In brief, this disinherited noble, this unfrocked priest, this disenchanted Liberal, was the complete expression of the inimitable society of the old _regime_, when quickened intellectually by Voltaire and dulled by the Terror.

After doing much to destroy the old society, he was now to take a prominent share in its reconstruction on a modern basis.[87] Such was the man who now commenced his chief life-work, the task of guiding Napoleon.

"The mere name of Bonaparte is an aid which ought to smooth away all my difficulties"-- these were the obsequious terms in which he began his correspondence with the great general.

In reality, he distrusted him; but whether from diffidence, or from the weakness of his own position, which as yet was little more than that of the head clerk of his department, he did nothing to assert the predominance of civil over military influence in the negotiations now proceeding.
Two months before Talleyrand accepted office, Bonaparte had enlarged his original demands on Austria, and claimed for France the whole of the lands on the left or west bank of the Rhine, and for the Cisalpine Republic all the territory up to the River Adige.

To these demands the Court of Vienna offered a tenacious resistance which greatly irritated him.