As well as appealing to royalists abroad, Napoleon appealed to them in the Vendée, offering a general amnesty to any Chouans who laid down their weapons. He told them that the ‘unjust laws’ and ‘arbitrary acts’ of the Directory had ‘offended personal security and freedom of conscience’ and offered a ‘complete and total amnesty’ for all past events, in return for which the insurgents were asked to hand in their weapons by February 18, 1800.50
