Jean-Baptiste Cavaignac

[1] He was constantly employed on missions in the provinces and distinguished himself by his staunch repression of the anti-Revolution risings in the newly designed départements of Landes, Basses-Pyrénées, and Gers.

Cavaignac managed to escape prosecution during the Thermidorian Reaction, assisted Paul Barras in resisting to the 13 Vendémiaire insurgency, and was a member of the Council of Five Hundred for a short while during the French Directory.

Each time he approached a community or town, e.g. Saint-Jean-de-Luz, its inhabitants were constrained to step over and cheer waving a laurel bouquet to the cry "Long live Cavaignac, his colleagues, the Mountain and the Convention.

[3] During August 1794 in the context of the War of the Pyrenees, as the highest authority of the Convention in Bayonne, he was in charge of negotiations with the representatives of the bordering Basque Spanish district of Gipuzkoa seeking detachment from Spain and conditional allegiance to France.

Cavaignac went on to order their arrest and imprisonment in Bayonne,[4] with the Gipuzkoans opting to turn their loyalty to the Spanish heir apparent Ferdinand VII and raise a militia against the French.