Port-au-Prince. Scapin hanged; battle before the government palace; the freedmen retreat.

Meanwhile, in the West, everything seemed to announce that war would soon break out again between the freedmen and the whites. The municipality and Praloto, although three of the four sections of Port-au-Prince had voted for the ratification and execution of the treaty of peace, were doing everything in their power to break with the men of color. Pinchinat, Bauvais and Lambert began to feel uneasy. The whites were taking a threatening attitude; they kept under arms in their quarters; the men of color, on the contrary, had for the most part dispersed; nearly all those of the South had withdrawn with Rigaud to their province; their companies were few in number. It was 21 November. The fourth section of Port-au-Prince, where the Italian Praloto ruled as master, demanded that the execution of the concordat be put off to another time; at the same moment the soldiers of the Artois and Normandy regiments were gathering in their barracks. The freedmen, seeing everything astir around them, assembled at the government palace and at the Bel-Air. A certain Scapin, a Black drummer, was arrested on his way to his post by whites who claimed he had never been free. Before Bauvais had time to make his protest, Scapin had been flogged and hanged from one of the street lamps of the municipality. The indignant men of color were deliberating on the course they should take when a white officer, coming out of the government house, where Praloto had sent him to Bauvais, crossed the Place d’Armes and was struck in the arm by a bullet fired at him by Lieutenant Valmé, a man of color. At once the whites cried “to arms” on every side, and the alarm was beaten. Praloto set out from the arsenal at the head of three battalions of the national guard, with twenty field pieces, and drew up in line of battle before the government palace. Bauvais had nothing to oppose to him but seven weak companies of infantry and cavalry together, and a company of artillery commanded by Pétion. Pétion had placed two cannon in the middle of the government gateway.

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.