Larose won a victory over the French at Arcahaye, and chief of battalion Lamartinière died.

On the morning of the day when Dessalines was driven back before Saint-Marc, Larose was winning at Arcahaye a signal victory over the French; this very triumph cost the country dear through the death of chief of battalion Lamartinière (1).

Very different from his brother, whom Rigaud had shot at Léogane on the recapture of that town, Lamartinière showed himself constantly devoted to the Republic during our struggles against the colonists and the English. Later, Port-au-Prince is threatened by General Boudet, and liberty is in peril. Lamartinière, a simple chief of battalion, perceives that the higher authorities of the town are disposed to welcome the French favorably. He betakes himself to the arsenal and demands gunpowder; on the shilly-shallying of Commandant Lacombe, a white man, director of that arsenal, he blows out his brains and seizes all the munitions he needs for the defense of the town. Soon he even had General Agé, a white man, to whom Toussaint had entrusted the command of the district, placed under close guard, and took upon his own head the responsibility and the supreme direction of events. Afterwards, the defense and the evacuation of the forts of Crête-à-Pierrot consecrated his name in an imperishable manner beside those of Dessalines and Magny (*). After the submission of Toussaint he had returned to Port-au-Prince; he was still there at the time of the insurrection of Lamour-Desrance. He was charged by General Rochambeau with going to smother that insurrection. Recalled soon afterward to the town and sent to Arcahaye against Larose, he must have learned, in one place or the other, of the taking up of arms by Pétion, which already dated from several days earlier, and of that of Dessalines, which had just come about. But far from following the example of those two generals, he continued to wage an implacable war on the insurgents, thus seeming to disown his past conduct. Some successes emboldened him. He marched against the Cortades plantation, in the quarter of Les Délices, the place of arms of Larose, in two columns; the one, commanded by Captain Boucard, advanced by the Barthélemy plantation, toward the Matheux; the other, commanded by himself, passed by the Jarossey plantation. It was the morning of 11 brumaire (2 November). Larose had kept at Cortades only his worst-armed men. He had posted his good skirmishers of the 8th in the avenues. Lamartinière, wounded, dragged himself into a field of sweet potatoes. His men had abandoned him. Discovered, he had his head cut off. Boucard, who had not gone into action at the same time as he, was in his turn defeated on the Dessources plantation, and killed. Sergeant Gédéon, so devoted to Lamartinière, whose man of trust he was, escaped the disaster only by a miracle. Thus perished Lamartinière, who had won such popularity in the army, both by his conduct at Port-au-Prince on the arrival of the French, and by that which he had shown at Crête-à-Pierrot. A soldier of liberty, he nevertheless perished, by a deplorable fatality, in the ranks of the oppressors of his country. A few days more, and he would have thrown himself into the insurrection that was breaking out on all sides against those same oppressors. His death, so sad, drew the regrets of all his contemporaries. The soldiers, who loved him dearly, still relate today that he was waiting only for the signal from Dessalines to declare himself against the French: so much does the human mind love the logic of deeds (1)!