Talleyrand Quotes

Black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, sweet as love.

I am more afraid of an army of 100 sheep led by a lion than an army of 100 lions led by a sheep

A diplomat who says “yes” means “maybe", a diplomat who says “maybe" means “no”, and a diplomat who says “no” is no diplomat.

To be agreeable in society, you must consent to be taught many things which you already know.

They had learned nothing and forgotten nothing.

There are no principles, only events.

Mistrust first impulses , they are nearly always good .

Speech was given to man to conceal his thoughts.

Speech is the faculty by which men conceal their thoughts.

- We're winning! - Who is 'we', mon Prince? - Not a word! I will tell you tomorrow.

You can do anything you like with bayonets, except sit on them.

Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts. —Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand

Give me a few lines written by any man and I will find enough to get him hung” goes the saying attributed to Richelieu, Voltaire, Talleyrand (a vicious censor during the French revolution phase of terror), and a few others.

Language exists to conceal true thought.

Regimes may fall and fail, but I do not

Non-intervention is a metaphysical idea, indistinguishable in practice from intervention.

Talleyrand define con enojo el cargo de ministro de Policia: "El ministro de Policia es un hombre que se ocupa, en primera línea, de todos los asuntos que le importan, y en segundo lugar, de todos los que no le importan".

So is it true, what our enemies say about us: nothing learned, nothing forgotten? (Talleyrand)

The art of statemanship is to foresee the inevitable and to expedite its occurrence.

[To Tsar Alexander I] Treason, your majesty, is a question of dates.

Faute. « C’est pire qu’un crime, c’est une faute. » (Talleyrand.) « Il n’y a plus une seule faute à commettre. » (Thiers.) Ces deux phrases doivent être articulées avec profondeur.

CHARLES MAURICE DE TALLEYRAND-PÉRIGORD was one of the most extraordinary and amoral men in an extraordinary and amoral time.

If he lasts a year, he’ll go far.’ Talleyrand on Napoleon’s consulship

Pseudo-philosophers, on the contrary, use speech, not indeed to conceal their thoughts, as M. de Talleyrand has it, but rather to conceal the absence of them

Yes, but bad language is bound to make in addition bad government, whereas good language is not bound to make bad government. That again is clear Confucius: if the orders aren’t clear they can’t be carried out. Lloyd George’s laws were such a mess, the lawyers never knew what they meant. And Talleyrand proclaimed that they changed the meaning of words between one conference and another. The means of communication breaks down, and that of course is what we are suffering now. We are enduring the drive to work on the subconscious without appealing to the reason. They repeat a trade name with the music a few times, and then repeat the music without it so that the music will give you the name. I think of the assault. We suffer from the use of language to conceal thought and to withhold all vital and direct answers. There is the definite use of propaganda, forensic language, merely to conceal and mislead.

A provisional government was appointed on April 1 (it consisted mainly of Talleyrand's whist partners), and the following day the Senate, on Talleyrand's urging, declared Napoleon deposed.

They also reminded me of a story Dallas Fed president Richard Fisher included in one of his speeches about the early nineteenth-century French diplomat Talleyrand and his archrival, Prince Metternich of Austria. When Talleyrand died, Metternich was reported to have said, “I wonder what he meant by that?” It seemed that no matter what I said or how plainly I said it, the markets tried to divine some hidden meaning.

the emperor’s two chief ministers were detected in a plan to replace Bonaparte by Murat, the emperor subjected Talleyrand to a lengthy and public dressing down in front of an astonished court. His parade-ground language was shocking, as in his tirade to Whitworth—he called Talleyrand “merde en bas-de-soie” (a shit in silk stockings)—and from that day to this, no one knows whether Bonaparte’s loss of temper was deliberate or not.

Such men as M. de Talleyrand are like sharp-edged instruments with which it is dangerous to play. But for great evils drastic remedies are necessary and whoever has to treat them should not be afraid to use the instrument which cuts the best.

Talleyrand was notorious for taking bribes. But then he was endlessly practical. He liked to lecture the young foreign office clerks on the necessity of masturbating before coming to work, thus ensuring unclouded minds at least throughout the morning.

He who has not lived in the eighteenth century before the Revolution does not know the sweetness of life and can not imagine that there can be happiness in life. This is the century that has shaped all the conquering arms against this elusive adversary called boredom. Love, Poetry, Music, Theatre, Painting, Architecture, Court, Salons, Parks and Gardens, Gastronomy, Letters, Arts, Science, all contributed to the satisfaction of physical appetites, intellectual and even moral refinement of all pleasures, all the elegance and all the pleasures. The existence was so well filled that if the seventeenth century was the Great Age of glories, the eighteenth was that of indigestion.

Might does not make right,” Talleyrand reminded. Has not Europe, he added, suffered enough from that doctrine, and paid for it “with so much blood and so many tears”? The golden age of peace could be right around the corner, if only every peacemaker would follow this course of action.

Mirabeau, the French revolutionary politician, once observed of Talleyrand that he “would sell his soul for money and he would be right, for he would be exchanging dung for gold.”32 Napoleon expressed this sentiment more concisely, calling Talleyrand “a pile of shit in a silk stocking.

At night the envoys received visits of a less savory sort. Three henchmen of Talleyrand’s came around regularly to demand payment in exchange for recognizing the U.S. diplomats. The foreign minister’s agents, characterized in the communications to Philadelphia as X, Y, and Z, laid out the terms: an American loan of ten million dollars to the French government plus a quarter million dollars for Talleyrand’s personal pocket. The envoys angrily rejected the demand, with Pinckney famously replying, “No! No! Not a sixpence.” In the retelling, Pinckney’s refusal evolved into the more American aphorism “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute.

However, an imagined order cannot be sustained by violence alone. It requires some true believers as well. Prince Talleyrand, who began his chameleon-like career under Louis XVI, later served the revolutionary and Napoleonic regimes, and switched loyalties in time to end his days working for the restored monarchy, summed up decades of governmental experience by saying that ‘You can do many things with bayonets, but it is rather uncomfortable to sit on them.

It’d be far better if you were intimidated by what lies ahead—humbled by its magnitude and determined to see it through regardless. Leave passion for the amateurs. Make it about what you feel you must do and say, not what you care about and wish to be. Remember Talleyrand’s epigram for diplomats, “Surtout, pas trop de zèle” (“Above all, not too much zeal”). Then you will do great things. Then you will stop being your old, good-intentioned, but ineffective self.

Sin embargo, un orden imaginado no puede sostenerse solo mediante la violencia. Requiere asimismo verdaderos creyentes. El príncipe Talleyrand, que inició su carrera camaleónica bajo el reinado de Luis XVI, sirvió posteriormente a los regímenes revolucionario y napoleónico y cambió su lealtad a tiempo de terminar sus días trabajando para la monarquía restaurada. Su célebre frase «Se pueden hacer muchas cosas con las bayonetas, pero es bastante incómodo sentarse sobre ellas» resume décadas de experiencia de gobierno.

But once it was conceded that Kissinger operated from a Realpolitik framework with intellectual, even moral principles of its own that were larger than himself or his personal advantage, then difficult questions about which decisions best served American interests or humanitarian ends were open to debate. Judgment calls weren’t the same as the perpetration of crimes (although some Realpolitikers were sure to recall Talleyrand’s words upon hearing of the murder of the Duc D’Enghien: “It was worse than a crime, it was a blunder”). Because Kissinger’s leftist critics didn’t accept Realism as a legitimate basis for foreign policy, they didn’t see any need to debate matters of judgment. What was more, locked in their partisan cocoons, they had trouble acknowledging that policymakers frequently made those judgment calls in a fog of ambiguity, in which outcomes could not be predicted and the ethics of a situation could point in several directions at once. “Statesmanship,” Kissinger said, “needs to be judged by the management of ambiguities, not absolutes.” But what the left craved, what they insisted on, was moral certainty in an uncertain world, or what Kissinger, in a combative mood, called “a nihilistic perfectionism.

Louis XIV was a very proud and self-confident man. He had such and such mistresses, and such and such ministers, and he governed France badly. The heirs of Louis XIV were also weak men, and also governed France badly. They also had such and such favourites and such and such mistresses. Besides which, certain persons were at this time writing books. By the end of the eighteenth century there gathered in Paris two dozen or so persons who started saying that all men were free and equal. Because of this in the whole of France people began to slaughter and drown each other. These people killed the king and a good many others. At this time there was a man of genius in France – Napoleon. He conquered everyone everywhere, i.e. killed a great many people because he was a great genius; and, for some reason, he went off to kill Africans, and killed them so well, and was so clever and cunning, that, having arrived in France, he ordered everyone to obey him, which they did. Having made himself Emperor he again went to kill masses of people in Italy, Austria and Prussia. And there too he killed a great many. Now in Russia there was the Emperor Alexander, who decided to reestablish order in Europe, and therefore fought wars with Napoleon. But in the year ’07 he suddenly made friends with him, and in the year ’11 quarrelled with him again, and they both again began to kill a great many people. And Napoleon brought six hundred thousand men to Russia and conquered Moscow. But then he suddenly ran away from Moscow, and then the Emperor Alexander, aided by the advice of Stein and others, united Europe to raise an army against the disturber of her peace. All Napoleon’s allies suddenly became his enemies; and this army marched against Napoleon, who had gathered new forces. The allies conquered Napoleon, entered Paris, forced Napoleon to renounce the throne, and sent him to the island of Elba, without, however, depriving him of the title of Emperor, and showing him all respect, in spite of the fact that five years before, and a year after, everyone considered him a brigand and beyond the law. Thereupon Louis XVIII, who until then had been an object of mere ridicule to both Frenchmen and the allies, began to reign. As for Napoleon, after shedding tears before the Old Guard, he gave up his throne, and went into exile. Then astute statesmen and diplomats, in particular Talleyrand, who had managed to sit down before anyone else in the famous armchair1 and thereby to extend the frontiers of France, talked in Vienna, and by means of such talk made peoples happy or unhappy. Suddenly the diplomats and monarchs almost came to blows. They were almost ready to order their troops once again to kill each other; but at this moment Napoleon arrived in France with a battalion, and the French, who hated him, all immediately submitted to him. But this annoyed the allied monarchs very much and they again went to war with the French. And the genius Napoleon was defeated and taken to the island of St Helena, having suddenly been discovered to be an outlaw. Whereupon the exile, parted from his dear ones and his beloved France, died a slow death on a rock, and bequeathed his great deeds to posterity. As for Europe, a reaction occurred there, and all the princes began to treat their peoples badly once again.

Talleyrand took quill in hand and penned one of the more remarkable documents of the Vienna Congress. This paper, a letter addressed to Metternich dated the nineteenth of December, was an elegant combination of philosophy and policy that affirmed the importance of justice and the rights of states in the face of aggression in international affairs. The French foreign minister first reminded Metternich that his country asked nothing for itself. France was satisfied with its borders and had no desire whatsoever for additional territory. What his embassy hoped instead was to persuade its fellow peacemakers to agree to one guiding principle, namely, “that everywhere and forever the spirit of revolt be quenched, that every legitimate right be made sacred.

Imaginární řád však nelze udržovat pouhou silou, bez lidí, kteří v něj opravdu věří. Vévoda Talleyrand, který svou kariéru schopného chameleona začal za vlády Ludvíka XVI., později sloužil revoluci a Napoleonovu režimu, ale včas převlékl kabát a dosloužil znovunastolené monarchii, shrnul desítky let vládní služby takto: „Bajonety se dají použít na ledacos, ale sedět na nich je velmi nepohodlné.“ Jeden jediný kněz často dělá práci stovky vojáků, a to levněji a efektivněji. Bajonety jsou sice účinné, ale někdo je musí držet v ruce. Proč by měli vojáci, vězeňská stráž, soudci a policisté udržovat řád, v nějž nevěří? Ze všech lidských činností je nejobtížnější organizovat násilí. Jestliže tvrdíme, že společenský řád je udržován vojenskou silou, kdo udržuje řád mezi vojáky? Armádu nelze organizovat pouhým násilím. Alespoň někteří velitelé a vojáci musejí v něco věřit a nezáleží na tom, zda je to Bůh, čest, vlast, odvaha nebo peníze.

when Napoleon, after reviewing the troops that had returned from Egypt in the Place Bellecour, was elected chief magistrate of the Italian Republic at a meeting in the Jesuit College (today the Lycée Ampère). A Committee of Thirty, headed by Francesco Melzi d’Eril, proposed Napoleon’s name to the 450 Italian delegates present, with the gavel banged down immediately after the question was put just in case anyone had the temerity to demur.5 Melzi had organized the delegates into sections according to whether they had come from the Austrian, Piedmontese, Venetian or Papal areas, thereby deliberately maximizing disunity and minimizing the chances of opposition. Though it was humiliating that the new Italian Republic should be founded in France, where Talleyrand could better keep an eye on the delegates, this was the first time that the word ‘Italy’ had appeared on the political map of Europe since the collapse of Rome in the fifth century AD.

At the Treaty of San Ildefonso, Napoleon had promised Spain not to sell Louisiana to a third party, a commitment he now decided to ignore. On the same day that Whitworth called for his passports in Paris, across the Atlantic President Thomas Jefferson signed the Louisiana Purchase, doubling the size of the United States at the stroke of his pen. The Americans paid France 80 million francs for 875,000 square miles of territory that today comprises all or some of thirteen states from the Gulf of Mexico across the Midwest right up to the Canadian border, at a cost of less than four cents an acre.93 ‘Irresolution and deliberation are no longer in season,’ Napoleon wrote to Talleyrand. ‘I renounce Louisiana. It is not only New Orleans that I cede; it is the whole colony, without reserve; I know the price of what I abandon … I renounce it with the greatest regret: to attempt obstinately to retain it would be folly.’94 After the Saint-Domingue debacle and

Hawkesbury told Otto repeatedly that Britain could do nothing to curtail ‘the liberty of the press as secured by the constitution of this country’, but Otto pointed out that under the 1793 Alien Act there were provisions for the deportation of seditious foreign writers such as Peltier.49 Talleyrand added that far from being immutable, the British constitution was unwritten and even habeas corpus had been suspended at various moments during the Revolutionary Wars. It has been alleged that Napoleon was too authoritarian to understand the concept of freedom of the press; in fact the question was not simply one of freedom or repression, since there were ‘ministerial’ papers which were owned by members of the government, and the prime minister’s own brother, Hiley Addington, even wrote articles for them. He also knew that London had been the place of publication of equally vicious libelles against Louis XV and Louis XVI written by disaffected Frenchmen.50 The diatribes of

Here are some people who have written books, telling what they did and why they did those things: John Dean. Henry Kissinger. Adolf Hitler. Caryl Chessman. Jeb Magruder. Napoleon. Talleyrand. Disraeli. Robert Zimmerman, also known as Bob Dylan. Locke. Charlton Heston. Errol Flynn. The Ayatollah Khomeini. Gandhi. Charles Olson. Charles Colson. A Victorian Gentleman. Dr. X. Most people also believe that God has written a Book, or Books, telling what He did and why—at least to a degree—He did those things, and since most of these people also believe that humans were made in the image of God, then He also may be regarded as a person… or, more properly, as a Person. Here are some people who have not written books, telling what they did… and what they saw: The man who buried Hitler. The man who performed the autopsy on John Wilkes Booth. The man who embalmed Elvis Presley. The man who embalmed—badly, most undertakers say—Pope John XXIII. The twoscore undertakers who cleaned up Jonestown, carrying body bags, spearing paper cups with those spikes custodians carry in city parks, waving away the flies.

Here are some people who have written books, telling what they did and why they did those things: John Dean. Henry Kissinger. Adolf Hitler. Caryl Chessman. Jeb Magruder. Napoleon. Talleyrand. Disraeli. Robert Zimmerman, also known as Bob Dylan. Locke. Charlton Heston. Errol Flynn. The Ayatollah Khomeini. Gandhi. Charles Olson. Charles Colson. A Victorian Gentleman. Dr. X. Most people also believe that God has written a Book, or Books, telling what He did and why—at least to a degree—He did those things, and since most of these people also believe that humans were made in the image of God, then He also may be regarded as a person… or, more properly, as a Person. Here are some people who have not written books, telling what they did… and what they saw: The man who buried Hitler. The man who performed the autopsy on John Wilkes Booth. The man who embalmed Elvis Presley. The man who embalmed—badly, most undertakers say—Pope John XXIII. The twoscore undertakers who cleaned up Jonestown, carrying body bags, spearing paper cups with those spikes custodians carry in city parks, waving away the flies. The man who cremated William Holden. The man who encased the body of Alexander the Great in gold so it would not rot. The men who mummified the Pharaohs. Death is a mystery, and burial is a secret.

Here are some people who have written books, telling what they did and why they did those things: John Dean. Henry Kissinger. Adolph Hitler. Caryl Chessman. Jeb Magruder. Napoleon. Talleyrand. Disraeli. Robert Zimmerman, also known as Bob Dylan. Locke. Charlton Heston. Errol Flynn. The Ayatollah Khomeini. Gandhi. Charles Olson. Charles Colson. A Victorian Gentleman. Dr. X. Most people also believe that God has written a Book, or Books, telling what He did and why—at least to a degree—He did those things, and since most of these people also believe that humans were made in the image of God, then He also may be regarded as a person . . . or, more properly, as a Person. Here are some people who have not written books, telling what they did . . . and what they saw: The man who buried Hitler. The man who performed the autopsy on John Wilkes Booth. The man who embalmed Elvis Presley. The man who embalmed—badly, most undertakers say—Pope John XXIII. The twoscore undertakers who cleaned up Jonestown, carrying body bags, spearing paper cups with those spikes custodians carry in city parks, waving away the flies. The man who cremated William Holden. The man who encased the body of Alexander the Great in gold so it would not rot. The men who mummified the Pharaohs. Death is a mystery, and burial is a secret.

At the Treaty of San Ildefonso, Napoleon had promised Spain not to sell Louisiana to a third party, a commitment he now decided to ignore. On the same day that Whitworth called for his passports in Paris, across the Atlantic President Thomas Jefferson signed the Louisiana Purchase, doubling the size of the United States at the stroke of his pen. The Americans paid France 80 million francs for 875,000 square miles of territory that today comprises all or some of thirteen states from the Gulf of Mexico across the Midwest right up to the Canadian border, at a cost of less than four cents an acre.93 ‘Irresolution and deliberation are no longer in season,’ Napoleon wrote to Talleyrand. ‘I renounce Louisiana. It is not only New Orleans that I cede; it is the whole colony, without reserve; I know the price of what I abandon … I renounce it with the greatest regret: to attempt obstinately to retain it would be folly.’94 After the Saint-Domingue debacle and the collapse of Amiens, Napoleon concluded he must realize his largest and (for the immediate future) entirely useless asset, one that might eventually have drawn France into conflict with the United States. Instead, by helping the United States to continental greatness, and enriching the French treasury in the process, Napoleon was able to prophesy: ‘I have just given to England a maritime rival that sooner or later will humble her pride.’95 Within a decade, the United States was at war with Britain rather than with France, and the War of 1812 was to draw off British forces that were still fighting in February 1815, and which might otherwise have been present at Waterloo.

A la vez, el diario liberal Morning Chronicle se preguntaba: ¿las potencias actúan contra Bonaparte o contra el espíritu de la democracia? Pero en Viena, donde las testas coronadas celebraban su congreso, ansiaban la restauración del Antiguo Régimen y nadie resultaba más molesto para sus planes que Bonaparte. Durante una fiesta que ofrecía Metternich, a la que asistían entre otros Wellington, el zar Alejandro y, naturalmente, el omnipresente Talleyrand, llegó la noticia del desembarco de Napoleón.

You can do anything with bayonets except sit on them.

Napoleon was in his bath, soaking in cologne-scented water, when his brothers came in to protest the decision to sell Louisiana.24 “You will have no need to lead the opposition,” Napoleon told his brothers, “for I repeat there will be no debate, for the reason that the project … conceived by me, negotiated by me, shall be ratified and executed by me, alone.25 Do you comprehend me?” “I renounce Louisiana,” Napoleon announced to finance minister Barbé-Marbois, early on the morning of Monday, April 11, 1803.26 Within hours, foreign minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand was enquiring whether the United States would be interested in the entire territory. “It is not only New Orleans that I will cede, it is the whole colony without any reservation. I know the price of what I abandon.… I renounce it with the greatest regret. But to attempt obstinately to retain it would be folly.” Livingston knew what he had to do. “The field open to us is infinitely larger than our instructions contemplated,” Livingston told Madison, and the chance “must not be missed.”27 He and Monroe, who had arrived in Paris, negotiated a treaty giving the United States the Louisiana Territory—a landmass so vast the borders were unclear even to the buyers and the sellers—for about $15 million, or three cents an acre.28 Word

Do not make the common mistake of regarding your clients as dopes. Make friends with them. Buy shares in their companies. But try not to become entangled in their politics. Emulate Talleyrand, who served France through seven regimes.

Devletin korumacılığı ile vergi kazancı arasındaki hassas dengeyi 1814'te Talleyrand çok güzel özetlemiştir. Bir hanım şu korkunç tütün alışkanlığına karşı bir önlem almasını istediğinde, Talleyrand şöyle cevap verir: "Haklısınız madam, tütün içmek ve enfiye çekmek kötü alışkanlıklar ve eğer siz bana devletin kasasına yılda yüz yirmi milyon frank akıtacak iki erdem söyleyebilirseniz tütüne derhal mücadeleye girisirim.

Some historians claim, and it may be true, that Talleyrand had principles. If so, he never let them interfere with his conduct.

Historians tell us that Talleyrand once told Napoleon, “You can do anything with bayonets, Sire, except sit on them.” In the language of the court this meant that obedience to the law ultimately depended on cooperation, not force.

Admirar al hombre honesto es rebajarse; adorarlo es envilecerse. Stendhal reducía la honestidad a una simple forma de miedo; conviene agregar que no es un miedo al mal en sí mismo, sino a la reprobación de los demás; por eso es compatible con una total ausencia de escrúpulos para todo acto que no tenga sanción expresa o pueda permanecer ignorado. "J'ai vu le fond de ce qu'on appelle les honnétes gens: c'est hideux", decía Talleyrand, preguntándose qué sería de tales sujetos si el interés o la pasión entraran en juego. Su temor del vicio y su impotencia para la virtud se equivalen. Son simples beneficiarios de la mediocridad moral que les rodea. No son asesinos, pero no son héroes; no roban, pero no dan media capa al desvalido; no son traidores, pero no son leales; no asaltan en descubierto, pero no defienden al asaltado; no violan vírgenes, pero no redimen caídas; no conspiran contra la sociedad, pero no cooperan al común engrandecimiento.

Even the man who attempts to rule with janissaries depends on their opinion and the opinion which the rest of the inhabitants have of them. The truth is that there is no ruling with janissaries. As Talleyrand said to Napoleon, “You can do everything with bayonets, sire, except sit on them!” (The Revolt of the Masses, chapter 14, “Who Rules in the World?”)

Talleyrand smiled. ‘It seems that the English are preparing to fight to the last Austrian.

Talleyrand’s maxim that speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts.

As Talleyrand memorably said, ‘The truth is whatever is plausibly asserted and confidently maintained.’ If I tell you something three times you will believe it, said the Bellman, and usually we do.

He who has not lived before 1789 has not experienced the true sweetness of life.

Napoleon’s minister Talleyrand was a master at taking people into his confidence by revealing some apparent secret. This feigned confidence—a decoy—would then elicit a real confidence on the other person’s part.

At the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815) he did his spying in other ways: He would blurt out what seemed to be a secret (actually something he had made up), then watch his listeners’ reactions. He might tell a gathering of diplomats, for instance, that a reliable source had revealed to him that the czar of Russia was planning to arrest his top general for treason. By watching the diplomats’ reactions to this made-up story, he would know which ones were most excited by the weakening of the Russian army—perhaps their governments had designs on Russia? As Baron von Stetten said, “Monsieur Talleyrand fires a pistol into the air to see who will jump out the window.

No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.

este modo en una homilía navideña: «Sed buenos cristianos, y seréis buenos demócratas. Los cristianos primitivos estaban colmados por el espíritu de la democracia». O escribiendo al principio de sus cartas dirigidas a Napoleón: «Libertad e igualdad». A cambio de que el Estado francés mantuviese en su poder la propiedad eclesiástica nacionalizada y se destituyera a los antiguos obispos para nombrar otros nuevos, Napoleón estaba dispuesto a aceptar que el catolicismo era la religión oficial en Francia. Pero en ese punto intervino la larga mano de Talleyrand, que, deseoso de casarse con su amante, madame Grand, quiso imponer la expresión «el catolicismo es la religión de la

asuntos más gruesos, concluyeron que Talleyrand debería ocuparse de los Asuntos Exteriores y Fouché de la policía. Cosa diferente era el «diseño» del nuevo Estado, en cuyos presupuestos de partida Sieyès y Napoleón se mostraron muy divergentes. En la concienzuda redacción de la constitución que pretendía ser su obra maestra, Sieyès se estaba mostrando extrañamente reaccionario. Tal vez llevado por la prevención que ahora sentía hacia los cuerpos parlamentarios, maquinaba suprimir las asambleas por la simple artimaña de sustituir las elecciones directas por el establecimiento de «listas de notables» aprobadas por el pueblo. Pero aún había más, pretendía situar en la cima

Napoleón permitió que él y Ducos se repartiesen el fondo secreto del Directorio, con una advertencia: «Háganlo ahora o mañana será tarde». El tercer hombre en el que fiaba su confianza Napoleón era otro clérigo, el incombustible Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, que en junio de 1799 había visto cómo se le obligaba a ceder su puesto en el Directorio, precisamente, a favor de Louis Gohier. A la vez, Bonaparte ha de buscar otras lealtades, señaladamente la del tercer clérigo en danza, Joseph Fouché, tan hábil para aferrarse al poder como su contrapersonaje Talleyrand. Tras haber sido agente partícipe del Terror, fue rehabilitado por Barras tras ayudarle a sofocar la «conspiración de los Iguales» contra el Directorio. Ese mismo año de 1799

para conspiradores y guerrilleros en Romsey (Inglaterra). Más tarde sería finalmente detenido por la policía en París, mientras trazaba una cuidada conspiración que tendría por fin «traer a un príncipe a Francia». Para la policía de Napoleón, el príncipe en cuestión no podría ser otro que Louis Antoine Henri de Bourbon-Condé, príncipe de la Casa de Borbón y duque de Enghien, quien por entonces vivía exiliado en la ciudad alemana de Ettelheim. De él se decía que trazaba secretamente planes de insurrección en las provincias del oriente francés, lo que probablemente era cierto. Contemplando la ola de conspiraciones que se le venía encima, Napoleón, empujado por la impaciencia de Talleyrand,

hostil por su propia cuna. Pregunté a Inglaterra si podía servir en sus ejércitos, pero ese país replicó que era imposible; yo debía esperar a orillas del Rin, donde representaría inmediatamente un papel, y en efecto estaba esperando». Ante tales pruebas, el duque de Enghien fue condenado a muerte, sentencia que Napoleón ratificó a pesar de los ruegos de clemencia de Talleyrand, que consideraba la ejecución un error político, y de la propia Josefina. En su opinión, no podía permitirse mostrarse débil en semejante circunstancia. De este modo, la mañana del 21 de marzo, en Vincennes, Enghien fue fusilado, un hecho que despertó la cólera de sus opositores por toda Europa y en especial en Inglaterra, permanentemente

Above all, gentlemen, not too much zeal

Above all, gentlemen, not too much zeal

The colonel could swear with vehemence and originality when he was angry, spilling his oaths in a pretty pepper and disproving Talleyrand's definition of swearing as the means by which the inarticulate gave themselves the impression of eloquence.

Metternich told lies all the time, and never deceived any one; Talleyrand never told a lie and deceived the whole world.

On dit de moi ou trop de bien ou trop de mal. Je jouis des honneurs de l'exagération...

Carl von Clausewitz, a nineteenth-century Prussian general and military theorist, had said that war was nothing more than the continuation of politics by other means. Similarly, the famous observation of French politician Charles Maurice de Talleyrand that war is much too serious a thing to be left to military men is eternally valid.

Por último, frente a un impetuoso y precipitado enemigo, no reaccionar resulta una reacción excelente. La táctica de Talleyrand: Nada es tan irritante como un hombre que mantiene la calma mientras que los demás la pierden. Cuando usted pueda obtener una ventaja desconcertando a su adversario, adopte una posición de aristocrática displicencia, sin burlarse, ni mostrarse triunfante sino solo haciendo gala de su indiferencia. Esto encenderá la mecha. Cuando su adversario se haya puesto en una situación embarazosa a raíz de sus arranques de ira, usted habrá ganado varias victorias, una de las cuales es que, frente a una actitud infantil, usted logró mantener su dignidad y compostura.

Clérel de Tocqueville, La Rochefoucauld, Noailles, Talleyrand-Périgord.

Passion is form over function. Purpose is function, function, function. The critical work that you want to do will require your deliberation and consideration. Not passion. Not naïveté. It’d be far better if you were intimidated by what lies ahead—humbled by its magnitude and determined to see it through regardless. Leave passion for the amateurs. Make it about what you feel you must do and say, not what you care about and wish to be. Remember Talleyrand’s epigram for diplomats, “Surtout, pas trop de zèle” (“Above all, not too much zeal”). Then you will do great things. Then you will stop being your old, good-intentioned, but ineffective self.