Fesch

Fesch, Joseph (1763-1839), Cardinal and Archbishop of Lyons, was Napoleon's maternal uncle. He was commissary of war to the Army of the Alps under General Montesquieu after the Revolution, and again to his nephew's Italian army in 1796. In 1801 he returned to his ecclesiastical condition, and in 1802 became Archbishop, and the next year Cardinal and French ambassador to the Papal Court. His ultramontane views displeased the Emperor, who sent him to a kind of exile at Lyons. In 1814 he went to Rome, and after the Hundred Days, during which he returned to France, he again retired to Rome. He refused to resign his episcopal rights till forced to do so by the Pope, and he finally died at Rome.