Torbec. The first column sets out from it.

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.