members of the senate and legislative body, and in his correspondence with the Bourbons themselves, this was the prominent idea. The means by which he meant to secure the attainment of this object were, first, to render the return of the Bourbons the consequence not of any hereditary claim or right pre-existing, but of the free and spontaneous invitation of the French people, speaking through the constituted authorities, especially the senate and the legislative body; and secondly, that this invitation should be accompanied by the draft of a constitution prepared by the senate, and to be accepted by the sovereign thus called to the throne by the voice of the nation. This design was frustrated. So long as any doubt remained as to the fate of Napoleon and his family, all objection to Talleyrand's project was suppressed. But the moment the unconditional abdica. tion of the Emperor was extorted, and the declaration of the allies against the succession of his family was promulgated, opposition to Talleyrand's plan of a constitution showed itself even in the provisional government itself. The Abbé de Montesquiou, one of the members of that government, declared against the principle of inviting Louis Stanislaus Xavier to the throne, and proposed that Louis XVIII. should be at once and unconditionally acknowledged as the legitimate King of France, as the successor of Louis XVII., whose right would thus be also implicitly admitted. In a word, the proposition of M. de Montesquiou tacitly effaced all that had been done in France since the fall of Louis XVI. It became evident, in the debates to which this proposition of the ultra-royalist party gave rise, that the complete realization of the design of Talleyrand was no longer to be hoped for. In this situation of affairs, Talleyrand saw that the best he could effect for the country was to make a compromise with the legitimist party, giving them his support, and obtaining from them in return such concessions in favour of popular rights as they could be induced to consent to. After much discussion, a senatus consultum was drawn up conjointly by Talleyrand and the Abbé de Montesquiou on the 6th April, and promulgated the next day, including the following heads :—

"1. The free invitation of the Bourbons to the throne of France, by the French people.

"2. The recognition of the ancient noblesse, and the continuance of the imperial noblesse.

"3. The maintenance of the Legion of Honour.

"4. King, senate, legislative body, to concur in making laws.

"5. Legislative body to be elective, to have freedom of discussion, and public debates.

"6. Taxes to be equitable, and granted only for a year.

"7. Independence of the Tribunals. "8. Military ranks, honours, and pensions to be preserved.

"9. Freedom of conscience and liberty of the press."

The king was to be proclaimed as soon as he should have sworn to and signed a constitution conformable to this programme.

Between the date of the publication of this act of the senate, and the entry of the Count D'Artois into Paris-an interval of less than a week, much disputation prevailed, and many bitter sarcasms were interchanged, between the royalists, imperialists, and republicans. Nothing but the greatest caution and prudence on the part of M. Talleyrand could have prevented a fatal collision of parties, which would either have compromised the cause of the Restoration, or utterly destroyed all hopes of obtaining any form of constitutional government. The Count D'Artois, when he entered France, assumed the title of Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom. This title the Senate refused to acknowledge; and when his intended entrance into Paris was announced, the Senators refused to meet him, or accompany him to the palace.

The provisional government, with Talleyrand at its head, however, met his Royal Highness at the Barrier, where Talleyrand addressed him in these words :-" Monseigneur, our felicity will be perfect, if your Royal Highness will accept, with that divine goodness which distinguishes your august house, the homage of our devotion." The prince, not possessed of presence of mind or command of language, stammered out some incoherent and unintelligible reply; but in the course of the evening the following answer was written for him by Talleyrand, and, with his consent and ap

ercise of his judgment. When pressed by Talleyrand, who demonstrated the advantages which would attend the simple acceptance of the constitution proposed by the Senate, the King, unable to refute his arguments, yet determined not to yield, said " Si j'acceptais cette constitution, vous seriez assis, M. de Talleyrand et je serais debout."

The

No fitting occasion was, however, omitted by Talleyrand to remind the King of the condition of his restoration. Thus, when the Senate were received at St. Omer, before the public entry of Louis into Paris, Talleyrand, as president, addressed him as follows: "Sire-The return of your Majesty restores to France its natural government, and gives all the necessary securities for the repose of the country, and the tranquillity of Europe. Senate, profoundly moved, happy to mingle its sentiments with those of the French people, comes to lay at the foot of the throne the testimony of its love and respect. A constitutional charter will re-unite all interests to those of the throne, and will strengthen the highest power by the concurrence of all inferior powers. You, Sire, know still better than we, that liberal institutions, so well tested with a neighbouring people, give to sovereigns who are friends of the laws and fathers of their people, support, and not obstruction. Yes, Sire, the nation and the Senate, filled with confidence in the wisdom and magnanimity of your Majesty, desire, as you do, that France shall be free, in order that her sovereign may be powerful."

He

Louis XVIII. was at length reseated on the throne of his ancestors. was no sooner there than, surrounded by the intrigues of the incurable coterie of Royalists who were countenanced and urged on by his brother, the Count D'Artois, he was impelled, by every persuasion and suggestion, to adopt a policy of re-action, in which the most conspicuous absurdity would have been an utter oblivion of the history of Europe from 1792 to 1814, and the most revolting baseness, the utter desertion and rejection of those by whose ability he recovered his crown. These intrigues were, at least in part, frustrated by the combined efforts of Mons. de Talleyrand and de Blacas.

The ultra-Royalists would gladly

have rid the court of M. de Talleyrand, when the restoration had once been accomplished by the aid of his great abilities. The Emperor Alexander foresaw and feared these tendencies. The eminent services of Talleyrand were, however, too conspicuous to render his exclusion from the first cabinet of the restoration expedient, or even safe. Such an act of base ingratitude would not only have given disgust in France, but even to the allied courts themselves. Yet it must be admitted, that notwithstanding all that the King owed him, Louis XVIII. did not regard him with a friendly eye. Having no confidence in his integrity, he could not forget the share he had in the Revolution. The official decision which characterised the manners of Talleyrand-those forms by which he was able to impose his opinion, rather than tender his advice, notwithstanding the elegance and refinement with which all this was covered, displeased the King, who desired to have at least the semblance of acting for himself. At length, however, and not without much reluctance and some hesitation, the Portfolio of Foreign Affairs, always esteemed the highest in the cabinet of the Tuilleries, was offered by Louis to Talleyrand, and accepted.

Besides the advantages secured to the French nation by the charter, the country owes to Talleyrand important benefits obtained in the negociations carried on soon afterwards for the territorial arrangement of France. The great powers, after the defeat of the French at Champanbert, ChateauThierry, Montmirail, and Montereau, refused to treat with Napoleon on any other basis than that of the ancient limits of the kingdom, that is to say, those of 1792. They now declined to negociate on any other terms. Nevertheless, Talleyrand obtained from them the preservation of Avignon, and the Comtat Venaissin, the county of Montbelliard, the department of Mont Blanc, composed of a part of the Savoy, and considerable annexations to departments of the Ain, the Lower Rhine, the Ardennes, and the Mosselle. He also induced them to respect those monuments of the arts which were the fruits of the latest victories of the French arms. He may be fairly admitted to have effected

an able and advantageous arrangement, when it is considered, that while peace was established in Europe, the territory of France was evacuated by the invading armies, and her independence secured; the partisans of the Bourbons saw their monarchy re-established, the defenders of the Empire saw their interests preserved, and their rights respected, and the party of the Revolution saw its chief results maintained, and its principles acknowledged. Such were the results of the negotiations of M. Talleyrand at Paris.

After he had been nominated to the ministry of Foreign Affairs, he went in person, as plenipotentiary of France, to the congress of Vienna, where the territorial arrangement of the remainder of Europe was to be decided on. Arrived there later than the representatives of the other powers, he found the congress about to pronounce on the general distribution of territory, and to appropriate, at their pleasure, the spoils of the Empire, without reference either to the wishes or the interests of France. The representative of a conquered state, and a feeble government, he was not in a condition favorable to the exercise of any influence which could disturb the unanimity of the great powers, or gain for his country that position and consideration of which her disasters had deprived her. The strength which he did not derive from his government, he nevertheless drew from his own eminent abilities, and the vast resources of his clear understanding.

Like all expert diplomatists, he varied his means with the circumstances in which he found himself placed, and the parties with whom he was to negotiate. The reign of force had now ceased; the abuses of conquest brought that term into disrepute. Reason, justice, principle, were the leading ideas. Talleyrand, therefore, presented himself to the Congress, prepared to extort from it the admission of a broad principle, which he depended on his own ability to render fertile of after-consequences beneficial to France. This principle was that of legitimacy as opposed to conquest. He insisted on the acknowledgment of all those rights which sprang out of the past, in opposition to claims founded exclusively on vic

tory. The partition of territory he contended must be effected on this principle, and not on the mere power of armies.

When he arrived, four European powers only were represented in the Congress-Russia, Prussia, Austria, and England. He succeeded in augmenting the number by the addition of France, Spain, Portugal, and Sweden, thus diminishing the preponderance of the great powers by the counterpoise of several lesser states. He found that several important territorial arrangements were on the point of being adopted at the moment he joined the Congress. Thus it was agreed to recognise Germany as an independent federative body, to restore to Switzerland its ancient form, and acknowledge its independence. Belgium, united with Holland, was to be erected into the kingdom of the Netherlands, under the Prince of Orange; Austria was to have Northern Italy, and to extend her influence over the central Italian states, in the persons of her archdukes, and archduchesses; Sardinia was to re ceive Genoa; Sweden was to get Norway, and England to retain those maritime places in different parts of the globe which best accorded with her commercial and national interests.

The questions respecting Saxony and the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, were still undecided. Prussia, which had gained accessions on both banks of the Rhine, claimed the former, and Russia, which had constantly been extending her territory during the wars of the Revolution and the Empire, demanded the latter, the population of which amounted to four millions, which the Czar designed to erect into the kingdom of Poland, with an independent constitution. Austria, without hesitation, had surrendered Poland, but had scruples about Saxony, while England, willingly enough, abandoned Saxony, but objected to the aggrandisement of Russia at the expense of Poland.

Talleyrand, seeing this state of things on his arrival at Vienna, soon succeeded, by adroit suggestions, in converting what were as yet only hesitations on the part of England and Austria into positive refusals, and out of those refusals arose dissensions

between the great powers, which were combined only by fear, while, in reality, they were opposed by interest. Appealing to the principle of legitimacy, he sought to re-establish Ferdinand I. on the throne of Naples, and to protect the territory of the King of Saxony, the only German Prince who, being strengthened by Napoleon, had remained faithful to France, and who, moreover, was related, by the ties of blood, to the House of Bourbon. M. Talleyrand declared that he could never consent that the King of Saxony should be stripped of all his states by Prussia; and that Russia, by gaining the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, should push her frontiers to the Oder, and thus menace, by her preponderance, the rest of Europe. The Emperor Alexander vainly endeavoured to bring him over to his own views, by calling to his recollection all that he, the Czar, had accomplished for France by his influence over Louis XVIII., and by threatening him with what he might still be enabled to accomplish. Finding him, however, immovable, the emperor observed, with some petulancy, "Talleyrand is playing here the minister of Louis XIV."

In fine, the influence exercised by Talleyrand was such, that Prussia, at length, in order to gain Saxony, offered to cede to Saxony all the territory lying between the Sarre, the Meuse, the Moselle, and the left bank of the Rhine, which was to have been given her as a compensation, but which pushed her frontiers, in that direction, too far from her centre. M. de Talleyrand, however, declined to accept this proposition, preferring to maintain the King of Saxony with a diminished territory, to establish him on the left bank of the Rhine. This has been considered as a serious error on the part of the great diplomatist. While the King of the Netherlands held Belgium, Bavaria, Spandon, the Germanic Confederation, Mayence, and Luxembourg, it is contended that it would have been more prudent to place between the Sarre and the Rhine, at a few days' march from Paris, a small state than a great onea sovereign inoffensive from his weakness, than a power of the first order. Would it not have been wiser, it has been asked, to have thrown Prussia on the flanks of Bohemia, than upon the frontier of France? Would it VOL. XXX.-No. 175.

not have been better to have created more rivalry between that power and Austria, by multiplying their points of contact in Germany, and by removing her further from France, to have afforded increased facilities for a future alliance.

To all this, it is answered, however, that Talleyrand really effected more by the course of negotiation which he pursued. He succeeded, as is admitted, in sowing division between the allied powers, and brought Austria and England to the joint determination to repulse the pretensions of Russia and Prussia, even by force of arms, if that extreme measure should be necessary. He signed, with Lord Castlereagh on the part of England, and Prince Metternich on the part of Austria, on the 5th January, 1815, a secret treaty of alliance, in which the eventuality of a war with the other powers was contemplated, and he had obliged, by his pertinacity, Prussia to limit her claims to a third of Saxony, and Russia to give up a part of the grand duchy of Warsaw.

The policy of M. Talleyrand was, by establishing an alliance within an alliance, to separate permanently Austria and England from Russia and Prussia, and to restore to France her political importance, by augmenting her influence in proportion as he succeeded in breaking up the coalition of the four great powers. He was on the point of accomplishing this, when all his projects were scattered to the wind, and Europe, filled with amazement and alarm by the arrival of the intelligence of the landing of Napoleon at Frejus, and his rapid march on the French capital. The moment this was announced in Vienna, the sovereigns and their representatives assembled ; all division disappeared, absolute unanimity was restored, and Napoleon was denounced as under the ban of all Europe.

The session of the Congress was a period of universal festivity at Vienna. Scenes of such magnificence and splendour had never before been witnessed in the capital of the Germanic empire. The theatrical performances, the masked balls, at which crowned heads mingled indiscriminately with the crowd-laying aside for a moment the ceremonial restraints which separate sovereigns from the herd of mankind— the singularity of the costumes, and

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