Jacmel. Its men of color force the whites to a concordat on the day of the burning of Port-au-Prince.

Port-au-Prince, however, closely hemmed in by the Mulattoes, sent to the Croix-des-Bouquets Caradeux de la Caye, brother of Caradeux the Cruel, charged with announcing to Pinchinat and Bauvais that the concordat of 23 October had not been destroyed, and with proposing to them the formation of a new municipality composed of whites and men of color. Caradeux was not received. The municipality then turned its eyes to Grimouard, who since the death of Villages had commanded the naval division, made up of the ship of the line Borée and the frigate Galathée. Grimouard, an officer esteemed by both parties, had the people of color’s children brought to them, together with those of their women who had not been slaughtered on the day of 21 November. He came himself to the Croix-des-Bouquets and found Bauvais disposed to enter into negotiations.

The men of color demanded the embarkation of the paid national guards, of Praloto’s gunners and of the chiefs of the brigands, according to a list that would be furnished; the handing over to their troops of Fort Saint-Joseph and the fort of the Bel-Air; the formation of a new national guard and a provisional municipality; the annulment of the acts of the former municipality and of the assembly of the West; and the ratification of the treaty of peace of 23 October by Blanchelande. The whites were hesitating to accept these conditions, which Praloto rejected, when they learned of the arrival at Le Cap of the civil commissioners sent by France. The municipality did not doubt that these delegates would enforce the decree of 24 September; it would no longer treat with the people of color, counting heavily, besides, on the six thousand men promised by the mother country. Grimouard, recalled from the Croix-des-Bouquets, was nearly torn to pieces by the populace, and the negotiations were broken off.

The town was hemmed in more closely by the confederates. They cut off its water from Turgeot and Marquissant; provisions could not reach it, and the famine there became horrible. Until then the enslaved of the West had not taken up arms; the freedmen, who exercised a powerful influence over them, kept them in perfect tranquillity. Had the men of color of the North not lost their prestige through the failure of Ogé’s enterprise, they would have exercised the same influence over the plantation gangs of their province. It is true that the territory of the West is more favorable to war than that of the North; nearly all the forces of the freedmen of the West were concentrated in a narrow circle full of military positions naturally impregnable. Masters of the mountains of the Mirebalais, which on the east separate the province of the West from the Spanish part, the Mulattoes protected the Cul-de-Sac from all attack; masters of the plains of Léogane and the mountains of Jacmel, they cut all communication between the whites of the South and Port-au-Prince, the seat of their enemies’ power in the West.

Meanwhile the freedmen of the South were blockading the town of Les Cayes by land, breaking the treaties they had made with the whites, and massacring them in the countryside. On the very day of the burning of Port-au-Prince, those of Jacmel had compelled the whites of that town to make a concordat with them.