native town. Espousing the principles of
the Revolution in 1789, he was commissioned by the _noblesse_ of the
province to draw up the _cahier_ (statement of principles and
grievances); and the _senechaussee_ of Montpellier elected him deputy to
the states-general of Versailles; but the election was annulled on a
technical point. Nevertheless in 1792 the new department of Herault, in
which Montpellier is situated, sent him as one of its deputies to the
Convention which assembled and proclaimed the Republic in September
1792. In the strife which soon broke out between the Girondins and the
Jacobins he took no decided part, but occupied himself mainly with the
legal and legislative work which went on almost without intermission
even during the Terror. The action of Cambaceres at the time of the
trial of Louis XVI. (December 25, 1792-January 20, 1793) was
characteristic of his habits of thought. At first he protested against
the erection of the Convention into a tribunal in these words: "The
people has chosen you to be legislators; it has not appointed you as
judges." He also 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 the cessation of hostilities, and that
the sentence should then be ratified by the Convention or by some other
legislative body. It is therefore inexact to count him among the
regicides, as was done by the royalists after 1815. Early in 1793 he
became a member of the Committee of General Defence, but he did not take
part in the work of its more famous successor, the Committee of Public
Safety, until the close of the year 1794. In the meantime he had done
much useful work, especially that of laying down, conjointly with Merlin
of Douai, the principles on which the legislation of the revolutionary
epoch should be codified. At the close of 1794 he also used his tact and
eloquence on behalf of the restoration of the surviving Girondins to the
Convention, from which they had been driven by the _coup d'etat_ of the
31st of May 1793. In the course of the year 1795, as president of the
Committee of Public Safety, and as responsible especially for foreign
affairs, he was largely instrumental in bringing about peace with Spain.
Nevertheless, not being a regicide, he was not appointed to be one of
the five Directors to whom the control of p