The revolt was comparable to the Chouannerie , which took place concurrently in the area north of the Loire.
Gradually referred to as the "Vendeans", the insurgents established in April a " Catholic and Royal Army " which won a succession of victories in the spring and summer of During the autumn, the arrival of the Army of Mainz as reinforcements restored the advantage to the Republican camp, which in October seized Cholet , the most important city controlled by the Vendeans.
From the winter of to the spring of , during the Reign of Terror , violent repression was put in place by the Republican forces. In what Max Weber later dubbed Caesaropapism , the Civil Constitution of the Clergy required all Roman Catholic priests to transfer their allegiance from the Holy See to the Constitution and, by extension, to the increasingly anti-clerical and anti-Catholic National Constituent Assembly of the Republic.
All but seven of the French bishops refused to take the oath, as did about half of the parish priests. The March conscription requiring Vendeans to fill their district's quota of the national total of , enraged the local nobility, clergy, and the populace, [ 10 ] who took up arms instead as " The Catholic Army ", "Royal" being added later, and fought for "above all the reopening of their parish churches with their former priests.
Some Vendean peasants had lived as tenant farmers on Church-owned farmland, and they overwhelmingly embraced the Revolution after all Church lands were seized and redistributed by the Republican government. They cite the fact that over the years of struggle to impose republicanism upon France, the middle class were the primary beneficiaries. Nearly all the purchasers of former Church land were members of the bourgeoisie and very few peasants benefited from the confiscation and sales.
