the danger of exemplary punishment, in the event of a counter revolution, he became, from interest and necessity, a violent republican, and promoted the most atrocious proceedings of the jacobins.

At the first establishment of the jacobin club, at Nantes, in 1789, Fouché was the first friar of his order, and one of the first of the clergy in Brittany, who enrolled his name as a member of the club: he was, in consequence, immediately elected one of its secretaries, and chosen its third president. The most sanguinary and violent measures were proposed and recommended by him. He particularly distinguished himself for his persecution of the clergy, and for his hatred to his own order. When the national seal was affixed to that religious abode where his youth had been cherished and protected, he headed, as a deputy from the jacobins, the detachment of the national guards commanded on this duty; and hunted out of their retreat, and turned upon the world, without mercy, men who had renounced it for ever, who were afflicted by sufferings, and weakened by age, without the means of subsistence, without strength to labour, or without knowledge and intelligence how to be industrious. Amongst others of those unfortunate fathers, he dragged forward the venerable old man, father Cholois, who had been his patron and protector, and who, thirty years before, had picked him up in the streets a beggarboy, the solitary victim of want and disease. In 1792, when the national convention was called, Fouché was elected a member for Nantes; and, to shew with what principles he was sent up, it is asserted that, in the afternoon of the day of his election, a general massacre of the priests and nobles confined in the prisons at Nantes took place, among the victims of which was father Cholois, Fouché's benefactor

Arrived in the French capital, and strongly recommended by the jacobins at Nantes to their brethren in Paris, he, on the 19th of September, 1792, made his first entrance at the jacobin club; in a violent and revolutionary declamation, he extolled the bloody and ferocious deeds of the Septembrizers, and seconded Marat in demanding the trial of the king and queen (who were then prisoners in

the temple), and the punishment of the aristocrats, their adherents. From the first sittings of the national convention, Fouché joined the mountain party, composed of Danton, Robespierre, Marat, and their accomplices; and with them he voted for the death of Louis. Observing, from the malignity and agitation of the different factions, and their consequent instability, that it would be safer, and more conducive to his advancement, to be employed in missions to the departments, he intrigued a long time, and at last, in July 1793, he was sent as a conventional deputy, first to the department of the Rhone, and afterwards to the departments of Allier and Nievre.

When Fouché first arrived before Lyons, the chief city of the department of the Rhone, it was in open insurrection against the authority of the national convention. Lyons was without ramparts, ammunition, artillery, and provisions; and had no other garrison, soldiers, or defenders, but its own inhabitants, mostly manufacturers and mechanics, accustomed to a sedentary life, which usually as much enervates the mind as it relaxes the body. But the Lyonese underwent a long and glorious siege: and shewed so many traits of valour, skill, and intrepidity, that it occupied the republicans a longer time, and cost them more lives, to enter this open and defenceless city, than it cost them in taking many a fortified place, with a strong garrison, in the subsequent wars: and had the Lyonese been properly assisted with a regular force of Swiss or Piedmontese troops (which, as lying in their neighbourhood, might have been sent to their assistance), they would doubtless have greatly contributed to establish a regular government in France, and would have prevented the havoc and desolation which for so many years after afflicted that country and all Europe. At this time, the royalists in La Vendée were in open arms, and victorious, and Toulon was occupied by the English; and thus, by a combination of all these elements, the revolutionary government might have been overturned, and a free monarchical constitution established in its stead. Unfortunately, however, these effects did not take place; and it was left to aftertimes, when experience had taught Europe the necessity of

a just and vigorous combination, to annihilate a system of government engendered by the revolution, and which was found incompatible with the safety of all others.

After a brave and noble resistance, the Lyonese were forced to open the gates of their city; and then it was that a dreadful and indiscriminate punishment ensued. Political fanaticism, aided and attended by the fury usual to faction, and the cruelties always accompanying civil wars, ordered not only the destruction of the citizens, but of their dwellings and city. A letter from Collot d'Herbois and Fouché may give some idea of the severities used on this occasion. It is as follows:

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Citizens Colleagues-We proceed in our mission with the energy of republicans who are penetrated with a profound sense of their character; this we shall retain. Neither shall we descend from the exalted situation to which the nation has raised us, to attend to the puny interests of some individuals, who are more or less guilty towards their country. We have dismissed every one of them, as we have no time to lose, no favours to grant; we are to consider, and only do consider, the republic and your decrees, which ordain us to set a great example, to give a signal lesson. We only listen to the cries of the nation, which demands that all the blood of the patriots should be avenged at once in a speedy and dreadful manner, in order that the human race may not lament its being spilled afresh. From a conviction that this infamous city contains no one that is innocent, except those who have been oppressed and loaded with irons by the assassins of the people, we are guarded against the tears of repentance; nothing can disarm our severity. This they are well aware of, who have obtained from you a decree of respite in favour of one of our prisoners.Who has dared to do this? Are we not on the spot? Have you not invested us with your confidence? And yet we have not And yet we have not been consulted. We cannot forbear telling you, citizens colleagues, that indulgence is a dangerous weakness, calculated to rekindle criminal hopes at the moment when it is requisite to put a final end to them. It has been claimed in behalf of one individual; it

has been solicited in behalf of every one of his species, with a view of rendering the effect of your justice illusory. They do not yet call for the report of your first decree relative to the annihilation of the city of Lyons; but nothing has hardly yet been done to bring it into execution. The mode of demolishing is too low; republican impatience demands more speedy execution. The explosion of the mine, and the devouring activity of the fire, alone can express the omnipotence of the people; their will is not to be checked like that of tyrants; it must have the same effect as thunder."

It was hardly possible to suppose that men could be found who would wish to improve upon the summary punishment commanded by the national convention; yet Fouché and Collot D'Herbois, their two deputies, were desirous of carrying republican vengeance still further. The convention had sentenced its devoted victims to perish by the guillotine; but Fouché and his fellow-colleague invented other means, more terrible and expeditious, to desolate the unhappy city, and to punish their fellow-citizens. They ordered the shooting in mass of hundreds of persons at the same time; or, as they wrote to the national convention, they had found_means "de vomier la mort à grand flots." In another letter to the convention they say—

"Citizens Colleagues-No indulgence, no procrastination, no tardiness in the punishment of crime, if you wish to produce a salutary effect. The kings used delay when they had punishment to inflict, because they were weak and cruel; the justice of the people ought to be as quick as the expression of their will. We have adopted efficacious measures to manifest their omnipotence, so as to serve as an example to all rebels.”

In inflicting their punishments, sometimes several hundred persons, tied together with ropes fastened to the trees of the Place de Brotteaux, were shot by piquets of infantry, which made the tour round the place, and, at a signal, fired on the condemned. At other times, when the proscribed were killed by cannons loaded with grape-shot, they were tied two and two together on the same place, and ranged along the edge of a grave, or rather ditch, digged after Fouché's orders, by

their nearest female relatives or friends, the day before their execution, and destined to receive their corpses. As it often happened that the grape-shot wounded and maimed more than it killed, the bayonets and swords of the revolutionary army dispatched those still alive, and suffering from the wounds of the cannon. One hour after the execution, those females who had digged the graves (most of them mothers, sisters, and wives) were forced by Fouché's satellites to fill them up, and to cover with earth the mutilated corpses of their fathers, husbands, and brothers, who were always previously stripped naked and plundered, by a band of females in the pay of Fouché's revolutionary judges, called the furies of the guillotine. It is difficult to say, which inspires more compassion or abhorrence, whether the dreadful situation of the female relatives of the sufferers, or the barbarous conduct of the furies of the guillotine, who regularly accompanied all condemned persons from the tribunal to the place of execution, hooting, shouting, insulting, and often calling to their remembrance the objects of their affection and tenderness, in order to sharpen their cruel sufferings, and to render death more terrible. One piece of cruelty has been particularly recorded. It is asserted, that when, one day in November 1793, near 300 Lyonese citizens were ordered to be shot in mass, the wife of one of them (Daunois) had, according to the orders of Fouché, been sent the night before to dig her husband's and brother's grave. She was young and beautiful, and had only been married four months. In being dragged to the Place de Brotteaux, she miscarried, and was brought home senseless. When Daunois was marched to execution, the furies of the guillotine had Fouché's orders particularly to torment him; and, amongst other things, they told him that his wife, whom he was passionately fond of, was, next decade, to be married to one of the sans-culottes, his executioner, whom they pointed out: and it has been further asserted, that Fouché actually put her in requisition for this man, but she expired at the sight of him when he presented Fouché's order.

The same summary vengeance and execution was practised at Toulon as well as at

Lyons. After one of these executions in mass at the former place, Fouché wrote thus to Collot d'Herbois, his friend, who had been made a member of the committee of public safety-" And we likewise, my friend, have contributed to the surrender of Toulon, by spreading terror amongst the traitors who had entered the town, and by exposing to their view the dead bodies of thousands of their accomplices. Let us shew ourselves terrible; let us annihilate, in our anger, and at one single blow, every conspirator, every traitor, that we may not feel the pain, the long torture, of punishing them as kings would do. Let the perfidious and ferocious English be assailed from every quarter; let the whole republic turn into a volcano, and pour forth the devouring lava upon them. May the infamous island that produced these monsters, who no longer belong to the human species, be buried for ever in the waves. Farewell, my friend!-tears of joy run from my eyes, and overflow my heart. P. S. We have but one way of celebrating our victory, we shall send 213 rebels this evening to the place of execution: our loaded cannon are ready to salute them."

Having pourtrayed the cruelty of Fouché, his sacrilegious conduct has not passed without notice by those who have given to the world his memoirs. The following instance of it has been particularly remarked. Challier, a Piedmontese by birth, had, from the beginning of the revolution, been the tormentor and tyrant of all the loyal and peaceable inhabitants of Lyons, at which place he was established as a merchant. Every insurrection, and the continual agitation of this populous city, were the work of this man, of the Jacobin emissaries of Paris, assisted by some of the worthless and bankrupt inhabitants. In December 1792, when it was difficult to find a respectable character to appear as a candidate for any public employment, Challier was, by some of the jacobins, first nominated a municipal officer, and afterwards a judge. a judge. As a recommendation to public favour, he distributed his own portrait, with the following inscription, as the best means of attaining, among the corrupt and profligate part of the population, his desired object:" Challier, an excellent patriot, has

passed six months at Paris, as an admirer of Marat, and of the mountain of the national convention." Challier's first act, as a public functionary, was an order to imprison twelve hundred citizens, whom he had proscribed as traitors to the republic, because he suspected them to be his private enemies. Despairing, from the courageous resistance of the mayor, Nievre Chol, of being able to send them to the scaffold, he, on the 6th of February, 1793, presented himself in the jacobin club with a dagger in his hand, and caused to be decreed in that assembly, "That a tribunal, similar to that which condemned the prisoners at Paris on the 2d of September 1792, should immediately be instituted, with a guillotine on the bridge of St. Clair; that nine hundred persons, whose names he gave in, should there be beheaded, and their bodies thrown into the Rhone; and that, in want of executioners, the members of the club should perform this office." Fortunately, the mayor and armed citizens prevented this shocking decree from having its effect. Some time afterwards, Challier was deposed by the citizens at Lyons, but restored by the convention and, in the daily contests between the two parties, the jacobins and the royalists, he was by turns victorious, and by turns defeated. At last the citizens of Lyons became exasperated, and erected the standard of revolt against the national convention; Challier was arrested, condemned, and executed, on the 17th of July 1793. No sooner had Fouché and Collot d'Herbois entered the city of Lyons, than the busts of Challier were carried in triumph, and placed upon the altars of the churches, and upon the tables of the tribunals and municipality. Fouché took upon himself the apotheosis of Challier, at a civic feast decreed in honour of his memory. He ordered the celebration of this feast to take place on the 1st of November 1793, a day consecrated by the Roman catholics to prayers, and to the memory of all saints. Early in the morning, the sound of cannon announced the festival; and men and women carried, with an air of respect, adoration, and pomp, the image of Challier; whilst other apostates and enemies to Christianity brought consecrated vases, surrounding a jack-ass covered with an episcopal gown, a mitre fas

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tened between its two ears, and dragging in the dirt the Bible fastened to its tail. After the burning of Challier's pretended corpse, of which the ashes were piously distributed among the sectaries of his and Fouche's morals, the Bible was thrown into the fire; and, as it arose into the air in smoke, the ceremony ended with the ass drinking from the sacred chalice. In his letter to the national convention, dated from Lyons on the 10th of November, and which was printed in the Moniteur, Fouché said-" The shade of Challier is satisfied; his precious remains, religiously collected, have been carried in triumph. It is upon the place where this holy martyr was immolated, that his ashes have been exposed to public veneration, to the religion of patriotism. At last the silence of sorrow was interrupted by the cries of Vengeance! vengeance! Yes, we answer that the cries of the people shall be avenged! people shall be avenged! This soil shall be overthrown; every thing which vice has erected shall be annihilated; and, on the ruins of this superb city, the traveller shall find only some simple monuments, erected in memory of the martyrs of liberty."

Having shewn himself so violent a champion of liberty, Fouché was thought by the national convention a fit and proper person to execute their vengeance and hatred at Moulins and in La Vendée. It would be impossible to credit the excesses of Fouché in his different missions, had not his active correspondence with Robespierre's committee of public safety been preserved in the Moniteur and other papers published at that time. In a letter to the national convention, of March the 28th 1794, he says" The day before yesterday, I had the happiness to see 800 dwellings of the brigands destroyed by fire; to day, I have witnessed the shooting of 900 of these brigands; and for to-morrow, I and Carrier have prepared a civic baptism (drowning) of 1200 women and children, mothers, sisters, wives, daughters, or sons of the accursed brigands from La Vendée. In two days three impure generations of rebels and fanatics have ceased to be any more."— In another letter from the department of Nievre, he wrote-"Let us have the courage to march upon the bodies even of our fathers, brothers, and sons, to arrive at liberty; let

us brave death ourselves by inflicting it on all the enemies of equality, without any distinction of sex or age, relatives or strangers." At Lyons, as well as in La Vendée, Fouché had, in the name and for the use of the republic, confiscated all the property of those whom he ordered to be executed; but Robespierre, by his spies, found out that Fouché had appropriated a considerable part of this national plunder: he therefore denounced him in the jacobin club; and his name was struck out as a member in its matricular register. Robespierre never forgave any peculator; but, fortunately for Fouché, the death of Robespierre soon after saved him from sharing the fate of Danton, Chaumette, Chabot, Hebert, and others.

After the death of Robespierre, and during the succeeding factions, denunciations against Fouché poured in from all the departments where he had been a deputy, and all manner of accusations were preferred against him.The national convention also, finding it necessary to make an example of some of its members, in order to obtain the applause of the people, sent Carrier and Le Bon to the scaffold, and declared others, for their crimes under the reign of Robespierre, unworthy of a seat in the convention. Fouché, after the report of Tallien, was amongst those expelled, being denominated a "thief and a terrorist, whose barbarous and criminal conduct would cast an everlasting dishonour on any assembly of which he was suffered to be a member." After another report, by Dentzel, on the 9th of August 1795, Fouché, with Lequinéo, and eight other terrorists, were ordered to be arrested, and they remained in prison until released by the amnesty granted by the national convention some time before the termination of its sittings,

From October 1795 to September 1797, Fouché was engaged in no particular employment: but when the revolution of 1797 took place, and his friends were restored to power, he was appointed to the commissariat in Italy, and was afterwards invested with the functions of ambassador to the Batavian republic. He was recalled from that situation in 1799, and appointed minister of police. When Buonaparte assumed the consulship he was bribed to aid his ambitious

views by a present of 600,000 livres, and a promise that he should retain his place for at least four years. In this situation he acted at the time when Toussaint, Pichegru, and captain Wright died; in what manner the duke of Otranto is best able to explain.

It would occupy the volumes of an extensive history to develope the system of police. adopted and enforced beneath the direction of Fouché. His power in this particular department was absolute, but on subjects of general policy he was opposed by Talleyrand, the minister of the foreign department. It was not to be expected that two such intriguing characters, whose revolutionary principles were so opposite, would long agree in the same councils, without attempt. ing to supplant each other. Those about Napoleon could easily discover, from his hatred to the jacobins on one hand, and the apprehensions of the royalists on the other, whose influence was the greatest, and whose reports were most believed. Talleyrand constantly insisted that the royalists were not dangerous, whilst Fouché assured him that the jacobins had neither the means nor the inclination to trouble his government. Until the plot of Arena, whether real or fictitious, had been forgotten by the first consul, Talleyrand successfully excluded Fouché for some time from Buonaparte's favour: Fouché, in his turn, on the discovery of the infernal machine, caused Talleyrand to be both slighted and neglected. Their jealousies and disputes were carried so far, that it was expected that one of them would be forced to resign. Talleyraud, however, got so far the better of his rival, that, contrary to the wishes and interest of Fouché, a prefect of police was nominated for Paris; and, what was of greater consequence, this prefect of police was one of Talleyrand's creatures. From this Fouché was led to conclude, that the instant he was no longer wanted he would be dismissed, notwithstanding he had been promised his place for four years by Napoleon. In order, therefore, to retain his situation, the best way was to endeavour to make his services necessary, by keeping his master in continual alarm and fear of plots, intrigues, and conspiracies. Twice in every decade, Fouché had orders to present his report of the public