Lieutenant-colonel of the gendarmerie in 1793, général de brigade in the Vendée, under the protection of general Charles-Philippe Ronsin, he was made commander-in-chief of the Army of the West on 27 July 1793.

He proposed a plan to the advocates of the council of war at Saumur was called absurd by Philippeaux and also by the soldiers of the Army of Mainz, interested in the outcome.

Judging the operations of the War in the Vendée at a distance, he declared that the only party to take to the Council of Saumur was to march directly and en masse, re-stating in several lines the plan proposed by Rossignol.

[citation needed] The opinion of general Turreau in his Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la Vendée, was the closest to the truth and to the ulterior motives presiding over Rossignol's fate.

[citation needed] Finally removed from office by the Committee of Public Safety, in April 1794, following disagreements with Billaud-Varenne during this Montagnard député's mission to Saint-Malo, he retired to Orléans, re-entering civil life.

Imprisoned for several days after the Thermidorian Reaction, he was compromised in the Conjuration des Égaux of Babeuf, but managed to get himself exonerated before the High Court of Vendôme.