Napoleon was, however, a soldier after all--much else as well, but a soldier first and foremost; and so was Decaen. When the general returned to France, his Imperial master had urgent need for stern, stubborn, fighting men of his type. He submitted to a court-martial* (* "Un conseil d'enquete." Biographie Universelle 10 248.) in reference to the surrender of Mauritius, but was exonerated. The discretion that he had exercised in not obeying the decree for the liberation of Flinders was evidently not made the ground of serious complaint against him, for in 1813 we find him commanding the army of Catalonia, participating gallantly in the campaign of the Pyrenees, and distinguishing himself at Barcelona under Marshal Suchet. For this service he was made a Comte of the Empire. When Napoleon was banished to Elba the Comte Decaen donned the white cockade, and took service under Louis XVIII, but on the return of his old master he, like Ney and some other of the tough warriors of the First Empire, forswore his fidelity to the Bourbons. He was one of the generals left to guard the southern frontiers of France while Napoleon played his last stake for dominion in the terrific war game that ended with the cataclysm of Waterloo. That event terminated Decaen's military course. For a while he was imprisoned, but his life was not taken, as was that of the gallant Ney; and in a few months he was liberated at the instance of the Duchesse d'Angouleme. Thenceforth he lived a colourless, quiet, penurious life in the vicinity of his native Caen, regretting not at all, one fancies, the ruin of the useful career of the enterprising English navigator. His poverty was honourable, for he had handled large funds during the Consulate and Empire; and there is probably as much sincerity as pathos in what he said to Soult and Gouvion-Saint-Cyr in his declining days, that nothing remained to him after thirty years of honourable service and the occupancy of high offices, except the satisfaction of having at all times done his duty. He died in 1832. His official papers fill no fewer than one hundred and forty-nine volumes and are preserved in the library of the ancient Norman city whose name he bore as his own.