Fort-Dauphin. Surrendered by Candy to the Spanish, who violate the capitulation.

On 3 February the Republic lost Fort-Dauphin, the bulwark of the province of the North on the side of the Spanish part. The civil commissioners had entrusted the command of that place to Candy. The Spanish were blockading it by land and by sea. A coasting skipper named Juan Delmonte won over the commandant of the fort Labouque, which protects the harbor, and the Spanish ship San Ramond, of 64 guns, entered without hindrance. Candy then concluded a treaty of capitulation with Admiral Don Gabriel Aristizábal, on condition that Jean-François and his bands should never be admitted into the town. When the Spanish had made themselves masters of every point of the place, they violated the terms of the capitulation, arrested Candy, and sent him to Mexico to labor in the mines. Candy will escape from the hands of the Spanish in 1797 and return to Saint-Domingue, from which he will be deported by Sonthonax, who will see in him only a traitor and an enemy of the Black race. He will accuse him of having slaughtered 200 Black people at Le Trou. Don Joaquín de Saso, of the Puerto Rico regiment, took command of Fort-Dauphin. He soon showed himself disgusted with that charge. He wrote to Don García, governor of Santo Domingo: “Soldiers are not needed to conduct a war of Pater Nosters and Ave Marias; Father Velásquez is enough. . . . . . . . . Besides, I am used to fighting, not to cajoling.” He was alluding to the caresses lavished on Jean-François to keep him in the Spanish ranks.