About the middle of September he learned their terms, and they were presented a few days later in "a sort of ultimatum." They themselves summarised their intentions pointedly enough in the clause: "Two-thirds of the territory added to the France of former days by the Treaty of Paris will now be detached from it." In addition, France was to pay an indemnity of 600,000,000 francs, provide 200,000,000 to build fortresses against herself in the provinces adjoining her frontiers, and maintain a foreign army of 150,000 men along her frontiers for seven years as a guarantee of peace. Prussia had triumphed. The English Ministers had wished to moderate the terms, but even they were shaken when it was pointed out that the Netherlands must be strengthened against France. Talleyrand, who rightly or wrongly believed that the whole of these harsh proceedings of the Allies would have been prevented if Louis had followed his advice at Mons, made a last effort to resist. The Council agreed with him in rejecting the terms, and he wrote a long and very able statement of his objections. He fell back on the bases of his policy as laid at Vienna. Conquest did not, in modern life, constitute a moral right to confiscation; morever, Louis had been expressly admitted as one of the Allies against Napoleon. France was prepared to make sacrifices in return for the sacrifices of the other Powers, but he would not continue the negotiations if these exorbitant demands were pressed.

Castlereagh, who is severely censured by Lytton for joining in these harsh claims, replied that the Allies made

no pretence whatever to a right given by conquest. The whole base of their claims was the right to indemnity and to a territorial settlement that gave Europe some guarantee of stability. Some of the foreign repre

sentatives were pressing for a special notice of the defiant conclusion of Talleyrand's letter, but he decided to resign. Louis was prepared to yield; he had no army with which to threaten resistance, and it was clear that Talleyrand's diplomatic talent would now avail him nothing. Talleyrand explains that his position was weakened by the fact that some of the King's entourage were all along in favour of a cession of territory, and that during the Hundred Days the Chamber of Representatives had already made the offer. He was, therefore, unable to press his last plea that the country would not endure such terms. He resigned his post on September 23rd, rather than sign the treaty. Metternich, Castlereagh and Stewart begged him to continue to be "a statesman of Europe," and Pasquier admits that almost all the Foreign Ministers deeply regretted his retirement, though he confesses that he himself did not share that feeling. The Tsar was pleased. His favourite, the Duc de Richelieu, was substituted for Talleyrand. Louis accepted his resignation with a mingled feeling of apprehension and relief. "I thank you for your zeal," he said to Talleyrand before the whole Cabinet; "you are without reproach, and nothing prevents you from living peacefully at Paris." Talleyrand replied: "I have had the pleasure of rendering to the King services

enough to believe that they have not been forgotten. I am unable to see how anything could force me to leave Paris. I shall stay here; and I shall be happy to learn that the King will not be induced to follow a line that may compromise his dynasty and France."

Napoleon had not been very wide of the mark when he said in 1814 that the Bourbons would avenge him by throwing over Talleyrand within six months. It did not, however, require any great penetration to foresee such an issue. The personality of the King and of his entourage furnished solid ground for prophecy. The curious evolution of the Tsar into a friend of Louis and enemy of Talleyrand, and his resumption of a great influence on French affairs, made further for estrangement; and when the first elections under the Restoration gave the power to the ultra-royalist faction in the country, the situation was complete. Talleyrand retired to write his impressions of men and events. provided for him the sinecure of High Chamberlain at 100,000 francs a year, and a further pension of 16,000 francs. He did not foresee that Talleyrand would take a conscientious view of his new duties, and would haunt his chair, a silent, smiling Mephistopheles, for years to

come.

Louis

Talleyrand probably felt that the King would be forced to recall him in time. For the moment he betook himself to the writing of the famous memoirs which were to sustain the legend of his inscrutability until the close of the nineteenth century. It is probable that he

had written the material for the first volume (up to 1809) already. In this he gives a prosaic and brief account of his first fifty years, with lively and artistic pictures of some of his great fellow actors (especially the Duc d'Orléans), and with a very discreet and unboastful account of his share in the Revolution. The second volume and half of the third carry the story up to the middle of 1814. The rest of the work consists almost entirely of his correspondence from Vienna, during the second Restoration, and from London under Louis Philippe; the letters being scantily threaded on a brief and common-place narrative. The close of the narrative at his retirement from the Ministry is dated "Valençay, 1816." The rest was compiled in the last three years of his life. He took stringent precautions that they should not be published until thirty years after his death, and not even then if those to whom they were entrusted thought fit to postpone the publication. It was, in fact, decided in 1868 to refrain from issuing them for another generation, and they only appeared in 1891. From one end of Europe to the other there was an expression of profound disappointment when they appeared. Such stringent measures had promised stirring revelations, but the volumes. contained absolutely no sensational matter and very little that was new to historians.

There is very little of the "apologia" in the memoirs, and not much of the impulse that urged most of his contemporaries to cover reams of

paper with

their contradictory versions of history. He is usually content to let documents tell the story. But, though Talleyrand ignores most of the charges that were made against him, he naturally reviews history in a light that sets his own career in harmony. Lady Blennerhassett surmises that his chief object when he wrote in 1816 was to conciliate Louis XVIII, and prepare the way for a return to power. Lord Acton has expressed the same opinion. It is based on the dexterous presentation of the way in which he was forced into the Revolution, the brevity with which he dismisses the more offensive parts of his share in it, his explanation of Napoleon as a step towards the Restoration, and the fulness of his account of his share in the Restoration and the work at Vienna. But this theory has to struggle desperately with the fact that his precautions against the publications of the memoirs before the appointed time were absolute, and must have been sincere. Nothing would have been easier for a man like Talleyrand than to have secured an accidental disclosure or theft of his papers; and the fact that he used to read passages from them to a few of his friends does not further his supposed plan in the slightest degree. Ordinary conversation with them would do just as well. On the other hand, we can quite understand the air of progressive policy he gives to his career by merely assuming that he wished. to make it appear consistent. A statesman who was convinced that monarchy was the best form of government for France, and who, nevertheless, took a purely