Les Cayes. Royalist rising of Badolet and Mouchet, defeated by Rigaud; the forts Lilet and La Tourterelle stormed.

Meanwhile the town of Les Cayes was in turmoil through the royalist party, which was making its last effort there. Delpêche, who had replaced the civil commissioner Ailhaud, represented the Republic there. General Rigaud, since his defeat at the camp Desrivaux, had been at the disposal of the civil commission there with a few companies of the legion of the West. Sonthonax’s proclamation of 21 June had been published there without any opposition. But since the check at Desrivaux the royalist party had been raising its head throughout the South, and at Les Cayes above all. A conspiracy whose aim was to deliver the town to the confederates of the Grand’Anse broke out on 14 July, immediately after the celebration of the feast of the taking of the Bastille. A white officer of the national guard named Badolet had asked Delpêche, and Harty, commander of the province, in vain to hand over to him several of those he had held in slavery, who had been freed by the proclamation of 21 June. He put himself at the head of the royalists and the petits blancs, supported by Mouchet, commander of the national guard, and came to assail Delpêche’s house. General Rigaud, on whom the whites had just fired, hastened to the aid of the civil commissioner. A bloody struggle begins in the streets between the royalists and the men of color; the prisons are thrown open by the colonists; the town fills with malefactors; and deserting sailors, whom at Les Cayes they called filibusters, roam through it, pillaging and murdering. Harty, supported by several battalions of the Seine-Inférieure and the Aube, drives the royalists from the center of the town. They seize Fort Lilet and the fort of La Tourterelle; and Harty, to protect the civil commissioner, trains a cannon in front of the national palace. General Rigaud gathered all the men of color and attacked Badolet at five in the afternoon. They fought all night; and the next day at ten in the morning the freedmen carried the two forts by storm. Badolet and Mouchet had fled that same night; they withdrew to Jérémie. The royalists who had scattered through the town after being driven from the two forts rallied once more and marched against General Rigaud. He came out of L’Islet, rushed to meet them and beat them near the place des Tanneurs. After this affair the colonial party was annihilated at Les Cayes: the white national guard was partly disarmed, and the men of color remained under arms. A rumor had spread that Rigaud had been assassinated by the aristocrats; the whites had at once been arrested at Aquin and at Saint-Louis; and the work gangs, which had stirred in favor of the men of color, were calmed by the wise measures taken by the commanders Touraux and Lefranc. From then on the freedmen of Les Cayes began to organize themselves into regular troops. Rigaud formed a battalion of young cultivators recruited in the plain of Les Cayes. He had taken ten from each work gang: this was the origin of the Legion of Equality of the South.