[1] He took part in the events of 14 July 1789, acting as a negotiator on behalf of the revolutionaries, meeting with the governor of the Bastille just before the royal fortress was stormed.

During the Festival of the Supreme Being (8 June 1794), Thuriot said of Robespierre presiding: “Look at the bugger; it’s not enough for him to be master, he has to be God.”[7] During the fateful session of the Convention on 9 Thermidor, Year II (27 July 1794), Thuriot presided in the absence of then-president Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois, and by refusing to allow Robespierre to make a speech, he sealed the fate of the Robespierrist faction.

On 5 April 1795, in the wake of the Jacobin-led Germinal Insurrection which he was accused of preparing, Thuriot's name was included among the many arrests ordered, but he eluded capture.

A second order of arrest was issued on 21 May after the even more violent Prairial Insurrection, and this time a large force was dispatched into the faubourgs to find where Thuriot was in hiding with Pierre-Joseph Cambon.

Once again he escaped and went into hiding until the amnesty of 26 October, which signalled the end of the National Convention and the Thermidorian Reaction and the beginning of the Directory.