For the artist, see Charles Le Brun.

Charles François Lebrun, duc de Plaisance, prince de l'empire (19 March 1739 - 16 June 1824) was a French statesman.

He was born at St-Sauveur-Lendelin (Manche), and in 1762 made his first appearance as a lawyer at Paris. He filled the posts successively of censeur royale (1766) and of inspector general of the domains of the crown (1768); he was also one of the chief advisers of the chancellor Alaupeou , took part in his struggle against the parlements, and shared in his downfall in 1774.

He then devoted himself to literature, translating Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata (1774), and the Iliad (1776).

At the outset of the French Revolution he foresaw its importance, and in the Voix du citoyen, which he published in 1789, predicted the course which events would take. In the Constituent Assembly, where he sat as deputy for Dourdan , he professed liberal views, and was the proposer of various financial laws. He then became president of the directory of Seine-et-Oise, and in 1795 was elected as a deputy to the Council of Ancients. After the coup d'etat of the 18th Brumaire in the year VIII (? November 1799), Lebrun was made third consul . In this capacity he took an active part in the reorganization of finance and of the administration of the departments of France. In 1804 he was appointed arch-treasurer of the empire, and in 1805-1806 as governor-general of Liguria effected its annexation to France.

He opposed Napoleon's restoration of the noblesse, and in 1808 only reluctantly accepted the title of "duc de Plaisance" (Piacenza). He was next employed in organizing the departments which were formed in Holland, of which he was governor-general from 1811 to 1813. Although to a certain extent opposed to the despotism of the emperor, he was not in favor of his deposition though he accepted the fait accompli of the Bourbon Restoration in April 1814. Louis XVIII made him a peer of France; but during the Hundred Days he accepted from Napoleon the post of Grand Master of the university. On the return of the Bourbons in 1815 he was consequently suspended from the House of Peers but was recalled in 1819. He died at St Mesmes (Seine-et-Oise).

He was made a member of the Academic des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1803.

References

• M. de Caumont la Force, L'Architrésorier Lebrun (Paris, 1907)
• M. Marie du Mesnil, Memoire sur le prince Le Brun, due de Plaisance (Paris, 1828)
• Opinions, rapports et choix d'icrits politigttes de C. F. Lebrun (1829), edited, with a biographical notice, by his son Anne Charles Lebrun

Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès

Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès, Duke of Parma, (18 October 1753 - 8 March 1824), French lawyer and statesman, is best remembered as the author of the Code Napoléon, which still forms the basis of French law.

Cambacérès was homosexual, and is widely, but not altogether accurately, given credit for decriminalising homosexuality in France.

Early career

Cambacérès was born at Montpellier in southern France, into a family of the legal nobility (noblesse de robe). In 1774 he graduated in law and succeeded his father as councillor in the Montpellier court of accounts and finances. He was a supporter of the French Revolution of 1789, and was elected to represent Montpellier at the meeting of the Estates-General at Versailles, although he was unable to take his seat. In 1792 he represented the département of Herault in the Convention which assembled and proclaimed the First French Republic in September 1792.

In revolutionary terms Cambacérès was a moderate. 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, he voted with the majority which declared Louis to be guilty, but recommended that the penalty should be postponed until it could ratified by a legislative body.

In 1793 Cambacérès became a member of the Committee of General Defence, but was not a member of its famous successor, the Committee of Public Safety, until the end of 1794, after the Reign of Terror had ended. In the meantime he worked on much of the legislation of the revolutionary period. During 1795 he was also employed as a diplomat, and negotiated peace with Spain.

Cambacérès was considered too conservative to be one of the five Directors who took power in the coup of 1795, and finding himself in opposition to the Directorate he retired from politics. In 1799, however, as the Revolution entered a more moderate phase, he became Minister of Justice. He supported the coup of 18 Brumaire (in November 1799) which brought Napoléon Bonaparte to power as First Consul in a new regime designed to establish a stable constitutional republic.

The Code Napoléon

In December 1799 Cambacérès was appointed Second Consul under Bonaparte. He owed this appointment to his vast legal knowledge and his reputation as a moderate republican. His most important work during this period was the drawing up of a new Civil Law Code, later called the Code Napoléon, France's first modern legal code. The code was promulgated by Bonaparte (as Emperor Napoleon) in 1804. It was the work of Cambacérès and a commission of four lawyers.

The Code was a revised form of Roman law, with some modifications drawn from the laws of the Franks still current in northern France (Coutume de Paris). The Code was later extended by Napoleon's conquests to Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, western Germany and Spain, and indirectly to the Spanish colonies in Latin America. Cambacérès's work has thus been enormously influential in European and American legal history. Versions of the Code are still in force in Québec and Louisiana.

The Code dealt with Civil Law; other codes ensued for Penal Law, criminal procedure, civil procedure.

Cambacérès and homosexuality

Cambacérès, Bonaparte and Lebrun

It is widely believed that Cambacérès used the Code Napoléon (or rather, the associated Penal Code) to decriminalise male homosexuality, and the fact that he was himself homosexual gives credibility to this belief. His sexual orientation was well-known, and he does not seem to have made any effort to conceal it. He remained unmarried, and kept to the company of other bachelors. Napoléon is recorded as making a number of jokes on the subject. During the Consulate, Bonaparte, Cambacérès and Third Consul Charles-François Lebrun were known as "Qui, Quae et Quod." (He, She and It).

Before the Revolution, sexual conduct had been regulated by mediaeval ecclesiastical law. When the National Constituent Assembly abolished ecclesiastical courts in 1791, it therefore in effect decriminalised male homosexuality, although it is not clear that this was its intention (a similar state of affairs occurred during the early years of the Russian Revolution in 1917).

The authors of the Code Napoléon had the option of reintroducing a law against male homosexuality (as was eventually done in the Soviet Union), but chose not to do so, presumably at least partly as a result of the influence of Cambacérès. In this sense Cambacérès can be credited with the decision to make decriminalisation a permanent fact of French law. Recent research by Michael Sibalis has shown, however, that Napoléonic officials could and did repress homosexuality using other laws, such as "offenses against public decency."

Sibalis argues that while officials of the Napoléonic regime disliked what they saw "crimes against nature," such offences were seldom actually tried as such in the courts. He concludes that despite police surveillance and harassment, "the Revolutionary and Napoléonic period was a time of relative freedom," partially anticipating "contemporary legal toleration."

Later career

Cambacérès disapproved of Bonaparte's accumulation of power into his own hands, culminating in the proclamation of the First French Empire on 19 May 1804. But he retained office under Napoléon, with the title Arch-Chancellor of the Empire and President of the Senate. He also became a prince of the Empire and in 1808 was made Duke of Parma. Under Napoléon as under the revolutionary regime, he was a force for moderation, opposing adventures such as the invasion of Russia in 1812.

As Napoléon became increasingly obsessed with military affairs, Cambacérès became the de facto domestic ruler of France, a position which inevitably made him increasingly unpopular as France's economic situation grew worse. His taste for high living attracted hostile comment. Nevertheless he was given credit for the justice and moderation of his government, although the enforcement of conscription was increasingly resented towards the end of the wars.

When the Empire fell in 1814 Cambacérès retired to private life, but was recalled during Napoléon's brief return to power in 1815. After the restoration of the monarchy, he was in danger of arrest for his revolutionary activities, and for a time he was exiled from France. But the fact that he had opposed the execution of Louis XVI counted in his favour, and in May 1818 his civil rights as a citizen of France were restored. He was a member of the Académie française, and lived quietly in provincial France until his death in 1824.

External links

• The House of Cambacérès (in French)
• French Council of State website on Cambacérès (in French)
• The Code Napoléon
• website of Dr Michael Sibalis