Tea at Trianon: Napoleon and Talleyrand

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, December 14, 2016

Napoleon and Talleyrand

How Napoleon tried unsuccessfully to shame and humiliate Talleyrand. I love this story. From Nobility:

Napoleon began with a few remarks…to the effect that his…Ministers had no right even to think for themselves, far less to give their thoughts expression. To doubt was for them the beginning of treason, to differ from him was the crime itself. With that he turned upon Talleyrand, who, in a characteristically graceful and negligent attitude, was half leaning against a small table by the fire. For one solid half-hour, without interruption, a steady flow of invective poured from the Emperor’s lips. There was hardly a crime omitted from the indictment, hardly a word of abuse that was not applied. He was told that he had never worthily performed a single duty, that he had deceived everyone with whom he had ever dealt, that he did not believe in God and would sell his own father. He was accused of responsibility for the execution of the Duke of Enghien and for the Peninsular War. Maddened by the impassivity of his victim, the Corsican lost all control and proceeded to taunt him with his lameness and to throw in his face the infidelity of his wife. Finally, shaking his fist and seeming to be upon the point of striking him, he informed his Vice-Grand Elector, in the language of the camp, that he was nothing but so much dung in a silk stocking….Talleyrand never changed his attitude. No spark of color appeared in his pale cheeks. No flicker of an eyelid betrayed the fact that he was conscious of being addressed. (Read more.)