His great-nephew Athanase-Charles-Marie Charette de la Contrie was a noted military leader and great-grandson of Charles X of France.

He soon returned to France to live at his property in La Garnache, and became one of the royalist volunteers who assisted in defending King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette from physical harm during the mob attack on Tuileries Palace (the Insurrection of 10 August 1792); arrested in Angers, he was released through the intervention of Charles François Dumouriez.

[3] Haxo later attacked the Isle of Noirmoutier, with Louis Turreau [fr], which had been taken by Charette the month before, and after promising life to the inhabitants if they surrendered, against Haxo's command Turreau killed most men, women and children on the isle at the steps of the local church (La chapelle de la Pitié), including D'Elbée who had taken refuge there after sustaining 14 wounds at the Second Battle of Cholet.

[7][8] On 17 February 1795, after being introduced to it by his sister, Charette signed the Treaty of La Jaunaye with the emissaries of the National Convention, which included freedom of religion guarantees and excluded the conscription of local peasants from the levée en masse.

Charette and his men returned to the fight again in July and moved to help the planned invasion at Quiberon by French royalist émigrés with assistance from the British Royal Navy.

[citation needed] The Count of Artois, the Bourbon successor to the throne of France, made him Lieutenant General and gave orders to prepare for a royal return which, however, did not eventuate.

[citation needed] According to a contemporary writing in Walker's Hibernian Magazine, it was Charette who said, by way of extenuating the number of deaths for which he was responsible, "Omelets are not made without breaking eggs.

Unlike his real-life counterpart, he shown as slain in battle defending a captured fortification and is also fluent in English in the television adaptation.

Charette has been since 2018 the lead character and his life story is depicted in the production of Le Dernier Panache ("The Last Plume"), at the French theme park Puy du Fou.