CAVAIGNAC, Loris (1S02-57). A French general. Ile was in Paris, October 15, 1802, and was educated in the Polytechnic School. and the Fri& d'Application in Metz. Entering the army, he rendered efficient service in Algeria, where he went in 1832, and rose rap idly in rank, hemming a brigadier-general in 1S-14, Governor of the Province of Oran in 1847, and Governor-General of Algeria in the following year. Ile was, however, almost immediately re palled to Paris after the February revolution. and in May was made Minister of War. Called upon to defend the republican Government dur ing the .Tune insurreetion, he displayed energy, courage, and coolness. His operations were sue eessful, and his clemency was as meritorious as his generalship. Though lie might have made himself dictator, he resigned his power into the hands of the National Assembly, which appointed him chief of the executive body. As a candidate for the Presidency of the Republic in 1).1-ember, against Louis Napoleon, he received about 1,500, 000 votes to the latter's 5,300,000. After the
coup d'kat of December 2, 1851, Cavaignac was arrested, lint was released after a short detention; and thought lie consistently refused' to give his adhesion to the Empire, lie was permitted to re side in France without molestation. Ile died of heart disease, October 2S, 1857, at his country house near Tours. De To•queville, in his Memoirs, referring, to Cavaignae as a debater, speaks of "those short addresses which he som• times delivered, in which ids Mind, which was naturally medimre and confused, reached the level of his soul and approached the sublime. Under these circumstances he became, for the moment, the man of the most genuine eloquence that I have ever beard in assemblies. Ile left, all the mere orators behind him." Consult: :Mont fort, Biographic du general raraig»ae ( Paris, 1848) ; Deschamps, lie de Caraignae (Park 1870).