The Vendeans had not yet sufficiently matured their plans to enable them to encounter successfully the republican army.  The death of Cathelineau had had a great effect upon the peasants:  those who were with him had returned home in sorrow and despair, and this feeling was general, even among those who had not been at Nantes.  De Lescure and Henri, however, had not despaired; after having seen the body of his General consigned to the dust, Henri had returned to Clisson, and he and his cousin were again busy in raising recruits, or rather in collecting their men, when they heard that Westerman, with an enormous army, was marching into Parthenay, and that it was his intention to proceed from thence into the Bocage, by way of Amaillou and Bressuire.

They had hardly heard this report, when the little village of Amaillou was on fire; it was the first place that was utterly burnt down, and laid in ashes by the republicans; not a house was left standing, or hardly the ruined wall of a house.  The church itself was set on fire and burnt, with its pictures, its altars, and all its sacred treasures; the peasants ran from the ruins, carrying with them their wives and children, the old, the crippled, and infirm:  hundreds were left dead and dying among the smoking ashes.  This feat having been accomplished, Westerman continued on towards Bressuire, intending to burn the chateau at Clisson, as he passed it on his way.

The district between Amaillou and Bressuire is thickly studded with trees.  The roads, or rather lanes, are all lined by avenues of limes and beeches.  The fields are small, and surrounded by lofty hedges, which are also, in a great measure, composed of large trees, and the whole country in July, when the foliage is at the thickest, has almost the aspect of one continued forest.

Westerman had obtained guides to show him the road to Clisson.  It was about six o’clock in the evening when the advanced portion of his army, consisting of three thousand men, had proceeded about a league from Amaillou.  He was himself riding nearly at the front of the column, talking to his aide-de-camp and one of the guides, when he was startled by hearing a noise as of disturbed branches in the hedge, only a few feet in advance of the spot in which he was standing; he had not, however, time to give an order, or speak a word on the subject, before a long sudden gleam of fire flashed before his eyes; it was so near to him that it almost blinded him:  a cannon had been fired off close to his face, and it was easy to track the fatal course of the ball; it had been directed right along the road, and was glutted with carnage before its strength was spent.