Republican general who crushed the émigré landing at Quiberon and pacified the Vendée in 1796
Born in 1768 near Versailles, a groom’s son, he enlisted as a private in the French Guards in 1784. Commissioned in 1792, he rose to divisional general and command of the Army of the Moselle in 1793 and drove the Austrians from Alsace. Arrested in March 1794 after a denunciation by Pichegru, he was freed only after Thermidor. Commanding the coastal armies in the west, he completed the conciliation that led to the Treaty of La Jaunaye in February 1795 and annihilated the émigré force landed by the British at Quiberon in July. Supreme commander in the west from December, he used disciplined mobile columns, amnesty and freedom of worship to capture Stofflet and Charette in 1796, ending the War in the Vendée, and took the surrender of the Chouans. His Irish expedition failed; he was briefly Minister of War in 1797 and died of tuberculosis aged 29.
Also known as: Louis Lazare Hoche
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1784–1789Private in the French Guards
- 1793Commander of the Army of the Moselle; recovered Alsace
- 1794Arrested on the Committee of Public Safety's orders; freed after Thermidor
- 1794–1795Commander of the Armies of the Coasts of Cherbourg and Brest; victory at Quiberon
- 1795–1796Commander in chief of the Army of the Coasts of the Ocean; pacification of the Vendée
- 1797Commander of the Army of Sambre and Meuse; Minister of War