46 Nineteenth Century Peace Congresses
When Paris was about to fall, Napoleon had ordered all
his official family to leave the city and to join him outside.
Among them was Talleyrand, who had been the grand
chamberlain of the empire ever since it was created in 1804.
Talleyrand was one of those adroit men to whom accidents
always happen opportunely. During the trial of Louis XVI
the famous chest was discovered back of the wainscoting
where the royal carpenter had placed it with all its incrimi-
nating documents. Among the contents were papers which
our good bishop of Autun might have found most difficult to
explain to the satisfaction of even so mild a man as Roland.
For Talleyrand was not only a bishop, having been kept
from the army in his youth by a hereditary lameness, but he
was also the chief author of the famous civil constitution of
the clergy, which placed the priests under the control of the
state. At the very moment when he was carefully buttering
his bread on one side by this very radical measure, he was
also in communication with the royal family, trying to help
Mirabeau to preserve the monarchy in some more satisfac-
tory and constitutional guise. Letters to royal personages,
however innocent they might have seemed when written,
were evidently not good forms of life insurance in the year
of the September massacres, when France was surrounded
by her enemies and when great Danton was arousing her to
action with his “L’audace, encore l’audace, toujours l’audace,
et la France est sauvée!” Fortunately for him, when these
embarrassing letters fell into the hands of Roland, Talley-
rand was also helping to save France on an unofficial diplo-
matic mission at London. If Louis had not been guillotined,
as he so richly deserved to be, Talleyrand might have per-
suaded Pitt to keep England out of the war and so changed
greatly the course of human history. It is probable that
even then the Scheldt might have rankled in her generous