ed the daughter
of Captain de Ponthieu and Marguerite de la Rochefoucauld, refugees
living at Portarlington. Malesherbes, the courageous defender of Louis
XVI., bears the following eloquent testimony to this young hero of the
Cevennes:--"I confess," he says, "that this warrior, who, without ever
having served, found himself by the mere gift of nature a great
general,--this Camisard who was bold to punish a crime in the presence
of a fierce troop which maintained itself by little crimes--this coarse
peasant who, when admitted at twenty years of age into the society of
cultivated people, caught their manners and won their love and esteem,
this man who, though accustomed to a stormy life, and having just cause
to be proud of his success, had yet enough philosophy in him by nature
to enjoy for thirty-five years a tranquil private life--appears to me to
be one of the rarest characters to be found in history."

For a more detailed account see F. Puaux, _Vie de Jean Cavalier_
(1868); David C.A. Agnew, _Protestant Exiles from France_, ii. 54-66
(Lond., 1871); Charvey, _Jean Cavalier: nouveaux documents inedits_
(1884). Eugene Sue popularized the name of the Camisard chief in _Jean
Cavalier ou les fanatiques des Cevennes_ (1840). (F. Px.)

CAVALIER, a horseman, particularly a horse-soldier or one of gentle
birth trained in knightly exercises. The word is taken from one of the
French words which derived ultimately from the Late Lat. _caballarius_,
a horseman, from Lat. _caballus_, properly a pack-horse, which gave the
Fr. _cheval._ a _chevalier_. This last word is the regular French for
"knight," and is chiefly used in English for a member of certain foreign
military or other orders, particularly of the Legion of Honour. Cavalier
in English was early applied in a contemptuous sense to an overbearing
swashbuckler--a roisterer or swaggering gallant. In Shakespeare (_2
Henry IV._ v. iii. 62) Shallow calls Bardolph's companions "cavaleros."
"Cavalier" is chiefly associated with the Royalists, the supporters of
Charles I. in the struggle with the Parliament in the Great Rebellion.
Here again it first appears as a term of reproach and contempt, applied
by the opponents of the king. Charles in the _Answer to the Petition_
(June 13, 1642) speaks of cavaliers as a "word by what mistake soever it
seemes much in disfavour." Further quotations of the use of the word by
the Parliamentary party are given in the _New English