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. Cavaignac filled various minor administrative offices under the Consulate and French Empire and in 1806 became an official Joachim Murat's administration of the Kingdom of Naples. During the Hundred Days, he was "préfet" of the Somme. At the Bourbon Restoration, he was proscribed as a ""regicide"" and spent the last years of his life in Brussels, where he died.