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.

Such was the way in which the republicans rewarded their friends, and the royalists avenged themselves on their enemies.
One hot July evening, five men were seated in a parlour of the Mayor's house in Angers, but the poor Mayor himself was not allowed, nor probably did he wish, to be one of the party.