MEDUSA'S HEAD: The Rise and Survival of Joseph Fouche, Inventor of the Modern Police State

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Hardcover version.

Minister of Police Joseph Fouche was universally distrusted, feared, and hated in his time, but was nevertheless considered indispensable. This biography recounts the chameleonic and astonishing career of Napoleon's security chief, who created the modern police state and wielded immense power that threatened the other main organs of government.

Fouche was one of the most important, fascinating, and controversial figures of the French Revolution, the First Empire, and the Bourbon Restoration. His roles included a priest-in-training who became a radical Jacobin and de-Christianizer; a regicide who cast a dramatic swing vote for Louis XVI's immediate execution; the grim and remorseless 'Butcher of Lyon' mastermind of the conspiracy that sent Robespierre to the guillotine; and the head of Napoleon's police - privy to everyone's secrets, shaping the media, deploying 10,000 informants in Paris alone, and securing funding from the Empire's casinos and brothels.

He was also the enabler of Napoleon's 1799 coup and subsequent repeated betrayer of the Emperor; acting president after Waterloo and traitor to France; Louis XVIII's Minister of Police, in spite of his responsibility for the death of the King's brother; and finally a wealthy but disgraced exile who met an unusual end in Trieste on the Adriatic.