La Croix-des-Bouquets. Evacuated by Bauvais and Pinchinat and occupied by Praloto.

While Saint-Léger was putting out the insurrection of Trou-Coffi, the assembly of the West asked for nothing but the extermination of the men of color of the Croix-des-Bouquets. It ordered an expedition to be sent against that town. In vain did Degers, commandant of the place, oppose this mad undertaking; he was dismissed. Praloto and Caradeux had armed several hundred enslaved men, of whom they had formed a company called the Africans. These new soldiers roamed the plain of the Cul-de-Sac by night, surprised the mulattoes on their properties, cut their throats, and paraded their heads on the ends of pikes through the streets of the town. The army of Port-au-Prince, made up of the national guard and of the 4th and 9th regiments, formerly Artois and Normandie, marched against the Croix-des-Bouquets on 10 March. The national guards, magnificently turned out, were commanded by Caradeux; the artillery was under the orders of Praloto; and the company of Africans was commanded by Breton de la Villandry and by an intrepid Black man named Philibert. All the troops together made up an effective force of 3,000 men. The vanguard of the army, which followed the high road, was composed of the Africans. At the same time another column, marching out of Port-au-Prince, went to occupy La Coupe. Everything fled at the approach of the whites: the army of the men of color had all but dissolved; for discouragement had spread among them since the publication of the law of 24 September revoking that of 15 May, and since the restoration of the municipalities, which were composed of colonists alone. They had only a few hundred men to oppose to the mass of the whites. A single plantation gang of the plain, that of the Baron de Santo-Domingo, tried to stop the march of the patriots; but the three hundred men of which it was composed put up a vigorous resistance in vain. Bauvais and Pinchinat evacuated the Croix-des-Bouquets and withdrew with their artillery to the Mirebalais, after fighting as far as the Crochus, harried by Caradeux and Philibert. Praloto took possession of the Croix-des-Bouquets, which he found entirely abandoned. Hanus de Jumécourt, knight of Saint-Louis and mayor of the town, whose life was threatened by the petits-blancs, fled to the Grands-Bois. The plantation gangs of the Cul-de-Sac made no movement on the day of 10 March and kept a gloomy silence. Most of the royalist whites of the plain refused to enter the Croix-des-Bouquets, being unwilling to put themselves at the discretion of the petits-blancs; besides, they feared to arouse the indignation of the men of color, who in their opinion were bound to regain the upper hand as soon as they could reassemble.