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French colonial expansion in Tunisia, Madagascar, the Gulf of Tonkin and the Congo, and at the Berlin Conference on African frontiers in 1884-5 he showed willingness to collaborate with BISMARCK. This ability to work with the traditional enemy, together with temporary rebuffs to a costly policy of colonialism, made him a target for withering attacks by CLEMENCEAU in parliament in the spring of 1885. He never held office again, dying from gunshot wounds inflicted by a mentally deranged assassin in March 1893. T.F.Power: Jules Ferry and the Renaissance of French Imperialism (New York, 1944); D.W.Brogan: The Development of Modern France (1940). Fish, Hamilton (1808-93), US Secretary of State from 1869 to 1877: born in New York, the son of a prominent Federalist who was a close friend of Alexander Hamilton, after whom the boy was named. Hamilton Fish graduated from Columbia University in 1827, practised law, entered politics and was Governor of New York in 1849-50, serving in the Senate from 1851 to 1857 before returning to his law practice. President Grant appointed him Secretary of State a week after his inauguration in March 1869. Fish resolved the outstanding diplomatic disputes between Great Britain and the United States, settling boundary problems, difficulties over fishing rights and the claims arising from the construction and supply to the Confederacy of commerce raiders, notably the Alabama. He also held in check demands for war with Spain when, in 1873, the Spanish authorities executed more than fifty Americans accused of gun-running on behalf of Cuban rebels against Spanish rule. Fish’s gifts as a mediator calmed disputes within Grant’s Cabinet while his statesmanlike approach to international problems lifted the level of an otherwise weak, and often corrupt, administration. The revival of the Democrats in the 1876 election induced Fish to resume his private law practice in New York City, where his family retained much influence within the Republican Party until after the Second World War. A.Nevins: Hamilton Fish: the Inner History of the Grant Administration (New York, 1936). Fisher, John Arbuthnot (1841-1920), British Admiral: born at Rambodde in Ceylon, the son of a coffee planter. He went to sea as a naval cadet in 1855, first seeing action in China as an 18-year-old midshipman. He possessed drive and a natural interest in technical developments. As early as 1872. he was a torpedo specialist, constantly seeking changes in the science of naval warfare. Training and tactics were revolutionized during his three years as Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean, 1899-1902. Fisher returned to England, eager to promote the building of the first ‘all-big-gun’ battleship, the Dreadnought, which was laid down in October 1905, almost exactly twelve months after Fisher took office as First Sea Lord (the serving officer responsible for naval policy in general and the disposition of the fleet). Fisher’s reforms modernized the Royal Navy, preparing it, for the first time, for war against Germany. He retired as First Sea Lord in 1910, was brought back by Winston CHURCHILL in October 1914 but was by then too old, too egotistic and too eccentric for such responsibilities. He resigned in May 1915. At the height of his influence, in 1909, he was raised to the peerage

as Baron Fisher of Kilverstone; characteristically he chose as his armorial motto, ‘Fear God and Dread Nought’. A.J.Marder (ed): Fear God and Dread Nought (Fisher’s correspondence, 3 vols) (1952-9); R.Mackay: Fisher of Kilver-stone (Oxford, 1973); J.Morris: Fisher’s Face (1995). Foch, Ferdinand (1851-1929), Marshal of France, Allied Generalissimo on the Western Front in 1918: born at Tarbes in the foothills of the Pyrenees, educated at Jesuit colleges, enlisted as a private in the infantry in September 1870 but resumed his studies in March 1871 and was eventually commissioned in the artillery in October 1873. He held staff positions and taught at the École Supérieure de Guerre from 1885 to 1901, returning as Commandant of the school from 1908 to 1912, and attended Russian and British manoeuvres with the rank of General in 1910 and 1912. He commanded the French Ninth Army at the battle of the Marne in September 1914 and was commander of the French Northern Army group in Flanders and Artois from October 1914 until the end of the battle of the Somme, November 1916. At first Foch, like most French Generals of his generation, believed in vigorous offensive operations, but by July 1915 he had come to accept the need for patient, defensive warfare until trench positions had been obliterated or there had been a collapse of enemy morale. He therefore disapproved of the Somme assaults, a strategy on which his advice was disregarded by JOFFRE and HAIG. Foch became Chief of the French General Staff in May 1917, a post which brought him into close contact with the British, Belgian and Italian war leaders as well as with General PERSHING and the first American troops, who reached France at the end of June. Foch’s initiative and resolution impressed the Allied leaders and when LUDENDORFF launched his ‘make-or-break’ spring offensive in 1918, Foch was empowered to co-ordinate Allied resistance (26 March), becoming Commander-in-Chief of the Allied armies in France on 14 April. His calm strategic vision staved off military disaster, enabling counter-offensives to be launched on 18 July and 8 August which forced Germany to sue for peace. He conducted the armistice negotiations with a German delegation in his personal railway carriage at a siding in the forest of Compiègne between 8 and 11 November 1918. A Paris Peace Conference of 1919 Foch was chief spokesman for a military pressure group which sought territorial acquisitions for France in the Rhineland. Together with his right-hand man, General WEYGAND, he was regarded by CLEMENCEAU as a possible originator of a coup d’état (April 1919), but Foch remained loyal to the Republic. He had been created a Marshal of France on 6 August 1918 and in July 1919 was appointed a British Field Marshal. Most of his last years were spent in retirement on his estate at Tréfeunteuniou, near Morlaix in Brittany, but he died in Paris on 2,0 March 1929, and was interred close to the tomb of Napoleon I, in the chapel of Les Invalides in Paris. F.Foch: The Memoirs of Marshal Foch (1931); B.H.Liddell Hart: Foch, the Man of Orleans (1931); C.Falls: Marshal Foch (1939); J. Marshall-Cornwall: Foch as Military Commander (1972).