Although still a partisan of the French Republic, Tissot became an admirer of the First Consul, and then of Napoléon as head of the French Empire – he celebrated in verse several of the emperor's victories, and the arrival in France of Marie Louise (1810). Prior to this moment, he had lived on the income derived from a factory of horn lanterns in the Faubourg Saint Antoine; finally in fairly comfortable circumstances, he devoted himself to literature. Jacques Delille took him as his assistant at the Collège de France, and Tissot succeeded him as head of it (1813); Napoleon signed the appointment as a reward for a poem composed by Tissot on his victory in the Battle of Lützen.