Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès

Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès, 1st Duke of Parma, 1st Duke of Cambacérès (18 October 1753 – 8 March 1824) was a French nobleman, lawyer and statesman during the French Revolution and the First Empire, best remembered as one of the authors of the Napoleonic Code, which still forms the basis of French civil law and inspired civil law in many countries.

Cambacérès was born in Montpellier, into a poor family of the legal nobility. (His brother, Étienne Hubert de Cambacérès, later became a cardinal.) In 1774, he graduated in law from the college d'Aix and succeeded his father (who later became mayor of Montepellier) as Councillor in the court of accounts and finances in Toulouse. He was a supporter of the French Revolution of 1789, and was elected as an extra deputy to represent the nobility of Montpellier (in case the government doubled the nobility's delegation) at the meeting of the Estates-General at Versailles. However, since the delegation was not increased, he never took his seat. In 1792, he represented the department of Hérault at the National Convention which assembled and proclaimed the First French Republic in September of 1792.

In revolutionary terms, Cambacérès was a moderate republican and sat left of center during the National Convention. During the trial of Louis XVI 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, Cambacérès voted with the majority that declared Louis to be guilty, but recommended that the penalty should be postponed until it could be ratified by a legislative body. This would later save him from being killed for regicide. During the Convention, many of his decisions (like the latter) were well thought out and calculated. Cambacérès made sure that he never committed himself to a certain faction. His legal expertise made him useful to all parties; he was a friend to all and an enemy to none. However, due to this, his fellow representatives at the convention did criticize him for sometimes fluctuating on some positions.

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