baronne d'Oberkirch visited Brest in June 1782 with the future Tsar Paul I and his wife Maria Feodorovna. There d'Hector informed her of these grudges. Neither Paul nor Louis XVI of France took attention of the complaints - de Castries invited d'Hector and commandant d'Albert de Rions to receive the king at Cherbourg and inform him about shipbuilding and about the necessity of building of coastal defences in Normandy against the British. On his departure from Cherbourg, Louis made d'Hector inspector of the main naval fortresses and charged him with submitting a plan for reforms to unify and coordinate the commands along the coast. In 1785 he contributed to the preparations for the La Perouse Expedition. Emigration On the outbreak of the French Revolution he asked to be dismissed on 24 May 1790 thanks to the hostility he encountered from the city authorities in Brest. He moved to Koblenz in February 1791 and there was put in command of the Corps de la marine royale, solely made up of naval officers. With few funds, he appealed to the tsar of Russia, who sent funds twice. The royalist princes made him a vice admiral on 1 January 1792. The corps was disbanded at the end of the campaign but re-formed in October 1794 in Britain, with d'Hector its colonel once again. He raised it from 600 sailors who had fled France and called it the Régiment Hector. It was sent to Brittany to assist the Quiberon Expedition but learnt of its failure on 21 July 1793 during its voyage out. D'Hector was now 73 and "had to renounce the hope of dying on the battlefield". He retired to a house near Reading, Berkshire and died there aged 86 on 18 August 1808. Later assessments Constant Merland dans ses Biographie vendéennes (1884) dit de lui: Sources Bibliography Les papiers personnels du Comte d'Hector sont conservés aux Archives nationales sous la cote 296AP Notes References 1722 births People from Fontenay-le-Comte French Navy admirals 1808 deaths Commanders of the Order of Saint Louis French Royalist military leaders of the French Revolutionary Wars French military personnel of the Seven Years' War French military personnel of the American Revolutionary War French emigrants to England