His horrible career ended with the fall of Robespierre and the terrorists on the 9th Thermidor. On the 1st of August 1794 he was imprisoned by order of the Convention and brought to trial. His defence was that he had only obeyed the orders of the Committee of Public Safety; but, after a trial which lasted forty-one days, he was condemned to death, and guillotined on the 7th of May 1795.
See Mémoire pour A.Q. Fouquier ex-accusateur public près le tribunal révolutionnaire, &c. (Paris, 1794); Domenget, Fouquier-Tinville et le tribunal révolutionnaire (Paris, 1878); H. Wallon, Histoire du tribunal révolutionnaire de Paris (1880-1882) (a work of general interest, but not always exact); George Lecocq, Notes et documents sur Fouquier-Tinville (Paris, 1885). See also the documents relating to his trial enumerated by M. Tourneux in Bibliographie de l’histoire de Paris pendant la Révolution Française, vol. i. Nos. 4445-4454 (1890).
FOURCHAMBAULT, a town of central France in the department of Nièvre, on the right bank of the Loire, 4½ m. N.W. of Nevers, on the Paris-Lyon railway. Pop. (1906) 4591. It owes its importance to its extensive iron-works, established in 1821, which give employment to 2000 workmen and produce engineering material for railway, military and other purposes. Among the more remarkable chefs-d’œuvre which have been produced at Fourchambault are the metal portions of the Pont du Carrousel, the iron beams of the roof of the cathedral at Chartres, and the vast spans of the bridge over the Dordogne at Cubzac. A small canal unites the works to the Lateral canal of the Loire.
FOURCROY, ANTOINE FRANÇOIS, Comte de (1755-1809), French chemist, the son of an apothecary in the household of the duke of Orleans, was born at Paris on the 15th of June 1755. He took up medical studies by the advice of the anatomist Félix Vicq d’Azyr (1748-1794), and after many difficulties caused by lack of means finally in 1780 obtained his doctor’s diploma. His attention was specially turned to chemistry by J.B.M. Bucquet (1746-1780), the professor of chemistry at the Medical School of Paris, and in 1784 he was chosen to succeed P.J. Macquer (1718-1784) as lecturer in chemistry at the college of the Jardin du Roi, where his lectures attained great popularity. He was one of the earliest converts to the views of Lavoisier, which he helped to promulgate by his voluminous writings, but though his name appears on a large number of chemical and also physiological and pathological memoirs, either alone or with others, he was rather a teacher and an organizer than an original investigator. A member of the committees for public instruction and public safety, and later, under Napoleon, director general of instruction, he took a leading part in the establishment of schools for both primary and secondary education, scientific studies being especially provided for. Fourcroy died at Paris on the 16th of December 1809, the very day on which he had been created a count of the French empire. By his conduct as a member of the Convention he has been accused of contributing to the death of Lavoisier. Baron Cuvier in his Éloge historique of Fourcroy repels the charge, but he can scarcely be acquitted of time-serving indifference, if indeed active, though secret, participation be not proved against him.
The Royal Society’s Catalogue of Scientific Papers enumerates 59 memoirs by Fourcroy himself, and 58 written jointly by him and others, mostly L.N. Vauquelin.
FOURIER, FRANÇOIS CHARLES MARIE (1772-1837), French socialist writer, was born at Besançon in Franche-Comté on the 7th of April 1772. His father was a draper in good circumstances, and Fourier received an excellent education at the college in his native town. After completing his studies there he travelled for some time in France, Germany and Holland. On the death of his father he inherited a considerable amount of property, which, however, was lost when Lyons was besieged by the troops of the Convention. Being thus deprived of his means of livelihood Fourier entered the army, but after two years’ service as a chasseur was discharged on account of ill-health. In 1803 he published a remarkable article on European politics which attracted the notice of Napoleon, some of whose ideas were foreshadowed in it. Inquiries were made after the author, but nothing seems to have come of them. After leaving the army Fourier entered a merchant’s office in Lyons, and some years later undertook on his own account a small business as broker. He obtained in this way just sufficient to supply his wants, and devoted all his leisure time to the elaboration of his first work on the organization of society.
During the early part of his life, and while engaged in commerce, he had become deeply impressed with the conviction that social arrangements resulting from the principles of individualism and competition were essentially imperfect and immoral. He proposed to substitute for these principles co-operation or united effort, by means of which full and harmonious development might be given to human nature. The scheme, worked out in detail in his first work, Théorie des quatre mouvements (2 vols., Lyons, 1808, published anonymously), has for foundation a particular psychological proposition and a special economical doctrine. Psychologically Fourier held what may with some laxity of language be called natural optimism,—the view that the full, free development of human nature or the unrestrained indulgence of human passion is the only possible way to happiness and virtue, and that misery and vice spring from the unnatural restraints imposed by society on the gratification of desire. This principle of harmony among the passions he regarded as his grandest discovery—a discovery which did more than set him on a level with Newton, the discoverer of the principle of attraction or harmony among material bodies. Throughout his works, in uncouth, obscure and often unintelligible language, he endeavours to show that the same fundamental fact of harmony is to be found in the four great departments,—society, animal life, organic life and the material universe. In order to give effect to this principle and obtain the resulting social harmony, it was needful that society should be reconstructed; for, as the social organism is at present constituted, innumerable restrictions are imposed upon the free development of human desire. As practical principle for such a reconstruction Fourier advocated co-operative or united industry. In many respects what he says of co-operation, in particular as to the enormous waste of economic force which the actual arrangements of society entail, still deserves attention, and some of the most recent efforts towards extension of the co-operative method, e.g. to house-keeping, were in essentials anticipated by him. But the full realization of his scheme demanded much more than the mere admission that co-operation is economically more efficacious than individualism. Society as a whole must be organized on the lines requisite to give full scope to co-operation and to the harmonious evolution of human nature. The details of this reorganization of the social structure cannot be given briefly, but the broad outlines may be thus sketched. Society, on his scheme, is to be divided into departments or phalanges, each phalange numbering about 1600 persons. Each phalange inhabits a phalanstère or common building, and has a certain portion of soil allotted to it for cultivation. The phalanstères are built after a uniform plan, and the domestic arrangements are laid down very elaborately. The staple industry of the phalanges is, of course, agriculture, but the various series and groupes into which the members are divided may devote themselves to such occupations as are most to their taste; nor need any occupation become irksome from constant devotion to it. Any member of a group may vary his employment at pleasure, may pass from one task to another. The tasks regarded as menial or degrading in ordinary society can be rendered attractive if advantage is taken of the proper principles of human nature: thus children, who have a natural affinity for dirt, and a fondness for “cleaning up,” may easily be induced to accept with eagerness the functions of public scavengers. It is not, on Fourier’s scheme, necessary that private property should be abolished, nor is the privacy of family life impossible within the phalanstère. Each family may have separate apartments, and there may be richer and poorer members. But the rich and poor are to be locally intermingled, in order that the broad distinction between them, which is so painful a feature in actual society, may become almost imperceptible. Out of the common gain of the phalange a certain portion is deducted to furnish to each member the minimum of subsistence; the remainder is distributed in shares to labour, capital and talent,—five-twelfths going to the first, four-twelfths to the second and three-twelfths to the third. Upon the changes requisite in the private life of the members Fourier was in his first work more explicit than in his later writings. The institution of marriage, which imposes unnatural bonds on human passion, is of necessity abolished; a new and ingeniously constructed system of licence is substituted for it. Considerable offence seems to have been given by Fourier’s utterances with regard to marriage, and generally the later advocates of his views are content to pass the matter over in silence or to veil their teaching under obscure and metaphorical language.