Les Cayes. Insurrection of the men of color and Black people after Lefranc’s arrest; whites slaughtered; Desfourneaux and Rey flee.

The delegates returned to Les Cayes, which they found in great agitation. Brigade Chief Boyé, a European officer, and General Bauvais, who were there, were striving to calm the ferment. The men of color, sure of the support of General Rigaud, who was still at Tiburon, were preparing an insurrectionary movement. At their head was Augustin Rigaud, the general’s brother. On 27 August, after having the constitution solemnly proclaimed by General Bauvais on the altar of the Fatherland, the delegates, who had received new instructions to act quickly and vigorously, had several chiefs of color imprisoned. The next day Lefranc, commander of Saint-Louis, was arrested. But he escaped from the hands of the European officers who were taking him on board the corvette Africaine, reached Fort L’Îlet and had the alarm fired there (11 Fructidor, Year 4; 28 August 1796). It was four in the afternoon. The whole Black and mixed-race population able to bear arms answered his call; the men of color also seized the fort of La Tourterelle. At the same time Augustin Rigaud had the alarm bell rung on all the plantations of the plain. The Black people took up arms on behalf of the mulattoes, their brothers; the insurrection spread over all the countryside, and the whites were slaughtered on every side. The insurgent cultivators, sacking everything, called loudly for General Rigaud and said they would not stop the carnage until they had him among them. General Desfourneaux and the delegate Rey, fearing they would be sacrificed, went on board the Africaine; but when they saw that the guns on shore were about to fire on them, they threw themselves into a boat and reached Île-à-Vache, from where they made their way to Gonaïves. They reached Le Cap overland.