Corps législatif
Cavaignac retired from the army after his marriage, and couple's son, Jacques Marie Eugène Godefroy Cavaignac, was born in May 1852. Under the French Empire established by Louis-Napoléon (now emperor Napoleon III) he was elected to the Corps législatif, on the 1852 and 1857 elections. On both occasions, however, Cavaignac was barred from taking office for refusing to take the oath of allegiance to the Empire.