The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Epochs #239 ｜ Talleyrand： Part I with Apostolic Majesty

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to this episode of Epochs where I am very privileged once again to be

00:00:25.660 joined by Apostolic Majesty. How are you sir? Thank you it's wonderful to come on again. Yeah it's

00:00:30.820 brilliant always brilliant to pick your brain about anything and today we're going to be talking

00:00:35.720 about Charles Talleyrand or Charles Talleyrand if you're not into the whole Gaelic thing. Charles

00:00:44.360 Maurice Talleyrand. Yeah which is a fantastic life so just to say for anyone who might not ever have

00:00:51.740 heard the name don't know anything about him. He was Napoleon's among various things during his life

00:00:56.940 he was Napoleon's sort of foreign minister but he's much more than that right. I think I think

00:01:03.580 one of the things the highlights the headlines say about him which makes him so fascinating

00:01:07.240 is he was born and died and he lived to be a ripe old age in his 80s right he was born and died in

00:01:12.460 just the right time where he could take part in a vast swathe of history and he did. So his career

00:01:20.120 is sort of before the revolution French revolution through the revolution through the Napoleonic era

00:01:24.820 through the restoration the Bourbon restoration and on and so it's almost like a literary character

00:01:31.900 like I think it's maybe Sharp or something where you place them in that bit of history where they

00:01:35.940 get to take part in a myriad of things but he's obviously real so so that's a tiny brief overview of

00:01:44.340 the man but just fascinating like his career ebbed and flowed peaks and troughs in and out of favor

00:01:49.200 but sort of always in and around for decades and decades and decades the cockpit of power.

00:01:54.880 Why are you interested in Talleyrand? Well it's interesting that you brought up that

00:02:00.000 explicit connection with him being around for all the great events of history because another figure

00:02:07.020 that seems to hang around during that entire time from the American Revolutionary Wars all the way up to

00:02:12.880 the 1830s is the hero of two continents Lafayette and Talleyrand said of Lafayette that an author

00:02:23.340 will imbue his protagonists with a sense of agency a sense of intelligence and resourcefulness but

00:02:31.120 Lafayette is one of those figures who is simply there taking credit for simply happening on the great

00:02:36.840 events of history. Talleyrand hated Lafayette right? We'll get more into that hopefully but there's a

00:02:43.700 little subtle intimation that you know he was there but he was a driver of events it's not simply

00:02:49.760 Talleyrand was. Absolutely. It's not simply that he was there at the time of the French Revolution he

00:02:55.080 was there at the time of Napoleon's coup he was there at the time of the Bourbon Restoration he was there

00:03:00.920 at the time of the creation of Belgium as a country he was decisive in all of these spheres you know

00:03:07.680 whether it be in his 30s or whether it be in his 80s he never lost his faculties he never lost his

00:03:13.380 intelligence and to be able to intervene so decisively in the affairs not just of France but of Europe with

00:03:23.120 such time gaps separating them seems all the more incredible. No absolutely I feel like if I could

00:03:30.360 go back and have someone's life or career like you do worse than Talleyrand you get to be at the

00:03:35.420 pinnacle of power for decades and decades and yeah it's like literally his policies his ideas very often

00:03:41.740 you know you think very very often when you get to the pinnacle of politics it is usually the

00:03:48.420 the characters and ideas of just a very small number of people that actually get to

00:03:53.480 set policy let's put it that way but and he was one of them I mean during the Napoleonic era

00:03:59.500 which is only like one bit of his life and career really isn't it let's be fair he was sometimes

00:04:06.320 very much out of favor with Napoleon and it wasn't necessarily him that was got to have the final say

00:04:12.580 on some piece of policy or other but sometimes it was right but nonetheless the fact that he's

00:04:18.400 in and around the the very inner sanctum of power for so long it's uh it's just just a remarkable

00:04:26.240 thing um so one thing before we we'll go through it chronologically right makes sense just to go

00:04:31.060 through his life chronologically I think one of the first things I want to say just before we do that

00:04:35.620 um it's just a tiny tiny overview of like what he was like personally physically um and just sort of

00:04:44.180 a tiny bit of a tiny bit of an overview too many spoiler alerts just about what he was like

00:04:48.920 so correct me if I'm wrong on any of this he was uh physically infirmed in some way whether he had

00:04:55.980 a club from birth or he got some sort of injury but he certainly walked with a limp there's no doubt

00:05:01.000 about that uh but he was a great womanizer had many many many lovers and mistresses and seems to have

00:05:07.380 been yeah right and seems to have been but seems to have been very very uh uh likable and witty and

00:05:15.140 uh quick-witted and um uh sort of like pithy I could come out with great almost like Oscar Wilde one

00:05:22.120 liners sort of thing you know um so again if he liked you and you liked him he would have been

00:05:27.540 a great sort of uh someone to sit down have a drink or a meal with he would have been interesting and

00:05:33.500 funny and entertaining just to qualify some of those elements I think what made Talleyrand such

00:05:38.840 an intoxicating personality especially for women is the fact that he was a capsule of French society 0.99

00:05:46.900 at the height of the era of the philosophes at the end of the Ansem regime he would treat say for

00:05:54.440 example the works of Voltaire as if they were tomes of scripture and because he was so adept in his

00:06:02.720 eloquence to articulate those principles of high French society even our concept of society as

00:06:10.640 distinct from politics comes from this period of ammunition and criticism against the revolutionary

00:06:17.220 government and I think because he was such a devotee of Voltaire who was the supreme wit for

00:06:24.780 better or worse in the 18th century and would go around the royal courts giving epithets like

00:06:30.360 the great to Frederick II of Prussia or Catherine II of Russia that gave Talleyrand an air of almost

00:06:39.320 consummate sarcasm sarcasm affects everything in terms of his personality so just to reference one

00:06:47.960 of those witticisms that you brought up he was a bishop and when he was finally excommunicated

00:06:53.260 he invited over the Duke of Corland who also happened to be the husband of one of his mistresses

00:07:01.180 right and there he said I my dear friend have been denied fire and water as the tradition of people

00:07:10.880 who've been separated from the communion of the church so tonight we will eat cold meat and drink iced wine

00:07:17.840 it's very witty isn't it seems to be in quite what was certainly a very sort of level a cool cucumber

00:07:27.380 you know like taking big things in stride you know like being excommunicated as a one-time bishop

00:07:32.760 and you know that's no small thing but you take it with uh with a wave of the hand and a

00:07:39.800 a pithy witticism there are two ways of interpreting it one is that he's a psychopath yes the other is

00:07:47.540 that he is a nihilist he doesn't believe in anything which I don't believe is true the other is that he's

00:07:55.320 actually very confident in his intellectual formation it's probably that right I feel like it must be that

00:08:01.220 and I believe that is the most convincing I think a lot of the detractors will argue for the two former

00:08:06.660 and I hate to say that but I think that mainly comes from a place of worshipping Napoleon

00:08:14.360 and seeing Talleyrand therefore as one of these figures who betrayed Napoleon in the same way that

00:08:22.040 Marshal Maman the marshal who surrendered which ultimately precipitated the abdication of Napoleon

00:08:28.980 at Fontainebleau in France he is known as the the traitor marshal for that exact reason so Talleyrand

00:08:35.020 has been affected by that Bonapartist admonition ever since and that is why disproportionately he's

00:08:41.260 associated with Napoleon despite the fact that his career as you've already alluded to is so much

00:08:45.840 more than that but I mean to be fair a lot of people turned on Napoleon at the end

00:08:51.720 right virtually everyone that's the way it goes right a lot of people abandoned Hitler in the last

00:08:57.740 days in the bunker because what else are you going to do commit suicide yeah you can go you can go the

00:09:02.240 Goebbels route yeah and if you're not going to go the Goebbels route then you've got to leave him at

00:09:07.420 some point right um okay so hopefully people have got some small idea of what Talleyrand is what he

00:09:14.520 was like so let's start on his life one of the first things I think that's interesting and I'd like to get

00:09:19.380 your thoughts on this is that he was born into an aristocratic family um they didn't necessarily have

00:09:26.460 vast sums of money but from what I gather and this is what I want to you to correct me on from what I

00:09:33.560 gather it does seem to be a very aristocratic family though not just like reasonably in and around

00:09:38.980 seem to be that they're very very eminent family is that right well there are two quotes one's

00:09:46.900 associated with a legend associated with the Talleyrand family that you've just brought up

00:09:51.340 another is a statement in Talleyrand's memoirs that he wrote a year before he died at the age of 82

00:09:58.060 and I think this really helps understand as to why he was able to switch regimes as liberally as he did

00:10:07.920 and always ultimately come out on the side of the winner I think a really simplistic way of looking at

00:10:15.040 Talleyrand's career for popular understanding is to see him as Francis Varys if you're going to be

00:10:22.560 familiar with uh the television program Game of Thrones but that would do Talleyrand a disservice

00:10:28.420 because especially in the show you're not given a broader impression of what Varys really is about

00:10:33.700 and in the books there's no comparison really with what we have in the show a figure who is there to

00:10:39.380 suffer all of the outrages and injuries done to the realm by a figure like you know Ares the mad

00:10:47.320 so long as he can be there serving the realm but encapsulated yeah you have to remind me which

00:10:53.720 one's Varys because I watched the Game of Thrones show but haven't read the books I thought you meant

00:10:57.300 Lucius Varys to begin with which one's Varys from Game of Thrones the spider oh okay the bald-headed

00:11:04.280 spider yeah okay okay sorry if that reference was lost and anyway I was going to joke I think

00:11:11.640 rather cruelly that people who watch Game of Thrones aren't necessarily going to be a

00:11:16.760 well apprised of Talleyrand and it seems like the opposite is true right but I think one is more

00:11:22.000 forgivable than the other um but just sorry just answer your question because that was a that was a

00:11:29.040 segue one legend regarding the Talleyrand family is that the king of France comes to the count de

00:11:36.540 Talleyrand and he says by what right do you claim to be counts and the count responds to the king by the

00:11:44.920 same right that you claim to be kings which is the Talleyrand family is pre-Capitian the house of

00:11:52.920 Capet has ruled France since well obviously not recently but from 987 right or thereabouts and the

00:12:01.340 Talleyrand family traced their line back to the Carolingians so during the time of Charlemagne and

00:12:07.280 you mentioned them being a storied family they were very high up in the ecclesiastical structure of

00:12:13.440 the Catholic Church there were cardinals and bishop Talleyrands throughout most of the span of that

00:12:20.220 millennia one of which was a prominent figure in the hundred years war so the Talleyrands have been

00:12:25.960 around for a very long time but take that so that's extremely eminent then isn't it that's

00:12:31.060 extremely aristocratic but you can't get much more aristocratic than that really can you perhaps

00:12:38.600 extraordinarily so it seems to me perhaps venerable venerable yeah is the is the correct term because

00:12:43.520 they were definitely not the most powerful aristocrats in France at that time but they weren't swimming in

00:12:47.920 money were they I mean they well compare it to compare it to the Bonapartes the Talleyrands to

00:12:53.080 the Bonapartes the Talleyrands are ancient ancient aristocracy pre-Ancien Regime aristocracy but the

00:12:59.560 Bonapartes were so negligible in terms of their aristocratic bearing that they had to be confirmed as

00:13:07.420 something post hoc which was noble patricians of the state of Tuscany because you found one Bonaparte

00:13:13.940 who seemed to have a minor rank in the Florentine town government or something like that so now we're

00:13:19.400 aristocrats in French society I mean they're basically Italian emigres to Corsica right that's what they

00:13:25.920 were yes an Italian family that had moved to Corsica of no real note well some note in Corsica but not

00:13:32.320 really but that again is just to highlight the the incredible comparison between the house of

00:13:38.800 Talleyrand and the house of Bonapartes but you add that and I think this is the impression I get

00:13:44.560 Talleyrand was incredibly adept about being able to form historical precedents and justifications for

00:13:54.740 everything that he did and so if you are well acquainted with that history of your own family which Talleyrand

00:14:00.240 was you look at that and say well if I do not owe my title to the kings of France because I'm in many

00:14:08.340 senses of a lineage which is older than that then I don't owe special allegiance to the king of France

00:14:14.360 or the directory or the Bonapartes or the Bourbons or the Olyonists I think it creates a an amount of

00:14:23.020 distance and you can almost say aristocratic disdain for what you consider to be upstarts to the point

00:14:28.240 that you will tolerate them and you will glorify them not not vice versa you are there to ennoble

00:14:34.640 the upstart regime that exists and that is very much perhaps how Napoleon saw it I am going to take

00:14:40.680 Talleyrand because he will buttress the frankly preposterous legitimacy of my government

00:14:46.460 and then you add that that phrase I was going to mention which is I have never betrayed a government

00:14:53.020 until it has betrayed itself and that is the other conceit of the Talleyrands is that it's one

00:14:59.740 thing to say oh well Talleyrand flip sides he was only he was only self-interested but in every single

00:15:05.580 instance I can point to a rationale as to where he believed kind of like because you and I both

00:15:11.160 watched Kenneth Clark's civilization the crisis in confidence which dooms a regime his brilliance is

00:15:19.620 being able to anticipate that moment and being able to use that moment to switch sides

00:15:24.380 right I do think from everything you're saying there and it's sort of cementing an idea I've thought

00:15:30.600 I've always thought about Talleyrand is that I think I think it's fair to say you might correct me

00:15:35.180 that uh he's he's loyal to France like the concept of France above and beyond any bauble any any Napoleon

00:15:45.900 um that it seems to me we say it's almost got disdain for these upstarts even like the Capetian

00:15:54.600 kings like he's more French than you right whoever you are you think you're French you think you stick 0.98

00:16:00.800 up for France he's he's doing it more it seems to me I mean do you think that's fair to say I mean

00:16:07.440 that's quite low resolution but you know what I'm getting at I don't think it is low resolution I think

00:16:11.240 obviously there are people who contest that and I think another conceit of very intelligent people

00:16:17.120 is that they believe that they appreciate the interests of whatever faction they're serving

00:16:22.900 better than the head of said faction and that's definitely the impression more gets from Talleyrand

00:16:27.720 so it's not just the the grandiose conceits of a venerable line of aristocrats it's also I'm

00:16:36.020 intelligent enough to be able to perceive the interests of my country and I have a conception

00:16:41.260 of my country which will ennoble it far better than any vanity project which Napoleon is going

00:16:48.860 to superimpose over it and that is something that never left him we'll definitely talk about moments

00:16:54.160 where he is carried away by Napoleon's genius but they are few and far between so it's like whether it's

00:17:01.040 the during the revolutionary period or whether it's under the the consoles whether it's under

00:17:08.460 the the empire of Napoleon the first whatever it is when he seems to be always working for

00:17:17.220 France and if and when one of those things aren't working for France as far as he's concerned

00:17:22.860 like when Napoleon becomes a detriment for France like truly completely like undeniably

00:17:30.280 that's when he will work against him then now right when Napoleon the rise of Napoleon and things

00:17:37.820 he's on board at that point but anyway we'll get into it let's go into his early life then so

00:17:43.340 so he's born into this I would say extremely venerable aristocratic family although as we say

00:17:49.900 they're not it's not like they're poor but they haven't got crazy amounts of money they haven't got

00:17:56.060 like endless estates or anything like that you know but still venerable and he wasn't the oldest

00:18:00.980 boy right because he goes into the church is that right he wasn't the old that's why he went into the

00:18:06.800 church is it I think you're actually alluding to a tragedy for Talleyrand which is he's never going to

00:18:13.440 forgive or forget which is he was the oldest and it was his congenital clubfoot or his injury which

00:18:21.100 made him lame which meant he couldn't follow in the path of what aristocrats at France at the time

00:18:26.040 had to do which was go into the army and because he couldn't go into the army he was disinherited and

00:18:31.700 had to be forced to become a clergyman that's right his father actually is his father actually fully

00:18:36.700 disinherited him because of his um well not fully obviously he was still a member of the family and his

00:18:42.820 father still very much patronized his son's clerical career but he was disinherited from becoming

00:18:50.660 a secular aristocrat which he hoped to be we hope you enjoyed that video and if you did please

00:18:58.280 head over to lotusseaters.com for the full unabridged video

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - November 30, 2025

PREVIEW： Epochs #239 ｜ Talleyrand： Part I with Apostolic Majesty

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