Joseph Cambon

Joseph Cambon (born June 10, 1756, Montpellier, France—died February 15, 1820, near Brussels, Netherlands [now in Belgium]) was a financial administrator who attempted, with considerable success, to stabilize the finances of the French Revolutionary government from 1791 to 1795.

Cambon was a prosperous businessman in Montpellier when the Revolution broke out in 1789. As a deputy to the Legislative Assembly (October 1791–September 1792), he specialized in financial matters. Elected to the National Convention, which succeeded the Legislative Assembly in September 1792, he at first sided with the moderate Girondin faction against the more radical Montagnards (deputies from the Jacobin Club). On December 15, 1792, he secured passage of a decree for the expropriation of the property of the nobility and the church in territories conquered by French armies. The measure posed a threat to the other regimes of Europe and helped widen the war that had begun in April 1792.

Cambon voted with the majority of the deputies for the death of King Louis XVI (January 1793), and he served on the first Committee of Public Safety (April 6–July 10, 1793). Although he soon sided with the Jacobins in advocating stringent economic controls, he opposed the arrest of the Girondist leaders during the Jacobin coup d’état of June 2, 1793. By this time Cambon was in charge of the committee on finance and the treasury. He fought inflation by reducing the quantity of assignats (paper currency issued by the Revolutionary government) in circulation, and, on August 24, 1793, he instituted the Grand Livre de la dette publique (“Great Book of the Public Debt”), a register of all the state’s creditors.

Nevertheless, his independent position as head of finances was threatened by the Jacobin leader Maximilien Robespierre, who sought to concentrate all authority in the second Committee of Public Safety. Hence, Cambon assisted the group of conspirators that brought about Robespierre’s downfall on 9 Thermidor, year II (July 27, 1794). In the ensuing Thermidorian reaction against the Jacobins, Cambon was removed from the financial committee (April 1795); he went into hiding until the amnesty of 4 Brumaire, year IV (October 26, 1795). For the next 20 years, Cambon lived quietly on his estate near Montpellier. He was elected to Napoleon’s legislature of the Hundred Days (March–July 1815) and then exiled in 1816 after King Louis XVIII was restored to power.