Cavaignac, Louis Eugène

Cavaignac, Louis Eugène (lwē özhĕn` kävānyäk`), 1802–57, French general. He participated in the French conquest of Algeria and was promoted to general in 1844. After the outbreak of the February Revolution in 1848, he became governor-general of Algeria. Elected to the national assembly, he returned to Paris and was appointed minister of war. He used his dictatorial powers to quell the threatened uprising of the working classes in the June Days of 1848. In the presidential election he was badly defeated by Louis Napoleon (later Napoleon III). Arrested after Louis Napoleon's coup of 1851, he was soon released and elected to the national assembly, but he refused to swear allegiance to Napoleon III and could not serve.

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Cavaignac, Louis Eugène 

Born Oct. 15, 1802, in Paris; died Oct. 28, 1857, at Ourne. French statesman and general. Bourgeois republican.

Cavaignac served in the conquest of Algeria from 1832; he was appointed military governor of Algeria after the Revolution of February 1848. Upon becoming French minister of war in May 1848, he led the suppression of the June uprising in Paris. Ca-vaignac’s epithet became the “butcher of the workers.” He was chief executive of the French republic until mid-December 1848.