Talleyrand drops in the Hamiltons
In 1794, the cynical and unprincipled French diplomat Talleyrand was on the lam from revolutionary France. He fled to England and then the United States...where he met U.S. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton.
Ron Chernow tells the story of the resulting friendship in his new biography of Hamilton:
"In January 1794, Talleyrand, informed that he had five days to leave England or face deportation, decided to join other stateless emigres in Philadelphia. The Churches [Hamilton's in-laws, then living in England - Ben] subsidized the trip, and Angelica [Angelica Church - Ben] smoothed the way for Talleyrand and his traveling companion, the chevalier de Beaumetz, by writing Eliza [Hamilton's wife, Angelica's sister - Ben] and introducing the two gentlemen as martyrs for "the cause of moderate liberty...To your care, dear Eliza, I commit these interesting strangers..."
In 1794, Hamilton was in his last year as Treasury Secretary. He would resign early in 1795. Washington declined to meet Talleyrand, for political reasons. There was, apparently, less concern about contact with Hamilton.
"Talleyrand soon acquired a mulatto mistress, whom he squired openly through the Philadelphia streets [At this time Philadelphia was the U.S. capital - Ben]. This bothered some priggish souls in polite society but not Hamilton, although Eliza may have been less forgiving. "He was notoriously misshapen, lame in one foot, his manners far from elegant, the tone of his voice was disagreeable, and in dress he was slovenly," she remembered as an old woman. "Mr. Hamilton saw much of him and while he admired the shrewd diplomat for his great inellectual endowments, he detested his utter lack of principle. He had no conscience."... He and Talleyrand became companions with a mutual fascination, if not close friends.
During his two-year sojourn in America, Talleyrand cherished his time with Hamilton and left some remarkable tributes for posterity: "I consider Napoleon, Fox, and Hamilton the three greatest men of our epoch and, if I were forced to decide between the three, I would give without hesitation the first place to Hamilton. He divined Europe." Of Hamilton he told one American travel writer that "he had known nearly all the marked men of his time, but that he had never known one on the whole equal to him." Hamilton savored the roguish diplomat's company and gave him, as a token of esteem, an oval miniature portrait of himself.
Hamilton and Talleyrand were both hardheaded men, disgusted with the utopian dreams of their more fanciful, radical compatriots. As one Talleyrand biographer put it, "They were both passionately interested in politics and both of them looked at politics from a realistic standpoint and despised sentimental twaddle whether it poured from the lips of a Robspierre or of a Jefferson." Both men wanted to create strong nation-states, led by powerful executive branches, and both wanted to counter an aversion to central banks and stock markets. Oddly, Talleyrand agreed with Hamilton that Britain, not France, could best supply America with the long-term credit and industrial products it needed. Talleyrand recalled vividly how Hamilton asserted a passionate faith in America's economic destiny. In their talks, Hamilton said that he foresaw, "the day when - and it is perhaps not very remote - great markets, such as formerly existed in the old world, will be established in America." Talleyrand confessed to only one complaint abut Hamilton: that he was overly enamored of the grand personages of the day and took too little notice of Eliza's beauty..."
In 1797, Washington's successor, President Adams, sent a three man delegation to France to negotiate the so-called quasi-war between France and the United States. (Hamilton was now out of office, and was not a member of the delegation.)
"...When the American commissioners arrived in France in August 1797, they were greeted by a lame minister of foreign affairs who had been a pariah a few years earlier: Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord, who had befriended Hamilton in Philadelphia. With the end of the Terror, Talleyrand had been rehabiliated and returned to France. Hamilton knew that he was avaricious and regarded public office as a means of obtaining money. The cynical Frenchman once told a mutual friend that "he found it very strange that a man of his [Hamilton's] quality, blessed with such outstanding gifts, should resign a ministry [Hamilton had resigned his position as Treasury Secretary in 1795 - Ben] in order to return to the practice of law and give as his reason that as a minister he did not earn enough to bring up his eight children." After Hamilton returned to New York, Talleyrand was enroute to a dinner party one night when he glimpsed Hamilton toilng by candlelight in his law office. "I have seen a man who made the fortune of a nation laboring all night to support his family," he said, shocked. After becoming French foreign minister in July 1797, he rejoiced at the plunder placed at his fingertips. "I'll hold the job," he confided to a friend. "I have to make an immense fortune out of it, a really immense fortune. "He proceeded to scoop up an estimated thirteen to fourteen million francs during his first two years as foreign minister."
He demanded bribes from the U.S. delegation, among other conditions for entering negotiations. The three agents he sent to meet with the U.S. delegation were identified in U.S. diplomatic codes as "X", "Y", and "Z". The conditions, including the demand for bribes, created a political firestorm in the U.S., referred to as the "X Y Z Affair."
Ron Chernow. Alexander Hamilton Penguin Press. New York. 2004
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