But ten days later he was suddenly arrested, charges of treason having been preferred by Pichegru, the displaced commander of the Army of the Rhine, and by his friends. Hoche escaped execution, however, though imprisoned in Paris until the fall of Robespierre. Shortly after his release he was appointed to command against the Vendeans (21st of August 1794). He completed the work of his predecessors in a few months by the peace of Jaunaye (15th of February 1795), but soon afterwards the war was renewed by the Royalists. Hoche showed himself equal to the crisis and inflicted a crushing blow on the Royalist cause by defeating and capturing de Sombreuil's expedition at Quiberon and Penthievre (16th-21st of July 1795). Thereafter, by means of mobile columns (which he kept under good discipline) he succeeded before the summer of 1796 in pacifying the whole of the west, which had for more than three years been the scene of a pitiless civil war. After this he was appointed to organize and command the troops destined for the invasion of Ireland, and he started on this enterprise in December 1796. A tempest, however, separated Hoche from the expedition, and after various adventures the whole fleet returned to Brest without having effected its purpose. Hoche was at once transferred to the Rhine frontier, where he defeated the Austrians at Neuwied (April), though operations were soon afterwards brought to an end by the Preliminaries of Leoben. Later in 1797 he was minister of war for a short period, but in this position he was surrounded by obscure political intrigues, and, finding himself the dupe of Barras and technically guilty of violating the constitution, he quickly laid down his office, returning to his command on the Rhine frontier. But his health grew rapidly worse, and he died at Wetzlar on the 19th of September 1797 of consumption. The belief was widely spread that he had been poisoned, but the suspicion seems to have been without foundation. He was buried by the side of his friend Marceau in a fort on the Rhine, amidst the mourning not only of his army but of all France.