CHAPTER NINE
TALLEYRAND
The voyage seemed interminable. Good weather meant calm waters and light wind but a longer journey. Marshall’s cabin was small but clean, and his berth was just long enough for his six-foot frame. There was plenty of fresh chicken, eggs, wine, and brandy on board. He was already homesick, and occasionally he would sink into melancholy when he realized the enormity of the stakes he was facing and the risk that negotiations could drag on for months.1 The Grace was stopped and searched on three separate occasions by British men-of-war looking for contraband or British subjects to impress into the Royal Navy.2 The British had no reason to suspect that the Grace was carrying a secret envoy to France. Marshall was a man of no particular importance.
After six weeks of sailing, the Grace crossed the Zuiderzee to Amsterdam on the evening of August 29, 1797. Ships crowded the docks, and dockworkers carried crates and barrels laden with Virginian tobacco, Venetian glass, Chinese silks and jade, Japanese furnishings, Persian carpets, Turkish spices, and Indian teas. Though the Netherlands was no longer the economic behemoth that had dominated the known world in the seventeenth century, its declining fortune was not evident to an American visitor.
The French Revolution had swept through the Netherlands only two years earlier. The so-called Dutch Patriots drove out the hereditary stadtholder, William V, Prince of Orange, and proclaimed a democratic “Batavian Republic” aligned with France. At first, these Dutch Patriots welcomed French troops as “liberators,” but for the privilege of calling France a “sister republic,” the Dutch paid dearly. To finance Bonaparte’s army, France extorted at least one hundred million florins from the Dutch economy—more than 20 percent of the Dutch gross domestic product.3 Marshall observed that the Dutch “willingly relinquish national independence for individual safety.” And he pointedly added, “What a lesson to those who would admit foreign influence into the United States.”4
Marshall’s first priority in the Netherlands was to seek additional funding for the Fairfax property from Dutch bankers. Despite the loss of its independence, the Netherlands remained a center of finance. After a few days negotiating loans, Marshall rode south to The Hague to meet Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, who was residing there with his wife, Mary; his young daughter, Eliza; and his nephew and personal secretary, Major Henry Rutledge, while he was in diplomatic limbo. But the seeds of France’s contempt for Pinckney had been planted before his arrival by his predecessor, James Monroe. Monroe, before returning to the United States as a U.S. senator, had warned the French government that the Federalist Pinckney was pro-British, which had no basis in fact.
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney was a large, broad-shouldered, flabby aristocrat with a slow drawl that belied a swift mind. He was the talented son of Charles Pinckney, who had served as South Carolina’s chief justice before statehood. His famous family included two governors and senators. He was married to the daughter of Henry Middleton, whose twenty plantations and eight hundred slaves made him the richest man in South Carolina. Like many southern gentlemen, Pinckney had been educated at Oxford and joined the bar at Middle Temple in London before returning home. He had distinguished himself in the Revolutionary War. At the Constitutional Convention, he was a fervent defender of slavery.5 Pinckney proposed the clause in Article I that preserved the slave trade for at least twenty years after the Constitution was ratified. Pinckney was just as passionate in his insistence that slaves should count equally to white persons for the purpose of apportioning congressional representatives so as to enlarge the voting power of the slave-holding South in Congress.6 Pinckney also proposed that senators should not be compensated for their service in order to reserve the Senate for men of wealth.7 Bucking the Republican sentiments of his state, Pinckney emerged as a leading southern Federalist and later ran as President Adams’s vice president in 1800.
Marshall and Pinckney hit it off from the start.8 They were both Revolutionary War veterans and southern Federalists who supported President Adams. Marshall joined the Pinckneys, who were living in modest accommodations at the Marshal Turenne Tavern.9 The two men waited in The Hague for a fortnight for Gerry to arrive by ship from Boston.
While in The Hague, Marshall learned of the momentous events taking place in revolutionary France. On September 4, 1797, the radicals who supported General Napoleon Bonaparte had seized power in the Coup of 18 Fructidor. They arrested their opponents, canceled elections, purged moderates from the Assembly, replaced members of the Directory, and closed opposition newspapers to pave the way for military dictatorship. Marshall thought that the radicals manifested a “wanton contempt of rules so essential to the very being of a republic.”10 Marshall hoped that ongoing negotiations between France and Britain might lead to peace, but he was not sanguine. France’s course defies “all human calculation,” he thought.11 As Marshall learned more about the brutality of the radicals, he concluded that peace between France and Britain was unlikely.12
As the autumn weather arrived, Marshall and Pinckney grew impatient waiting for Gerry and decided to start for Paris without him. Pinckney traveled with his wife and nephew in one carriage, and Marshall traveled in another. They passed through the great polyglot cities of Rotterdam, Antwerp, and Brussels, where Marshall marveled at the mix of cultures and languages. They crossed the border into France and proceeded through the small city of Valenciennes. The flat landscape was crowded with trees turning amber and brown like ripe pears. From the window of his coach, Marshall marveled at the French agriculture. The air was pungent with the aroma of grapes. “The whole earth appears to be in cultivation,” he observed.13 Near Cambrai, Marshall’s carriage lost a wheel, and he was delayed for several hours while Henry Rutledge argued in French with the local blacksmith.14 Meanwhile, Gerry was on his way from Rotterdam.
On September 27, Marshall and Pinckney arrived in Paris. Gerry joined them a week later. All three took rooms at a large apartment building at 1131 rue de Grenelle in Saint Germain des Prés. The Pinckneys chose for themselves the largest suite on the second floor. Gerry and Marshall, appalled by Paris prices, chose two less expensive rooms on the first floor. The total rent for all three apartments was exorbitant—seventy louis d’or (about twenty-five thousand dollars today).15 Marshall’s suite was cramped and filthy. The linens and drapes smelled of smoke. The upholstery was stained, and the windows were cracked. Marshall’s fireplace did not work properly, and there was no carpeting, so in the morning he nearly froze from the damp autumn air. Below them was a stable, and all night the noise of people coming and going and horses neighing disturbed their sleep. The street traffic outside the window—drunken parties, brawls, and carriage rides late in the night—was so close it sounded like someone was inside the room. Gerry was so fearful of the noise that he insisted on sleeping with a loaded pistol under his pillow.16
Elbridge Gerry had an oversize head and a miniature body. His flashy dress was as unconstrained as his tongue. He was famously contrarian. At the Constitutional Convention, he fought against nearly every power of the federal government. He opposed, for example, the power to raise a standing army, which he famously compared to an erect penis: “An excellent assurance of domestic tranquility, but a dangerous temptation to foreign adventure.” Gerry saw the world as a Manichaean struggle, but he often confused good and evil. For example, he was deeply suspicious of his friend President Adams, but he gave the benefit of every doubt to the treacherous French Directory. Gerry spoke frequently and at great length, but he was not persuasive. His fellow delegates thought he was kind and intelligent but “not well acquainted with mankind.” In truth, Gerry enjoyed being the odd man out.17
Despite all this, Gerry was later elected the first Republican governor of Massachusetts and then vice president under James Madison. His lasting contribution to American politics was the invention of drawing election districts to favor incumbent politicians—a practice still called gerrymandering.
When new en
voys arrived in Paris, the women who worked in the market stalls customarily welcomed them with a rowdy street celebration. The ministers deputized Rutledge, who was fluent in French, to receive this dubious honor. Forty or more women shouted greetings and compliments to the young man. The vendeuses formed a long receiving line, and as each one took turns squeezing, pinching, and kissing the astonished young American, he was overpowered by the smell of cheese and fish.18
Later that afternoon, still feeling a bit discomposed, Rutledge carried a letter to Talleyrand, who was the minister of foreign affairs, to officially notify him of the arrival of the three envoys and request a meeting to present their credentials. Of course, this came as no surprise. French spies had already informed Talleyrand about the Americans soon after Marshall had sailed into Amsterdam. No doubt they were being carefully watched.
The foreign minister replied that he would receive them at his home on October 8 at one o’clock sharp. They should not be late.19
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CHARLES MAURICE DE TALLEYRAND-PÉRIGORD was one of the most extraordinary and amoral men in an extraordinary and amoral time. He was born into a noble family, but as an infant, he suffered an accident to his foot that left him lame. Ashamed of his son’s limp, his father sent him away at age eight to train for the priesthood. Depressed and isolated from his family, Talleyrand devoted himself to reading. While he was still a student at the seminary, he began an affair with a young actress. He found that despite his twisted limb, he could win the hearts of women with his quick wit and angelic face. Even after his ordination, the louche Talleyrand never permitted his vows of celibacy to encumber his myriad sexual conquests. As the abbé of Périgord, he cultivated intimate relationships with members of the king’s court, which begat a string of rapid promotions. By the time Talleyrand reached the age of thirty-five, the church had elevated him to agent-general of the clergy and bishop of Aucun.
Beginning in 1789, the French Revolution turned against the church and the aristocracy, and Talleyrand hastily embraced the democratic reforms. Whether he actually believed in these reforms was hardly relevant; Talleyrand’s only lodestar was self-interest. He was elected to the National Assembly, where he proposed to nationalize all church property. In 1790, he was elected president of the assembly. When the National Assembly required all clergy to swear allegiance to a new democratic constitution in defiance of the pope’s authority, Talleyrand was one of only four bishops who consented. When the pope excommunicated him, he was relieved to remove his collar.20
As the revolution progressed, Talleyrand became one of the leaders of the moderate Feuillants, who opposed the more radical Jacobins. Talleyrand, a closeted Anglophile, favored a diplomatic settlement and an alliance with England to secure the borders of France so that the revolutionary government could focus on internal reforms.21 After war broke out with Austria in April 1792, Talleyrand was appointed minister to Britain. Later, as the Reign of Terror swept across France, Talleyrand sought refuge in London among the other French émigrés.22 When Britain declared war on France, Prime Minister William Pitt tossed Talleyrand out of the country. Rather than face an uncertain fate in France, Talleyrand caught the next ship to Philadelphia.23
In Philadelphia, Talleyrand hoped to meet with the leaders of the young Republic. But Gouverneur Morris warned President Washington that the former bishop of Aucun was a man of poor character as he had seduced Morris’s mistress, Adelaide de Flahaut.24 Yet Talleyrand formed an improbable friendship with Alexander Hamilton despite the American’s fierce hostility toward France. Hamilton and Talleyrand were both pragmatists and intellectuals who shared a weakness for beautiful women and material pleasures.25 Hamilton left Talleyrand with one lasting impression that later colored his foreign policy: The natural ally of the Americans was Britain, not France. After two years adrift in the United States, Talleyrand received word that the French legislature had invited him to return to France.26
Talleyrand returned to Paris in the late spring of 1797 with no money and few prospects. He begged one of his former lovers, Germaine de Staël, to help him find a position or “I shall blow my brains out.” Madame de Staël persuaded the president of the Directory, Paul Barras, with whom she also shared her bed, to appoint Talleyrand foreign minister.27 Talleyrand had opposed French militarism and favored a peaceful resolution to France’s external conflicts. On its face, his appointment by Barras, who favored conquest over compromise, made no sense. Perhaps it showed how little Barras cared about the subject of diplomacy. In truth, Barras had few other qualified candidates. The waves of arrests, massacres, and emigration had depleted the diplomatic service.28 By the time the Americans arrived at his door, Talleyrand had been in office fewer than one hundred days, and he was no doubt still tiptoeing through the deadly minefield of revolutionary politics.
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TALLEYRAND LIVED in the foreign minister’s mansion at 471 rue de Bac, just three blocks from where the Americans were lodging. The afternoon after Rutledge visited the Foreign Ministry, the three Americans arrived precisely at one. They were told that the foreign minister could not see them until three. They returned at three and waited while the minister met with the ambassador from Portugal. They were brought into the audience room where Pinckney, as the senior member, presented their credentials to Talleyrand. Though fluent in English, Talleyrand felt self-conscious speaking it.29 Polite but succinct, he carefully studied the credentials as if he were trying to find a mistake. Then Talleyrand looked up and responded that the Directory had requested a report from him on relations with the United States and that he could not accept their credentials until he finished his report. That made little sense, but Talleyrand assured them it would be done in a few days. Then he dismissed them. The whole meeting lasted little more than a quarter of an hour, and the Americans were swiftly ushered out into the somber gray light of an autumn afternoon not quite certain what had transpired.30
Thomas Paine, the English author of Common Sense, who had recently been released from the Directory’s prison, had counseled the foreign minister to treat the Americans with “reproach.” As a strident propagandist, Paine had successively offended the British, American, and French governments, and now he was trying his hand at diplomacy. He advised Marshall that the Americans should repudiate their treaties with Britain and accept whatever conditions France imposed. Cheeky Paine told Marshall that since Americans had not shown sufficient gratitude to France for its aid during the Revolutionary War they should not expect anything from France except “high toned indignation.”31 Marshall realized that Paine’s impertinent proposal would only make war with Britain more likely and that the commissioners should reject it coldly. Gerry, however, thought that Paine would make the perfect liaison with the Directory, but Marshall correctly suspected that Paine was already acting on instructions from Talleyrand. Marshall countered that they could not appease France by agreeing to terms that President Adams would certainly reject. Caught between Marshall’s firmness and Gerry’s appeasement, Pinckney proposed crafting a reply to Paine expressing appreciation for his plan without making any commitment.32
The American envoys assumed incorrectly that Talleyrand had authority to negotiate on behalf of the Directory. Talleyrand, in fact, had less bargaining room than the American envoys imagined he had. His approach to diplomacy was conciliatory, but the Directory had little use for Talleyrand’s moderation. In October 1797, it was too early for the newly appointed foreign minister to judge how much freedom he had to act. Talleyrand needed time to assess.33
Talleyrand did think that the Americans had taken France for granted. He felt that Jay’s Treaty, which conferred trading rights on Britain that the United States had not offered to France, violated the 1778 Treaty of Amity and Commerce. But Talleyrand had a more nuanced view of American politics than others in the French Directory. He did not view President Adams as inherently hostile to Fran
ce. In fact, Talleyrand thought that Adams was less hostile to France than Washington was. Talleyrand doubted that the Republican Party was a reliable ally, and he criticized his predecessor for putting too much faith in America’s previous envoy, James Monroe.34
Talleyrand believed that the rhetoric of Federalists and Republicans was far less important than the United States’ underlying national interests. “Let us, therefore, see what utility demands at this moment,” he advised the Directory. “The measure of our future conduct must be that of our interest.” The United States was naturally more inclined to favor the British as a function of language and culture, but that should not be a cause for war. “War leads to no useful result,” he advised the Directory. If France attacked the United States, it would only drive the Americans into the arms of Britain and give the Americans and the British a pretext for attacking Spain in Louisiana. France needed Spain’s help in the European war, and if Spain was tied down in a land war in Louisiana, it would be unable to help.35
Talleyrand was prepared to end the harassment of American shipping, which he regarded as illegal and unjustified. “The time has come to remove the despotic actions and violence which are carried out against the Americans,” he told the Directory. Instead, he thought it was in the best interest of France to negotiate for unrestricted trade with America. He was even willing to entertain paying compensation to the Americans for the seizure of their ships and releasing their crewmen from captivity. It appeared that there was no substantive disagreement between the Americans and the foreign minister.36
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