He would vote for the execution of the King Louis XVI and would later in January 1793 be elected to the Committee of General Security.  He would also play a leading role in the removal of the Girondins from the National Convention on the 2nd of June 1793.  He would later be sent on mission to Bordeaux to deal with counter revolutionaries.  He soon brought the area to heel as he guillotined the guilty.  However his methods seemed far less extreme than others this could be due to the fact that he had fallen in love with a prisoner called Thérésa Cabarrús.  It is possible that she sought clemency for the people of Bordeaux.

This softening of approach was not appreciated in Paris and Robespierre recalled Tallien.  In his absence Thérésa Cabarrús was once again arrested.  Tallien believing he might well have been next supported the actions of Thermidor which saw Robespierre and his supporters executed.  Tallien was then elected to the Committee of Public Safety where he used his power to curb the powers of the Revolutionary Tribunal and seek to limit the influence of the Jacobin Club.  He would also release many of the political prisoners who had been awaiting trial and presumably death.  He also removed the law of 22 July which had meant that people could be arrested without a hearing.

These measures were not entirely popular on the 23rd of Fructidor where he was shot at and grazed with a knife.  With the aid of the Golden Youth he was able to publish his newspaper and keep control of the streets against the sans culottes.  He was sent by the Convention to oversee the trial of the émigrés who had landed with assistance of the Royal Navy and had been routed at the hands of General Hoche.  Tallien tried them and executed them all.

As time passed neither the radicals nor conservatives felt they could trust Tallien and his power faded.  He would go on Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt in June 1798.  He helped edit the official journal of the expedition but was eventually sent back to France only to be captured by the British and sent to London.

He would return to France and briefly become governor of Alicante only for him to contract yellow fever.  After the bourbon restoration he was not exile as the other perceived regicides.  He was however deeply impoverished and would die in penury in 1820.

Madam De La Tour Du Pin in Bordeaux worries for her future and asks Tallien via Mme de Fontenay (Thérésa Cabarrús) for help.   Taken from Escape from the Terror The Journal of Madam De La Tour Du Pin, The Folio Society, London (1979) p157-159

Mme de Fontenay … it was said that she had divorced her husband in order to preserve her fortune but it was more probably in order to be able to use- and abuse her freedom.  She had met Tallien at a spa in the Pyrenees and he had rendered her some service or other which she repaid with a boundless devotion she made no effort to conceal.

Mme de Fontenay went out and returning after a moment, took my hand and said: “He is waiting for you.”  I felt as if she was announcing the executioner.  She opened a door leading into a small passage at the end of which I could see a room with lights burning… Tallien was leaning against the opposite corner.  He asked me quiet gently what I wanted and I stammered my request to go to our house at Le Bouilh and my petition for raising of the sequestration put in error on the property of my father in law, with whom I lived.  He replied brusquely… “All these enemies of the Revolution will have to go.”... “I have not come here citizen,” I told him, “to hear the death warrant of my relatives.”...

When I reached home,  I thought my situation worsened rather than improved.  If Tallien did not protect me , my death seemed inevitable.  Mme de Fontenay realised however that I had made a good impression on him… He promised then that I would not be arrested.