establishes power upon an immovable foundation." When sent, however, on one occasion to the department of Aube, and on another to that of Nievre, to quell an insurrection, he effected his purpose without violence. At Nevers he permitted the following inscription to be placed over the gate of a graveyard, "La mort est un sommeil éternel," and on this account Robespierre afterwards accused him of materialism. He returned to Paris, from his mission to Lyons, on the 8th April, 1794, after an absence of nearly eight months. He appeared before the jacobin club, of which he had been president, to answer accusations preferred against him. Robespierre denounced him as a conspirator, and carried against him a decree of expulsion from the club. His arrest was decreed, but he escaped by flight. After the fall of Robespierre on the 28th July, 1794, Fouché was denounced for his participation in the enormities of the jacobins; but having concealed himself for a time, he was permitted by the amnesty of the 26th October, 1795, to return to public life. After having been intrusted with a mission to Italy and to the Spanish frontier in 1797, he was sent in 1798 by the directory as ambassador to the Hague and the Cisalpine republic, and subsequently to that of Batavia. He was, however, recalled to Paris for disobeying instructions, and for a time excluded from public employment. In 1799 he was raised to the office of minister of police, the duties of which his talents, firmness, and activity, so admirably fitted him to discharge. Having supported Bonaparte on his return from Egypt, he was confirmed in this office on the establishment of the consulate, and continued in it until its suppression in September, 1802. The service he rendered to the government in 1801, by frustrating the conspiracy of Arena and Cerrachi, was not forgotten. In July, 1805, the office of minister of police was revived, and committed to the direction of Fouché; and in December of the same year he was created duke of Otranto. His activity and address maintained the tranquillity of the empire while Napoleon I. was occupied in foreign wars; and it was the measures which he took as minister of the exterior that marred the success of the English expedition against Holland in 1809. He fell out of favour, however, for having said in one of his proclamations to the national guards—"Let us prove that Napoleon's presence is not necessary in order to expel our enemies." He was dismissed in June, 1810, but soon afterwards had the offer of being made governor of Rome, provided he would deliver up his correspondence to Napoleon. He refused to do so, and was sent to Aix; he was, however, soon recalled, but, as his views did not coincide with the emperor's, he retired into Provence. In 1813 Napoleon fixed upon Fouché to direct a new government in Berlin, but he declined the offer. The same year he was made governor of the Illyrian provinces, but the progress of the allied troops compelled him to give up his post and retire into Italy. In 1814, while still in the service of Napoleon, he did not scruple to earn the wages of Metternich; and at a secret conference with Murat, he urged the latter to desert Napoleon and join the coalition; and finally, induced Joachim to issue his celebrated proclamation. Fouché was at Paris when Napoleon escaped from Elba, and he accepted the office of minister of police, only on the understanding, however, that England and Austria secretly connived at the emperor's return. He advocated liberal measures during the Hundred Days, and after the battle of Waterloo he earnestly urged the emperor to abdicate. Having been made president of the provisional government, he entered cordially into the plans of the allied powers. By his intrigues he baffled the scheme of Carnot and others to defend Paris. He did not favour the restoration of Louis XVIII.; but from the circumstance that he had a private audience with him, it has been concluded that he proved a traitor to Bonaparte, and contributed to the second return of the Bourbons. Immediately after this event Fouché was reinstated in his office of minister of police, and the same year he was chosen deputy to the national convention, but did not take his seat. He resigned his office in September, 1815, and was afterwards sent as ambassador to Dresden. His advice to grant a general amnesty was not followed, and on the 24th July, 1815, he signed an ordonnance du roi, by which some of the most culpable of those who took part in the execution of Louis XVI. were ordered to be tried for their lives, and the rest banished. He himself was banished on 12th January, 1816. He retired to Prague, thence to Lintz, and lastly to Trieste, where he died 25th December, 1820. His character has been thus summed up by one of his countrymen—"Fouché effected some good, and a great deal of evil." He was treacherous, unprincipled, and unscrupulous. Napoleon knew well his perfidy, but dared not punish him with the death he deserved. The "Memoirs of Fouché," published at Paris in 1824, though declared spurious by his sons, are probably in the main reliable.—W. A. B.
FOUCHER, Paul, born at Tours in 1704; died at Paris in 1778. He early acquired the habit of writing verse, and in a poem on the "Battles of Cats and Rats" imitated Homer's Frogs and Mice. In 1753 he became member of the Academy of Inscriptions, and published in their Transactions a series of papers on the Religion of the Persians. Many of his speculations on the subject were disproved by Anquetil du Perron's translation of the Zend Avesta. A series of papers of his on the religion of the Greeks is of less value. He was about to publish a history of the house of Tremouille, when apoplexy carried him off.—J. A., D.
FOUCHER, Simon, was born in 1644 at Dijon in Burgundy, and died at Paris in 1696. He is called by Baillet "the restorer of the academic philosophy." Among the most important of his dissertations, published between the years 1673 and 1693, are—"A Treatise on the Wisdom of the Ancients," "A Letter on the Morality of Confucius," and "A Treatise on Hygrometers, or instruments for ascertaining the dryness or humidity of the atmosphere."—T. J.
* FOUCHER, Victor-Adrien, an eminent French magistrate, was born at Paris of an ancient family of Anjou, June 1, 1802. He has filled many offices, and always with credit, in the administration of justice. He was at one time director-general of civil affairs in Algeria, and in that capacity showed himself much superior to the routine habits and prejudices of his profession. Foucher was also remarkably useful in maintaining order in some of the critical periods in the recent history of his country. He declined in 1849 an under-secretaryship of state, chosing rather to devote his attention to the business of the justiciary court. Foucher is the author of a great number of works, chiefly on professional subjects.—R. M., A.
FOUCHER DE CHARTRES (Fulcherius Carnotensis), a French historian, born at Chartres in 1059, and died in 1127. Foucher was a priest, and followed Stephen, count of Blois and Chartres, and Robert, duke of Normandy, to Palestine, where he was appointed chaplain to Baldwin. He died at Jerusalem. His "History of Jerusalem" comes down to the period of his own death.—R. M., A.
FOUCHER D'OBSONVILLE, a French traveller and naturalist, was born at Montargis in 1734, and died near Chateau-Thierry in 1802. In 1753 he left his country in the hope of making his fortune in the East Indies. Travelling by the overland route, he experienced many perils and hardships in Western Asia. He at length reached India, in which country he travelled largely and made many interesting and valuable observations. After his return home, which was also full of danger and adventure, he extended the notes he had made during his travels, and published them under the title of "Essais Philosophiques sur les mœurs de divers animaux, avec des observations relatives aux principes et usages de plusieurs peuples," &c., 1783.—R. M., A.
FOUCQUET. See Fouquet.
* FOULD, Achille, a French political and financial notability, was born in Paris on the 31st of October, 1800, the son of a rich Jewish banker who died in 1855. Educated at the Lycée Charlemagne, he entered his father's establishment, but diversified his early pursuit of business by amateur-study of the fine arts, and by travel, domestic and foreign. Previously a member of the council-general of the Hautes Pyrenées, he was returned in 1842 to the chamber of deputies, as deputy for Tarbès, the chief town of this department. In the chamber, M. Fould spoke exclusively on questions of finance, commerce, and political economy, and was a staunch supporter of the policy of M. Guizot. After the revolution of 1848, he gave the provisional government the benefit of his advice; but, finding himself overruled, withdrew from their councils, publishing in the May of the year a pamphlet entitled "Observations sur la situation financière," in which he strongly condemned the financial measures of the new régime. A member of the constituent and legislative assemblies (in the latter as one of the deputies for the metropolitan department of the Seine), M. Fould exhibited strongly conservative tendencies, and several times held the portfolio of finance in the ministries of the prince-president, now emperor of the French. As minister of finance, M. Fould distinguished himself by many useful reforms of detail, and
