Jean Jacques Régis De Cambacérès Early Career The Code Napoléon

Cambacérès was born at Montpellier in southern France, into a family of the legal nobility (noblesse de la robe). In 1774 he graduated in law and succeeded his father as councillor in the Montpellier court of accounts and finances. He was a supporter of the French Revolution of 1789, and was elected to represent Montpellier at the meeting of the Estates-General at Versailles, although he was unable to take his seat. In 1792 he represented the départementThe departements (or departments) are administrative units of France, roughly analogous to British counties and are now grouped into 22 metropolitan and four overseas regions''. They are subdivided into 342 arrondissements''. Departements are also found i of Herault in the ConventionThis article is about a legislative body and constitutional convention during the French Revolution. The term national convention also refers, in the United States, to the presidential nominating conventions. During the French Revolution, the National Con which assembled and proclaimed the First French Republic in September 1792.

In revolutionary terms Cambacérès was a moderate. During the trial of Louis XVILouis XVI of France ( August 23, 1754 January 21, 1793) succeeded his grandfather ( Louis XV of France) as King of France on May 10, 1774; he was crowned on June 11, 1775. His father, the Louis dauphin son of Marie Leszczynska, had died in 1765. Louis was he protested that the Convention did not have the power to sit as a court and demanded that the king should have due facilities for his defence. Nevertheless, when the trial proceeded, he voted with the majority which declared Louis to be guilty, but recommended that the penalty should be postponed until it could ratified by a legislative body.

In 1793Events January 2 Russia and Prussia partition Poland January 9 Jean-Pierre Blanchard becomes the first to fly in a balloon in the United States. January 21 After being found guilty of treason by the French Convention, "Citizen Capet" ie. Louis XVI of Fran Cambacérès became a member of the Committee of General Defence, but was not a member of its famous successor, the Committee of Public SafetyThe Committee of Public Safety ( French: Comite de Salut Public , set up by the National Convention on April 6, 1793, formed the de facto executive government of France during the Reign of Terror ( 1793 1794) of the French Revolution. Under war conditions, until the end of 1794Events February 11 1st session of US Senate open to the public. March 14 Eli Whitney is granted a patent for the cotton gin. March 27 The United States Government established a permanent United States Navy and authorized the building of six vessels (in 17, after the Reign of Terror had ended. In the meantime he worked on much of the legislation of the revolutionary period. During 1795 he was also employed as a diplomat, and negotiated peace with Spain.

Cambacérès was considered too conservative to be one of the five Directors who took power in the coup of 1795, and finding himself in opposition to the Directorate he retired from politics. In 1799, however, as the Revolution entered a more moderate phase, he became Minister of Justice. He supported the coup of 18 Brumaire (in November 1799) which brought Napoléon Bonaparte to power as First Consul in a new regime designed to establish a stable constitutional republic.

2 The Code Napoléon

In December 1799 Cambacérès was appointed Second Consul under Bonaparte. He owed this appointment to his vast legal knowledge and his reputation as a moderate republican. His most important work during this period was the drawing up of a new Civil Law Code, later called the Code Napoléon, France's first modern legal code. The code was promulgated by Bonaparte (as Emperor Napoleon) in 1804. It was the work of Cambacérès and a commission of four lawyers.

The Code was a revised form of Roman law, with some modifications drawn from the laws of the Franks still current in northern France. The Code was later extended by Napoleon's conquests to Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, western Germany and Spain, and indirectly to the Spanish colonies in Latin America. Cambacérès's work has thus been enormously influential in European and American legal history. Versions of the Code are still in force in Québec and Louisiana.

3 Cambacérès and homosexuality

It is widely believed that Cambacérès used the Code Napoléon to decriminalise male homosexuality, and the fact that he was himself homosexual gives credibility to this belief. His sexual orientation was well-known, and he does not seem to have made any effort to conceal it. He remained unmarried, and kept to the company of other bachelors. Napoléon is recorded as making a number of jokes on the subject. During the Consulate, Bonaparte, Cambacérès and Third Consul Charles-François Lebrun were known as "Qui, Quae et Quod." (He, She and It).

Before the Revolution, sexual conduct had been regulated by mediaeval ecclesiastical law. When the National Constituent Assembly abolished ecclesiastical courts in 1791, it therefore in effect decriminalised male homosexuality, although it is not clear that this was its intention (a similar state of affairs occurred during the early years of the Russian Revolution in 1917).

The authors of the Code Napoléon had the option of reintroducing a law against male homosexuality (as was eventually done in the Soviet Union), but chose not to do so, presumably at least partly as a result of the influence of Cambacérès. In this sense Cambacérès can be credited with the decision to make decriminalisation a permanent fact of French law. Recent research by Michael Sibalis has shown, however, that Napoléonic officials could and did repress homosexuality using other laws, such as "offenses against public decency."

Sibalis argues that while officials of the Napoléonic regime disliked what they saw "crimes against nature," such offences were seldom actually tried as such in the courts. He concludes that despite police surveillance and harassment, "the Revolutionary and Napoléonic period was a time of relative freedom," partially anticipating "contemporary legal toleration."

4 Later career

Cambacérès disapproved of Bonaparte's accumulation of power into his own hands, culminating in the proclamation of the First French Empire on 19 May 1804. But he retained office under Napoléon, with the title Arch-Chancellor of the Empire and President of the Senate. He also became a prince of the Empire and in 1808 was made Duke of Parma. Under Napoléon as under the revolutionary regime, he was a force for moderation, opposing adventures such as the invasion of Russia in 1812.

As Napoléon became increasingly obsessed with military affairs, Cambacérès became the de facto domestic ruler of France, a position which inevitably made him increasingly unpopular as France's economic situation grew worse. His taste for high living attracted hostile comment. Nevertheless he was given credit for the justice and moderation of his government, although the enforcement of conscription was increasingly resented towards the end of the wars.

When the Empire fell in 1814 Cambacérès retired to private life, but was recalled during Napoléon's brief return to power in 1815. After the restoration of the monarchy, he was in danger of arrest for his revolutionary activities, and for a time he was exiled from France. But the fact that he had opposed the execution of Louis XVI counted in his favour, and in May 1818 his civil rights as a citizen of France were restored. He was a member of the Académie française, and lived quietly in provincial France until his death in 1824.

5 External links

The House of Cambacérès (in French)
French Council of State website on Cambacérès (in French)
The Code Napoléon
website of Dr Michael Sibalis

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1 Early career