Word: talleyrand
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Like Hitler, Napoleon created "a great panic" in Europe, started "intercontinental terrors" all over the globe. The way to check this panic, Historian Ferrero believes, was discovered by French Foreign Minister Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, and "the way out" was achieved with the sometimes reluctant help of Tsar Alexander I of Russia and Louis XVIII of France...
This book is therefore a sensational re-evaluation of the great Talleyrand, whose name is almost a synonym for villainy, as the "most constructive force" of the 19th Century...
...Talleyrand. The man who ended the terror, says Ferrero, was Talleyrand. His life reflected the chaos of the time. An unwilling youth, he had been forced into the Church. He retaliated by practising such public debauchery that when his dying father begged Louis XVI to give Talleyrand a bishopric, his mother begged the King "not to disgrace the Church with such a bishop." One month after becoming bishop of Autun, Talleyrand left the Church, joined the Revolution, initiated a bill to strip the Church of all its property in France. Says Ferrero: "The rebellious prisoner had taken advantage...
...heaven": the $500,000, 21-room Tudor mansion once the property of Manhattan Realtor Leo S. Bing, in wealthy Tarrytown, N. Y. Assessed at $169,000, last sold for $27,000, Divine got it for $36,000, will enjoy as one of his nearest neighbors the Duchesse de Talleyrand, formerly Anna Gould, who was reported "pretty angry...