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TITLE OF PAPER USING FEWER THAN 50 CHARACTERS 3 [Title:] Talleyrand and the Resurrection of France [Introduction to the topic] The Congress of Vienna marked the end of nearly two decades of continuous war in Europe. Napoleon had been defeated and the Bourbon monarch Louis XVIII had been restored in France. The Congress, led by the war-time alliance of Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Britain, sought to right the wrongs of the Napoleonic Era and craft a lasting peace in Europe. But a France defeated was not a France destroyed. [Problem/Question] Louis XVIII, as the newly crowned monarch, sent Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord to ensure that French interests would not be unduly violated at Vienna. According to the king, Talleyrand was the only man in France with the intelligence, stature, and cunning to prevent France from being pillaged by the bitter enemies of Napoleon's wars (Blinn, 1935, p. 151). Talleyrand felt that the creation of a European “balance of power,” with France as an integral component, would pay enormous dividends by providing France with a safe and secure Europe in which to flourish. Naturally, as the representative of a defeated and maliciously-hated nation, Talleyrand had his work cut out for him. How well did Talleyrand negotiate French political interests and advance his belief in a European “balance of power” at the Congress of Vienna? [Thesis] In response to this question, I will argue that Talleyrand successfully articulated his notion of the balance of power and, through clever maneuvering, he helped secure France a strong position at the negotiating table in Vienna and in continental politics writ large. Although France had been resoundingly defeated on the battlefield, Talleyrand ensured that her interests would not be ignored in the new European order. [Different scholarly interpretations/counter-arguments] While some scholarship supports this interpretation of Talleyrand's legacy, there are plausible arguments that indicate that
TITLE OF PAPER USING FEWER THAN 50 CHARACTERS 4 Talleyrand may not have been as cunning as he believed himself to be and that his efforts at Vienna may not have been as beneficial to France as he had hoped. Sometimes his grand notion of collective European security (underpinned by a balance of power) came at the expense of France's national interests. Talleyrand viewed the German states as hopelessly weak and divided and thus did not foresee that by supporting the Prussian acquisition of the Rhineland he was contributing to Prussia's regional dominance and to their ultimately successful attempts to unify much of the German lands. This eventual unification was capped in 1871 by the crushing defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War and the crowning of Wilhelm I as German Emperor in the Palace of Versailles’s Hall of Mirrors (Blinn, 135, p. 157). A second possible misstep was his advice to Louis XVIII against a marriage alliance between his nephew, the Duke of Berry, and the Tsar's sister. Instead, Talleyrand negotiated a “Triple Alliance” with Britain and Austria to counter perceived Russian aggression (Harris, 2007, pp. 253- 244). According to some, Talleyrand put a European balance of power before French national interests. Sharp attacks came from multiple statesmen, such as Etienne-Denis Pasquier, who believed Talleyrand should have allied French interests to Russia (France's frequent partner prior to the Napoleonic Wars) instead of trying to counter the Tsar's claims over Poland (Harris, 2007, pp. 253-254). These statesmen argued that the strategic and territorial interests of Russia conflicted far less with those of France than the much more proximate empires of Britain and Austria. The third and arguably the greatest of Talleyrand's failures emerged with the Second Treaty of Paris. After Napoleon's Hundred Days, the Congress of Vienna drew up a particularly vicious and punitive treaty when it became clear that neither Talleyrand nor his master Louis XVIII could be trusted in their repeated assertions that the French people were tired of Napoleon (Chapman, 1998, p. 55).
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