La Tannerie. Stormed by Laveaux’s army.

While Delasalle was in the West, Sonthonax ordered Laveaux to march against Jean François and Biassou, who held the mountains of the Limbé and the Souffrière, and La Tannerie, a well fortified and almost impregnable position, girded by a wide, deep ditch and armed with fourteen pieces of cannon. Among the white prisoners were several engineers who had been forced to direct the works of fortification. This strong redoubt had been raised on the spot where M. de Belsunce, a former governor of the colony, had had four field pieces mounted.

The young royalist whites who, before the day of 19 October 1792, had formed the corps of mounted volunteers, and whose intrepidity was well known, had been discontented since the deportation of Cambefort, and showed little inclination to take the field; the petits blancs had been discouraged and dejected since the embarkation of Larchevêque Thibaud and the triumph of the freedmen; and the men of color openly declared their repugnance at marching against the insurgents. Laveaux was about to be reduced to undertaking this expedition with the troops come from France, already decimated by disease, yet still full of enthusiasm. Sonthonax gathered the young whites at La Fossette, caressed them, flattered them and induced them to elect officers for themselves; MM. Dessources and de Russy, two rich enslavers, were placed, the one at the head of the foot volunteers, the other at the head of the mounted volunteers. It was January 1793. Sonthonax and Laveaux drew up a very fine plan of campaign: by narrowing the circle held by the troops of the western cordon and of the eastern cordon, they were to hem the insurgents closely into the basin of the Grande Rivière, then drive them from the fort of La Tannerie, throw them into the valley, and hunt them so as to force them back into the gorges of the mountains, where they would have been exterminated by the whites already established there. Three army corps set out, from the western cordon, from Fort Liberté and from Le Cap. On the side of the western cordon the insurgents held a chain of mornes stretching from the Marmelade to the Limbé; there was such discord between Jean François and Biassou that they will refuse to help each other. Lieutenant colonel Nully, commander of the western cordon, attacked the insurgents and carried in succession eight positions they held; he met a vigorous resistance in taking the last, the camp of Petit-Thouars. At the same time the commander of the eastern cordon, setting out from Fort Liberté, though abandoned by Candy, a man of color and chief of a numerous cavalry, carried a post at the Acul de Samedi; but he failed at the camp of Lesec, where a man of color was in command. For his part Laveaux came out of Le Cap at the head of his army, marching in three columns: the first was commanded by M. Dubuisson, the second by Desprès, lieutenant colonel in the 41st regiment, the third by Degouttes, formerly an officer in the Royal Auvergne. Laveaux reached the Bérard and Langardière plantations, and the next day attacked the camp of Milot, which the insurgents gave to the flames. He pursued them to the foot of the fort of La Tannerie, where they shut themselves in. He could not breach this redoubt, having only six field pieces; but, making use of the ardor of his soldiers, he ordered the troops of the line to mount the assault. They obey with enthusiasm, and are thrown back with loss, crushed under the grapeshot of the fortification’s 14 pieces. Biassou, sustaining the courage of his men, showed the greatest daring and exposed himself on the ramparts with rare intrepidity. The volunteers of Le Cap, under Dessources’s orders, attack in their turn, and march proudly without firing a single shot amid the grapeshot that blasts them. The rest of the army, astonished at such courage, raises cries of admiration and enthusiasm; the volunteers reach the top of a small morne that commanded La Tannerie. Seeing themselves supported by the column commanded by Desprès, they rush toward the entrenchments, reach the ditches, then the embrasures of the fort, in spite of the insurgents’ hottest fire; at the same moment the troops of the line arrive, and the corps of freedmen, who scale the walls; the cavalry moves off to cut the enemy’s retreat; Biassou, disconcerted by so much daring, takes flight; and the whites hoist the tricolor flag on the ramparts. It was 18 January. De Russy pursued the fugitives into the plain of the Grande Rivière; but he took only a few of them, since the whites could not match the Black men in agility through the woods. These gained the heights of the Grande Rivière and of the Dondon. Jean François went to camp at Piveteau, to fall from there upon the whites and attack them piecemeal. Thus was carried the famous redoubt of La Tannerie, the bulwark of the districts held by the insurgents, which for a long time had been thought impregnable. During the attack on this fort Jean François had made no move to help Biassou, of whom he was envious and whom he wished to see perish.