Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, 1st Prince of Benevento, or later1st Prince of Talleyrand, 1754-1838, Buried in Notre-Dame Chapel near his Castle of Valençay.
Quote: Too much sensibility creates unhappiness and too much insensibility creates crime.
Education: University of Paris, Lycée Saint-Louis
He was a laicized or (dismissed from the clerical state) In addition, while still a seminarian, he took his first mistress. After theology studies, he became in 1780 Agent-General of the Clergy and represented the Catholic Church to the French Crown and was noted for his capacity for political survival and eventually became the French bishop, politician, and diplomat and who held high office during the French Revolution under Napoleon and he had annulled his marriage to the Empress Joséphine, Talleyrand played a part in arranging the Emperor’s marriage with Marie-Louise of Austria, in the hope that this union would modify Napoleon’s ambition which eventually produces Napoleon the second the Duke of Reichstadt
at the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, and under King Louis-Philippe
As ambassador to London, from 1830 to 1834, he played a vital part in the negotiations between France and Great Britain that resulted in the creation of a neutral kingdom of Belgium. His diplomatic career was crowned by the signing of an alliance between France, Great Britain, Spain, and Portugal in April 1834.
Today, when speaking of the art of diplomacy, the phrase “he is a Talleyrand” is used to describe a statesman of great resourcefulness and craft.
His children, Adelaide Filleul, Marquise de Souza-Botelho, Mysterious Charlotte who he adopted at the age of five.
Talleyrand had a reputation as a voluptuary and a womanizer. He left no legitimate children, though he may have fathered illegitimate ones. Four possible children of his have been identified: Charles Joseph, Comte de Flahaut, generally accepted to be an illegitimate son of Talleyrand and the painter Eugène Delacroix, once rumoured to be Talleyrand’s son, though this is doubted by historians who have examined the issue (for example, Léon Noël, French ambassador); the “Mysterious Charlotte”, possibly his daughter by his future wife, Catherine Worlée Grand; and Pauline, ostensibly the daughter of the Duke and Duchess Dino. Of these four, only the first is given credence by historians.
However, the French historian Emmanuel de Waresquiel has lately given much credibility to the father-daughter link between Talleyrand and Pauline who he referred to as “my dear Minette”.
Described by biographer Philip Ziegler as a “pattern of subtlety and finesse” and a “creature of grandeur and guile”, Talleyrand was a great conversationalist, gourmet, and wine connoisseur.
From 1801 to 1804, he owned Château Haut-Brion in Bordeaux. He employed the renowned French chef Carême, one of the first celebrity chefs known as the “chef of kings and king of chefs”, and was said to have spent an hour every day with him.
His Paris residence on the Place de la Concorde, acquired in 1812 and sold to James Mayer de Rothschild in 1838, is now owned by the Embassy of the United States.
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