Joseph Fouché elsõ „pálfordulása”
The First „180-degree Turnaround” of Joseph Fouché

Summary/Abstract: The place attributed to Joseph Fouché by the great majority of historians is among the great traitors of world history. That it is so is accounted for by the fact that the French Revolution is a heritage full of acute conflicts, and unfit for a heartily approval in its entirety. Consequently, the politicians, political thinkers, artists and historians of the 19th and 20th centuries all identified themselves or sympathised with one given element or trend within this vast conglomeration. Those persons, on the other hand, such as Fouché and Talleyrand, who played a decisive role in several consecutive regimes, were rejected and accused of opportunism or even treachery. The biographers of Fouché regard his votes given at the trial of the king as the proof of his first major conversion, when he left the Gironde and joined the Mountain. Yet a profound analysis of the trial, the voting, and of the contemporary and later writings of Fouché makes this interpretation untenable. Far from making a true conversion by voting for the death of Louis XVI, he, just like the majority of the Convent, under the pressure of extraordinary events, and after due consideration given to pros and contras, merely accepted the revolutionary solution of a problem, which then appeared effective, and decided accordingly.

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