Best talleyrand biography
Best talleyrand biography series!
Charm Offensive
Culture
Editor’s Choice: Womanizer, bribe-taker, statesman—the cynically brilliant Talleyrand inspired an equally colorful biographer.
By Benjamin Schwarz
He is one of history’s great survivors— and opportunists.
Born into the high aristocracy, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754–1838) was by 34 a worldly, womanizing bishop.
Best talleyrand biography
With the overthrow of the ancien régime, he adjusted to the new realities and embraced the revolution, rising fast and high in the new order even though it meant his excommunication. He fled the Terror, first to England and then to America.
But Citizen Talleyrand soon returned, ingratiating himself with the Directoire and slithering into the remunerative post of foreign minister. He nicely timed his transfer of allegiance to Napoleon, who bade him to continue his brilliant, subtle conduct of French foreign relations.
By 1808, having long since decided that Bonaparte had embarked on a ruinous course, Talleyrand