Jacques Antoine Marie de Cazalès

Jacques Antoine Marie de Cazalès was a French orator and politician. De Cazalès was born at Grenade, Haute-Garonne to a family of the lower nobility. With his father as an adviser to the parliament of Toulouse, Cazalès undertook a career in the military, becoming captain of the dragoons at the age of 21. In this political career, he proved to be a devout representative of the right, becoming the elected deputy of the nobility for the Verdun countries. His rightist ideals and orations made him political enemies, such as Barnarve, who scarred Cazalès in a duel. As a moderate conservative, Cazalès favored an intermediate system of government, between absolute and constitutional monarchy. It is not surprising that he was thus close to Edmund Burke, who held similar views, and served as a source of information and intelligence to British leaders during the French Revolution. Cazalès also tried to found a conservative-liberal party, along with Mirabeau. His son, Edmond de Cazalès, wrote philosophical and religious studies.