M. de Talleyrand declared, in his speech, that he had had "the misfortune to displease "Bonaparte" by unveiling the future to him, by revealing to him all the dangers which were about to arise from an act of aggression which was as unjust as it was reckless." Let M. de Talleyrand console himself in his grave: he did not have that misfortune; he must not add that calamity to all the afflictions of his life. [Sidenote: Talleyrand's diplomatic errors.] M. de Talleyrand's principal mistake as against the Legitimacy was that he deterred Louis XVIII. from concluding the proposed marriage between the Duc de Berry and a Russian Princess[376]; M. de Talleyrand's unpardonable mistake as against France was that he consented to the revolting Treaties of Vienna. The result of M. de Talleyrand's negociations is that we are left without frontiers: a battle lost at Metz or Coblentz would bring the enemy's cavalry under the walls of Paris in a week. Under the Old Monarchy, not only was France enclosed within a circle of fortresses, but she was defended on the Rhine by the independent States of Germany. It was necessary to invade the electorates or negociate with them in order to reach us. On another frontier stood Switzerland, a neutral and free country; she had no roads; no one would violate her territory. The Pyrenees were impassable, guarded as they were by the Spanish Bourbons. That is what M. de Talleyrand failed to understand; those are the mistakes which will for ever condemn him as a politician: mistakes which, in one day, deprived us of the work of Louis XIV. and the victories of Napoleon. It has been contended that his policy was superior to Napoleon's: in the first place, we must well bear in mind that a man is purely and simply a clerk, when he holds the portfolio of a conqueror who every morning puts into it the bulletin of a victory that changes the geography of States. When Napoleon had once become inebriated, he made mistakes so enormous as to strike every eye: M. de Talleyrand probably perceived them, like everybody else; but that points to no lynx-like vision. He compromised himself in a strange fashion in the catastrophe of the Duc d'Enghien; he was mistaken about the Spanish War of 1808, although he tried, later, to disown his advice and take back his words.