Upon their return to France, William Bulkeley resigned from the military, and the couple retired to Château de la Brossardière.

By 14 March 1793, she and her husband partook in the insurrection, and with a host of peasants, later joined with the army of Charles Aimé de Royrand.

Her brother Toussaint Ambroise Talour de la Cartrie wrote, "My sister, as brave as a true heroine, never left her husband's side, fighting alongside him in every battle he engaged in.

In October 1794, a Republican report told of an attack by the "Amazon Bulkeley (Bucly)" against a detachment of 200 soldiers quartered at the Château du Givre, between Avrillé and Saint-Cyr-en-Talmondais.

According to the historian Lionel Dumarcet, Céleste Bulkeley was "for a significant part, the origin of the legend of Charette's amazons... Royalists and Republicans unanimously described her as frequently taking up arms more often than her turn."

In October 1797, Céleste Bulkeley again remarried, to Jacques Thoreau de la Richardière but he would die 10 months later.

In 1803, she remarried for the fourth time with a Republican officer from the Nantes garrison, Captain François Pissière of the 24th Infantry Regiment.