Early Years
He was born at Besançon. His father, on the outbreak of the French Revolution, was appointed mayor of Besançon and consequently chief police magistrate; he seems to have become an instrument of the tyranny of the Jacobins without sharing their principles; but his son was for a time an ardent citizen, and is said to have been a Jacobin Club member at the age of twelve. In 1793 Charles saved the life of a lady guilty of sending money to an émigré, declaring to his father that if she were condemned he would take his own life. He was sent to Strasbourg, where he lived in the house of Eulogius Schneider, the notorious Jacobin governor of Alsace, but a good Greek scholar.
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