Westerman brought with him a legion of German mercenaries, on whom he
could rely for the perpetration of any atrocity, and Santerre was at the
head of the seven thousand men, whom the allied army had permitted to
march out of Valenciennes, and to return to Paris.
It was in the beginning of July that this worthy triumvirate met at
Angers, on their road to La Vendee. Cathelineau had driven the
republican garrison out of this town immediately after the victory at
Saumur, but the royalists made no attempt to keep possession of it, and
the troops who had evacuated it at their approach, returned to it almost
immediately. It was now thronged with republican soldiers of all
denominations, who exercised every species of tyranny over the
townspeople. Food, drink, forage, clothes, and even luxuries were
demanded, and taken in the name of the Convention from every shop, and
the slightest resistance to these requisitions, was punished as treason
to the Republic. The Vendeans, in possession of the same town only a
fortnight before, had injured no one, had taken nothing without paying
for it, aid had done everything to prevent the presence of their army
being felt as a curse; and yet Angers was a noted republican town; it
had shown no favours to the royalists, and received with open arms the
messengers of the Convention.
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