Louis Marie Turreau de Garambouville (1756-1816) was a French soldier and diplomat. After serving in the French army during the American War for Independence, he returned to France and was a captain in the infantry at the start of the French Revolution. He rose through the ranks quickly. By the end of November 1793 he was named commander-in-chief of the Army of the West. In that position he presided over efforts to suppress the rebellion in the Vendée and became known for his harsh tactics in the region. Denounced and jailed in the aftermath of the fall of Robespierre, he defended himself in print and was released. He resumed his military career in 1797, and led troops in Switzerland and Italy. After peace was declared, he was named a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor. Napoleon appointed him minister plenipotentiary to the United States in 1803. He arrived at the capital in November 1804. His wife, Marie Angélique Lequesne Ronsin Turreau, followed several months later. Her arrival only added to his poor reputation with Washington locals as the brutal suppressor of the Vendée rebellion. “They live in quarrel,” wrote one congressman. “He is a savage.” Turreau beat her, often so severely that her cries could be heard from the street. The situation escalated until, with Turreau’s permission but without his promised financial support, city officials moved Marie Angélique Turreau to safer quarters in Georgetown. She lived there in poverty from late 1806 until March 1809, when William Thornton raised the funds to see her back to France. “ ’Tis disgraceful that such a man should be the representative of a nation,” William Plumer wrote, but he, like the rest of official Washington, continued to accord Turreau the courtesies of his rank. As for TJ, Plumer wrote that the president “very prudently” took no notice of Turreau’s private affairs. The French minister’s working relationship with TJ’s and Madison’s administrations remained professional and without political incident. In 1811, when Napoleon decided he needed a younger, more energetic representative in Washington, Turreau was recalled. He returned to France and once again served in the army until Napoleon’s final defeat (Biographie universelle, ancienne et moderne, new ed., 45 vols. [Paris, 1843-65], 42:300-3; Charles M. Wiltse and others, eds., The Papers of Daniel Webster: Correspondence, 7 vols. [Hanover, N.H., 1974-86], 1:77; Everett Somerville Brown, ed., William Plumer’s Memorandum of Proceedings in the United States Senate, 1803-1807 [New York, 1923], 521, 555-6; Anna Maria Brodeau Thornton diary, 18-19 Mch. 1809, in DLC: Anna Maria Brodeau Thornton Papers; Peter P. Hill, Napoleon’s Troublesome Americans: Franco-American Relations 1804-1815 [Dulles, Va., 2005], 84; Vol. 42:416n).