De Lussan soon proved that he was not only a good fighter, but that he was also an able general, and his operations on the western coast of South America were more like military campaigns than ordinary expeditions of lawless buccaneers.
He attacked and captured the city of Panama, always an attractive prize to the buccaneer forces, and after that he marched down the western coast of South America, conquering and sacking many towns.

As he now carried on his business in a somewhat wholesale way, it could not fail to bring him in a handsome profit, and in the course of time he felt that he was able to retire from the active practice of his profession and to return to France.
But as he was going back into the circles of respectability, he wished to do so as a respectable man.

He discarded his hat and plume, he threw away his great cutlass and his heavy pistols, and attired in the costume of a gentleman in society he prepared himself to enter again upon his old life.

He made the acquaintance of some of the French colonial officers in the West Indies, and obtaining from them letters of introduction to the Treasurer-General of France, he went home as a gentleman who had acquired a fortune by successful enterprises in the new world.
The pirate who not only possesses a sense of propriety and a sensitive mind, but is also gifted with an ability to write a book in which he describes his own actions and adventures, is to be credited with unusual advantages, and as Raveneau de Lussan possessed these advantages, he has come down to posterity as a high-minded pirate..