Bel-Air. Aubrant entrenched there, then abandons it.

Firing began at once; the chain shot and grapeshot would have annihilated the men of color had the white artillery been well served. The freedmen, whose courage was sustained by Bauvais’s composure, answered the enemy’s fire vigorously. The chasseurs of Sale-Trou, skilled marksmen, brought down most of the white gunners. Suddenly Praloto’s troops were reinforced by the regiments of Artois and Normandy, which, having received in their barracks a few cannonballs fired by the men of color, had broken the neutrality they had kept since the beginning of the affair and had come to take part in the fight. Aubrant was coming down from the Bel-Air with three companies to attack Praloto in the flank and force him to retreat, when Major-General Taillefer, at the head of a column of white troops, fell upon him from behind after crossing the rue des Césars. Aubrant fell back, hurled himself furiously on the whites, overthrew them, and pursued them as far as the church square, where Taillefer was killed. He then entrenched himself on the Bel-Air. The regiments of Artois and Normandy and the royal artillery corps then attacked the government house on its south side. Bauvais, already out of projectiles, had replaced his cannonballs with stones; even his powder began to fail him; he ordered the retreat; and while he spiked his guns and threw them into the ditches, Captain Doyon, posted at Montalet, covered his retreat by holding back Caradeux, who was striving to turn the government palace. Bauvais crossed the Covin plantation in good order and withdrew to the Croix-des-Bouquets. The fighting had lasted from two in the afternoon until evening.

As soon as the fighting was over, fire broke out in every quarter of the town. No effort could stop the conflagration spread by Praloto and his band. The men of color who had not taken up arms were massacred in the streets, together with their women. Many of these unfortunate women took refuge in the countryside; others, hunted on every side through the town, threw themselves into the harbor and reached the mangroves of the islets that close the port; but they were fired on with grapeshot from the shore by Praloto’s artillery. The white rabble, spread along the quay, accused the white merchants of having set the fire, and gave the richest warehouses over to pillage.

The next day, at daybreak, Aubrant abandoned the Bel-Air and took the road to the Croix-des-Bouquets, where he joined Bauvais.