The Vendéens were no longer worried about the republican troops too busy reorganizing their forces, but they were ravaged by illnesses (dysentery, typhus and cholera) related to famine caused by their difficulties in supply and in protecting themselves from the cold of the upcoming winter.

On 3 December the Vendéens attacked, but the initial assault wasn't better planned than at Granville, they spread into the faubourgs abandoned by the republicans but without siege weapons they were unable to pass the fortifications.

On 4 December, the Vendéen tried another attack, on the verge of taking the Cupif gate the republican troops led by general Jean Fortuné Boüin de Marigny arrived as reinforcements.

These troops were the avant-garde of the Army of the West, their arrival provoked panic in Vendéen lines who abandoned the siege and fled back to the North-East, towards Le Mans.

Pitre-Chevalier also wrote that the sans-culottes, following orders of Levasseur "made a lustral procession, and burnt the frankincense of the fatherland to purify the walls from royalist contact".