This article is about the French revolutionary. See also Claude Fournier (Quebec filmmaker).

Claude Fournier L'Héritier (December 21, 1745 - 1825), was a French revolutionary, nicknamed "l'Americain" ("the American").

He was born at Auzon (Haute-Loire), the son of a poor weaver, and went to America to seek his fortune. At San Domingo on the island of Haiti, he began the manufacture of tafia (an inferior quality of rum), but lost everything in a fire. Returning to France he joined the French Revolution with enthusiasm, and distinguished himself by organizing the popular armed force by means of which the most famous of the revolutionary coups were effected. His influence was principally manifested in the insurrections of October 5 and 6 1789, July 17 1791, and June 20 and August 10, 1792.

He was on bad terms with the majority of the politicians (particularly with Jean-Paul Marat) and spent much of his time in prison, all governments regarding him as an agitator and accusing him of inciting to insurrection. Arrested for the first time for trying to force an entrance into the club of the Cordeliers, from which he had been expelled, he was released, but was in prison from December 12 1793 to September 21 1794, and again from March 9 to October 26, 1795.

After the attempt on the First Consul in the rue Sainte-Nicaise he was deported to French Guiana, but was allowed to return to France in 1809. In 1811, while under surveillance at Auxerre, he was accused of having provoked an emeute against taxes known as the droits reunis (afterwards called contributions indirectes), and was imprisoned in the Chateau d'lf , where he remained till 1814.

On the second restoration of the Bourbons, Fournier was confined for about nine months in the prison of La Force. After 1816 he turned royalist, and passed his last years in importuning the Restoration government for compensation for his lost property in San Domingo. He died in obscurity.

For further details see preface to FA Aulard's edition of Fournier's Mémoires secrets (Paris, 1890), published by the Societe de l'histoire de la Revolution.

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