At Sibert, Yayou fired the first shot, Métellus’s fire routed Christophe’s advance guard, and Pétion’s line then broke when the 8th demi-brigade appeared on his flank.

Yayou, impatient at all this talk, gave the signal for combat by a pistol shot (1). Métellus opened fire. This fire was so well directed that Christophe’s advance guard was routed. Savary was the first victim of this attack.

The son of Charles Savary, who in 1794 had been at the head of the coalition of Saint-Marc for the restoration of slavery and who had delivered that town to the English, the man who had just been killed, a *mulâtre* like his father, had fought ardently in that same town of Saint-Marc, with the French, against the indigenous army. It seems that the destiny of that family was to serve every bad cause. It was doubtless on account of these baleful antecedents that Dessalines had had him arrested and plunged into the dungeons of Laférière, from which Christophe took him out to place him in the 4th demi-brigade.

Gédéon, perceiving then the rout of Christophe’s advance guard, invites Métellus to cease fire. Then the courageous colonel, after having ardently harangued his soldiers, crosses the dike and engages the enemy with a boldness that adds to the disorders of the flight. Gédéon pursues the troops of the North as far as the bridge of the Saline. The road is covered with the dead and the dying. The 4th alone has lost nearly 400 men. But the reserve, commanded by Romain, rallies the fugitives. The combat begins again. Gédéon, in his turn, is obliged to fall back to Sibert, under the protection of the squadron commander Bastien. The fire continues with equal fury on both sides. Up to that point one might say that the advantage is on Pétion’s side, for his reserve has not yet been engaged, while the enemy is worn out. It was at this moment that the brigade commander Larose, at the head of the 8th, without superior orders, falls upon the wood of Desprez by the seashore, and across a marsh comes out on the Lerebours plantation, crosses its dike, a capital position, to the guard of which the battalion commander Louis Lerebours had been assigned, and which that officer had treacherously abandoned (1); with the 3rd battalion of the 20th he crosses the barrier of Sibert and appears at the extreme left of the 21st. Larose announces, and has the soldiers repeat, that he comes to surrender to the Republic. These words cast indecision into the 21st.

Pétion, who for some unknown reason had brought no artillery in his train, had just sent Bonnet to fetch some from Port-au-Prince; mounted on the mound of the mill of Sibert, he thought that in the end the glory of the day was going to remain with him, when he perceives the 8th. He sees at a glance that he is threatened with finding himself between two fires. He mounts his horse again, and, taking the head of the 21st in person, leads it into the fire. The first platoon, instead of converging to right and left, carried away by the ardor of the combat, was reloading its arms when the second platoon fired and laid several soldiers of the first on the ground. Confusion was the first result of this baleful ineptitude. The demi-brigade fell back in disorder. Already Magny, with three demi-brigades, had crossed the river in his turn: all seemed lost. Pétion ordered the retreat on Port-au-Prince. Soon the enemy masses invade Sibert: their cavalry, commanded by Barthélemy Miraut, hurls itself on the left flank of our troops: the retreat is now only a great disorder, which it becomes impossible to remedy.