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Camille Jordan (11 January 1771 inLyon[1] – 19 May 1821) was a French politician born in Lyon of a well-to-do mercantile family.
Jordan was educated in Lyon, and from an early age was imbued with royalist principles. He actively supported by voice, pen, and musket his native town in its resistance to the Convention, and when Lyon fell, in October 1793, Jordan fled. FromSwitzerland he passed in six months to England, where he formed acquaintances with other French exiles and with prominent British statesmen, and imbibed a lasting admiration for the English Constitution.[2]
In 1796 he returned to France, and next year he was sent by Lyon as a deputy to theCouncil of the Five Hundred.[3] There, his eloquence won him consideration. He earnestly supported what he felt to be true freedom, especially in matters of religious worship, though the energetic appeal on behalf of church bells in hisRapport sur la liberté des cultes procured him the sobriquet of "Jordan-Cloche". Proscribed at thecoup d'état of the 18th Fructidor (4 September 1797), he escaped toBasel. Thence he went to Germany, where he metGoethe.[2]
Back again in France by 1800,[4] he boldly published in 1802 hisVrai sens du vote national pour le consulat à vie,[5] in which he exposed the ambitious schemes ofBonaparte. He was unmolested, however, and during the First Empire lived in literary retirement at Lyon with his wife and family, producing for the Lyon academy occasional papers on theInfluence réciproque de l'éloquence sur la Révolution et de la Révolution sur l'éloquence;Etudes sur Klopstock, etc.[2]
At therestoration in 1814, he again emerged into public life. ByLouis XVIII he was ennobled and named a councillor of state; and from 1816 he sat in the chamber of deputies as representative ofAm. At first, he supported the ministry, but when they began to show signs of reaction, he separated from them, and gradually came to be at the head of the constitutional opposition. His speeches in the chamber were always eloquent and powerful. Though warned by failing health to resign, Camille Jordan remained at his post till his death at Paris, on 19 May 1821.[2]
To his pen we oweLettre à M. Laniourette (1791);Histoire de la conversion d'une dame parisienne (1792);La Loi et la religion vengées (1792);Adresse à ses commettants sur la Révolution du 4 Septembre 1797 (I797);Sur les troubles de Lyon (1818);La Session de 1817 (1818). HisDiscours were collected in 1818. The "Fragments choisis," and translations from the German, were published inL'Abeille française. Besides the histories of the time, see further details vol. x. of theRevue encyclopédique; a paper on Jordan and Madame de Staël, byCharles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, in theRevue des deux mondes for March 1868 and R Boubbe, "Camille Jordan à Weimar," in theCorrespondance (1901), ccv. 718–738 and 948–970.[2]
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Jordan, Camille".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 15 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 508.