The consensus for over 200 years has been that Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord, 1st Sovereign Prince de Benevent - better-known as Talleyrand - was a thorough-going rascal. Brilliant, yes, but a rascal just the same.
Talleyrand was a very senior diplomat for many years. He was ambassador to the Court of St James twice, I believe, and also French Ambassador in Washington and French foreign minister during the Napoleonic era and then under three Bourbon kings. He was by all accounts incredibly venal and duplicitous, even by the standards of the times, accepting bribes from other governments to advance their interests within France. He was also a womaniser - but who was not in 19th century France? I hear you cry - a great gourmet, and a lover of fine wine: the lucky man owned the First Growth Chateau Haut Brion for several years.
Napoleon depended upon him, and employed him until he could no longer bear to hear Talleyrand's persistent advocacy of diplomacy rather than war as a means of achieving the ends of the state. Napoleon threatened him with death for treachery, and famously described him as "shit in a silk stocking" - to which Talleyrand replied (although not, it must be said, within the Emperor's hearing) that it was "a pity that so great a man should have been so badly brought up". On his deathbed Talleyrand confessed his sins and received extreme unction, but there have always been those who felt that this was just another gambit; that he was an unregenerate sinner to his last breath.
And yet, and yet.
In 1812, when told of Napoleon's plan to invade Russia, Talleyrand asked:
"Why?"
(The literal translation is something like "To do what?")
If there is a heaven, which seems to me to be highly improbable, and any of us get there, which is more improbable still, I'm quite confident that we will find Talleyrand there before us, because of that question - the question which, above all others, needed to be asked in 1812, as Napoleon embarked on his last, great, destructive venture.
Blessed are the people who ask "Why", for they will inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.
Where, I wonder, was George Bush's Talleyrand when the worst - and most dangerous - American president in a hundred years authorised the invasion of Iraq? (It was an invasion which I, to my shame, initially supported - but, then, I didn't have access to the information available to George Bush, did I?)
Where was Hitler's Talleyrand when he contemplated launching Operation Barbarossa?
But wait. Reel back the tape a bit:
Where was Hitler's Talleyrand when the Nazi leader came to the ludicrous conclusion that Jews were 'the problem'; never mind what 'the problem' was?
Where was Hirohito's Talleyrand when the Emperor condoned the attack on Pearl Harbor? (We know he could have acted to constrain his military commanders, had he wished to do so, because he did act, decisively, less than four years later, to force them into accepting the unacceptable, and agreeing to the surrender.)
And where was Truman's Talleyrand when the American President authorised the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, given that an effective demonstration of the power of the atomic bomb (I have always believed that they should have blown the top off Mt Fuji) would almost certainly have achieved the same result at a cost of no or very few lives?
Where was Princess Diana's Talleyrand when she decided to go to Paris with Dodi (or, indeed, have anything to do with him)?
Where was Winona Ryder's Talleyrand when she entered Saks 5th Avenue on 12 December 2001?
Where was Lindsay Lohan's Talleyrand when - oh, on fifty occasions or more in recent months - she has behaved like a complete idiot, and thrown away a wonderful career?
And so on.
Come back, M. Talleyrand. A confused and troubled world needs to hear your irritating questions.
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