The New Student's Reference Work/Talleyrand de Perigord, Charles Maurice, Prince

Talleyrand (tăl′lĭ-rănd) de Perigord, Charles Maurice, Prince, a famous French diplomatist, was born at Paris, Feb. 14, 1754. His father, Count of Talleyrand, would have had him enter the army, had he not been accidentally lamed when a child. So he became a priest and rose to be bishop of Autun, As a member of the national assembly of 1789 he was a hearty friend of Mirabeau, and at the feast of the federation in the next year he headed a procession of 200 priests wearing the national colors over their white robes and performed mass on the altar set up in Champ de Mars. After the fall of Louis XVI Talleyrand went to England and then to the United States, where he reaped a fortune by speculation. He went back to France as soon as his name was crossed off the list of exiles, and in 1797, as the newly appointed minister of foreign affairs, welcomed Napoleon on his return from his famous Italian campaign. He greatly helped Napoleon to seize absolute power, and as his minister of foreign affairs became the ablest diplomat in Europe. An estrangement, however, separated the co-workers, Talleyrand resigning in 1807. To his intrigues was chiefly due Napoleon's fall in 1814, and for this treachery he was for the third time made foreign minister by Louis XVIII. At Napoleon's return from Elba he was in Austria as French commissioner to the Congress of Vienna, but after Waterloo he accompanied the king to Paris. He soon resigned his office, but retained great influence, men of all parties thronging his salon. He came to the front again after the revolution of 1830, as ambassador to England. His personal Memoirs and his Memoir on the Commercial Relations of the United States are the most valuable of his writings. He died on May 20, 1838.