Just for fun, here are all the times in Gourgaud's diary where Napoleon laments not having Fouché shot, hanged, or guillotined (and also regrets that Louis XVIII has likewise failed in this capacity).
Source: General Gourgaud, Sainte-Hélène - journal inedit de 1815 à 1818
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29 November 1815 – “I should have hanged him, that was my intention. If I had been victorious at Waterloo, I would have had him shot immediately.”
29 December 1815 – We speak of the news from France… His Majesty says that the King has done well to name Richelieu Prime Minister, but he should have hanged Fouché.
2 February 1816 – At 8 o’clock, His Majesty asks for me and dictates to me for a long while, then I have lunch with him. Sadness and chess. In the evening, it is said that Fouché has been executed. The Emperor exclaims: “I always predicted he’d eventually be hanged.”
16 February 1817 – “I am not Louis XVIII, but it has always repelled me to deal with such a man. The King should’ve had him hanged.”
11 July 1817 – “I cannot understand the current conduct of Paris. Had I stayed there after Waterloo, if I had cut off a hundred heads, that of Fouché the first, I could have held on in Paris with the rabble.”
14 July 1817 – “On my return from Waterloo, I was of a mind to have Fouché’s head cut off. I’d already composed the military commission, that of the Duke d’Enghien…”
23 September 1817 – [Speaking, again, of what he should have done after Waterloo] “I should, it is true, have had Fouché shot immediately after my arrival, he was the soul of the party, his judgment would have been shouted under the windows of the deputies to whom I could have said: ‘who invokes the tricolor flag? This is a man who fled France to take refuge with foreigners and who owes his return to Paris to me. At this moment there is no salvation except in men who love their country.’ I would have ended by demanding to purge the Chamber and by hanging seven or eight of its members and, above all, Fouché.
24 September 1817 – “I should’ve had the Duke of Otranto shot, but Laffitte prevented me from doing so. Talleyrand will maintain himself, he is a man of the Revolution, he is a priest married to a whore…”
