Talleyrand is a notoriously slippery and elusive figure in Napoleonic history and parsing out his actual role in events is often an exercise in frustration. Like any good Realpolitiker working behind the scenes, Talleyrand always kept multiple irons in the fire during his negotiations. This allowed him to adapt to political circumstances quite adeptly, and one of his foremost political skills was actually survival. Despite changes in regimes, he managed to keep his neck and position despite his problematic past. Napoleon's stepdaughter Hortense noted that one of Talleyrand's talents was a poker face for Parisian salon society, so that it always appeared he silently supported whomever was talking to him. This talent for coming out on top has compounded historians' ability to analyze the man's diplomacy.

Talleyrand's Russian diplomacy was emblematic of Talleyrand's diplomatic slipperiness. After Austerlitz, Talleyrand had encouraged Napoleon to make an alliance with Austria and have her expand eastwards at Russia's expense. Such machinations were actually quite foolhardy and would have been the recipe for further war, and Napoleon wisely declined Talleyrand's geostrategic vision. Yet, within these schemes of Talleyrand was a sense that a balance of power was necessary to maintain French preeminence on the continent. Therefore it really was not a surprise that in the post-Tilsit diplomacy, Talleyrand encouraged a Franco-Russian-Austrian alliance, with France in the cockpit of Europe and the other two states as partners. Although it is difficult to discern the specifics, broadly speaking Talleyrand saw both Austria and Russia as a means to restrain Napoleon, not as a means to depose him. Talleyrand's own back-dealing with Alexander I at Erfurt is well attested to, with at one point him explaining to the Tsar that there was a difference between the French people and their sovereign. Alexander I alternated between sympathy for Talleyrand and his liberal principles, and disgust at the Frenchman's venality and unctuous behavior.

On St. Helena, Napoleon took such unauthorized diplomacy as evidence of treason and Talleyrand's hypocrisy. To an extent, these charges have merit. For one thing, Talleyrand was one of the chief architects of the Empire as it rose, and he was complicit in a number of Napoleon's adventures. The diplomat was one of the champions of the Continental system. Talleyrand had encouraged the Spanish intervention and his actions at Erfurt were bordering on treason, or, at the very least, willful incompetence. Talleyrand's venality also opens him up to charges of self-interest. When he was in the political wilderness after toying with a conspiracy to depose Napoleon, he demanded payment from his Russian contacts to access his intelligence networks.

Yet Napoleon's charge that Talleyrand sabotaged a working relationship with Alexander I does not really hold much water. In short, there was not much of a working relationship there to sabotage. Talleyrand's scheme for a tripartite division of Europe was unworkable, but so to was the Napoleonic empire as Napoleon conceived of it. The creation of the Duchy of Warsaw was representative of the unworkability of the Napoleonic system. The Duchy was too small to be a credible deterrent against Austrian or Russian aggression, but large enough to be a threat to the Polish partition parties. The Napoleonic system of forced contributions and conscription levies in Central and Southern Europe made French hegemony deeply unpopular and a tinderbox waiting to explode at any sign of French weakness. While current historiograpy on Napoleonic rule has emphasized that this discontent did really signal a national awakening against foreign rule, the mass discontent was palpable and easily channeled into violent revolts. The Empire was an incredibly unstable system.

Within Russia itself, the Tilsit accords were deeply unpopular among the Romanov elite and the military. The spectre of a resurgent Poland, which Napoleon never really took off the table, played to some of the Polonophobic tendencies in both the army and the imperial administration. A number of Russian military reformers saw the Tilsit peace as a valuable breathing space to accomplish much needed reforms after the subpar performance of the Russian army in Central Europe. Additionally, Alexander I's own vanity, which Talleyrand and others enabled, prevented him from being a lieutenant to Napoleon, which is what Napoleon's imperial order would have consigned Russia to becoming.

Most importantly, an alliance with Napoleon offered nothing Russia truly wanted. At Tilsit, Napoleon played around with notions of dividing the Ottoman Empire, but balked at giving Alexander I Istanbul. The land-based French hegemony meant that French military power could be of little assistance in Russian expansion south towards Central Asia or to the Ottomans. In the later case, the decline of the Ottoman military also meant that Russia did not really need France to expand in Southeastern Europe. Russian participation in the Continental System brought very few dividends either, as the French economy could not displace British products and the Continental System had a demi-colonial character to it in which an inner imperial core provided finished products to an underdeveloped European periphery. Russia fit quite poorly in this French imperial schema, and naturally few Russian elites saw any benefit in continuing a Tilsit alliance.

The non-functional alliance was apparent as early as 1809 when the Russian expeditionary force dragged its heels in Galicia while Napoleon fought Austria. Alexander I chafed at any assertion of delaying, but his vague orders to Golitsyn as well as the Russian commander's interpretation of these orders showed that Russia was not willing to stake much on its alliance with Napoleon. But Russian military modernization continued apace, as did Alexander I's contacts with various opposition circles within France and French emigres. But despite this, there were no real open moves towards a preemptive war on Russia's part, and Napoleon's diplomatic corps, many of whom were less self-serving than the disgraced Talleyrand, explicitly told Napoleon so. But the French Emperor was trapped in a geostrategic box of his own making. He could never incorporate either Russia or Austria into his orbit, and the inherent instability of the French imperial order made the threat of outside intervention an ever-present fear in Napoleon's calculations.

The 1812 invasion and its failure was where Talleyrand's Erfurt rod paid dividends. By cultivating a personal rapport with Alexander I, he became a default alternative negotiator for one of the most powerful sovereigns within the Allied coalition. The two men's shared elite-centric liberalism allowed them to craft a functional relationship. Talleyrand's flexibility meant he could adapt either to a Bourbon restoration or a Bonaparte regency depending upon which way the political winds were blowing. Talleyrand initially favored the latter solution, but adapted quickly as circumstances shifted in favor of the Bourbons. Despite Napoleon's dressing down of Talleyrand, the diplomat still possessed considerable social capital within French society, and thus he was able to craft a political coalition of various opposition circles to depose Napoleon legally via the constitution.

And here Talleyrand was and was not the savior of France. The Senate's deposing of Napoleon allowed France to have some sort of diplomatic standing with the victorious allies. By enabling the Restoration, Talleyrand allowed France to be put on something of an even moral footing in the emerging Vienna system. His knowledge of French social circles and political culture was also valuable to his new master, although, as usual, Talleyrand's advice often dovetailed with preserving his position. But, like the fracturing of the Tilsit system, the return of France to diplomatic normalcy was probably going to happen without Talleyrand. France was in no danger of being partitioned like Poland; France was too big of a prize to disappear from the map. At Vienna, the idea of a Prussian annexation of most of Saxony was the source of much tension, and to do the same to France would have been a nightmare far greater than dispossessing the Wettins. The allies were already disposed to leaving France relatively strong. The Frankfurt proposals of 1813 had already shown that some of the allies' diplomats were prepared to keep France fairly powerful. A Carthaginian peace was not in the cards in 1814/15, and Talleyrand knew this.

Talleyrand's self-presentation of as France's diplomatic savior involved both enfolding his own biography (carefully edited to avoid too deep of a complicity with Napoleon) into his diplomacy. In his memoirs and salon life, he retroactively packaged his own Napoleonic political exile as a form of opposition, when in reality, he often played both sides. This self-serving narrative was not just decried by Napoleon, but was also noticed by many during the Restoration period. While Talleyrand may have come out on top through multiple regimes, his reputation for self-interested deceit became entrenched in elite opinion. Thus Talleyrand's talent for self-preservation overshadowed much of what he tried to accomplish as a diplomat.

Sources

Dwyer, Philip G. Talleyrand. London: Longman, 2002.

Hartley, Janet M., Paul Keenan, and D. C. B. Lieven. Russia and the Napoleonic Wars. New York: Palgrave, 2015.

Price, Munro. Napoleon: The End of Glory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Whitcomb, Edward A. Napoleon's Diplomatic Service. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1979.