His father was Franz Faesch, a Swiss officer in the service of the Republic of Genoa, whose family belonged to the Basel patriciate and had been ennobled in the Holy Roman Empire in 1562.

As provost of the "chapter" in that city he directly felt the pressure of events; for on the suppression of religious orders and corporations, he was constrained to retire into private life.

Drawn gradually into espousing the French cause against Pasquale Paoli and the Anglophiles, he was forced to leave Corsica and to proceed with Laetitia and her son to Toulon, in early autumn, 1793.

When the restoration of the Roman Catholic religion was in the mind of the First Consul, Fesch resumed his clerical vocation and took an active part in the complex negotiations which led to the signing of the Concordat with the Holy See on 15 July 1801.

[2] Appointed by Napoleon on 4 April 1803 to succeed François Cacault on the latter's retirement from the position of French ambassador at Rome,[3] Fesch was assisted by Chateaubriand, but soon sharply differed with him on many questions.

Towards the close of 1804, Napoleon entrusted to Fesch the difficult task of securing the presence of Pope Pius VII at the forthcoming coronation of the emperor at Notre Dame, Paris (2 December 1804).

In 1806 one of the most influential of the German clerics, Karl von Dalberg, then prince-bishop of Regensburg, chose him to be his coadjutor and designated him as his successor.

Napoleon was inexorable in his demands, and Pius VII refused to give way where the discipline and vital interests of the church seemed to be threatened.

[4] Affairs came to a crisis in the year 1809, when Napoleon issued at Vienna the decree of 17 May, ordering the annexation of the Papal States to the French empire.

In the year 1811 the emperor convoked a national council of Gallican clerics for the discussion of church affairs, and Fesch was appointed to preside over their deliberations.

In June 1812 Pius VII was brought from his first place of detention, Savona, to Fontainebleau, where he was kept under surveillance in the hope that he would give way in certain matters relating to the Concordat and in other clerical affairs.

[5] The disasters of the years 1812-1813 brought Napoleon to treat Pius VII more leniently and the position of Fesch thus became for a time less difficult.

There he spent the rest of his days in dignified ease, surrounded by numerous masterpieces of art, many of which he bequeathed to the cities of Lyon and Ajaccio.