Port-au-Prince. The civil commissioners leave; the English enter with 4,000 men.

Port-Républicain, whose defenders numbered only 800, seemed disposed to defend itself. As for Monbrun, he promised to bury himself beneath the ruins of the place; nevertheless Sonthonax, distrusting his patriotism, had summoned Martial Besse, a man of color, from Jacmel and had given him command of the town. On 31 May, in the afternoon, the civil commissioners turned back a boat under flag of truce from General Whyte that was approaching Fort de l’Ilet. The English resolved to bombard the place. At the same time they directed three columns against it: the first, a thousand strong, coming out of Léogane, was commanded by the Baron de Montalembert; the second, coming from the Arcahaie under the orders of Lapointe and Hanus de Jumécourt, was of 1,200 men; the third, of 1,465 men, had in its ranks the remnants of the émigré corps that had not entered the army of the Prince de Condé: the regiments of Hompesch and of the Rohan Hussars, and the Uhlans of Bouillé.

On 1 June, at eleven in the morning, the frigate Pénélope moored broadside to Fort Touron, and the ships Belliqueux and Sceptre against Fort Bizoton, which was armed with five guns and two mortars. Monbrun held this last fortification with a few gunners and 450 men of the Legion of the West. The English opened fire on the place. Under cover of the bombardment, 800 men of European troops of the line landed at Lamantin, led by Colonel Spencer. Fort Bizoton answered the broadsides of the English squadron only feebly. At six in the evening the rain began to fall so heavily that the firing ceased on both sides. Captain Daniel, at the head of sixty grenadiers of the 41st regiment, marched with the bayonet against Bizoton, whose gates were opened to him by traitors. Monbrun, seeing a company enter the fort, thought that Republicans were seeking shelter there from the downpour. Captain Daniel came up to him and said in French: “You are my prisoner.” “Not yet,” answered Monbrun, and he felled him with a ball to the head. Colonel Spencer entered the fort with a battalion; they fought in the darkness, with the bayonet and hand to hand. The soldiers of the Legion of the West, seeing themselves betrayed, fell back on the town. Monbrun had been wounded in the hand in the melee; throughout the town he was suspected of treason. On 2 June, at daybreak, the English flag was flying over Fort Bizoton. In the afternoon Colonel Hampfield landed with 200 men at the Pointe de la Saline and seized Fort Touron, which was handed over to him by a battalion of the Regenerated. The white people of the town, fearing the fury of the newly free, took refuge some aboard the ships in the roadstead and others in Fort Saint-Joseph, the better to lend the English a hand. Polvérel and Sonthonax assembled the Regenerated and harangued them, telling them that if they were beaten they would go back into servitude; they answered with prolonged cheers, but in truth they thought only of pillaging the town. Sonthonax, who believed that Monbrun had delivered Fort Bizoton to the English, wished to have him arrested, but gave up the plan, being no longer able to hold the place. A council of war met, and it was decided there that the civil commissioners would go to La Charbonnière, four leagues from Port-Républicain. Sonthonax and Polvérel left the town after exhorting the newly free not to burn it. General Bauvais, at the head of a detachment of the Legion of the West that had come out of the Croix-des-Bouquets, accompanied them (3 June). Bauvais, no longer able to hold his ground in the plain of the Cul-de-Sac, into which the English had penetrated, had evacuated the Croix-des-Bouquets and rallied to Sonthonax, in whom he still respected the representative of France.

Martial Besse remained in the place; he went round all the posts and found the soldiers of the legion of the Regenerated more disposed to plunder than to fight. The weather was so frightful that the English did not leave the positions they held; but the town was already almost empty, and there was no longer any authority that was respected. Blaise, lieutenant-colonel in the Legion of the West, delivered Fort Saint-Joseph to the English (5 June).

On the same day the British army, 4,000 strong, entered Port-Républicain; it fired on everyone it met in the streets. A French colonist of Montalembert’s legion, named Béranger, went to Fort Saint-Joseph, where all the white men who had called in the English were gathered. He carried a list of thirty landowners, old acquaintances of his, who were, he said, Republicans. He called them out, beginning with Messrs. Goy and Gau, and threw them one after another into the ditch, blowing out their brains with his own hand and saying to each: “Republican, take the leap from the Tarpeian Rock.” He would have killed in this way all these unfortunates, who had just betrayed their country, had not General Whyte, arriving at the fort at eight in the evening, put an end to this frightful carnage. The English general had him arrested, and the next day (6 June) published a proclamation condemning the crime. Béranger fled. He drowned in the Voldrogue on his way to Jérémie. The English, if we are to believe their bulletin, counted eight men killed and eight wounded, five of them aboard the frigate Hermione.