Cavaignac family

   A family of French political and military figures who served in the 18th and 19th centuries. Jean-Baptiste Cavaignac, baron of Lalande (1763-1829), born in Gourdon, was elected during the revolution of 1789 to the Convention (1792), and was known for his extreme revolutionary views. Named prefect during the hundred days, he was banished as a regicide at the time of the Restoration (1815). Godefroy Cavaignac (1801-45), the son of Jean-Baptiste Cavaignac, was born in Paris and, after participating in the july revolution of 1830, joined the republican opposition. Imprisoned after the troubles of June 1834, he escaped and reached England; returning to France (1841), he served as president of the society of the Rights of Man, which he had helped to found. Louis-Eugène Cavaignac (1802-57), the brother of Godefroy Cavaignac, was born in Paris. A military officer with republican convictions, he was sent to Algeria (1832), where he was named governor-general in 1848. Shortly after, he was then recalled to France to become minister of war. In that capacity, he suppressed the workers' uprising of June 1848 and, invested by the National Assembly with quasi-dictatorial powers, undertook a policy of severe repression. Defeated in the elections of December 1848 by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (see napoléon III), he joined the opposition. Elected to the legislature in 1852, he refused to take his place because he would have had to swear the oath.