e
government troops were frequently repulsed, till, fresh regiments
arriving, he forced his way to the Place de la Bastille and crushed the
insurrection in its headquarters. The contest, which raged from the 23rd
to the morning of the 26th of June, was without doubt the bloodiest and
most resolute the streets of Paris have ever seen, and the general did
not hesitate to inflict the severest punishment on the rebels.

Cavaignac was censured by some for having, by his delay, allowed the
insurrection to gather head; but in the chamber he was declared by a
unanimous vote to have deserved well of his country. After laying down
his dictatorial powers, he continued to preside over the Executive
Committee till the election of a regular president of the republic. It
was expected that the suffrages of France would raise Cavaignac to that
position. But the mass of the people, and especially the rural
population, sick of revolution, and weary even of the moderate
republicanism of Cavaignac, were anxious for a stable government.
Against the five and a half million votes recorded for Louis Napoleon,
Cavaignac received only a million and a half. Not without chagrin at his
defeat, he withdrew into the ranks of the opposition. He continued to
serve as a representative during the short remainder of the republic. At
the _coup d'etat_ of the 2nd December 1851 he was arrested along with
the other members of the opposition; but after a short imprisonment at
Ham he was released, and, with his newly-married wife, lived in
retirement till his death, which took place at Ourne (Sarthe) on the
28th of October 1857.

His son, JACQUES MARIE EUGENE GODEFROI CAVAIGNAC (1853-1905), French
politician, was born in Paris on the 21st of May 1853. He made public
profession of his republican principles as a schoolboy at the Lycee
Charlemagne by refusing in 1867 to receive a prize at the Sorbonne from
the hand of the prince imperial. He received the military medal for
service in the Franco-Prussian War, and in 1872 entered the Ecole
Polytechnique. He served as a civil engineer in Angouleme until 1881,
when he became master of requests in the council of state. In the next
year he was elected deputy for the arrondissement of Saint-Calais
(Sarthe) in the republican interest. In 1885-1886 he was under-secretary
for war in the Henri Brisson ministry, and he served in the cabinet of
Emile Loubet (1892) as minister of marine and of the colonies. He had
exchanged hi