Desrivaux. Rigaud’s defeat there.

We have seen that the civil commissioners, before leaving Port-au-Prince to go and fight Galbaud, had ordered Rigaud to assemble an army corps to subdue the Grand’Anse. General Rigaud had set out with three representatives of the civil commission, Pinchinat, Delestang and Albert. His army, made up of the freedmen of Jacmel, Grand-Goâve, Petit-Goâve, Miragoâne, Saint-Michel and some companies of those of Les Cayes, assembled at Petit-Trou, where Jourdain was in command. There he found 3 companies made up of men of color and Black men of Jérémie belonging to the republican party. All his forces rose to fifteen hundred men. Instead of marching directly on Jérémie after reinforcing himself with all the ateliers of the quarter of Petit-Trou, he approached the camp of Desrivaux, a fortification twenty feet across built on a height of the plantation of the same name, not far from Pestel. The men of Jérémie were commanded by two royalist officers, Débrosse and Duperrier. They asked the republicans to enter into negotiations with them and sent them deputies. Pinchinat told the envoys haughtily that he had come to have the law of 4 April carried out, and that he meant Jérémie to open its gates to the republican army without any prior condition, failing which it would be treated as a rebel town. Débrosse asked for five days to send this ultimatum to Jérémie and receive the answer; Rigaud consented. It was only a ruse of the men of Jérémie, who had already asked for reinforcements. Their envoys told the council of administration: “They will have no conditions; you must submit to the discretion of your barbarous enemies.” The population, animated by the energy of despair, preferred war; nothing was heard but these words: rather die than submit to the freedmen. There was at Jérémie a brave and intrepid white youth; even the women showed themselves ready to fight. This population, like the stormy sea that washes its shores, was always energetic and tumultuous. The council of administration entrusted to one Domingeau a corps made up of armed enslaved men and young white Creoles, and ordered him to make his way to the camp of Desrivaux. In the night before the fifth day of the truce Domingeau entered the fortification. The next day, 19 June, at nine in the morning, a very well equipped Black soldier climbed onto the ramparts and said to the freedmen of Les Cayes: Go back to your plantations; you have ruined your own country, and now you want to ruin ours; go home, wretched free men, naked plunderers in straw hats. The republicans were beginning to answer when some musket shots were fired from the fort; they could not account for Débrosse’s conduct; but a moment later they learned that General Rigaud had been deceived. The soldier who had shown himself on the ramparts appeared again and said to the republicans: You do not know who has just spoken to you; it is I, my name is Café Mûr; you have come to pick our coffee; well then! if you carry it off, it will be yours by right. One of Rigaud’s officers, Bernard, ordered the firing to begin. They fought relentlessly all day; the cannon of the fort wrought great havoc in the ranks of the republicans, who had no artillery. Rigaud, having lost three hundred of his men, among them Jourdain, carried off by a cannonball, fell back after sending his wounded to Anse-à-Veau. Ignace, one of his lieutenants, gravely wounded, blew out his brains so as not to fall into the enemy’s power. Domingeau pursued the fugitives as far as the Rivière Salée; and Rigaud returned to Petit-Trou.