Fouché's successor was General Savary, one of Napoleon's most devoted and uncompromising adherents, an indifferent soldier and a conceited, self-sufficient man. He will always be stigmatised as the executioner of the Duc d'Enghien, one ready to go any lengths in blind obedience to his master's behests. His appointment as chief of the police caused universal consternation; it was dreaded as the inauguration of an epoch of brutal military discipline, the advent of the soldier-policeman, whose iron hand would be heavy upon all. Wholesale arrests, imprisonments, and exiles were anticipated. Savary himself, although submissively accepting his new and strange duties, shrank from executing them. He would gladly have declined the honour of becoming Police Minister, but the emperor would not excuse him, and, taking him by the hand, tried to stiffen his courage by much counsel. The advice he freely gave is worth recording in part, as expressing the views of a monarch who was himself the best police officer of his time.
"Ill-use no one," he told Savary as they strolled together through the park of Saint-Cloud. "You are supposed to be a severe man, and it would give a handle to my enemies if you were found harsh and reactionary. Dismiss none of your present employees; if any displease you, keep them at least six months, and then find them other situations. If you have to adopt stern measures, be sure they are justified, and it will at least be admitted that you are doing your duty.... Do not imitate your predecessor, who allowed me to be blamed for sharp measures and took to himself the credit of any acts of leniency. A good police officer is quite without passion. Allow yourself to hate no one; listen to all, and never commit yourself to an opinion until you have thought it well over.... I removed Monsieur Fouché because I could no longer rely upon him. When I no longer gave him orders, he acted on his own account and left me to bear the responsibility. He was always trying to find out what I meant to do, so as to forestall me, and, as I became more and more reserved, he accepted as true what others told him, and so got farther and farther astray."
Savary, on assuming the reins of office, found himself in a serious dilemma. He could hardly have anticipated that Fouché would make his task easy for him, but the result was even worse than he had expected. He had been weak enough to allow Fouché three weeks to clear out of the Ministry, and his wily predecessor had made the best use of his time to burn and destroy every paper of consequence that he possessed. When he finally handed over his charge, he produced one meagre document alone--an abusive memorandum, two years old, inveighing against the exiled House of Bourbon. Every other paper had disappeared. He was no less malicious with regard to the secret staff of the office. The only persons he presented to the new chief were a few low-class spies whom he had never largely trusted; and although Savary raised some of them to higher functions he was still deprived of the assistance of the superior agents upon whom Fouché had so greatly relied. Savary solved this difficulty cleverly. He found in his office a registry of addresses for the use of the messengers who delivered letters. This registry was kept by his clerks, and, not wishing to let them into his design, he took the registry one night into his private study and copied out the whole list himself. He found many names he little expected; names which, as he has said, he would have expected sooner to find in China than in this catalogue. Many addresses had, however, no indication but a single initial, and he guessed--no doubt rightly--that these probably related to the most important agents of all.