Fouché. Les Silences de la Pieuvre.

 
 
From the publishers:
 
“Everyone knows Fouché. Fouché from Nantes, the penniless bourgeois, the short teacher at the heavily religious Oratoire schools; Fouché the member of Convention, the regicide, the 'proconsul' of Nevers and Moulins, the 'gunner of Lyons', the destroyer of Robespierre, Napoléon's nightmare, the minister of all regimes, the inventor of the modern police force, the builder of the State, the theoretician and the man of action, the adventurer, the conspirator and the parvenu. Undoubtedly one of the most powerful men of his age, certainly one of the most extraordinary. Few are the men who invent new rules without waiting for the endgame. Fouché was that sort of man.”
 
In Fouché. Les silences de la pieuvre, Emmanuel de Waresquiel digs into every corner of the life of a man as secretive as he was contradictory. With the help of an enormous collection of archives – many of which are unpublished – Waresquiel paints a […] portrait of an incredible character who has long been misunderstood and too strongly identified with his black legend. This is Fouché as you've never seen him before.
 

(translated by F. Whitlum-Cooper)