ABSTRACT
Charles Maurice Prince de Talleyrand was one of the most able and gifted diplomats in the nineteenth century but was incapable of loyalty to any one regime. He, therefore, and entirely for personal reasons, betrayed his own class, institutions and various regimes one after the other. Napoleon Bonaparte was certainly one of the first to propagate the image of a Talleyrand 'always in a state of treason'. Anglo-Saxon historians have been more indulgent in their treatment of Talleyrand, but many of the myths perpetuated by the French have persisted right up to the present time. Talleyrand thus helped bring down governments by manipulation and intrigue rather than by making a clear ideological/political stance for or against a regime. The most striking thing about Talleyrand was that he was a political survivor, never very far from the centre of power, sometimes wielding it, and on occasion helping determine the political future of France and even Europe.
