Titans of History (38 page)

c.
1743–1803

The Spartacus … whose destiny it was to avenge the wrongs committed on his race
.

Comte de Lavaux, the French governor-general of Saint-Domingue, describing Toussaint

Toussaint Louverture was the founding father of Haiti. A plantation slave himself, he won his own freedom and went on to help emancipate hundreds of thousands of others and to found the world's first black state. He was a skillful politician and general who led the Haitian revolution from the early 1790s and drove the mighty European powers of France, Spain and Britain out of Haiti. Though at times his enemies found him harsh and uncompromising, he left behind a nation free from slavery and transformed by his enlightened leadership.

Toussaint once said, “I was born a slave, but nature gave me a soul of a free man.” His early years demonstrated this perfectly. He was born François Dominique Toussaint to a father who had been shipped by French slave traders to Saint-Domingue (the French colony, later called Haiti, occupying the western third of the island of Hispaniola). Toussaint rose swiftly through the ranks of service under his owner, the Comte de Bréda. Naturally intelligent and fortunate enough to acquire a basic education in French and Latin, he rejected the voodoo beliefs of many of his fellow slaves and remained an ardent Catholic all his life. By 1777 he had served as a livestock handler, healer and coachman, finally
becoming Bréda's plantation steward, a post normally reserved for a white man.

Toussaint won his freedom at the age of thirty-four and thereafter farmed a plot of fifteen acres with thirteen slaves of his own. The first uprising of the Haitian revolution broke out under the mulatto reformer Vincent Ogé in 1790, but Toussaint took no part. In August 1791 another revolt erupted as thousands of black slaves across Saint-Domingue rose in rebellion. Toussaint realized that this larger rising could not be ignored. After helping Bréda's family to escape and sending his own family to safety on the Spanish side of the island, he joined the rebel ranks.

There were more than half a million slaves on Saint-Domingue, compared to just 32,000 European colonists and 24,000
affranchis
(freed mulattoes and blacks). Although the black army was a ragtag and ill-equipped bunch, their superior numbers and Toussaint's brilliant drilling in guerrilla tactics soon told. He gained the surname Louverture in recognition of his brilliant generalship (
l'ouverture
being “the opening” or, in military terms, “the breakthrough”).

In 1793 war broke out between France and Spain. By this time Toussaint was a major figure in the black Haitian army. His leadership was widely admired and he had attracted talented allies such as Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henry Christophe, both future leaders of Haiti. Toussaint joined the Spanish and served with distinction in a series of engagements.

The following year the pressure told on the French and the revolutionary government in Paris declared an end to slavery. In what has been seen by some as an underhand about-turn against his former allies, Toussaint abandoned the Spanish and declared his new allegiance to France. The French governor of Saint-Domingue, the Comte de Lavaux, appointed him lieutenant-governor and the Spanish were expelled.

By 1795 Toussaint was widely seen as a hero. The freed blacks adored him, while the whites and mulattoes respected his hard but fair line on the economy, in which he allowed the return of émigré planters and used military discipline to force idlers to work. Favoring racial reconciliation between blacks and whites, he held the firm belief that—despite their history of oppression, enslavement and persecution—his country's blacks could learn valuable lessons from white people. His personal popularity and political shrewdness allowed him to outlast a succession of French governors.

His political cunning was in evidence in 1798–9, when after a series of secret negotiations Toussaint negotiated a British withdrawal from Haiti. The political settlement allowed Toussaint to sell sugar and buy arms and goods. He undertook not to invade British territories such as Jamaica but rejected their offer of conferring on him the title king of Haiti—all his life he maintained that he was a true French citizen.

In 1801 Toussaint invaded the Spanish side of Hispaniola, overrunning the entire island, freeing the Spanish slaves and surprising the defeated nonblacks with his magnanimity in victory. He declared himself governor-general and strove to convince Napoleon of his loyalty.

Napoleon, however, was not to be convinced. He considered Toussaint an obstacle to the profitability of Haiti and an affront to the honor of France. In December 1801 Napoleon sent a powerful invading force under his brother-in-law General Charles Leclerc (accompanied by Napoleon's nymphomaniacal sister Pauline) to depose Toussaint.

Months of heavy fighting ended in May 1802, when Toussaint agreed to lay down his arms and retire to his farm. But he was not allowed to remain in his beloved country. He and his family were arrested and Toussaint was taken in a warship to France,
where he was transferred in August to Fort-de-Joux in the Alps. Heartbroken and alone in a tiny dungeon, he wrote letters begging Napoleon for a fair trial. Napoleon never answered, and Toussaint died of pneumonia in 1803. It was a sad end to a great life, but his legacy—the Free Black Republic of Haiti—lived on.

1754–1838

It seems to me that one will do him no injustice in accepting him for what he claimed to be: the type, the representative, of the times in which he lived. But, good God! What times!

Baron de Vitrolles

Talleyrand was the undisputed grand master of diplomacy. Undeniably venal, sexually promiscuous, supposedly amoral in character and capable of ruthlessness in pursuit of his goals, but also charming and witty, Talleyrand was surprisingly consistent in his views. A champion of tolerance and liberalism, in government he advocated an English-style constitutional monarchy, in international affairs a balance of power and the rule of law. He remained all his life a dedicated enemy of power that was founded on conquest and force.

Born into an ancient noble family, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord was destined for the Church as a result of a “dislocated foot,” a disability that also prompted his parents to effectively disinherit him in favor of his younger brother. Talleyrand learned early on that charm and wiliness could more than compensate for his club foot.

Talleyrand seemed able to flourish in every circumstance. As the successful, if supremely decadent, bishop of Autun, during the last years of Louis XVI (1754–93), he argued vigorously for the Church's privileges yet became the revolutionary clergyman who equally enthusiastically dismantled them. He was always a moderate. Through a timely departure abroad on diplomatic affairs (1792), he escaped the guillotine's worst excesses, living in England and America. On returning to a less bloodthirsty France in 1796, he managed to refute charges of counter-revolutionary behavior, became foreign minister (1797) and struck up an alliance with the rising General Napoleon Bonaparte, organizing his seizure of power. As foreign minister, Talleyrand went on to help design Napoleon's rise to the position of emperor of the French, serving as his grand chamberlain and becoming prince of Benevento. He played his part in some of Napoleon's excesses—notably the kidnapping and execution of the duke of Enghien and the disastrous Spanish adventure—but he grasped quickly that Napoleon's ambitions had become despotic and self-serving. Talleyrand, humiliated by the emperor who described him as “excrement in a silk stocking,” now worked to undermine him.

Above all, in an age dominated by war, Talleyrand wanted to secure peace and stability in Europe, even if the means involved mendacity and secret intrigues. At the 1808 Congress of Erfurt he secretly persuaded Russia to oppose Napoleon's European designs and henceforth helped Tsar Alexander I to overthrow Napoleon. (Talleyrand was also acting as matchmaker for Napoleon, brokering his marriage to Marie-Louise of Austria and securing a religious settlement with the pope.) On Napoleon's fall in 1814, Talleyrand supervised the capitulation of Paris, welcoming the conquering Alexander into his house, fostering the restoration of the Bourbon King Louis XVIII and forming a liberal ministry as premier.

Talleyrand's most audacious diplomacy, though, resulted in the
1815 Treaty of Vienna. Roundly defeated, and viewed in Europe as hopelessly aggressive and regicidal, France faced partition by the victorious allies. Talleyrand managed to gain France a place at the table and then fracture the anti-French alliance. The resulting treaty restored France to her 1792 borders, with no reparations to pay, effectively still a great power.

After Napoleon's brief resurgence and defeat at Waterloo in 1815, Talleyrand, now a prince, again became prime minister, advocating a liberal monarchy on the English model. Forced out by ultra-royalists, he remained a respected grandee until another revolution overturned the stubborn Bourbons in 1830. He then returned in triumph under the July Monarchy of King Louis-Philippe to become ambassador to London in 1830, the glorious culmination of a diplomatic career of over forty years.

A survivor through several, radically different regimes, Talleyrand nevertheless remained in some ways a defiant symbol of a way of life that had disappeared. “No one who has not lived under the Ancien Régime,” he once murmured, “will know how sweet life can be.” But those living in the France of Napoleon and the restored Bourbons who attended Talleyrand's daily semi-public
lever
—the last of its kind—were given a startling glimpse of the extraordinary pomp and precision of this vanished world.

Talleyrand devoted the first two hours of every morning to his
lever
—the serious business of rising. Like the monarchs of pre-revolutionary France, permanently surrounded by a horde of courtiers and onlookers watching and assisting his every move, Talleyrand made getting dressed a public event. His rooms were open to all who wished to attend—provided they were amusing, or at least furnished with up-to-date news and gossip.

Talleyrand's
lever
was an incomparable opportunity for networking and the exchange of information and repartee. Statesmen and society ladies, doctors, academics, financiers, on
occasion the tsar of Russia, all were regular visitors to the prince's apartments. As 11 o'clock approached and men and women of all ages intrigued and debated the events of the day, Talleyrand limped into the room swathed in white flannel and nightcap, a mummified figure who slept in a bed with a deep hollow because he was terrified of falling out of it.

The elderly Courtiade, the most famous valet of the age, directed proceedings. Two junior valets dressed Talleyrand's long gray hair as he sat in a chair by the fire. A sponge in a silver bowl was brought to him. After he had wiped his face, Talleyrand's hat was immediately set upon his pomade-drenched locks.

The man who kept the best table in France confined himself to a breakfast of a single cup of chamomile tea, followed by two cups of warm water which he inhaled through his nostrils and expelled through his mouth.

Dressed from the neck up, the seated figure then had his legs unwrapped. The “dislocated foot” about which Talleyrand was so sensitive was unashamedly revealed; his long, flat left foot and the stunted, gnarled right one were washed and dried. Pursued by his valets as he then meandered around the room, signing letters, listening to newspaper articles and issuing a stream of his famously understated
bon mots
, Talleyrand was unswaddled and helped into an array of clothes that were almost equally bulky.

Two hours after he had first limped into the room, Talleyrand, clad in a mass of cravats and waistcoats and several pairs of stockings, allowed his valets to add the finishing touch: his breeches. Fully dressed, his paperwork done, gossip exchanged, filled in on the news of the day, Talleyrand was ready to face the world.

Talleyrand lived lavishly, courted bribes (offending the rather more correct American diplomats) and was exuberantly promiscuous, fathering at least four illegitimate children. He married a disreputable courtesan, enjoyed many affairs with an army of beauteous
mistresses and his last love was his own niece, the duchess of Dino. When asked if he believed in Platonic friendship with women, he replied “After; but not before.” But his principles were consistent. A co-author of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, he was a son of the Enlightenment who had praised its ideals since his seminary youth. His faith in a constitutional monarchy drove him to support the candidate who seemed most likely to secure it. This necessitated chameleon-like changes of alliance in the turbulence of revolutionary France and brought accusations of opportunistic treachery. When Talleyrand called brie the “king of cheeses,” a contemporary remarked that it was the only king that he had never betrayed! But he was hardly unique in his dissimulation. “Treason,” he said, “is just a matter of dates.”

Diplomatic to the last, on his deathbed Talleyrand was reconciled with the Church and received the last sacraments.

1756–1791

I cannot write about Mozart. I can only worship him
.

Richard Strauss

Born in Salzburg, Austria, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was the epitome of genius, a child prodigy who went on to become one of the most brilliant composers in the history of Western classical music. Leaping from one musical genre to the next, in his short life Mozart composed some of the greatest and most melodic compositions of all time.

As a child virtuoso on the keyboard Mozart was the musical wonder of his age, touring Europe's capitals and courts with his sister Nannerl under the direction of their father, Leopold, himself a musician who was quick to recognize his children's precocious talents. As both a fond parent and an assiduous publicist, Leopold dressed his children in the latest fashions and airily reported that: “We keep company only with aristocrats and other distinguished persons.” Wolfgang began composing at the age of five, was a seasoned performer at seven, and had written his first symphony by eight. Of Mozart's early compositions, Leopold wrote with satisfaction, “Imagine the noise these sonatas will make in the world when it says on the title page that they are the work of a child of seven.”