Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/520

488 F U F O U from the long wars and the shameless greed of courtiers and officials ; and it is stated that Fouquet for a time provided the means of meeting the expenses of the state out of his own fortune or by loans obtained on his own credit. He had long been in the confidence of the first minister, Cardinal Mazarin, and was his zealous instrument. But soon after the marriage of Louis XIV. a quarrel broke out between them, and thenceforth each was bent on injuring the other. The increasing deficit in the treasury alarmed the king ; inquiries were addressed to Colbert, who was secretly ambitious of succeeding Fouquet as minister of finance, and he consequently made the worst of the case against Fouquet. The extravagant expenditure and personal display of the superintendent served to in tensify the ill-will of the king. Fouquet had bought the port of Belle-Isle, and strengthened its fortifications, with a view to taking refuge there in case of disgrace. He had spent enormous sums in building a palace on his estate of Vaux, which in its extent, magnificence, and splendour of decoration, was almost a forecast of Versailles. He had cherished the hope of succeeding Mazarin as first minister, and had even made advances to Mademoiselle de la Valliere. In August 1661 he entertained the king at his palace of Vaux, giving him a fete unrivalled for magnificence, at which Les FdrJieux of Moliere was for the first time produced. But the king could not be appeased. By crafty devices Fouquet had been induced to sell his office of procureur-general, thus losing the protection of its privi leges, and he had paid the price of it into the treasury. The king, however, was only prevented from arresting him at the fete by the pleading of the queen mother. He dissembled for a short time, and the arrest was made about three weeks later at Nantes. Fouquet, after several re movals from prison to prison, was sent to the Bastille. His trial extended over several years, and excited the deepest interest. In 1664 he was condemned and sentenced to perpetual exile and confiscation of his property. The sentence, however, was commuted into one of imprison ment for life in the fortress of Pignerol. He bore his fate with manly fortitude, and composed in prison several devotional works. He died at Pignerol, March 23, 1680. The report of his trial was published in Holland, in 15 vols., in 1665-1667, in spite of the remonstrances which Colbert addressed to the states-general. A second edition, under the title of (Euvres de M. Fouquet, appeared in 1696. FOUQUIER-TINVILLE, AXTOINE QUENTIN (1747- 1795), was born at H^rouel, a village in the department of the Aisne. Originally a procureur (attorney) attached to the chatelet jurisdiction at Paris, he is said to have been driven by his debts to accept a humble employment under the lieutenant-general de police. When the Revolution broke out he was, as the friend of Danton and Robespierre, appointed public prosecutor to the revolutionary tribunal of Paris, and discharged this office with the most unim- passioned rigour from the 10th of March 1793 to the 28th of July 1794. He dealt as pitilessly with his friends as with his enemies, if only they were charged by the committee of public safety. He sent to the guillotine his protector Danton, just as he had sent Vergniaud and the Girondists. He was not an eloquent speaker, but main tained his accusations with an obstinacy so . cold, convinc ing, and pressing that he never failed to obtain from the judges the sentence of capital punishment, which he always claimed. Although it seems that he had been somewhat unscrupulous in the earlier part of his career, he was, during the period of his bloody mission, inaccessible to bribery ; and, having accepted it as his business to provide the guillotine with a constant supply of victims, he might well boast of faithfulness in its discharge. And this he actually did in the pamphlet that he published in his own defence, when he had been imprisoned by order of the convention (August 1, 1794), on the motion of Freron, whose hands had been as deeply imbrued in blood as those of Fouquier. But the men then in power wielded the terrors of the law in a spirit of revenge that made them as unsparing as Robespierre and his companions had been. After a trial which lasted forty-one days, Fouquier- Tinville was in his turn sent to the scaffold, on the 8th of May 1795. See Memoire pour A. Q. Fouquier, ex-accusateur public pres le tribunal r&colutionnaire tiabli a Paris, et rfndu volontaircmcnt a la Coiicicrgerie le jour du decret qui ordonne son arrestation, Paris, 1794, 4to ; A. J. T. Bonnemain, Les Chemises rouges, ou meinoires pour scrvir a I histoire du regnc dcs anarchistcs, Paris, 1799, 2 vols. 8vo ; Ch. Berriat-Saint-Prix, La Justice revolution- naire a Paris, Bordeaux, Brest, Lyon, Nantes, etc., Paris, 1861, 18mo ; E. Campardon, Histoire du Tribunal revolutionnaire de Paris, Paris, 1861, 2 vols. 18mo (the 2d edition, Paris, 1866, 2 vols. 8vo, has a slightly altered title, Tribunal revolutionnaire da Paris) ; Mortimer-Ternaux, Histoire de la Terreur d apres les docu ments authentiqucs ctdes pieces ineditcs, Paris, 1861, &c., 8 vols. 8vo. FOURCHAMBAULT, a town of France in the depart ment of Nievre, on the right bank of the Loire, with a station on the railway about 5 miles S.E. of Nevers. It owes its importance to its extensive iron-works, which were established in 1821 by MM. Boignes, and give employment to from 2000 to 5000 workmen. Among the more remark able chefs d ceuvre which have been produced at Fourcham- bault are the metal portions of the Pont du Carrousal, some of the bronzes of the Colonne du Juillet, the frame work of the cathedral at Chartres, and the vast spans of the bridge over the Dordogne at Cubzac. The population of the town in 1871 was 5835, and of the commune 6054. FOURCROY, ANTOINE FRANCOIS, COMTE DE (1755- 1809), a celebrated chemist, son of an apothecary in the household of the duke of Orleans, was born at Paris, June 15, 1755. Some of his ancestors had been distin guished at the bar, but the branch of the family to which he belonged had become greatly reduced in circumstances. At the age of fourteen Fourcroy left the college at Harcourt, where he had profited but little by the instruction of a harsh teacher. Deterred by the ill-success of a friend from going upon the stage, he for two years maintained himself as a copyist and writing-master ; he then, in con sequence of unjust treatment there received, left the office of his employer. At this juncture, Vicq d Azyr, who having boarded at his home had become acquainted with the young man s talents, encouraged him to enter upon a medical career. ,We accordingly now behold Fourcroy a poor and hard-working student of medicine, his lodging a garret, in the middle only of which was it possible to stand upright, and his near neighbour a water-carrier, to whose family of twelve he acted as physician, receiving for his services a good supply of water. To support himself he gave lessons to other students, and made translations for a bookseller, who, 30 years later, when Fourcroy had become director-general of public instruction, conscientiously offered to make up for the meagreness of his former remuneration. In 1777, under the auspices of the Soci(! t<j Royale de Me decine, appeared Fourcroy s first publica tion, Essai sur les Maladies des Artisans, the translation of a Latin work by Ramazzini, with notes and additions. At length Fourcroy, who was recognized as the most successful alumnus of the Parisian medical school, became an applicant for a gratuitous degree and licence, provision for the granting of which to the best deserving poor student had been made by the bequest of a Dr Diest. It so happened that the faculty of physic at Paris entertained feelings of the most jealous enmity against the newly- founded Societd Royale de Me decine, of which Vicq d Azyr was perpetual secretary, and to humiliate him, and in him the whole society, it rejected his prote ge Fourcroy.