CAMBACÉRÈS, Jean Jacques Regis de (1753–1824), an eminent French statesman under the first republic and the first empire, was born at Montpellier the 18th October 1753, of an old and distinguished family. Being destined for the profession of law, he began his studies in that department at an early age, and was soon recognized as one of the ablest jurists in France. And as his legal learning was one of the main sources of his fame, so it was his chief means of rendering service to his country. Cam bace res was a decided though moderate disciple of the new principles now everywhere diffused in France, and on the assembling of the States-general in 1789 was chosen as a second representative for the nobility of the district of Montpellier. The right of Montpellier to send a second noble deputy was disputed, and Cambace res did not sit. But he was a member of the National Convention in 1792. Foreseeing the violent courses into which the Convention should be impelled, Carnbace res, from principle as well as necessity, held aloof, and sought to avoid the perils and excesses of the time by confining himself to the neutral province of jurist and legislator. The trial of the king, however, compelled him to declare himself. In the first place, he maintained that the Convention was not competent to try the king ; and when the trial had been decided on, he insisted that all latitude of defence ought to be accorded to the royal counsel. As to the sentence, he found the king guilty, and worthy of the punishment due to one who had conspired against his country ; but moved for delay in the execution of it, till peace should be restored, or the French soil invaded. This moderation made Cambace res " suspect " in the eyes of the Mountain, and he confined himself more circumspectly than ever to his proper work of revising and codifying the new laws. On the downfall of Robespierre in 1794, he was a leading man in the restoration of a milder regime. He was sometime president of the Con vention, and, subsequently, president of the Committee of Public Safety, in which capacity he helped to the conclusion of peace with Prussia and Spain. Under the Directory he again fell under the suspicion of the extreme party, and was obliged to retire from the presidency of the Five Hundred, to which he had been called. He took no part in the revolution of the 18th Brumaire (9th November 1799), which overturned the Directory and set up the con sulate ; but Napoleon had such confidence in him that he made him second consul. This confidence Cambace res continued to enjoy all through the consulate and the empire. On the establishment of the empire he became arch-chancellor, being life-president of the Senate, and the right-hand man of Napoleon in the civil administration generally. While loyal to his master, his influence was on the whole beneficial to France. He took an important part in the redaction of the Code Napoleon, tried to dis suade Napoleon from the murder of the Due d Enghien and from the disastrous campaigns of 1812 and 1813, and only gave in his adhesion to the act of abdication of 1814 when resistance was manifestly hopeless, while he resumed office with reluctance during the Hundred Days.
After the final restoration of Louis XVIII. in 1815, Cambace res again became an object of persecution, this time as a regicide, and was obliged to retire into Belgium. A royal decree of 1818 restored him to all his civil and political rights, but he did not again emerge from private life. He died in 1824. Cambace res was a great contrast to most of the leading men in the stormy days of the Revolution. He was moderate in his opinions and in his advocacy of them ; he had a clear, penetrating and luminous understanding ; and was a great master of sena torial eloquence. He had been created duke of Parma in 1808, and by this name is sometimes known in history.
CAMBALUC is the name by which, under sundry modifications, the royal city of the Great Khan became known to Europe during the Middle Ages, that city being in fact the same that we now know as Peking. The word itself represents the Mongol Kaan-Baligh, “the city of the khan,” or emperor, the title by which Peking continues, more or less, to be known to the Mongols and other northern Asiatics.
A city occupying approximately the same site had been the capital of one of the principalities into which China was divided some centuries before the Christian era; and during the reigns of the two Tartar dynasties that immediately preceded the Mongols in Northern China, viz., that of the Khitans, and of the Kin or “Golden” khans, it had been one of their royal residences. Under the names of Yenking, which it received from the Khitan, and of Chungtu, which it had from the Kin, it holds a conspicuous place in the wars of Chinghiz Khan against the latter dynasty. He captured it in 1215, but it was not till 1264 that it was adopted as the imperial residence in lieu of Kara Korum in the Mongol steppes, by his grandson Kublai. The latter selected a position a few hundred yards to the N.E. of the old city of Chungtu or Yenking, where he founded the new city of Ta-tu (“great capital”), called by the Mongols Taidu or Daitu, but also Kaan-baligh; and from this time dates the use of the latter name as applied to this site.
The new city formed a rectangle, enclosed by a colossal mud-rampart, the longer sides of which ran north and south. These were each about 5 English miles in length, the shorter sides 3, so that the circuit was upwards of 18 miles. The palace of the khan, with its gardens and lake, itself formed an inner inclosure fronting the south. There were eleven city gates, viz., three on the south side, always the formal front with the Tartars, and two on each of the other sides; and the streets ran wide and straight from gate to gate (except, of course, where interrupted by the palace-walls), forming an oblong chess-board plan.
Tatu continued to be the residence of the emperors till the fall of the Mongol power (1368). The native dynasty (Ming) which supplanted them established their residence at Nan-king (“South-Court”), but this proved so inconvenient that the second sovereign of the dynasty reoccupied Tatu, giving it then, for the first time, the name of Pe-king (“North-Court”). This was the name in common use when the Jesuits entered China towards the end of the 16th century, and began to send home accurate information about China. But it is not so now; the names in ordinary use being King-cheng or King-tu, both signifying “capital.” The restoration of Cambaluc was commenced in 1409. The size of the city was diminished by the retrenchment of nearly one-third at the northern end, which brought the enceinte more nearly to a square form. And this constitutes the modern (so-called) “Tartar city” of Peking, the south front of which is identical with the south front of the city of Kublai. The walls were completed in 1437. Population gathered about the southern front, probably using the material of the old city of Yenking, and the excrescence so formed was, in 1544, enclosed by a wall, and called the “outer city.” It is the same that is usually called by Europeans “the Chinese city.” The ruins of the retrenched northern portion of Kublai’s great rampart are still prominent along their whole extent, so that there is no room for question as to the position or true dimensions of the Cambaluc of the Middle Ages; and it is most probable, indeed it is almost a necessity, that the present palace stands on the lines of Kublai’s palace.
