A first attempt at staging an uprising was carried out by the Association bretonne to defend the French monarchy and reinstate the devolved government, specific laws, and customs of Duchy of Brittany, which had all been repealed in 1789.

In another incident, the following spring, in the area around Quimper, a justice of the peace led several parishes in an uprising in the name of King Louis XVI against the local authorities.

[2] In the summer of 1792, further incidents occurred in the districts of Carhaix (Finistère), Lannion, Pontrieux (Côtes-d'Armor), Craon, Château-Gontier and Laval, where peasants opposed a levy of volunteers for the army.

[3] By January 1794, the Vendéans of the Vendée militaire [fr], following a setback of the Virée de Galerne, tried to resist the infernal columns of General Louis Marie Turreau.

[5] Using guerrilla warfare tactics, Chouans in groups of a few score or a few hundred men ambushed military detachments, couriers and stagecoaches carrying government funds.

On 15 March, it reached Morbihan, where Joseph de Fay and Béjarry, former officers of the Vendean army, assisted by Pierre Guillemot incited a peasant uprising aimed at Vannes.

Georges Cadoudal and Pierre-Mathurin Mercier [fr], nicknamed la Vendée, rescued from the Battle of Savenay, moved to the Morbihan, where Boulainvilliers was appointed general-in-chief of the département.

Joseph de Puisaye, a former officer who was compromised in the federalist revolts, realised the necessity of centralised command and attempted to assume the function of general-in-chief of the Chouans.

However, after the intervention of British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, Puisaye was appointed general-in-chief of the Royal and Catholic Army of Brittany on 15 October 1794 with the rank of lieutenant general, thus entrusting him with the king's authority.

His power thus extended to all the insurgent areas north of the Loire, including the Maine and Anjou, where Scépeaux appointed him general-in-chief.

When Maximilien de Robespierre fell on 28 July 1794, the Terror ended and the Convention nationale became more flexible and open to negotiation.

The Agence royaliste de Paris asked the Chouans in the name of Louis XVIII of France, then count of Provence, to stop fighting.

Puisaye tried to organise a landing from London, and his lieutenant, Cormatin, assumed full command and negotiated the peace treaty of La Mabilais in April 1795.

The peace was broken on 26 August 1794 by General Lazare Hoche, who succeeded Jean Antoine Rossignol as head of the Army of the Coasts of Brest and ordered the arrest of those who had refused to sign the treaty of La Mabilais.

On 23 June 1795, a British fleet led by Commodore John Borlase Warren, landed 3,500 soldiers of the émigré army in Carnac.

However, disagreements between the general of the émigrés Louis Charles d'Hervilly and the expedition leader Puisaye cost the Royalists precious time.

On 10 July, two columns of Chouan troops wearing English uniforms embarked on British ships from the peninsula and were landed behind Republican lines.

The day before his execution, he wrote a letter to Commodore Warren denouncing the flight of the Chief General, Joseph de Puisaye.

Guerilla fighting resumed after the failure of the British royalist expedition and spread to Normandy, where Louis de Frotté, who had freshly landed in France in 1795, organised an uprising.

Puisaye had suffered a loss of reputation and blamed the Chouans of the Morbihan and their chiefs, who he claimed were hostile towards nobles and wanted to "establish equality under a white flag".

The Army of the Coasts of Brest, led by Lazare Hoche, was based alternately in Rennes or Vannes and controlled the Finistère, the Morbihan, the Côtes-d'Armor, the Ille-et-Vilaine and the Mayenne.

The Army of the West, led by Jean Baptiste Camille Canclaux, was based in Nantes and controlled Loire-Atlantique, Maine-et-Loire, the Vendée and Deux-Sèvres.

The Army of the Coasts of Cherbourg, led by Jean-Baptiste Annibal Aubert du Bayet, was based in Saint-Malo and controlled Manche, Orne, Calvados, Sarthe and part of Ille-et-Vilaine.

In December 1795, the Directoire named Hoche chief general of all the Republican forces based in the West and gave him full authority.

He set up mobile columns, promised amnesty to Chouans who surrendered, guaranteed religious freedom and strove to discipline the army.

In contrast to the earlier War in the Vendée of 1793, the Chouannerie did not have any territory, the cities and many towns having remained Republican, but some districts were openly in revolt.