Achille Fould was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 financier and politician.

Born in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, the son of a successful Jewish banker, he was associated with and afterwards succeeded his father in the management of the business. As early as 1842 he entered political life, having been elected in that year as a deputy for the department of the Hautes-Pyrénées

Hautes-Pyrénées

Hautes-Pyrénées is a department in southwestern France. It is part of the Midi-Pyrénées region.-History:...

. From that time to his death he actively busied himself with the affairs of his country. He readily acquiesced in the revolution of February 1848, and is said to have exercised a decided influence in financial matters on the provisional government then formed. He shortly afterwards published two pamphlets against the use of paper money, entitled, Pas d'Assignats I and Observations sur la question financière.

During the presidency of Louis Napoleon he was four times minister of finance, and took a leading part in the economic reforms then made in France. His strong conservative tendencies led him to oppose the doctrine of free trade, and disposed him to hail the coup d'état and the new empire. On January 25, 1852, in consequence of the decree confiscating the property of the Orléans family, he resigned the office of minister of finance, but was on the same day appointed senator, and soon after rejoined the government as minister of state and of the imperial household. In this capacity he directed the Paris exhibition of 1855

Exposition Universelle (1855)

The Exposition Universelle of 1855 was an International Exhibition held on the Champs-Elysées in Paris from May 15 to November 15, 1855. Its full official title was the Exposition Universelle des produits de l'Agriculture, de l'Industrie et des Beaux-Arts de Paris 1855.The exposition was a major...

. The events of November 1860 led once more to his resignation, but he was recalled to the ministry of finance in November of the following year, and retained office until the publication of the imperial letter of January 19, 1867, when Émile Ollivier

Émile Ollivier

Olivier Émile Ollivier was a French statesman. Although a republican, he served as a cabinet minister under Emperor Napoleon III and led the process of turning his regime into a "liberal Empire".-Early life and career:Émile Ollivier was born in Marseille...

 became the chief adviser to the emperor. During his last tenure of office he had reduced the floating debt, which the Mexican War had considerably increased, by the negotiation of a loan of 300 million francs (1863).

Fould, besides uncommon financial abilities, had a taste for the fine arts, which he developed and refined during his youth by visiting Italy and the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean. In 1857 he was made a member of the Academy of the Fine Arts

Académie des beaux-arts

The Académie des Beaux-Arts is a French learned society. It is one of the five academies of the Institut de France.It was created in 1795 as the merger of the:* Académie de peinture et de sculpture...

.

Achille Fould died in Tarbes

Tarbes

Tarbes is a commune in the Hautes-Pyrénées department in south-western France.It is part of the historical region of Gascony. It is the second largest metropolitan area of Midi-Pyrénées, with 110,000 inhabitants....

in 1867.