in Ireland, with his diminishing Irish contingent, Byrne was to see action in the Low Countries, Germany and Spain. Byrne rose to the rank of brigadier general and was awarded the Legion of Honour in 1813. Following the Bourbon Restoration, with fellow legionnaire John Allen, Byrne narrowly avoided deportation as a foreign Bonapartist. An introduction to the Prince de Broglie, then vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies and two audiences with the Minister of War, Marshal Henri Clarke, the Duke of Feltre, (a son of Irish parents, who had advised Wolfe Tone) contributed to the latter's decision to quash the deportation order. In August 1817 Byrne was naturalised as a French citizen. For much of the next decade Byrne found himself effectively retired on half pay. Returned to active military service in 1828, he distinguished himself in the French expedition to Morea (as did his fellow United Irishman, William Corbet) during the Greek War of Independence. He retired in 1835 with the rank of Chef de Bataillion. Memoirs In the 1840s, Byrne was Paris correspondent for The Nation in Dublin, the Young Irelander paper that under the early direction of Thomas David did much to rehabilitate the memory of the United Irishmen. In his last years Byrne wrote his Memoirs, which are an account of his participation in the Irish rebellion and his time in the Irish Legion of Napoleon. These were first published in three volumes in 1863 (under the direction of his widow, Fanny), but there have been many subsequent reprints. Stephen Gwynn who edited and published a new edition of Byrne’s Memoirs in 1907, stated in his Introduction to Volume 1: “I owe my acquaintance with these Memoirs to Mr John Dillon, who spoke of them as the best of all books dealing with Ireland; and a reading of the volumes left me inclined to agree with him.” Against the portrayal of '98 as a series of disjointed, unconnected risings, Byrne's memoirs presented the United Irishmen as a cohesive revolutionary organisation whose aim of a democratic, secular, republic had captured the allegiance of a great mass of the Irish people. Marriage Byrne was married (1835) in Paris to a Scots Presbyterian, Frances Charles Horner (better known as Fanny), (1789 - 1876) (originally from George Square, Edinburgh, Scotland) but they had no children. Fanny's father was John Horner, a "merchant of Edinburgh", and her mother was Joanna Baillie.