One Does It Like This
David A. Bell
- Napoleon’s Master: A Life of Prince Talleyrand by David Lawday
Cape, 386 pp, £20.00, September 2006, ISBN 0 224 07366 4
Napoleon Bonaparte and his chief diplomat, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, are usually seen as the oddest of history’s odd couples. One personified boldness, ambition and overblown operatic passion; the other, subtlety, irony and world-weary cynicism. One displayed such restless physical energy that contemporaries repeatedly reached for that newly hatched adjective ‘electric’ to describe him; the other was sickly, pallid and had a club foot. Politically, one wanted to conquer the world, while the other thought France would do very well within its ‘natural boundaries’, and even conspired with the country’s enemies to put it back there. The two most familiar images of the men express the contrast eloquently. First, there is David’s brilliant portrait of Napoleon on his rearing charger in the Alps, seemingly master of the wind, rocks and sky; second, Chateaubriand’s acid description of Talleyrand hobbling into the presence of Louis XVIII with the help of Napoleon’s sinister police chief: ‘A door suddenly opened. Silently, there entered vice, leaning on the arm of crime, M. de Talleyrand walking with the support of M. Fouché.’
You are not Logged In
- If you have already registered login here
- If you are a print subscriber using the site for the first time please register here
- If you are not yet a subscriber you can subscribe here
- If you are a member of a subscribing institution or University library please login here
- If you have an Institutional print subscription and online access is not included, find out about our Institutional online subscriptions
Vol. 28 No. 22 · 16 November 2006 » David A. Bell » One Does It Like This (print version)
Pages 15-17 | 3226 words