Platons. Battle of the Platons: the whites routed.

We have seen that the Blacks of the mountains of the Platons had risen to uphold the rights of the men of color when Rigaud, sent to Les Cayes by the commissioner Saint-Léger, had failed to conclude a concordat with the whites. This insurrection had become formidable; it spread terror in Les Cayes and kept that town in continual alarm. The Blacks, under the orders of one of their own named Armand, held steep mountains, covered with woods, cut by deep gorges, and running along the plain of the Fond.

The Assembly of the South exhorted Blanchelande, in the name of the safety of the province, to march against the insurgents. Thiballier, commandant of the province, and Mangin d’Ouence called this plan of campaign a mad rashness. Rigaud tried in vain to turn Blanchelande from the expedition, confessing to him that the freedmen would not fight against men who had risen in support of the decrees of the metropolis. Rigaud no longer had any influence over the masses he had raised; for, the law of 4 April being carried out, there was no longer any reason to remain under arms. But Rigaud had never thought of making the field laborers of the South understand, as Pinchinat and Bauvais had done in the West, that once the freedmen became active citizens, general liberty would not be long in being proclaimed.

Blanchelande, at first heeding the advice of the men of color, went to the foot of the Platons with a few officers and presented himself as a peacemaker to the Blacks, who refused to give up their arms. He was not discouraged, however, and held another conference with them. They asked, on the one hand, that 300 liberties be granted them as to the field laborers of the West, and, on the other, the frank and sincere execution of the law of 4 April toward the freedmen; they promised, moreover, to send their final conditions within three days. The Assembly of the South refused to accept these demands and pressed the weak Blanchelande to take the field, unwilling to let slip so fine a chance of ruining him. Blanchelande ended by promising that he would march against the Platons if he received no answer from the insurgents when the three days expired. But during this interval the whites of the anti-metropolitan party, indignant against the governor who had carried out the law of 4 April, incited the insurgents to break off the negotiation by having it hinted to them that traps were being laid for them. At once, before the three days had expired, the Berrault camp, one of the posts that protected Les Cayes, was attacked by the Blacks and carried. As soon as this news reached the town the general alarm was beaten; it was eight in the evening, and there was so little zeal among the citizens that by ten not thirty national guards had been assembled. Blanchelande nonetheless resolved to fight. He fixed the day of the general attack for 6 August. Three columns were to be launched against the insurgents; and various corps quartered in the neighborhood of Les Cayes, at Port-Salut, at L’Abbaye and at Les Anglais, received orders to march, as did the reserve corps he was to command in person. *

Fleury, commandant of Port-Salut and a captain in the 73rd regiment, formerly Royal-Comtois, had the general alarm beaten but could not assemble the colonists, who refused to take the field. He blew out his brains in despair. Saint-Léger, commandant of the camp of L’Abbaye and an officer in the 4th regiment, formerly Provence, having met with the same resistance from the enslavers on his side, set out with twelve soldiers of his regiment.

Blanchelande had set up his headquarters facing the foot of the Platons, not far from the main camp of the insurgents, where Armand was in person, watching the movements of the whites and ready to oppose a strong resistance to them everywhere. The reserve corps Blanchelande commanded was made up of thirty-three white proprietors, a company of artillery under the orders of Saint-Cyr, a battalion of marines commanded by Esmangart and Serecey, and forty men of color under the orders of Rigaud.

The Blacks, ten thousand in number, held a stretch of six leagues; they had only nine hundred men carrying muskets, whom they had formed into three battalions; the rest were armed with pikes and stones. The white army numbered 1043 men.

The first column, made up of a hundred and twenty men of the 92nd regiment, formerly Walsh, and two hundred militiamen, white and mulatto, was commanded by Deschet. It set out from Torbeck and reached the Platons on 6 August, the day fixed for the general attack. The other two columns had not yet reached the Platons. Deschet waited in vain for the cannon shot that was to be the signal for the attack; for Blanchelande, having learned of the delay of the second and third columns, had sent orders not to attack until the seventh. But in the afternoon of the 6th the insurgents Armand had set against Deschet vigorously assailed the first column in front and on the flanks. The whites fought with the greatest courage until the end of the day; but as soon as night had come they fell back under a hail of bullets and stones, and crossed in disorder the highest peak of the Platons, the famous defile bordered by precipices called Dompte-Mulâtres. Most of them perished in the gorges of the mountain. The prisoners died under torture: Thiolière, a white man, after being forced to kiss the severed head of his friend Walsh, perished in frightful torments.