He was intended by his father, a sea captain, for the merchant service, but owing to his delicate health this project was abandoned. He was sent to the Oratorian College in Nantes, and later to an establishment of the same Order in Paris. He received the tonsure and became an abbé; at the time of the Revolution he was a professor in the Nantes University. He quitted the cassock, married, and proceeded to Paris. In 1792 he was elected member of the Convention, and became intimate with Robespierre. The King’s trial gave him his first opportunity of publicly expressing his extreme views. He said in a speech from the Tribune: “I demand the execution of the tyrant, for it would almost appear as if we regretted our courage in abolishing Royalty, were we to tremble before its wretched shadow.” In March 1793, Fouché was despatched to his native town (Nantes), armed with full powers to crush a rebellion against the Republic in the West of France. He opened the campaign by a violent attack on every form of Christianity, confiscated all ecclesiastical buildings, arrested and imprisoned the priests, commanded the destruction of all religious emblems, and ordered this inscription to be placed on the gates of the cemeteries: “Death is an Eternal Sleep.” He affected a disdain for wealth, writing to the Assembly, “Let us abolish gold and silver and fling away all such idols of Monarchy!” These deeds and sentiments caused his rapid promotion, and he was sent to Lyons in company with Herbois, with orders to chastise with fire and sword that recalcitrant city. The two commissioners inaugurated their mission by celebrating a “Feast of Reason,” which, like that of Paris, was a licentious and impious orgie. One of its principal features was a procession headed by an ass, upon whose head was fixed a mitre, while to his tail were fastened the Books of the Old and New Testaments. An altar was erected, at which a mock Mass was celebrated, and the ass given food and drink from consecrated vessels. A bonfire fed with religious emblems and sacred books was extinguished by a violent storm of rain and wind, which finally broke up the “_Feast_.” Upon the next day the massacres of Lyons began. The tribunal decided that the guillotine was too slow a form of execution. They therefore decreed the condemned should be mowed down in batches by cannon shot. As many as fifty-nine persons were on one occasion blown to pieces at the same instant. During their four months’ reign in Lyons, over 1700 persons are known to have been destroyed by order of the commissioners.