He attained the rank of Commander of the Legion of Honor on 25 December 1805. On 20 August 1809 he became Baron of the Empire. In 1812 he joined the Grande Armée to Moscow; in Minsk, Borisov and Smolensk he had to organize supplies for the army. He joined Ney, who left the city on 17 November 1812. He was wounded in the Battle of Krasnoi, but succeeded to escape with Ney when crossing the Dnieper. He defended Stettin in 1813. But it was defending Fortress of Huningue against some 25,000 Austrians in 1815 which made him most famous, holding out with only several hundred men. On the 28 June shortly after word of Napoleon's abdication became known, and the French Provisional Government had requested a ceasefire, Barbanègre ordered the bombardment of Basel, something that contemporaries on the Seventh Coalition side considered to be a war crime.