Theories on Why Fouché Provided Financial Assistance to Some of His Former Revolutionary Colleagues and Their Wives
I'm not infallible, feel free to correct me
Emmanuel de Waresquiel has done solid work in his biographies of Fouché (despite some points where I disagree with him—partly due to my own subjective criteria, and partly because no historian is infallible). He mentions a significant number of revolutionaries whom Fouché assisted throughout his career, even though in Year VII he was one of the main opponents of the neo-Jacobins—closing their clubs—and in Year IX he sacrificed many Jacobins to Bonaparte in order to keep his position.
He helped Vadier and Parein du Mesnil, even though they had (albeit very loose) connections to the babouvism (and most of the babouvists disliked Fouché, and vice versa). He may also have tried to do the same for Rossignol (perhaps because Rossignol had good relations with Parein du Mesnil), as can be seen in the letters Rossignol sent to the Minister of Police here https://www.tumblr.com/nesiacha/781841224830156800/rossignols-final-appeals-to-fouch%C3%A9?source=share . According to Adrien Bélanger, Fouché deliberately omitted Rossignol from the list of Jacobins to be arrested in Year IX; it was Bonaparte who added him as you can see here https://www.tumblr.com/nesiacha/784020593902338048/there-is-currently-an-article-circulating-on-the?source=share .
He also ensured that Barère, as well as Armonville and François Tisset, received financial support. On the women’s side, he provided pensions to Charlotte Robespierre, to the widow of Collot d’Herbois (Anne-Catherine Joséphine Catoir), and to the widow of Antoine Dorfeuille, who had published newspapers in the style of Le Père Duchesne in Lyon.
However, given Fouché’s well-known miserliness and his highly ambiguous (to say the least) relationship with revolutionary principles, it is reasonable to assume that these acts of assistance were not entirely selfless (with perhaps the exception of Charlotte Robespierre, which does not require much analysis).
I do not believe that helping Vadier—by securing his release from prison—ultimately brought Fouché much benefit. Perhaps he hoped to obtain information about the Babeuvists, but I doubt Vadier provided any, or that Fouché truly expected him to (I say this knowing that Vadier has many things to reproach himself for, but not his conduct during the Conspiracy of Equals, nor his later attitude on his fellow Babouvists) .
As for Tisset and Armonville, I am not sufficiently familiar with them to draw conclusions. Barère, however, was politically inconsistent at times. To my knowledge, he did nothing to help Demerville—who was very close to him politically (Waresquiel even suggests that Demerville was his nephew)—when Demerville was arrested and executed, even though historians generally agree that the “daggers conspiracy” was largely fabricated or at least exaggerated. While Barère retained some revolutionary principles, he does not seem reliable in many respects. It is therefore plausible that Barère may have helped Fouché before this period, and vice versa.
The case of Parein du Mesnil is more troubling. Despite initially opposing the coup of 18 Brumaire Coup and having Babouvist connections, he appears to have become a police informant—denouncing “patriots,” (sic) gaining the trust of deportees’ wives, and relaying information to Fouché (or at least to Napoleonic authorities). This is illustrated in this article:
https://www.tumblr.com/nesiacha/804861309236674560/the-role-of-women-supporting-the-jacobins-in-the?source=share
Thus, this assistance was clearly not without ulterior motives. The same likely applies to the widows of Collot d’Herbois ( you can see her history here Facebook) and Dorfeuille.
In the latter case, I do not know her situation when she accepted the pension—whether she was desperate or not. However, Fouché was known for attempting to erase certain aspects of his past from public opinion. Since Dorfeuille had worked in Lyon, it is possible that he and his widow possessed documents concerning Fouché’s activities there. My hypothesis is that she handed them over in exchange for protection—which would be entirely understandable given the harsh circumstances.
I lean toward a similar hypothesis for the widow of Collot d’Herbois. She endured extreme hardship in a failed attempt to save her husband, alongside Anne-Angélique Doye, and was likely ostracized and ruined. Fouché had effectively sacrificed Collot d’Herbois to deflect responsibility for events in Lyon—unlike Collot, who always accepted responsibility and refused to blame other people about what happened in Lyon (which was, in reality, a collective responsibility ).
In a short biography I wrote about Anne-Angélique Doye (see:
https://www.tumblr.com/nesiacha/801393590312075264/biography-about-anne-ang%C3%A9lique-doye-wife-of?source=share ), I noted that Jacques-Nicolas Billaud-Varenne left her manuscripts justifying his actions after his deportation. When he later discovered that she had remarried (even if it was to help him), he broke off all ties, and she returned the documents to his former father-in-law (they are now lost).Given that Collot was at his side, perhaps he had prepared documents concerning Lyon and the role that each person played in it.
To my knowledge (though I may be mistaken), while some papers belonging to Collot d’Herbois and his wife have been found, pamphlets he had printed to defend himself against the calumnies of the Thermidorians , no memoir manuscripts sent to her have surfaced—unlike many other revolutionaries who entrusted such documents to their spouses. It is possible that he never wrote them, that they were lost, or that he did send them—but that his widow surrendered them in exchange for a pension from Fouché. This may well have been a condition.
From these hypotheses, we can turn to the case of Henriette Simonin, about whom I gathered some information here:
https://www.tumblr.com/nesiacha/804044312295964672/the-information-i-have-been-able-to-find-about?source=share
She was a woman capable of holding strong political views and remained close to the Montagnards even in Year III. We know that Fouché and Chaumette worked together in Nevers during the French Revolution. However, Fouché later distanced himself from Chaumette after his death, blaming him for events in Nevers.
In 1801, Henriette Simonin was among the women imprisoned after the Rue Saint-Nicaise bombing due to her links with Jacobinism, particularly Babouvism (like Simone Evrard, Albertine Marat, and Marie-Anne Babeuf). Unlike the widows of Dorfeuille and Collot d’Herbois, she did not benefit from Fouché’s protection.
There are several possible explanations. She may have distrusted him after he distanced himself from her husband, knowing the truth. In the letter I found, she appears closer to Babouvist figures than to Fouché, and may even have encouraged them to distrust him. Notably, she showed genuine concern for Gracchus Babeuf and Marie-Anne Babeuf in a letter she sent when Babeuf was imprisoned again in Year III. Babeuf himself had once been close to Chaumette, though he later distanced himself from him posthumously when he renewed his admiration for Maximilien Robespierre. In a letter to his Hébertist friend Joseph Bodson—who resented Robespierre for the executions of Chaumette and Jacques Hébert—Babeuf spoke harshly of Chaumette.
Henriette Simonin may have opposed Fouché by attempting to make him acknowledge his own responsibility in Nevers. Another possibility is that she refused to seek help from a man who had become Minister of Police, seeing it as a betrayal of her principles, and chose instead to face the consequences.
It is also possible that Fouché considered her incapable of harming him and therefore ignored her situation. While it is certain that he sought to politically erase his role in Nevers, this was far less sensitive than his actions in Lyon.
The difficulty is that historians have largely neglected her, leaving us with very little information, despite the existence of at least three letters (two of which are hard to access).
The fact that I can only offer hypotheses is due not only to my own limits in historical knowledge and to certain passages of history that some historians have neglected to explore in depth, but also to the fact that Fouché had many documents destroyed upon his death, which accounts for some of the remaining mysteries.
Sources:
Waresquiel
Robert Legrand
