On the twenty-fifth of June, 1793, while engaged in duties to which we have just referred, Jean Audubon was appointed, with rank of ensign, to command the Republican lugger named the _Cerberus_.[68] During this charge, which lasted until the twenty-second of November of the following year, he fought one of the stiffest engagements of his career. On the twelfth of July he encountered the _Brilliant_, an English privateer of fourteen cannon which had captured an American ship laden with flour; and after a desperate battle which lasted three hours, in the course of which Jean was wounded in the left thigh, the Englishman, beaten and obliged to surrender his prize, was glad to escape under cover of night. Jean towed the American into the port of La Rochelle, and afterwards sent to the Administration a full account of the engagement.[69] Ensign Audubon's next command was a dispatch boat called _L'Eveillé_ ("The Awakened"), on which he served for nearly nine months, from November 23, 1794, to August 14, 1795. He was then detailed for port duty at La Rochelle from August 15, 1795, to January 24, 1797. His last ship was _L'Instituteur_ ("The Institutor"), which he commanded with the rank of _lieutenant de vaisseau_, January 25 to October 3, 1797, while he was engaged in governmental business between the ports of La Rochelle and Brest. The financial losses which Lieutenant Audubon sustained at Les Cayes in consequence of the revolution in Santo Domingo were a crushing blow to him; he never recovered his fortune, later estimated by his son-in-law at a sum which at that day would have been fabulous.[70] The business house in which he was interested failed; his plantations, refinery, houses and stores, the rents from which, as we have seen, in certain years after 1789, had yielded 90,000 francs, were presumably ravaged and partially destroyed. When the news of this misfortune reached him after 1792, his hands were tied by revolutions at home. Though he applied to his Government for relief, as undoubtedly did a host of other losers, he was eventually granted only a small indemnity, not exceeding 30,000 francs.