He was sent to England in February 1792 as an envoy by the French Government, with the idea of reconciling the British Sovereign and his Ministers to the revolutionary changes being then carried out in France. He did not, however, inspire any confidence in either George III. or Pitt, with whom he had several interviews. He returned privately to London in December 1792, and three months later was accused of conspiring against the Republic. He continued to remain in England until the death of Louis XVI., when, finding his position intolerable, owing to the indignation the death of the King excited against all supposed revolutionaries, he departed to America, where he remained until his sentence of banishment from France was revoked in 1795. He did not arrive in France till the following year; he was accompanied by the then notorious Mdme. Grand, with whom he cohabited for a considerable time before he married her. She was the divorced wife of a merchant at Calcutta, and had created a considerable scandal in India owing to her intrigue with Sir Philip Francis, the enemy of Warren Hastings, and reputed author of the _Junius Letters_. Talleyrand reached Paris, March 1796. In 1797, by the influence of Barras, and notwithstanding the opposition of Carnot (who was probably the only sincere and disinterested member of the Directorate), Talleyrand was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs. He took a considerable part in the _coup d’état_ of 18th Fructidor (September 4, 1797), by which the Directorate re-established, in the name of liberty, most of the tyrannical excesses of the Convention. He had already discovered the extraordinary genius of Bonaparte, and from that time until the fall of the Empire was more or less attached to the fortunes of the then youthful hero. It was Talleyrand who drew up the treaty of Campo-Formio (October 17, 1794), which Talleyrand and Bonaparte concluded in direct opposition to the desires of the Directorate. Talleyrand first suggested to Bonaparte the idea of an expedition to Egypt, in lieu of that invasion of England which was then the favourite scheme of the French Government. Bonaparte endeavoured to persuade Talleyrand to accompany him to Egypt; but this he refused, and remained in Paris during the Egyptian and Syrian campaigns, carrying out unchecked his ingenious and tortuous foreign policy. He it was who brought about the occupation of the Papal States by the French, and the imprisonment and capture of the Pope (_see_ Pius VI.), and he also caused the destruction of the Swiss Republic, on the ground that its government was not sufficiently democratic. By diplomatic ruses and threatened violence he extorted an act of abdication from Charles Emmanuel, King of Sardinia, December 9, 1798.