The rebels moved rather slowly, and it took more than two weeks for General de la Cotri's army to reach the vicinity of Le Mans after Napoleon arrived. It wasn't that General Dracotri was deliberately delaying, but that he was really unable to move quickly.

First of all, what held him back was the declining morale of his army. In order to persuade the peasants to leave their hometowns, General Dracotri offered what appeared to be a relatively high salary. But in this way, General Dracotri did not have much money to buy munitions.

General Dracotri had hoped to capture something after entering Angers. However, after entering Angers, General Dracotri found that the situation was not quite what he had imagined. It's not that they didn't capture anything in Angers, for example, they captured more than a dozen cannons. However, they didn't have much of the things they needed most, such as food, gunpowder, and so on.

The lack of military supplies naturally makes it difficult to maintain military discipline. After the rebels entered Angers, they were able to control military discipline for the first two days, but soon military discipline began to spiral out of control. The streets are full of rebels who buy and sell, and rob porcelain. Some of the rebels even broke into the homes of those who had heads and faces, and even had a strong part of the events of that night, and looted them.

The rebels recruited by General Dracotri and the rebels who defeated the government army at the Vendée have actually changed a lot in terms of personnel composition. The rebels were more honest local farmers. But now there are many fewer peasants and many more prodigals in this rebel army.

This is also normal, because most of the honest peasants have gone home to farm, and many of them are not those honest peasants who are willing to run away for the military salaries of the nobles. So it's even harder to get these people to follow the rules. These guys not only broke into other people's homes to steal money, but even did a lot of things that were not allowed to be described by doing things to the women in other people's homes. It's almost as if the Huns had entered the city of Rome.

Dracotri grabbed some of those who had gone too far, especially those who had gone to the homes of nobles to rob and commit unspeakable crimes, and hanged themselves on the gallows in the square. I finally pressed this wave of things. However, what I didn't expect was that with the purge of military discipline, it brought about other problems.

The first problem is the flight of soldiers. Some soldiers fled because they missed their homeland, while others fled because they were under control and could not plunder at will. And once the escape happens, it is often not one person who runs, but people from the same village or even the same area. For this reason General Dracotri had to take all sorts of drastic measures against deserters, and any soldier who tried to flee and was caught would certainly be hanged.

Such draconian measures brought a new problem, that is, the soldiers actually began to resist. In less than two days, three military judges were shot and killed. One of them was also the nephew of General Dracotri. General Dracotri knew that the pressure on the gallows had reached the end, and if he continued to hang, he did not know who would be hanging on the gallows at that time.

As a result, military discipline was completely unattended, and the only thing General Dracotri could do at this time was to restrain the soldiers from encroaching on the persons and property of those nobles and decent people at will. Later, he couldn't do anything about it, and all he could do was: restrain the soldiers not to infringe on the personal and property of nobles, and not to infringe on the personal safety of decent people. As for the average fart people, there really can't be helped.

Atrocities are sometimes like drinking, which is addictive. In the beginning, the rebels' atrocities were only to fill their stomachs, but now, the purpose of their atrocities is no longer so material. Rather, it has reached a higher realm, a realm of spiritual enjoyment—for the sake of pleasure.

The decent people of Angers could not bear it anymore, and they sent a representative to General Dracotri and proposed to him that in order to support the great cause of the restoration, they were willing to donate a part of the supplies to support the army of "the king and God" to continue to advance. To put it more clearly, they are now willing to break the bank, spend some money, and quickly send these plague gods to any other place to harm others.

If the rebels had been able to get this package a few days earlier, they would have happily gone to Le Mans, but now that they have evolved into an army with spiritual pursuits, the soldiers refused to leave until they had completely spoiled Angers.

"Today I'm going to go to the daughter of the owner of the small hotel and try some new moves, how can I leave like this?"

"His brother is also very beautiful, and their mother, we are planning to have a party with their whole family, how can we leave now?"

"Yes, yes!"

As a result, the package was left behind by General Dracotri, but the "king and God's army" did not leave immediately, but intended to remain in Angers for a few more days "to rejoice with the people".

The people of Angers, fed up, finally decided to revolt, and some of the townspeople suddenly attacked the "army of the king and God" one night. As a result, the city of Angers was burned to the ground by a fire on this night.

A nobleman who escaped from the fire, later referring to this experience in his memoirs, said this:

"Just as Prince Alexei brought the Crusaders (the Byzantine prince in exile Alexei brought the Crusaders to Constantinople, which resulted in the massacre and sacking of Constantinople) we got in touch with the Vendée army and helped them to enter Angers. And their behavior in Angers is almost indistinguishable from that of the Crusaders in Constantinople...... Before they arrived, the republic had taken away my privileges, but I still had money, and I still had real estate, and I still had land, and I had my family...... Now, I don't have anything......"

After a great fire, the "king and the army of God" could no longer rejoice with the people, so they had to continue their march north. However, because of the confusion of military discipline, the pace of the march also became procrastinated, so it was only then that they staggered to the vicinity of Le Mans.

At this time, in the face of low morale, General Dracotri had no choice but to simply break the jar and break the city, and after announcing the destruction of the city, he would take a three-day holiday to boost morale.

Hearing this, Napoleon almost fainted without laughing. He found several regiment commanders and battalion commanders under his command and began to deploy operations.

Encouraged by the "three-day holiday", the rebels raised a little morale and launched an attack on Le Mans. However, by this time, the story of their "rejoicing with the people" in Angers and their preparation for a "three-day holiday" had become known to the entire Le Mans through the efforts of Fouché and Mayor René.

So when it comes to defending the city, the Le Mans are particularly determined, after all, no one wants to have a holiday with those guys outside the city. As a result, the National Guard at Le Mans fought with great courage and determination. In contrast, the guys on the other side, perhaps because they still want to save their precious lives to enjoy the upcoming vacation, have been counterattacked, and immediately retreat. As a result, at the end of the day, the rebels did not make any progress.

Napoleon gave almost all of the defensive tasks to Fouché's National Guard. This army was newly formed, and its military quality was quite poor, but because it was really defending the country, their morale was very high, and several times after the enemy approached, they were able to charge with bayonets and easily defeat the rebels.

As for Napoleon's main forces, they were placed behind the National Guard by Napoleon, ready to be used to plug leaks or counterattack.

At the same time, Napoleon's cavalry units, under the command of Davout, constantly attacked the rebel logistics lines in the rear. The rebels did have an advantage in numbers, but this advantage was limited to infantry. The rebels did not have much cavalry, which made it difficult for them to effectively restrain Davout's movements.

As a result, the rebels had to send more troops, set up more stations along the supply lines, and deploy more troops in these positions to ensure the security of the supply lines.

The natural result of this is a significant reduction in the number of troops that can be used for front-line operations. Therefore, although General Dracotri once had more than 40,000 men under his command in terms of total strength, after the battle and flight of Angers, he was forced to draw a considerable amount of troops to defend the supply lines, which made the number of troops he could use for offensive operations on the first line quickly dropped to about 20,000. In Napoleon's hands, in addition to the more than 5,000 people in his division, there were also more than 5,000 people of the National Guard formed by Fouché, and now on the battlefield, the disparity between the numbers of the two sides is actually not so great. Coupled with the bonus of fortifications, it is theoretically impossible for the rebels to take Le Mans.

However, because Napoleon had always hidden his main force well and had never used it on the battlefield, General Dracotri did not know how many enemy troops there were on the opposite side, and according to the information he had received before, as well as the situation of the battles in the past few days, General Dracotri judged that the enemy army was only six or seven thousand men at most. He felt that he could still fight it. After considering the attacks in the past few days, he felt that he seemed to have some understanding of the enemy's defenses, and it seemed that he could be reckless. Moreover, the logistics are becoming more and more difficult, and there has been no progress in the past few days, and the morale of his army has begun to decline again, and if he does not launch a general offensive again, he is afraid that he will not have the morale needed to launch a general offensive in the future. So General Dracotri decided: "Tomorrow morning, let everyone have a good meal, and then launch a general attack!" ”