Richard Holmes describes him as "quick-thinking, stern, and ruthless... a general of real talent whose early death was a loss to France.

During the October Days protests, he was among the Guardsmen under the command of La Fayette who escorted King Louis XVI and his family out of the Palace of Versailles.

[2][4] Hoche first saw action in the defence of Thionville in 1792, as a lieutenant, in the early stages of the Flanders campaign of the Revolutionary Wars, and took part in the Siege of Namur at the end of the year.

[2] After serving with distinction in the Siege of Maastricht, Hoche became an aide-de-camp to General Le Veneur in March 1793, and further distinguished himself later that month at the Battle of Neerwinden.

[2] In the Second Battle of Wissembourg on 26 December 1793, the French under his command drove Dagobert Sigmund von Wurmser's Austrian army from Alsace.

[2] However, upon arriving in Nice to receive the assignment, he was arrested on orders of the Committee of Public Safety,[2] charges of treason having been proffered by Charles Pichegru, the displaced commander of the Army of the Rhine.

[4] He was sent to Paris' Carmes Prison on 11 April, was later transferred to the Conciergerie, and was only released on 4 August, after the fall of Maximilien Robespierre and the end of the Reign of Terror.

[2] Hoche completed the work of his predecessors in a few months by the Treaty of La Jaunaye (15 February 1795), but soon afterwards the war was renewed by the rebel leadership.

[2][4] Hoche directed the operations that led to the capture (and subsequent execution) of rebel leaders Jean-Nicolas Stofflet (24 February 1796) and François de Charette (23 March), bringing an end to the War in the Vendée.

[2] With the surrender of the leaders of the Chouannerie, in May and June 1796, Hoche concluded the pacification of Western France, which had for more than three years been the scene of civil war.

[2] In Brest, Hoche gathered an army and forty-eight vessels for the expedition, under the command of Vice Admiral Justin Bonaventure Morard de Galles.

[2] In this position he was surrounded by obscure political intrigues, and, finding himself the dupe of Paul Barras and technically guilty of violating the constitution, he resigned after less than month in office, and returned to his command on the Rhine frontier.

[2] In 1919, the French Army in occupied Rhineland reburied his mortal remains into the 1797-built Monument General Hoche in Weißenthurm, near Neuwied, where he had started his last campaign against the Austrians.