Jacmel. Evacuated by its garrison of about 1,400 men on the night of 12 March.

Pétion and Auger were in the vanguard, with Jérémie walking before them as their guide; the garrison, about 1,400 men, was followed by more than 400 women, by children and by many wounded. It flung itself with the bayonet upon the column that Henri Christophe commanded. Christophe, while meeting it with a murderous musketry fire, tried to carry the blockhouse; but he was disconcerted by the threatening bearing of the troops who held it, and showed hesitation. Brunache, who commanded the fort, had time to spike its guns and join Pétion. Christophe then trained two 18-pounders on the men of Jacmel and swept them with grapeshot at point-blank range. The women, seized with terror, threw themselves among the soldiers of the legion, uttering cries of despair. Pétion, astonished to meet the whole of the enemy’s forces at that point, recognized a betrayal. In the darkness the mêlée became horrible and the carnage frightful; it was almost impossible to break through the rampart of iron and fire that Christophe set against the march of the legion. Colonel Nérette, profiting by the disorder of the Jacmel men, dashed at them at the head of the 11th and pierced their column, which was cut in two! Pétion forced a passage to the bank of the Grande-Rivière of the town, where the enemy corps had not been massed, and was able to reach the woods with a few hundred grenadiers. Had Nérette not made this headstrong stroke, which, by splitting the Jacmel column, divided the blows of the soldiers of the North, the whole legion would have been annihilated under the fire of Dessalines’s army. Gauthier remained alone on the blockhouse road, assailed by the entire besieging army, which with the reinforcements it had received still amounted to more than 20,000 men. The legionaries, about 800 in number, were surrounded on every side; they were without any hope; certain of their death but resolved to defend themselves well, they entrenched themselves under the most murderous grapeshot, some behind fallen trees, others behind enormous stones; pierced with bayonets, riddled with balls, they fought on with matchless intrepidity; several whose arm had been cut off defended themselves with the one left to them; those who from loss of blood could no longer stand dragged themselves on their knees, still fought with fury, made a rampart of the bodies of those who had fallen, and held firm against a number twenty times greater than their own. Suddenly a cry for quarter rose from the ranks of these brave men. The enemy’s fire ceased at once; Dessalines, seeing them sell their lives so dearly, was glad to silence the cannon. At the same time Gauthier, passing along the ranks, urged his soldiers in a low voice to close up against one another and to strike, like desperate men, a headlong blow at the center of the enemy masses. Dessalines was already sending an officer to order them to lay down their arms when, to cries of “Long live the Legion! Long live Jacmel!”, they hurled themselves with the bayonet upon the troops of the North, who were disconcerted by the vigor of this fresh attack, overthrew everything they met in their path, and reached a slope of Cap Rouge after losing half their number. They made for the Gast plantation, hotly pursued through the woods by bold skirmishers. They could rally a little only on reaching Gast. It was only there that Gauthier noticed that Pétion’s column had not followed him; he believed it annihilated. He could not stay long on this plantation; the bands of the mountain, under the orders of Pierre Conil and Michel Selles, came to attack him. The legionaries reached Bénard, driving the armed mountaineers before them; yet they could not hold this new plantation either. On 13 March, in the afternoon, they took the road to the Grand Appon, still harassed. On the 14th they reached Girard, where they met friendly mountaineers commanded by one Figaro, a Black man, who had hastened to their aid at the sound of the firing. They halted there to await news of Pétion. Pétion, as we have seen, after being overthrown near the mouth of the Jacmel river, where the ambulance of Toussaint’s army lay, had thrown himself into the woods. Through the night of the 12th to the 13th and all through the day of the 13th he had fought against the enemy skirmishers; he reached the Grand Appon only on the 14th at five in the afternoon. The troops of Jacmel had evacuated the place 1,400 strong; when they were all reunited at Girard, they were reduced to 600 men. Auger had vanished during the action on the night of the 12th; he was twenty-three years old; his comrades in arms, who believed him dead, mourned him bitterly. The people of Jacmel said of him that no man had ever been more intrepid. The remnants of the Legion of the West went to Grand-Goâve, where Colonel Faubert commanded. The soldiers of the South greeted the brave men of the Jacmel garrison with loud acclamations and presented arms to them. There were touching scenes, and not one of the heroes of the legion reproached them for not having come to their aid.