Galbaud landed at the head of sailors and began three days of battle at the Cap, in which the town burned.

Three o’clock in the afternoon strikes; a cannon shot goes off from the ship *Jupiter*, a blue flag rises at the head of the mizzenmast. The crews of the warships and of most of the merchantmen throw themselves into the boats; and without the fort of Gris-gris making any movement, Galbaud lands at the head of six thousand sailors. Sixty colonists receive him with an enthusiasm that borders on delirium; they cry: To the government! Then begins one of the bloodiest of battles; it lasts three days; more than two thousand persons lose their lives in it. Gajack is killed; Galbaud’s party takes Polvérel’s son prisoner, at the moment when that of the commission forces Cézar Galbaud to surrender.

On the morning of the 21st, the government house, continually battered by cannon, threatened to fall in ruins. The commission decided to withdraw through the gardens to Camp Breda, accompanied by Chanlatte and the legionaries. There, on the same day, it took the supreme resolution to call to freedom all the enslaved who should enlist under the banners of the Republic. It was an audacious decision which, it is true, did not follow entirely from its instructions; yet it was commanded by the imperious law of public safety. Galbaud had at his orders six thousand sailors, five battalions of national guards, the volunteers on foot and mounted, while the delegates of France had to oppose to him only three hundred freedmen and two hundred men of the line (1). Galbaud, who thought the commissioners in flight and who already believed himself victorious, ordered the commander of the cordon of the West to arrest them if they presented themselves at that cordon (2).

It was believed that at the call the commission had just made, Jean-François, Biassou and Toussaint would hasten to return to the service of the republic; but Pierrot alone, who commanded at Port-Français, took advantage of this benefit, hurrying from the Haut-du-Cap with his bands, whom he caused to take an oath of fidelity to the Republic. On the very day of Pierrot’s surrender, Martial-Besse was seen to arrive with one hundred and eighty dragoons from the camp of Terrier-Rouge, which he was holding against the insurgents (3). To him Laveaux, who is ill, entrusts the general command of the Cap, where a handful of freedmen continued to defend themselves with Villatte. This town, since the evening before at six o’clock, had been given to the flames by the sailors. Martial-Besse, followed by Pierrot and his band, enters it, charges the men of Galbaud vigorously, carries Fort Bel-Air and the position of Bonne-Poirié; from Fort Bel-Air he has the arsenal, where Galbaud is located, bombarded, and hurls himself anew with his dragoons upon the sailors (1). These, at five o’clock in the evening, on the 23rd, regain their boats with frightful howls. Galbaud himself finds himself on the point of being captured; he is near drowning as he gains his longboat (2). At seven o’clock the ground was purged of the counter-revolutionaries, but covered with corpses; the fire continued its ravages.