Will Macron Troll Trump in Paris?
"As the French diplomat Talleyrand grew older, his reputation as a master liar and deceiver spread. At the Congress of Vienna, he would spin fabulous stories and make impossible remarks to people who knew he had to be lying. His dishonesty had no purpose except to cloak the moments when he really was deceiving them. One day, for example, among friends, Talleyrand said with apparent sincerity, "In business, one ought to show one's hand." No one who heard him could believe their ears: a man who never once in his life had shown his cards was telling other people to show theirs. Tactics like this made it impossible to distinguish Talleyrand's real deceptions from his fake ones. By embracing his reputation for dishonesty, he preserved his ability to deceive.
When the two men were first getting to know each other, Napoleon once said in passing, "I shall come to lunch at your house one of these days." Talleyrand had a house at Auteuil, in the suburbs of Paris. "I should be delighted," the minister replied, "and since my house is close to the Bois de Boulogne, you will be able to amuse yourself with a bit of shooting in the afternoon."
"I do not like shooting," said Napoleon, "But I love hunting. Are there any boars in Bois de Boulogne?" Napoleon came from Corsica, where boar hunting was a great sport. By asking if there were any boars in a Paris park, he showed himself still a provincial, almost a rube. Talleyrand did not laugh, however, but he could not resist a practical joke on the man who was now his master in politics, although not in blood and nobility. To Napoleon's question, then, he simply replied, "Very few, but I dare say you will manage to find one."
It was arranged that Napoleon would arrive at Talleyrand's house the following day at seven a.m. and would spend the morning there. The 'boar hunt' would take place in the afternoon. Throughout the morning the excited general talked nothing but boar hunting. Meanwhile, Talleyrand secretly sent his servants to the market, to buy two enormous black pigs, and take them to the great park.
After lunch, the hunters and their hounds set off for the Bois de Boulogne. At a secret signal from Talleyrand, the servants loosed one of the pigs. "I see a boar!" Napoleon cried joyfully, jumping onto his horse to give chase. Talleyrand stayed behind. It took half an hour of galloping through the park before the 'boar' was finally captured. At the moment of triumph, however, Napoleon was approached by one of his aides who admitted that this couldn't be a boar, "Sir, you realise of course that this is not a boar but a pig."
Flying into rage, Napoleon immediately set off at a gallop for Talleyrand's house. While Napoleon was very displeased, Talleyrand tried to sooth his ego. He told Napoleon not to go back to Paris yet - he should again go hunting in the park. There were many rabbits there, and hunting them had been a favourite pastime of Louis XVI. Talleyrand even offered to let Napoleon use a set of guns that had once belonged to Louis. With much flattery, he once again got Napoleon to agree to a hunt.
The party left for a park in the late afternoon. Along the way Napoleon told Talleyrand, "I'm not Louis XVI, I surely won't even kill one rabbit." Yet that afternoon, strangely enough, the park was teeming with rabbits. Napoleon killed at least fifty of them, and his mood changed from anger to satisfaction. At the end of his wild shooting spree, however the same aide approached him and whispered in his ear, "To tell the truth Sir, I am beginning to believe that these are not wild rabbits." (He was in fact right, Talleyrand ordered to purchase a dozen of rabbits from the market and let them loose around the park.)
Napoleon immediately mounted his horse and galloped away, this time returning to Paris. He later threatened Talleyrand, warned him not to tell a soul what had happened.
- "48 Laws of Power", Robert Greene
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