He was later appointed, in 1799, chief physician of the military hospital of Saint-Denis, then called hôpital militaire de Franciade and located after the revolution within the walls of the Abbey Church of St Denis, where his son Godefroy was born.

Established in Villefranche-de-Lauragais, where he had early acquired a certain political influence in republican circles, he was named after the Revolution of 1830 Commander of the National Guard; but seeing that the government was embarking on a course which was not his, he resigned.

Godefroy remained close, intellectually and politically, to his uncle Jean-Marie, and this, despite the fact that the royalists condemned him to exile and banished him from the national territory in 1816, as a regicide, during the restoration of Monarchy.

A letter written from Liège in 1833 by the former conventional and deputy to the Council of the Five-Hundred, and addressed to his nephew Godefroy, explicitly testifies about the proximity of their common republican convictions.

which has been formulated above in terms so expressive: "I do not pretend, said the honorable doctor of Villefranche, that the therapeutic agents have no action; but, forced to accept our patients with their misery, we are confessing our failures.

I have obtained satisfactory results only in those who have been placed under the influence of better hygiene" »This sensitivity to the living conditions of the needy will underlie his future political action and his commitment to stand for the legislative elections of 23 April 1848.

This group, in 1848, was led and organized by Alexandre Ledru-Rollin and comprising sixty-six deputies such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Pierre Leroux, Victor Schœlcher or Félicité Robert de Lamennais, some of the pioneers of socialism in history.

[17] He maintained a relationship of friendship with the latter (famous writer, philosopher, poet, historian, professor at the Collège de France and republican politician), which continued later with his son Jean Jules Godefroy Calès.

Edgar Quinet and his wife, Hermione Ghikère Asaky, frequently visited the Calès in the family home of Villefranche-de-Lauragais and maintained an epistolary relationship.

Thus, when on 26 August 1848, the Assembly proposed the prosecution of the former member of the Provisional Government Louis Blanc and the former prefect of police Marc Caussidière, who had been accused of having participated to the uprising, Calès strongly opposed the project.

Thus, on 6 October 1848, Godefroy Calès defended the Grevy amendment, which proposed that « The National Assembly delegates the executive power to a citizen, who takes the title of president of the council of ministers, elected for a limited time, and always revocable ».

Being accused of having allowed the June insurrection to flourish, and before violently crushing it, sacrificing thousands of National Guards, General Cavaignac gave explanations at the occasion of a public debate, which took place at the Assembly on 25 November.

[21] The expedition was nevertheless voted by the National Assembly to initially provide aid to the Roman republicans, insurgent against the pretensions of Pope Pius IX expelled from Rome and against the Austrian domination.

Calès unsuccessfully signed the request for indictment of the President of the Republic Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte – the future emperor Napoleon III – and of the ministers guilty of violating the constitution:[23][24] in the following weeks, the French troops will finally receive the order of the Prince-President and Odilon Barrot to crush the Roman Revolution led by the republicans Giuseppe Mazzini and General Garibaldi.

Supported by the government, the « Rateau proposal » was opposed by many representatives, from the deputies of the Mountain to some moderate republicans like Alphonse de Lamartine, Adolphe Billault or Jules Grévy, who felt that the task of the Constituent Assembly was not over.