After the abolition of the monarchy in 1792, Tourzel was separated from the royal family and imprisoned in La Force Prison and the Prison Port-Libre. Also imprisoned at the same time were Tourzel's daughter, Pauline de Tourzel, and Marie Antoinette's personal friend, the Princesse de Lamballe. Shortly after their imprisonment, they found themselves targeted in the September Massacres, when thousands of incarcerated people in Paris were massacred by mobs who were trying to rid the prisons of jailed aristocrats they suspected of treason. Tourzel and her daughter were smuggled out of the prison by a mysterious man, but Lamballe was not so fortunate. She was murdered, and her severed head was then paraded around the city. Tourzel and her daughter were advised by their rescuer, a "Monsieur Hardi", to leave Paris because Pauline had escaped the prison illegally and was in danger of arrest, and they left for the countryside, where they lived incognito in Vincennes and at the property of her son in Aboundant outside of Dreux.