The confidence of his friends, the Jacobins, increased, however, in proportion to his disasters, and he was, in 1794, after the superior number of the republican soldiers had forced the remnants of the Royalists to evacuate what was properly called La Vendee, appointed a commander-in-chief.  He had now an opportunity to display his infamy and barbarity.  Having established his headquarters at Mantes, where he was safe, amidst the massacres of women and children ordered by his friend Carriere, he commanded the republican army to enter La Vendee in twelve columns, preceded by fire and sword; and within four weeks, one of the most populous departments of France, to the extent and circumference of sixty leagues, was laid waste-not a house, not a cottage, not a tree was spared, all was reduced to ashes; and the unfortunate inhabitants, who had not perished amid the ruin of their dwellings, were shot or stabbed; while attempting to save themselves from the common conflagration.  On the 22d of January, 1794, he wrote to the Committee of Public Safety of the National Convention:  “Citizen Representatives!—­A country of sixty leagues extent, I have the happiness to inform you, is now a perfect desert; not a dwelling, not a bush, but is reduced to ashes; and of one hundred and eighty thousand worthless inhabitants, not a soul breathes any longer.  Men and women, old men and children, have all experienced the national vengeance, and are no more.  It was a pleasure to a true republican to see upon the bayonets of each of our brave republicans the children of traitors, or their, heads.  According to the lowest calculation, I have despatched, within three months, two hundred thousand individuals of both sexes, and of all ages.  Vive la Republique!!!” In the works of Prudhomme and our republican writers, are inserted hundreds of letters, still more cruelly extravagant, from this ci-devant friend of Liberty and Equality, and at present faithful subject, and grand officer of the Legion of Honour, of His Imperial Majesty Napoleon the First.

After the death of Robespierre, Turreaux, then a governor at Belleisle, was arrested as a terrorist, and shut up at Du Plessis until the general amnesty released him in 1795.  During his imprisonment he amused himself with writing memoirs of the war of La Vendee, in which he tried to prove that all his barbarities had been perpetrated for the sake of humanity, and to save the lives of republicans.  He had also the modesty to announce that, as a military work, his production would be equally interesting as those of a Folard and Guibert.  These memoirs, however, proved nothing but that he was equally ignorant and wicked, presumptuous and ferocious.

During the reign of the Directory he was rather discarded, or only employed as a kind of recruiting officer to hunt young conscripts, but in 1800 Bonaparte gave him a command in the army of reserve; and in 1802, another in the army of the interior.  He then became one of the most assiduous and cringing courtiers at the Emperor’s levies; while in the Empress’s drawing-room he assumed his former air and ton of a chevalier, in hopes of imposing upon those who did not remember the nickname which his soldiers gave him ten years before, of Chevalier of the Guillotine.