FESCH, CARDINAL JOSEPH, was born at Ajaccio, in Corsica, on the 3rd of January 1763; he was the son of a respectable citizen at 1111e, and half-brother of Letitia Ramoliui, the mother of Napoleon I. In 1776, his father sent him to the seminary of Aix, a college for pre paring youths for the priesthood, where he was educated with much care. During the revolution, the young abb6 was like the rest of his brethren, driven from one place of concealment to another, until he at length sought refuge in the army of General Montesquieu, at that time quartered in Savoy. He suffered great pri,,ations during the Reign of Terror, but the sudden elevation of his nephew, General Bonaparte, after the 13th Vendemiaire (October 1795), in a moment changed his fortune. Bonaparte having been appointed to take the command of the army in Italy, prevailed upon the Abb6 Fesch to withdraw from the church, and become one of the Commissioners, or factors, attached to it. He continued in this office, and performed all its functions, so different from those he had been used to, until the 18th Brumaire 1799. Bonaparte now felt that his uncle's services might be more effective in his first calling, he therefore induced him to resume the ecclesiastical habit after the concordat of 1801, and in April 1802 had him appointed archbishop of Lyon. The following year Archbishop Feach was sent as ambassador to the holy see, taking with him as his secretary the young Viscount de Chateaubriand. The assiduous court paid to the pontiff by the archbishop during his sojourn at Rome, completely won the heart of the kind-hearted old man, who bestowed upon him the cardinal's hat, and consented to go with him to Paris to crown Napoleon. This had been the real
object of his mission.
After the coronation of Napoleon I., at which he officiated, Cardinal Fesch became grand aumonier in 1805, received the grand cordon of the Legion of Honour, and was made a member of the senate. In 1809 Napoleon I. offered him the primacy, and actually announced his nomination, as Archbishop of Paris ; but Cardinal Fesch, angry at the harsh treatment which the pope had received at his nephew's bands, rejected the offer. On the 28th November 1810, he openly rebuked the all-powerful monarch before the council of Paris, of which he was president, and bitterly complained of his aggression on the independence of the church. For this act of insubordination the cardinal was exiled from court, and ordered to return to his diocese at Lyon, where he continued in disgrace until the first abdication, in 1814. During the next few months the cardinal resided at Rome, but he hastened to Paris after the escape of Bonaparte from Elba. Tho battle of Waterloo compelled him a second time .to take refuge in the pontifical court, where he spent the remainder of his life. He died on the 13th of May 1839, at tho age of seventy-six. He was a patron of the fine arts, and had become possessed of a remarkably fine collection of ancient and modern pictures.