It determined, therefore, to strike terror into the nation by exhibiting a fearful example in La Vendee.

After full consideration, the Committee absolutely resolved to exterminate the inhabitants of the country--utterly to destroy them all, men, women, and children--to burn every town, every village, and every house--to put an end to all life in the doomed district, and to sweep from the face of the country man, beast, and vegetable.

The land was to be left without proprietors, without a population, and without produce; it was to be converted into a huge Golgotha, a burial-place for every thing that had life within it; and then, when utterly purged by fire and massacre, it was to be given up to new colonists, good children of the Republic, who should enjoy the fertility of a land soaked with the blood of its former inhabitants.
Such was the deliberate resolution of the Committee of Public Safety, and no time was lost in commencing the work of destruction.
Barrere, one of the members of the Committee, undertook to see the work put in a proper train, and for this purpose he left Paris for the scene of action.

Westerman and Santerre accompanied him, and to them was committed the task of accomplishing the wishes of the Committee.

There was already a republican army in La Vendee, under the command of General Biron, but the troops of which it was composed were chiefly raw levies, recruits lately collected by the conscription, without discipline, and, in a great degree, without courage; but the men who were now brought to carry on the war, were the best soldiers whom France could supply.
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.