At Bory, Pétion’s army fought Dessalines’s vanguard, and Desruisseaux was struck down while charging the 2nd demi-brigade with the bayonet.

After taking the town of Baynet, Dessalines appeared, on 11 floréal (1 May), on the heights of the Bory plantation, to the west of the small plain in the middle of which Grand-Goâve is situated. This latter place, whose command Pétion had resumed since his return from Jacmel, held an army of nearly five thousand men, most of them conscripts, poorly armed and undisciplined, of the 5th and 6th demi-brigades, but all full of ardor. The fire of an ambush commanded by Figaro announced the approach of the enemy. Pétion ordered Desruisseaux to move forward with the 5th. It was in the banana fields of Bory that the deadliest combat was joined, against the vanguard of the army of the North, commanded by Christophe. Desruisseaux, musket in hand, exposed himself like a plain soldier. Christophe was routed. Dessalines brought up the 2nd. Desruisseaux, still urging on his soldiers by voice and by example, charged this fresh demi-brigade with the bayonet. Already everything was giving way before him, when a ball came and shattered his head. Bathed in his blood, he still wished to continue the fight. But his grenadiers, seeing him more dangerously wounded than he thought himself, surrounded him and carried him off. Then the drum beat the retreat. The sight of the dying Desruisseaux drew tears from the whole army. Pétion above all, who knew the extent of his courage and the nobility of his heart, was profoundly afflicted.