by Alan Schom
It was typical of Fouché and a clear warning to the people of the new Police Minister’s concept of his office and what to expect. France had been threatened by émigrés abroad and Jacobins and royalists at home; he, Fouché, would protect the country. That meant taking stern measures.
“The police, such as I perceive it, must be established to anticipate and prevent crimes in order to contain and stop even that which has not yet been foreseen by the present laws,”[439] Fouché warned. This was hardly calming or reassuring, echoing as it did the mentality witnessed in the blackest days of the Revolution. He literally expected to act unhindered extrajudicially and with the blessing of First Consul Bonaparte. He could execute a dictatorial policy of harsh “preventive measures” if he merely suspected certain individuals, for instance, of being guilty of acting against the state (while lacking any solid evidence to that effect). As for humane treatment and general respect for the principles of humanity being flaunted — yet flagrantly defied — by the Revolution, Fouché considered that issue as well. “None of the measures that the public well-being now necessitates requires inhumane treatment” of suspects and prisoners, he assured the citizenry. “Nevertheless, humane action remains a virtue only so long as it does not conflict with the public interest, and this interest is ultimately the sole motive that might justify taking extraordinary precautions in imprisoning certain individuals.”[440] No one dared to ask who defined what consituted a “conflict with the public interest.”
Several months after taking office, Fouché reported to the first consul:
It is possible, it is even true no doubt, that a few enemies of our liberty and laws are still at large, hiding in France. But they will hardly be in a position to act with impunity in any concerted effort. We have all their movements, words, acts, and most secret plans under the closest scrutiny, preparatory to penetrating their groups and arresting them. Every means of surveillance is available to the police, whose love for our nation renders this surveillance and its enforcement more sweeping, faster, and more infallible.[441]
What powerful words, reflecting equally powerful action, in this proclamation of new police policy. What a transformation from the schoolmaster, what a development from the science enthusiast launching montgolfières to launching spies and filling the nation’s prisons with “enemies of the state.” What sort of individual created the most ruthlessly efficient police system that Europe had ever known? Who indeed was Joseph Fouché?
Chapter Seventeen – Fouché the Man
‘A heart as hard as a diamond, a stomach of iron and a tearless eye.’
Talleyrand on Fouché
Tall, thin, hollow-chested, slightly stoop-shouldered, with thin reddish-blond hair, a pale — indeed colorless — unhandsome face, as expressionless and dead as his watery gray eyes, his thin-drawn bloodless lips rarely emitting more than an occasional caustic sentence or order, completed by a cold, aloof, forbidding bearing — this was the image the new police minister presented to the world.
And yet there were times when he suddenly began gossiping, relating embarrassing comments or stories about the highest officials of the land, including his own closest colleagues.[442] This deceptively quiet exterior concealed a man of ceaseless energy, who rarely slept more than a few hours or wasted more than a few minutes on anything but the most abbreviated of dinners, even interviewing people in the morning while he was still dressing. When standing at an official reception in his dark, simple dress — in stark contrast with the heavily encrusted gold or silver of the uniforms of his fellow high officials and of the military — he rarely moved, apart from his long, bony hands, only his weasel eyes and alert ears following everyone and every conversation, noting everything, missing nothing. Fouché’s name and reputation were as feared as much as they were detested.
Napoleon was still impressed by this bizarre creature that had been vomited forth by the Revolution. There was not another police official in the country who could even begin to replace his seemingly mournful police minister. He had his mouchards — spies — in every salon, in every ministry, and, it was said, even in the army. On Napoleon’s orders he had just closed forty-seven of the nation’s newspapers, the prisons were crowded once again as his gendarmes cracked down on the brigands attacking travelers, coaches, and even government depots and cashiers in forty-six of the country’s eighty-seven departments. As for crime in the capital, it was still staggeringly high, daily burglaries, muggings, and murder requiring every male citizen to be armed.
Outwardly devoid of emotion and human feeling of any kind, Fouché seemed to retain that perfect equanimity, the “unflappable calm”[443] for which he was renowned, even when facing General Bonaparte’s thunderous tirades. By now, at the age of forty-one, Fouché seemed imbued with a philosophy that protected him from the world of mere human beings, he existing on another plane, far above them all. Men and women would be arrested, interrogated, tortured, imprisoned, or executed on his personal orders, and he continued to eat the same amount, sleep the same hours, day in, day out. He felt nothing; he was simply doing his job. (At least Napoleon was seen to break down in tears at the sight of his maimed and dead warriors on the battlefield.) Unlike Talleyrand at the Foreign Ministry, Fouché was the first to arrive at his Police Ministry in the Quai Voltaire and the last to leave. Again unlike Talleyrand, no detail was too small for him; aided by a superb memory, Fouché mastered everything with in-depth knowledge of events in every department of the land, down to the names of the officers and agents concerned. All was recorded and stored in the swelling secret files — some in his own office — of his ministry — files to which not even Napoleon had access.
But for all his simplicity of manner and dress in daily life, Fouché was not loath to attire himself in one of his several silver-encrusted blue velour state uniforms. Nor did he decline official, ostentatious cavalry escorts on occasion for his carriage, as he was whisked through Paris’s teeming streets. He considered himself a statesman, a great man, not a mere policeman, and he secretly longed to exchange his portfolio for that of foreign affairs.
For all that, however, deep down Fouché was a born policeman and throve in this role alone. One aspect of this required him to act “the mole,” as biographer Stefan Zweig so aptly referred to him. Victorine de Chastenay noted this characteristic even in the salon, during seemingly innocent chit-chat. He was ua true Breton,” she claimed, “invariably meddling in everything that was happening.”[444] It went much deeper, of course, and Talleyrand quite agreed: “The minister of police is a man who begins by taking up that which concerns him and then that which does not concern him in the least.”[445] It was this constant burrowing and ferreting out of fresh scandal, plots, shameful acts, indiscreet slips of the tongue, or simply discreet confidences that provided him with the pretext for visiting some very varied drawing rooms in Paris, whether Jacobin (he still had some old friends among them), clerical (he always protected his fellow Oratorians), republican, or aristocratic. That he was frequently looked on with unease and caution, regardless of the social or political milieu, was hardly surprising, and Fouché would even jest about it, secretly relishing the very fear he caused: “When you have something bad to say about the emperor and the government, wait for my arrival. The [police] spies will disappear when they see me.”[446] But few found anything to laugh about. Napoleon, who naturally spied on his own superspy, would thus receive bewildering, confusing reports of his police minister observed in intense conversation with alleged friend and foe alike.[447] Napoleon was stymied, and a smiling Fouché knew it and delighted in the mystification. To Fouché stealth was sublime, convoluted plottings not only a way of life but as necessary as the air he breathed. Without them, he simply had no raison d’être. François Guizot, the future scholar and statesman, despite his youth at the time, was one of the few to understand this man in gray, at least in part, recognizing his “hardy, ironic, cynical indifference, indeed phlegmatic attitude [to all about him], applied in his u
nsated quest for embroilment.”[448]
This man who had no softness in him when it came to his work was, on the other hand, a doting husband and dedicated paterfamilias. Unlike most of his colleagues, Fouché rarely permitted official life to intrude into his quietly sumptuous homes in the Rue du Bac and later in the Rue Cérutti. Only close and special friends were invited to spend an evening chez lui, and again unlike most of the higher officials with social pretensions and obligations, he did not hold an open house once a week. His wife rarely appeared at receptions or in the famous salons. This was not the result of shyness on the part of this hardened woman, who had personally witnessed her husband’s blood-curdling massacres without a murmur of dissent, but simply that she completely shared his values, insensitivity, and utterly bleak view of humanity and society.
Unlike almost every other high French official at this time, Fouché was not only a proud father and husband but also contentedly monogamous. “My only wish is to make life pleasant for my wife and children,” he insisted.[449] “Follow my example,” he warmly advised his old friend, Raoul Gaillard, “dictate your letters to your wife. It is so pleasant being able to kiss your secretary.”[450]
Indeed, his happiest moments were spent at home with his family, where he actually guffawed at the pranks of his four children (who could do no wrong). In French society at this time, of course, children were never allowed to be seen or heard with guests present, but not so in the Fouché household. There the children were vociferously present, running wild, which quite astonished new arrivals to his salon and left Fouché filled with amusement: “You have probably been told that they are spoiled, but they are delightful and the supreme joy of my life,” he confessed.[451]
Victorine de Chastenay was a good example of the aristocratic ladies to be found frequently in chez Fouché. The former head of a religious order, she was not entirely without criticism of the new police minister, which nonetheless did not seem to deter her visits there. She felt instinctively that there was something of “the charlatan” in his pretensions, as he coldly and arrogantly vaunted his “superiority over all men, over all social ranks, over every opinion and passion, giving one the impression that he alone was in full control [of what was transpiring in France].”[452] He always acted with dignified condescension, permitting his friends to feel that they were being given confidential information about some event of the day, only to learn subsequently that Fouché had in fact imparted nothing of importance.
One of the factors that seemed to attract his female admirers — and most of his admirers were, as in the case of Talleyrand, female — was no doubt his fidelity to his wife, especially in an age when sexual permissiveness was considered the norm (even the great national hero Lafayette was known for his conquests). Added to this was his equally obvious love of, and dedication to, his children, whom he idolized and showered with the affection he had never received from his parents. Madame de Chastenay was equally impressed by his wife’s devotion to him.
He would not brook the presence of loose women, advising his sister, Alexandrine Broband, to keep a close eye on her daughters, his nieces: “Recommend that they behave themselves properly in public. Let them realize that a woman’s empire in society is established by the firmness of her principles, spirit, and moral values.”[453] Like Napoleon, he did not at all approve of the permissive society fostered by the Revolution and still continuing. It was hardly surprising, therefore, that Police Minister Fouché, later the duke of Otranto, rarely allowed his wife to appear in public, nor — in his exceptional case — did Napoleon insist.
Despite Josephine’s lurid history of sexual exploits, Fouché genuinely liked her and was often able to obtain information from her, including Napoleon’s personal letters to her from Egypt (for which he paid her handsomely). Josephine the police informer did not make a pretty picture. But at the same time Fouché admired her honesty in the matter — her grace, warmth, and generosity — even naming one of his daughters after her. If Fouché did not throw open the doors of his home to most high Napoleonic officials — not that they would have cared to join him, least of all the Bonaparte clan — select guests were welcomed, even Josephine on occasion. Perhaps the most surprising guest to appear there was the archbishop of Paris, Cardinal du Belloy,[454] who chose to ignore the ignoble past of this priest-killer and despoiler of the church.
Although Madame de Chastenay could find “a certain nobility of character” to admire in Fouché, not so his colleagues, including Talleyrand, who summed him up with unusual pithy precision as a man with “a heart as hard as a diamond, a stomach of iron and a tearless eye.”[455] (Others had of course attributed similar qualities to the foreign minister himself.)
If Fouché had no apparent weakness for the temptations of women, food, and drink, nevertheless he was enticed by another siren (apart from the lust for power): money — despite his public declarations to the contrary during the Revolution (“Let us scorn vile gold and silver, and leave those monarchical gods in the filth where they belong”). Although some of his wealth came from a few very discreet “gifts,” and larger amounts were annually siphoned off from unaudited gambling “taxes” collected by the police, Napoleon himself was not to prove ungenerous, eventually giving him millions over the years.[456] This money Fouché safely invested with his wealthy financier friends, or he at least acted on their advice. But perhaps even more important than this and his priceless art and gem collections — mostly acquired at little or no cost from the monasteries, churches, and châteaux looted during and following the Reign of Terror, including a few choice items from Lyons — was Fouché’s real estate empire.
This impressive gallery of properties included the quietly impressive mansion he was shortly to acquire in the Rue Cérutti (next to the Paris residence of Queen Hortense of Holland) and two superb estates fairly close to Paris, Ferrieres (later owned by the Rothschilds) and Pont Carré; two other sizable domains in the South of France; elegant town houses in Aix, Toulon, and Nice; two entire parishes in Champagne — every house, shop, mill, tannery, farm, and field; and tens of thousands of acres and dozens of farms and houses, chiefly between Aix and the Var. Nor should one omit future large income-producing estates in conquered German and Italian provinces, as well as the family sugar and indigo plantations he had inherited in Santo Domingo. Quite exclusive of his private investments was the combined income received from his government posts as minister, senator, and state counselor, bringing another 223,000 francs annually to the family coffers. As a frugal Breton he managed to save a considerable amount of this, despite the great costs of maintaining such properties and the hundreds of domestics and retainers required for them. Unlike the chronic spendthrift and gambler Talleyrand, Fouché ultimately accrued an estimated fortune of about 15 million francs, in an age when a workman with a thousand francs in cash each year would have considered himself very fortunate indeed. Some of this wealth was derived from killings he made on the Bourse as a result of “insider information” of some forthcoming peace agreement or spectacular military victory, a pastime he shared with Joseph Bonaparte. Of Fouché’s two great lifelong passions, it is hard to say which took precedence, political intrigue or collecting real estate.
While remaining surprisingly loyal to his Oratorian friends over the years, in politics Fouché betrayed just about everyone, including Robespierre, Sieyès, Barras, Talleyrand, Lafayette, Carnot, and of course Napoleon. Curiously, though, despite his great thirst for power, he was not vindictive when it came to transgressions against himself personally, unless such actions interfered with his own professional plans and objectives. The great skeptic so far as human behavior and values were concerned, he expected and accepted just about anything. “I excuse all human weaknesses,” he nobly conceded, and on occasion even helped political enemies who found themselves in a difficult position. Fouché always claimed to aim for moderation and “clémence” which seemed a bit far-fetched given his own bloodstained record of revolutionary excesses. As
Louis Madelin so cogently perceived:
He had...studied his neighbors. He had seen at firsthand the shameful capitulations made by men he had hitherto considered to be upright, and the debauchery of those who had previously descried similar actions of the tyrants before them...The Minister of Police had personal experience of every type of ignominious act and had explored the worst humanity had to offer. He had known better than anyone else...the lamentable trafficking of the human conscience. [For him] the world was comprised of either...hypocritical scoundrels or contented imbeciles.
But of course he who had permitted the fishwives of Lyons to hack a woman to death with carving knives and meat cleavers, and who had filled his stately residences with a museum’s ransom in stolen or despoiled objets d’art, was above reproach as he now stood officially as overseer of national morality. If Fouché was the greatest skeptic in a nation of skeptics, it was because he recognized all the traits he now denounced in his own sadistic, even psychotic, acts; in his own treachery, ruthlessness, brutality, and egotism, which he had then seen repeated by those around him. He knew that such a man as he, once in a position of real power, was capable of doing anything. As he frankly confided to his oratorian friend Raoul Gaillard, “I have to be able to be complete master when I govern.” And that he was at the Police Ministry.
As for policies and objectives, did he in fact have any? He was, like Napoleon himself, a disturber of the public peace. He was a conspirator, a conniver, a man bent on upsetting any government in power. “He sought out storms, he created complications for the sheer pleasure of unraveling and solving them, just as an actor shapes his plays to fit his own particular style. That is why he was contented when dealing with especially formidable adversaries,” and “at times he revealed a stupefyingly bold and furious force” when grappling with them. It amused him to say the most outrageous things about his colleagues, and even about Napoleon, knowing full well that such remarks would get back to them within the hour. “Bonaparte does not like me,” he confided with the slight trace of a smile, “and he knows that I do not like him.”[457] These remarks would set tongues wagging once again. Ever since his proconsulship days at Lyons, where he deployed almost sovereign power over the lives of that city’s inhabitants, he felt himself to be above everyone and everything. He could do anything, and indeed had done so, down to sacking hundreds of churches and murdering young nuns and old ladies. He was duplicity and immorality personified and had “a strange and constant need to mystify” those around him,[458] relishing their ultimate failure to understand him. “One finds a mixture of everything [in him],” Chateaubriand acknowledged, “religion along with impiety, virtue with vice, the royalist with the revolutionary...I have never found a more bewildering combination in anyone.”[459]