Joseph Fouché

Joseph Fouché (1759-1820), French statesman, known as the father of modern political espionage. He was born on May 21, 1759, near Nantes. Trained for the priesthood, he never took orders, instead becoming a teacher.

During the French Revolution, Fouché turned to politics. He was elected to the National Convention in 1792, and in 1793 he voted with the extremist majority, the Jacobins, for the execution of King Louis XVI. Later, as the convention's representative in Lyon, he suppressed counterrevolutionary opposition in the city with unparalleled ferocity, executing more than 1600 persons. In 1794 Maximilien de Robespierre, then the head of the revolutionary government, denounced Fouché for his terroristic excesses. Fearing arrest, Fouché secured his own election as president of the Jacobin Club. Plot and counterplot followed, ending in the overthrow (July 27, 1794, or the 9th Thermidor by the revolutionary calendar) and execution of Robespierre.

In 1799 Fouché became minister of police of the French republic. Informed of the plan of Napoleon to seize power, Fouché neither restrained nor aided the conspirators. Upon the success of Napoleon's coup d'etat of November 9, 1799 (the 18th Brumaire), Fouché sided with the victor.

As Napoleon's minister of police, Fouché perfected the first modern system of secret police and political espionage. He was granted a senatorship and a large pension and in 1809 was made duc d'Otrante. In 1809 Fouché became minister of the interior. Exceeding his authority, he mobilized an army to repel a British invasion in the Netherlands. He then entered into surreptitious peace negotiations with the British. When his activities were discovered in 1810, he was dismissed from his post. He was later made governor of the Illyrian provinces that France had acquired from Austria in 1809. After Napoleon's abdication in 1814, Fouché, finding no favor with King Louis XVIII, intrigued against him. On Napoleon's return from exile in Elba, Fouché again became minister of police. Soon, however, he began to intrigue against Napoleon with the Austrian foreign minister, Prince Klemens von Metternich. After Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, Fouché himself received Napoleon's abdication and then became head of the provisional government of France. Louis XVIII made him minister of police for a few months in 1815, but ultraroyalists soon forced him to resign. Exiled as a regicide in 1816 (for his part in the execution of Louis XVI), Fouché lived in Prague and other cities. Before his death in Trieste on December 25, 1820, he burned all his papers except his memoirs.