From 1794 between the count of Provence (future Louis XVIII of France), François de Charette, the Vendéens and the chouans in Brittany. After the Quiberon landing was defeated in July 1795, he wrote to Louis XVIII to suggest he stop massacring his partisans in uprisings and taking advantage of political and electoral means as a way back to power. At the end of 1795 he made contact with abbot Charles Brottier and Charles Honoré Berthelot La Villeheurnois in a royalist plot. He met with Louis XVIII in Zürich in April 1796 and the comte d'Artois (the future Charles X of France) in London in October, putting them in touch with the progress of the royalist cause. Effectively the elections to the councils of the French Directory led to many elected figures favourable to a restoration of the monarchy, but the plotters were betrayed by a double agent and arrested on 30 June 1797. Condemned to death, Thomas Laurent Duverne de Presle saw this commuted to a 10-year prison sentence. He and the other conspirators were sent to Guyana – Presle was treated leniently, leading some to believe he had told the authorities all he knew about the royalist networks active in France. On 21 March 1798 he embarked on an American ship with a Swiss passport, probably taking him to the USA.