During his administration the great works at Cherbourg were materially advanced; as well as those at Nieuwe Dieppe and Flushing, while the docks and construction yards of Antwerp were wholly created. He managed to keep up, and even increase, the strength of the French navy, in spite of their great losses; and he collected the great flotilla of Boulogne, which circumstances rendered useless, however. Napoleon, who made him, in succession, a Count, Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, and finally, a Duke, recalled him to his old position during the Hundred Days; and when the Emperor finally fell, he was retired by the Bourbon government. Duke Décrès survived many bloody battles, to be at last assassinated by his valet. This man, who had been robbing him for a long time, placed a quantity of powder, with a slow match, under Décrès’ mattress. Stealing into the Duke’s bedroom at night, he blew him up. The valet, in his perturbation at what he had done, threw himself out of the window, and was killed. His master died a few days after, aged 58 years. And now to return to this celebrated action. At eleven o’clock at night, on the 30th of March, 1800, the Guillaume Tell, taking advantage of a strong southerly gale, and the darkness that had succeeded the setting of the moon, weighed anchor and put to sea. About midnight the English frigate Penelope, which was on guard off the harbor, discovered the French ship, under a press of sail, with the wind on the starboard quarter. The Penelope at once made the necessary signals to the other blockading ships, and then tacked, and stood after the Tell. In half an hour she was close up with the chase, and luffed up, and gave the Tell her whole broadside; receiving in return, only the Tell’s chase guns. The French ship, aware that if she brought to, she would soon have upon her the whole of the English blockading ships, whose lights could be already seen on the horizon, wisely kept her course to the northward. The Penelope was faster than the Tell, and was commanded by an experienced seaman, and she continued to follow her, and to occasionally luff, and pour in a broadside, so that, just before daybreak, the Guillaume Tell’s main and mizzen-top-masts, and her main-yard came down. She was thus reduced, except her mizzen, to her head-sails; and these were greatly damaged by the Penelope’s shot. She had also lost many men from the English frigate’s raking shots. The Penelope skillfully avoided exposing herself to a broadside from so powerful a ship, and had the good fortune to escape much damage to her sails and rigging. She had lost her master, killed, and a few wounded.