Page "Joseph Fouché" Paragraph 8

Fouché went on to Lyon in November with Jean-Marie Collot d ' Herbois to execute the reprisals of the Convention.

Lyon had revolted against the Convention and needed to be dealt with.

Lyon, on 23 November, was declared to be in a " state of revolutionary war " by Collot and Fouché.

The two men then formed the Temporary Commission for Republican Surveillance.

He inaugurated his mission with a festival notable for its obscene parody of religious rites.

Fouché and Collot then brought in " a contingent of almost two thousand of the Parisian Revolutionary Army " to begin their terrorizing.

" On 4 December, 60 men, chained together, were blasted with grapeshot on the paline de Brotteaux outside the city, and 211 more the following day.

Grotesquely ineffective, these mitraillades resulted in heaps of mutilated, screaming, half-dead victims, who had to be finished off with sabres and musket fire by soldiers physically sickened at the task.

" It is through events like this that made Fouché infamous as " The Executioner of Lyons.

" The Commission was not happy with the methods used for killing the rebels, so soon after this " more normal firing squads supplemented the guillotine.

" These methods led to the carrying out of " over 1800 executions in the coming months.

" Fouché, claiming that " Terror, salutary terror, is now the order of the day here .... We are causing much impure blood to flow, but it is our duty to do so, it is for humanity's sake ," called for the execution of 1, 905 citizens.

As Napoleon's biographer Alan Schom has written: