PREVIEW： Epochs #239 ｜ Talleyrand： Part I with Apostolic Majesty
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Summary
In this episode of Epochs, I'm joined by Apostolic Majesty to discuss the life and career of Charles Maurice Talleyrand, better known as Choderlos, or Choderloan. He was Napoleon's foreign minister, and one of the most influential men in French history, but he was much more than that.
Transcript
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Hello and welcome to this episode of Epochs where I am very privileged once again to be
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joined by Apostolic Majesty. How are you sir? Thank you it's wonderful to come on again. Yeah it's
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brilliant always brilliant to pick your brain about anything and today we're going to be talking
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about Charles Talleyrand or Charles Talleyrand if you're not into the whole Gaelic thing. Charles
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Maurice Talleyrand. Yeah which is a fantastic life so just to say for anyone who might not ever have
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heard the name don't know anything about him. He was Napoleon's among various things during his life
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he was Napoleon's sort of foreign minister but he's much more than that right. I think I think
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one of the things the highlights the headlines say about him which makes him so fascinating
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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
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just the right time where he could take part in a vast swathe of history and he did. So his career
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is sort of before the revolution French revolution through the revolution through the Napoleonic era
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through the restoration the Bourbon restoration and on and so it's almost like a literary character
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like I think it's maybe Sharp or something where you place them in that bit of history where they
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get to take part in a myriad of things but he's obviously real so so that's a tiny brief overview of
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the man but just fascinating like his career ebbed and flowed peaks and troughs in and out of favor
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but sort of always in and around for decades and decades and decades the cockpit of power.
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Why are you interested in Talleyrand? Well it's interesting that you brought up that
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explicit connection with him being around for all the great events of history because another figure
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that seems to hang around during that entire time from the American Revolutionary Wars all the way up to
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the 1830s is the hero of two continents Lafayette and Talleyrand said of Lafayette that an author
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will imbue his protagonists with a sense of agency a sense of intelligence and resourcefulness but
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Lafayette is one of those figures who is simply there taking credit for simply happening on the great
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events of history. Talleyrand hated Lafayette right? We'll get more into that hopefully but there's a
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little subtle intimation that you know he was there but he was a driver of events it's not simply
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Talleyrand was. Absolutely. It's not simply that he was there at the time of the French Revolution he
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was there at the time of Napoleon's coup he was there at the time of the Bourbon Restoration he was there
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at the time of the creation of Belgium as a country he was decisive in all of these spheres you know
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whether it be in his 30s or whether it be in his 80s he never lost his faculties he never lost his
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intelligence and to be able to intervene so decisively in the affairs not just of France but of Europe with
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such time gaps separating them seems all the more incredible. No absolutely I feel like if I could
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go back and have someone's life or career like you do worse than Talleyrand you get to be at the
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pinnacle of power for decades and decades and yeah it's like literally his policies his ideas very often
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you know you think very very often when you get to the pinnacle of politics it is usually the
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the characters and ideas of just a very small number of people that actually get to
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set policy let's put it that way but and he was one of them I mean during the Napoleonic era
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which is only like one bit of his life and career really isn't it let's be fair he was sometimes
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very much out of favor with Napoleon and it wasn't necessarily him that was got to have the final say
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on some piece of policy or other but sometimes it was right but nonetheless the fact that he's
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in and around the the very inner sanctum of power for so long it's uh it's just just a remarkable
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thing um so one thing before we we'll go through it chronologically right makes sense just to go
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through his life chronologically I think one of the first things I want to say just before we do that
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um it's just a tiny tiny overview of like what he was like personally physically um and just sort of
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a tiny bit of a tiny bit of an overview too many spoiler alerts just about what he was like
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so correct me if I'm wrong on any of this he was uh physically infirmed in some way whether he had
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a club from birth or he got some sort of injury but he certainly walked with a limp there's no doubt
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about that uh but he was a great womanizer had many many many lovers and mistresses and seems to have
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been yeah right and seems to have been but seems to have been very very uh uh likable and witty and
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uh quick-witted and um uh sort of like pithy I could come out with great almost like Oscar Wilde one
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liners sort of thing you know um so again if he liked you and you liked him he would have been
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a great sort of uh someone to sit down have a drink or a meal with he would have been interesting and
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funny and entertaining just to qualify some of those elements I think what made Talleyrand such
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an intoxicating personality especially for women is the fact that he was a capsule of French society
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at the height of the era of the philosophes at the end of the Ansem regime he would treat say for
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example the works of Voltaire as if they were tomes of scripture and because he was so adept in his
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eloquence to articulate those principles of high French society even our concept of society as
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distinct from politics comes from this period of ammunition and criticism against the revolutionary
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government and I think because he was such a devotee of Voltaire who was the supreme wit for
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better or worse in the 18th century and would go around the royal courts giving epithets like
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the great to Frederick II of Prussia or Catherine II of Russia that gave Talleyrand an air of almost
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consummate sarcasm sarcasm affects everything in terms of his personality so just to reference one
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of those witticisms that you brought up he was a bishop and when he was finally excommunicated
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he invited over the Duke of Corland who also happened to be the husband of one of his mistresses
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right and there he said I my dear friend have been denied fire and water as the tradition of people
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who've been separated from the communion of the church so tonight we will eat cold meat and drink iced wine
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it's very witty isn't it seems to be in quite what was certainly a very sort of level a cool cucumber
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you know like taking big things in stride you know like being excommunicated as a one-time bishop
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and you know that's no small thing but you take it with uh with a wave of the hand and a
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a pithy witticism there are two ways of interpreting it one is that he's a psychopath yes the other is
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that he is a nihilist he doesn't believe in anything which I don't believe is true the other is that he's
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actually very confident in his intellectual formation it's probably that right I feel like it must be that
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and I believe that is the most convincing I think a lot of the detractors will argue for the two former
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and I hate to say that but I think that mainly comes from a place of worshipping Napoleon
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and seeing Talleyrand therefore as one of these figures who betrayed Napoleon in the same way that
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Marshal Maman the marshal who surrendered which ultimately precipitated the abdication of Napoleon
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at Fontainebleau in France he is known as the the traitor marshal for that exact reason so Talleyrand
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has been affected by that Bonapartist admonition ever since and that is why disproportionately he's
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associated with Napoleon despite the fact that his career as you've already alluded to is so much
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more than that but I mean to be fair a lot of people turned on Napoleon at the end
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right virtually everyone that's the way it goes right a lot of people abandoned Hitler in the last
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days in the bunker because what else are you going to do commit suicide yeah you can go you can go the
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Goebbels route yeah and if you're not going to go the Goebbels route then you've got to leave him at
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some point right um okay so hopefully people have got some small idea of what Talleyrand is what he
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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
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your thoughts on this is that he was born into an aristocratic family um they didn't necessarily have
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vast sums of money but from what I gather and this is what I want to you to correct me on from what I
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gather it does seem to be a very aristocratic family though not just like reasonably in and around
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seem to be that they're very very eminent family is that right well there are two quotes one's
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associated with a legend associated with the Talleyrand family that you've just brought up
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another is a statement in Talleyrand's memoirs that he wrote a year before he died at the age of 82
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and I think this really helps understand as to why he was able to switch regimes as liberally as he did
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and always ultimately come out on the side of the winner I think a really simplistic way of looking at
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Talleyrand's career for popular understanding is to see him as Francis Varys if you're going to be
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familiar with uh the television program Game of Thrones but that would do Talleyrand a disservice
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because especially in the show you're not given a broader impression of what Varys really is about
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and in the books there's no comparison really with what we have in the show a figure who is there to
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suffer all of the outrages and injuries done to the realm by a figure like you know Ares the mad
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so long as he can be there serving the realm but encapsulated yeah you have to remind me which
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one's Varys because I watched the Game of Thrones show but haven't read the books I thought you meant
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Lucius Varys to begin with which one's Varys from Game of Thrones the spider oh okay the bald-headed
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spider yeah okay okay sorry if that reference was lost and anyway I was going to joke I think
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rather cruelly that people who watch Game of Thrones aren't necessarily going to be a
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well apprised of Talleyrand and it seems like the opposite is true right but I think one is more
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forgivable than the other um but just sorry just answer your question because that was a that was a
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segue one legend regarding the Talleyrand family is that the king of France comes to the count de
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Talleyrand and he says by what right do you claim to be counts and the count responds to the king by the
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same right that you claim to be kings which is the Talleyrand family is pre-Capitian the house of
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Capet has ruled France since well obviously not recently but from 987 right or thereabouts and the
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Talleyrand family traced their line back to the Carolingians so during the time of Charlemagne and
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you mentioned them being a storied family they were very high up in the ecclesiastical structure of
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the Catholic Church there were cardinals and bishop Talleyrands throughout most of the span of that
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millennia one of which was a prominent figure in the hundred years war so the Talleyrands have been
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around for a very long time but take that so that's extremely eminent then isn't it that's
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extremely aristocratic but you can't get much more aristocratic than that really can you perhaps
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extraordinarily so it seems to me perhaps venerable venerable yeah is the is the correct term because
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they were definitely not the most powerful aristocrats in France at that time but they weren't swimming in
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money were they I mean they well compare it to compare it to the Bonapartes the Talleyrands to
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the Bonapartes the Talleyrands are ancient ancient aristocracy pre-Ancien Regime aristocracy but the
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Bonapartes were so negligible in terms of their aristocratic bearing that they had to be confirmed as
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something post hoc which was noble patricians of the state of Tuscany because you found one Bonaparte
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who seemed to have a minor rank in the Florentine town government or something like that so now we're
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aristocrats in French society I mean they're basically Italian emigres to Corsica right that's what they
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were yes an Italian family that had moved to Corsica of no real note well some note in Corsica but not
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really but that again is just to highlight the the incredible comparison between the house of
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Talleyrand and the house of Bonapartes but you add that and I think this is the impression I get
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Talleyrand was incredibly adept about being able to form historical precedents and justifications for
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everything that he did and so if you are well acquainted with that history of your own family which Talleyrand
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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
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senses of a lineage which is older than that then I don't owe special allegiance to the king of France
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or the directory or the Bonapartes or the Bourbons or the Olyonists I think it creates a an amount of
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distance and you can almost say aristocratic disdain for what you consider to be upstarts to the point
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that you will tolerate them and you will glorify them not not vice versa you are there to ennoble
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the upstart regime that exists and that is very much perhaps how Napoleon saw it I am going to take
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Talleyrand because he will buttress the frankly preposterous legitimacy of my government
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and then you add that that phrase I was going to mention which is I have never betrayed a government
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until it has betrayed itself and that is the other conceit of the Talleyrands is that it's one
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thing to say oh well Talleyrand flip sides he was only he was only self-interested but in every single
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instance I can point to a rationale as to where he believed kind of like because you and I both
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watched Kenneth Clark's civilization the crisis in confidence which dooms a regime his brilliance is
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being able to anticipate that moment and being able to use that moment to switch sides
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right I do think from everything you're saying there and it's sort of cementing an idea I've thought
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I've always thought about Talleyrand is that I think I think it's fair to say you might correct me
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that uh he's he's loyal to France like the concept of France above and beyond any bauble any any Napoleon
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um that it seems to me we say it's almost got disdain for these upstarts even like the Capetian
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kings like he's more French than you right whoever you are you think you're French you think you stick
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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
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that's quite low resolution but you know what I'm getting at I don't think it is low resolution I think
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obviously there are people who contest that and I think another conceit of very intelligent people
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is that they believe that they appreciate the interests of whatever faction they're serving
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better than the head of said faction and that's definitely the impression more gets from Talleyrand
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so it's not just the the grandiose conceits of a venerable line of aristocrats it's also I'm
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intelligent enough to be able to perceive the interests of my country and I have a conception
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of my country which will ennoble it far better than any vanity project which Napoleon is going
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to superimpose over it and that is something that never left him we'll definitely talk about moments
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where he is carried away by Napoleon's genius but they are few and far between so it's like whether it's
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the during the revolutionary period or whether it's under the the consoles whether it's under
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the the empire of Napoleon the first whatever it is when he seems to be always working for
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France and if and when one of those things aren't working for France as far as he's concerned
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like when Napoleon becomes a detriment for France like truly completely like undeniably
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that's when he will work against him then now right when Napoleon the rise of Napoleon and things
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he's on board at that point but anyway we'll get into it let's go into his early life then so
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so he's born into this I would say extremely venerable aristocratic family although as we say
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they're not it's not like they're poor but they haven't got crazy amounts of money they haven't got
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like endless estates or anything like that you know but still venerable and he wasn't the oldest
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boy right because he goes into the church is that right he wasn't the old that's why he went into the
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church is it I think you're actually alluding to a tragedy for Talleyrand which is he's never going to
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forgive or forget which is he was the oldest and it was his congenital clubfoot or his injury which
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made him lame which meant he couldn't follow in the path of what aristocrats at France at the time
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had to do which was go into the army and because he couldn't go into the army he was disinherited and
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had to be forced to become a clergyman that's right his father actually is his father actually fully
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disinherited him because of his um well not fully obviously he was still a member of the family and his
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father still very much patronized his son's clerical career but he was disinherited from becoming
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a secular aristocrat which he hoped to be we hope you enjoyed that video and if you did please
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head over to lotusseaters.com for the full unabridged video