Fouché, JOSEPH, Duke of Otranto, minister of Police under Napoleon, was born at Nantes, 29th May 1763. Although educated for the church, he hailed the Revolution with extravagant delight; and, on being elected to the National Convention in 1792, attached himself to the extreme party of the Mountain, and voted for the execution of Louis. He was commissioned by the Committee of Public Safety to castigate the obdurate city of Lyons (1794), and in that business rivalled his associates, Collot d'Herbois and Couthon, in cruelty and bloodthirstiness. In 1794 he was expelled from the National Convention as a dangerous Terrorist. Yet in September 1799 he had so far recovered ground that he was appointed minister of Police, a post which he held, though with several interruptions, down to 1815. Having made himself indispensable to Napoleon, whom he materially assisted during the revolution of 18th
Brumaire (5th November 1799), he proceeded to organise a system of police espionage; but this soon grew intolerable to the First Consul, who in 1802 abolished the ministry. In compensation Fouché was nominated senator of Aix, and rewarded with a large sum of money. Yet two years later Napoleon found it necessary to reinstate him in the office. Once more dismissed by the emperor in 1810, Fouché, after a period of flight in Tuscany, received the appointment of governor-general of Laibach and Rome (1813), and then of ambassador at Naples. Once more he was restored to his former post by Napoleon after his return from Elba, but seeing the downfall of the latter to be inevitable, he made terms with the Bourbons. Under Louis XVIII. he retained his position until the king was constrained by the popular voice to dismiss him in September 1815. Appointed ambassador to Dresden, he was there struck in 1816 by the decree of banishment pronounced against the executioners of Louis XVI.; and henceforward he led an exile's life at Prague, Linz, and Trieste, where he died, 25th December 1820. Fouché was a man with one aim only, his own political success. Unscrupulous, yet politic and sagacious, crafty, and fond of intrigue, he made an admirable head of police in the troublous days of Napoleon's reign, and by the firmness and skill which he displayed in the internal government of France, which was left almost entirely in his hands during the emperor's absence on his many campaigns, he was largely instrumental in preserving his country from anarchy. The Mémoires de J. Fouché, published in 4 vols. at Paris in 1828-29, have been declared not genuine by his sons. Nevertheless Fouché is known to have composed mémoires during his last years of banishment.