Talleyrand

An enigmatic and fascinating personality, with an ecclesiastical formation that launched him to the heights of the French Church, when he had the opportunity he soon became friends with a young Bonaparte, in whom he believed he saw the executor of his ideas and wishes for France: to put end the Revolution, strengthen the State, recreate a monarchy, and rebuild the country and its economy within the framework of a pacified Europe. However, his student turned out to be more wayward than he imagined. Talleyrand, whose enormous personal fortune he knew was closely linked to the fate of the one who had become Emperor of the French, tried to stop him until the invasions of Spain and Russia ended his relationship. His figure has been the subject of bitter confrontations: the right hated him as a "traitor" to the Church, an emperor and three kings, and the left saw him as a fossil of the aristocracy and a plutocrat. Friend of the joke and the mystification, he lived "hiding" like some ancient philosophers, and it shows in his memoirs. In them, superbly written, he lies a little, but is silent a lot. Roca-Ferrer sheds new light on the life of the old aristocrat, who understood the conflicts of his time better than anyone else. He realized that the irruption of the people in the great theater of the world was going to change history, and he brought into it principles such as those of sovereignty of the people, legitimacy, non-intervention or neutrality.