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410 they contrived the Eighteenth of Brumaire. He had seen from the beginning that Bonaparte had more than a military genius. He felt for monarchy like the Vendéan chief who, when he was asked in whose name he fought, replied, "In the name of the King, that is, of any man who may occupy the throne."

He had found what he wanted, a master worthy of such a minister. By the account which he gives of his own system, his endurance in office during all the ascending years is a prodigy of suppleness. Talleyrand at all times wished to restrict the limits of France to the Rhine. He would have made terms with England by the sacrifice of Malta, and thought us justified in the breach of the peace of Amiens. He regarded Austria as the natural and necessary ally, and would have granted overwhelming compensation, by the partition of Turkey, for her losses in the sphere of French influence. He advised the restoration of Venice, and exposed the folly of surrounding the Empire with a girdle of helpless Bonapartes. On the topics of agreement with Napoleon he does not enlarge, and asserts some merit for sympathy and generosity shown to the vanquished Hohenzollerns. But in his political construction Prussia was the inevitable adversary. He constantly described it as a neighbour on whom there was no reliance, with a barren territory and an open frontier, compelled by nature to be ambitious and aggressive, and to scheme for the subjugation of Germany. ''Tout prétexte lui est bon. Nul scrupule ne l’arrête. La convenance est son droit.'' His encounter at Vienna with the Prussian statesmen, when he got the better of William Humboldt, must have been a prouder moment than when he set up his chancery at Berlin.

From his entrance into office he pursued the policy of secularisation. From Salzburg all round to Liège Europe was covered with ecclesiastical proprietors and potentates, and it was an opportune and congenial resource to suppress them in order to satisfy the princes who had to be consoled for the conquests of Bonaparte. This process of ecclesiastical liquidation was Talleyrand's element. He had destroyed the Church of France as a