Dessalines took up arms again at Petite-Rivière after leaving Gonaïves.

Such were the events accomplished, or on the point of being accomplished, in the North, when Dessalines, who had just been fighting the insurrection in the mountains of Port-de-Paix, and who would have met the saddest fate had he not separated from Brunet, “learning in the plain of the Artibonite of the defection of Christophe, of Clervaux and above all of Pétion, with whom he had prepared his hostile plans, took up arms again abruptly, instead of disarming the fort of Crête-à-Pierrot, as he had received the formal order of the commander-in-chief to do (1).” This rising in arms took place on a Thursday morning, 1 brumaire (23 October) (2). Dessalines, coming out of Gonaïves, where on the previous day he would have been arrested by Commandant Huin, had it not been for the timely warnings of a man of color, M. Simon Durvray, had just dismounted at Petite-Rivière. Concealing his anxiety and his plans, he accepts an invitation to lunch from the abbé Videau, in company with Andrieu, commandant of arms. They were about to sit down at table. Around the presbytery white soldiers were prowling, posted there to arrest him and bind him. But a *mulâtresse*, Madame Pageot, the priest’s servant, to whom indiscretions had revealed the plot, gives him a sign with her eye and with both elbows. At this eloquent pantomime, which announces to him the imminence of the danger, and which even a less alert man would have understood, Dessalines leaves the room under pretext of duty, springs on his horse, and, followed by his escort, makes for the bridge of Lameau, crying: To arms!

The Black population and the men of color run to rally around him. Andrieu, seeing his plan foiled, hastens to Crête-à-Pierrot and has the alarm cannon fired to warn the town of Saint-Marc, which is only seven leagues away, of his critical position. That cannon serves only to draw to the village swarms of cultivators, so many enemies. Summoned by Dessalines to evacuate the fort, Andrieu passes through the village undisturbed; but from the Drouet plantation to the crossroads of the Coursin ferry he had to endure a multitude of ambushes which Dessalines had sent filing there along roundabout paths. He returned to Saint-Marc with only a few men.