The Man Who Outshone the Sun King: The Rise and Fall of Nicolas Fouquet

The story of the rise and fall of Nicolas Fouquet, Louis XIV’s first finance minister.Sometime late in 1664, the musketeer D’Artagnan rode beside a heavily-armoured carriage as it rumbled southwards from Paris, carrying his great friend Nicolas Fouquet to internal exile and life imprisonment in the fortress of Pignerol. There he would be incarcerated in a cell next door to the Man with the Iron Mask. . .From a glittering zenith as the King’s first minister, builder of the chateau of Vaux-le-Vicomte, collector of books, patron of the arts and lover of beautiful women, Fouquet had fallen like Icarus. Charged with embezzlement, he was convicted and sentenced to banishment until the King intervened to change his sentence to life imprisonment.Charles Drazin’s riveting account brings to life the rich and hazardous world in which Foucquet lived. But it is in his downfall and incarceration, which he bore with great fortitude, courage and humour, that Fouquet’s strength of character and grace emerge. The richness and contrasts of his remarkable story are done full justice in this compelling book.