TALLEYRAND-PERIGORD, CHARLES MAURICE DE (1754-1838), French diplomatist and statesman, was born at Paris on Feb. 12 or 13, 1754, the son of lieutenant-general Charles Daniel de Talleyrand-Perigord. His parents, descended from ancient and powerful families, were in constant attendance at the court of Louis XV. In his third or fourth year, while under the care of a nurse in Paris, he fell from a chest of drawers and injured his foot for life. This accident darkened his prospects; for though by the death of his elder brother he should have repre sented the family and entered the army, yet he forfeited the rights of primogeniture, and the profession of arms was thence forth closed to him. At the age of eight he was sent to the College d'Harcourt at Paris, and, at thirteen to St. Sulpice, where he con ceived a dislike of the doctrines and discipline thrust upon him. After a visit to his uncle, the archbishop of Reims, he returned to St. Sulpice to finish his preliminary training for the church, but in his spare time he read the works of Montesquieu, Voltaire and other writers who were beginning to undermine the authority of the ancien regime, both in church and state. As subdeacon he witnessed the coronation of Louis XVI. at Reims, but he did not take priest's orders until four years later. While rejecting the authority of the church in the sphere of dogma and intellect, he observed the proprieties of life, and respected the outward ob servances of religion.
During his life at Paris he frequented the salon of Madame de Geniis, and there formed his ideas in favour of political and social reform. After taking his licentiate in theology in March 1778, he gave little more attention to theological studies. Never theless his ability and his social position gained for him in the year 178o the position of agent-general of the clergy of France. The growing claims of the state on the exchequer of the clergy made his duties responsible. At the extraordinary assembly of the clergy in 1782 he made proposals, by one of which he sought, though in vain, to redress the most glaring grievances of the un derpaid cures. Though the excellence of his work as agent-general in the years 1780-86 was fully acknowledged, yet he did not gain a bishopric until the beginning of the year 1789, probably because the king disliked him as a freethinker. He now became bishop of Autun, and was installed on March 13.
clergy of his diocese as their cahier, or book of instructions to their representative at the States General, namely Talleyrand himself.
His influence in the estate of the clergy, however, was cast against the union of the three estates in a single assembly, and he voted in the minority of his order which in the middle of June opposed the merging of the clergy in the National Assembly. The folly of the court, and the weakness of Louis XVI. at that crisis, probably convinced him that the cause of moderate reform and the framing of a bicameral constitution on the model of that of England were hopeless. Thereafter he inclined more and more to the democratic side, though for the present he concerned him self mainly with financial questions. In the middle of July he was chosen as one of the committee to prepare a draft of a con stitution ; and in the session of the Assembly which Mirabeau termed the orgie of the abolition of privileges (Aug. 4) he inter vened in favour of discrimination and justice. On Oct. Io, that is, four days after the insurrection of women and the transference of the king and court to Paris, he proposed to the Assembly the confiscation of the lands of the church to the service of the nation, but on terms rather less rigorous than those in which Mirabeau (q.v.) carried the proposal into effect on Nov. 2. He identified himself in general with the Left of the Assembly, and supported the proposed Departmental System which replaced the old Provincial System early in 179o. At the federation festival of July 14, 1790 (the "Feast of Pikes") he officiated at the altar reared in the middle of the Champ de Mars. This was his last public celebration of mass. For a brilliantly satirical but not wholly fair reference to the part then played by Talleyrand, the reader should consult Carlyle's French Revolution, vol. ii., bk. i., ch. 12. The course of events harmonized with the anti-clerical views of Talleyrand, and he gradually loosened the ties that bound him to the church. He took little part in, though he probably sympathized with, the debates on the measure known as the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, whereby the state enforced its author ity over the church to the detriment of its allegiance to the pope.