These floating batteries would have strong thick wooden armour and water pumped around them to avoid fire breaking out, whilst old cables would also deaden the fall of enemy shot and their ballast would counterbalance the guns' weight.

This "reduced General d'Arcon to despair, and he was deeply resentful of the failure for the rest of his life", printing a vindication in 1783 under the title "Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire du siège de Gibraltar, par l’auteur des batteries flottantes".

He wrote and published an article on backward-firing batteries and on the outbreak of the War of the First Coalition he initially fought in the Army of the North under Charles François Dumouriez before being promoted to maréchal de camp on 13 June 1791.

He then became a divisional general and he and Pichegru successfully captured the fortress at Breda in January 1795, though that campaign damaged his health and forced him to leave active service.

One of the Lunettes of Trois-Châtels and Tousey was named after him, whilst his daughter Élisabeth le Michaud d'Arcon de Vaudey was a lady in waiting to empress Josephine and mistress to Napoleon I.