Fouquet, NICOLAS

Fouquet, NICOLAS, Viscount of Melun and of Vaux, and Marquis of Belle-Isle, finance minister under Louis XIV. of France, was born at Paris in 1615. Attaching himself closely to Mazarin, he received in 1650 the important appointment of procureur-général to the parliament of Paris, and three years later was advanced to be superintendent of finance. His rapid advance made him ambitious of succeeding Mazarin as first minister, and in order to secure himself friends and a party he distributed money with a lavish hand; but he had a formidable rival in Colbert. Fouquet's plans were, however, brought to nought; for in the first place Louis himself took the reins of power into his own hands when they slipped from the grasp of the dead cardinal, and in the second place, instigated thereto by Colbert, he suddenly arrested Fouquet in September 1661. After a trial extending over three years, Fouquet was sentenced to perpetual exile and the loss of all his property, but the sentence was afterwards altered to life-long imprisonment in the fortress of Pignerol, where he died 23d March 1680. As an example of the extravagance and gorgeous display made by Fouquet, it may be mentioned that shortly before his arrest he entertained the king at a banquet which cost 120,000 livres in his castle of Vaux, erected by him on a plan very similar to that afterwards embodied in the royal palace at Versailles. From the circumstance of his imprisonment at Pignerol, Fouquet, though he died in 1680, has been identified with the Man with the Iron Mask (q.v.; who died in 1703). See Lives by Chéruel (1865), Lair (1890), and Chealcs (1899).