In 1791, two representatives on mission informed the National Convention of the disquieting condition of Vendée, and this news was quickly followed by the exposure of a royalist plot organized by the Marquis de la Rouërie.

It was not until the social unrest combined with the external pressures from the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790) and the introduction of a levy of 300,000 on the whole of France, decreed by the National Convention in February 1793, that the region erupted.

[5] To add to this insult, on 23 February 1793 the Convention required the raising of an additional 300,000 troops from the provinces, an act which enraged the populace,[1] who took up arms instead as The Catholic Army; the term "Royal" was added later.

[6] In March 1793, as word of the conscription requirements filtered into the countryside, many Vendéans refused to satisfy the decree of the levee en masse issued on 23 February 1793.

[8] The immediate victims also included the juring priest, Pierre Letort, who was bayoneted to death and whose body was mutilated,[9] Pagnot the magistrate, and Étienne Gaschignard, the principal of the college.

On 19 March, many counter-revolutionary suspects were rounded up and the republicans inflicted their own massacres: in La Rochelle, six non-juring priests were hacked to death and their heads (and other body parts) shown throughout the city.

[10] About a week later, the insurgents from Machecoul seized the neighboring harbor town of Pornic (approximately 10 miles (16 km) to the northwest) on 23 March, this time joined by some of the irregular army that had been forming elsewhere, and sacked it.

[11] In total, about 200 died (not all in the battle), and when the survivors of Pornic returned to Machecoul, they pulled the detained "blue coats" out of the prison and shot them, a process that lasted over the next few weeks, into mid-April.

Despite the demonization of the insurgents, though, twenty-two "blue coats" from the parish were saved by the request of their own neighborhoods; others were even cleared by tribunals established to monitor executions, and overseen by the local jurist, René François Souchu.

[10] Souchu, a lawyer and judge by profession, directed the execution of approximately 50 republican officials and adherents on 3 April; they were shot down and buried in a field outside of the city.

[Note 2] Boullemer claimed to be among the few surviving eyewitnesses: "there arrived from all exits of the city, five to six thousand peasants, women and children, armed [with] guns, scythes, knives, shovels and pikes.

At that time, according to him, some national guardsmen who had tried to escape through an alley were ambushed by peasants, pursued, and finally brought down by the crowd at the feet of the deputy, Maupassant.

Within a short time the entire affair had become a wholesale massacre of republican troops, the constitutional priest, known radical sympathizers and anyone involved with the municipal administration.

Prisoners had their hands tied behind their backs, and were linked with a rope passed under their armpits, in a so-called rosary; then they were dragged into fields and forced to dig their own graves before being gunned down.

By early April, in areas north of the Loire, order had been restored by the revolutionary government, but south of the river, in the four departments that became known as the Vendée Militaire, there were few troops to control rebels and what had started as rioting quickly took on the form of a full insurrection led by priests and the local nobility.

The unrest began halfway through Lent; Easter that year occurred on 31 March 1793, and, significantly, the initial violence was directed at the local priest Letort.

The violence followed what Raymond Jonas called a singular pattern of logic: it targeted those who personified the revolution in their function or status: National Guard Lieutenant Ferré, such prominent townsmen as Deputy Maupassant, and the constitutional priest Letort.