Fort Ça-Ira. Formerly called Lapointe; taken by Pétion.

While General Rigaud was restoring order and labor throughout his command, most of the men of color of Léogane, discontented with the English domination, under which the colonists received a quite special protection, sent him several deputies bearing an address in which they urged him to come and attack their town, promising to second him vigorously. The deputies met Pinchinat, who was lying ill at Petit-Goâve. He congratulated them on the noble resolution they had taken. Rigaud sent the address to General Bauvais, who dispatched from Jacmel to Grand-Goâve part of the legion of the West, infantry, artillery and cavalry. These troops waited there for the army of the South. The general alarm was beaten in the streets of Les Cayes, and many young men enlisted with enthusiasm. Rigaud set out with 2,000 men drawn both from the legion of Equality of the South and from the national guard. He left garrisons at Saint-Louis, at Aquin and at Petit-Goâve. In all these places he had the partisans of England arrested, of whatever color. After granting his troops a few days’ rest at Grand-Goâve, where he met a thousand men of the legion of the West, he marched boldly against the enemy. Léogane, then well fortified, is built in the midst of a fine plain and lies half a league from the sea, with which it communicates by a magnificent highroad lined with houses. The port of the town was defended by a fort of turf almost at sea level, formerly called Lapointe, but Ça-Ira since the founding of the Republic. This redoubt was mounted with 14 guns, twelve- and eighteen-pounders. As he came out into the plain Rigaud saw the chief Republicans of Léogane, who had been hiding in the cane fields, hasten to meet him. They told him that their conspiracy had been discovered by the English, that they had been forced to flee, that the royalists, animated by the greatest determination, occupied all the fortifications, and that all the patriots were in the dungeons. We must recall that Labuissonnière, a man of color won over by Lapointe, had delivered Léogane to the English troops. A battalion of the Berwick regiment occupied the place.

Rigaud entrusted the vanguard of his army to Lieutenant-Colonel Faubert, commander of the second battalion of the legion of Equality of the South. This vanguard was halted by the fire of a redoubt raised in the middle of the road leading to the town. Lieutenant-Colonel Faubert, crushed under the grapeshot, fell back on the center of the column. Rigaud ordered Squadron Leader Marc Borneau to take the right. The grenadiers of the legion of the West made their way into the ditches of the town under the heaviest fire, while Commandant Pétion trained a battery on Fort Ça-Ira. After an hour of the bloodiest fighting the Republicans scaled the ramparts, entered the place and raised the tricolor flag there. (6 October.)

In the meantime Commandant Pétion, of the legion of the West, had taken Fort Ça-Ira and had forced the English warships to put out to sea.