It was not in Tone's nature to despair for long. Hoche's appointment on 24 January 1797 to command the Sambre and Meuse army effectively terminated any immediate plans for Ireland. But Hoche assured Tone that those plans were merely suspended. He had greeted Tone like a long-lost friend, dispelled his worries about how his own conduct would be viewed in the aftermath of the Bantry Bay failure, and invited him to join his staff on the Rhine. Tone had not expected to be retained in the French army and was delighted by Hoche's trust and the resolution of worries about his personal and financial future. ‘I feel this moment like a man who is just awakened from a long terrible dream’, he wrote on the last day of January.

Hoche was genuine in his assurances. He had not abandoned his dream of attacking England at the source, and for the next eight months his headquarters on the Rhine were the nerve centre for France's Irish plans. But these did not amount to much. Events had moved on since 1796. Tone in Germany, then in Holland, was too far removed from the centre to recognise this. In 1796 his natural acuteness had sensed the prevailing political winds. In contrast the 1797 diary reveals an ignorance produced by distance. Bantry Bay was not a defeat for either France or Hoche. But it might as well have been. France had no money of her own with which to maintain her armies. Success depended on maintaining them on conquered territory. In contrast to Bonaparte, Hoche had a reputation for treating such territories with fairness, and he was respected in the occupied Rhineland. But he was still imposing monthly levies of 3,000,000 to 12,000,000 livres on the left bank of the Rhine alone, and retained tithes and many seigneurial dues to satisfy the Directory's financial expectations.

How Ireland would have fared had the French landed is speculation, but financial terms were apparently settled with Hoche (undoubtedly by O'Connor) and the United Irishmen were not such hopeless romantics as to expect to receive French services gratis.