with silence, selflessness with vanity, conviction with shrewdness. Talleyrand embodied all of these things, a testament to the duality and strength of soul required of a French statesman of the early nineteenth century. These traits are not, however, exclusive to that era. Though the specific context may vary, the principles he embodied are timeless, and today’s leaders ought to adapt to live these traits out themselves.
He was intentional in every move, even to the point of the destination of his soul. His life is marked in an exclamation point with his reconciliation with the Catholic Church. This book is worth rereading.
Regality contrasted with hedonism, charisma with haughtiness, eloquence with silence, selflessness with vanity, conviction with shrewdness. Talleyrand embodied all of these things, a testament to the duality and strength of soul required of a French statesman of the early nineteenth century. These traits are not, however, exclusive to that era. Though the specific context may vary, the principles he embodied are timeless, and today’s leaders ought to adapt to live these traits out themselves.
He was intentional in every move, even to the point of the destination of his soul. His life is marked in an exclamation point with his reconciliation with the Catholic Church. This book is worth rereading.
September 28, 2025
It’s well written and I almost felt dirty reading an Englishman who loves the French as much as Duff Cooper.
I found the subject simultaneously very interesting and very boring, which it seemed like a lot of his contemporaries at times shared, viewing Talleyrand as often flippant and sometimes astonishingly charming.
I think Talleyrand’s performance in France’s reckoning from the treaty of Vienna alone justifies Cooper’s clearly deep admiration (despite his subjects deep flaws). Just compare the settlement France received in 1815 with that of Germany 100 years later.
All in all definitely worth a read. You’ll learn something even if already well read in the period, as it dives into the important of social connections in the period in a way other books do not. It’s not a massive time sink either.
I found the subject simultaneously very interesting and very boring, which it seemed like a lot of his contemporaries at times shared, viewing Talleyrand as often flippant and sometimes astonishingly charming.
I think Talleyrand’s performance in France’s reckoning from the treaty of Vienna alone justifies Cooper’s clearly deep admiration (despite his subjects deep flaws). Just compare the settlement France received in 1815 with that of Germany 100 years later.
All in all definitely worth a read. You’ll learn something even if already well read in the period, as it dives into the important of social connections in the period in a way other books do not. It’s not a massive time sink either.
July 6, 2025
Duff Cooper’s prose and his mastery of political and geopolitical historiography are remarkable. The subject of Prince de Talleyrand is, in itself, as grand and layered as one could hope to portray. This magisterial work of diplomatic history is a joy to read—at once sweeping and intimate, offering a compelling portrait of a visionary statesman who, though often misunderstood, helped shape the course of European history in the first half of the nineteenth century, and with it, the world.
My only criticism is that Lord Norwich is, at times, too forgiving of his subject’s flaws. He seems a little too enamoured with the charm of a man who, by all accounts, was irresistible in his lifetime—and who appears to have exercised that same power from beyond the grave over his worthy biographer.
My only criticism is that Lord Norwich is, at times, too forgiving of his subject’s flaws. He seems a little too enamoured with the charm of a man who, by all accounts, was irresistible in his lifetime—and who appears to have exercised that same power from beyond the grave over his worthy biographer.
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