He assisted his father and Dupin in the unsuccessful defence of Marshal Ney before the chamber of peers; and he undertook alone the defence of General Cambronne and General Debelle, procuring the acquittal of the former and the pardon of the latter.
He was born at Saint-Quentin, Aisne, the son of a middle-class family in a mainly agricultural region, but also home to the celebrated General Cambronne and to illustrious notaries and Normandy judges.
His "Grenadier de Waterloo", 1817, with the motto "La Garde meurt et ne se rend pas" (a famous phrase frequently attributed to Cambronne, but which he never uttered, and which cannot, perhaps, be traced farther than to this lithograph by Charlet), was particularly popular.