Anse-à-Veau. Evacuated and pillaged by the Rigaudins; Dessalines enters next day.

General Rigaud, struck by the numerical strength of the enemy, fell back in haste on the town of Aquin. Colonel Dommage dashed after him with the 4th demi-brigade, taking the right of Colonel Désir Laurent. Rigaud, at the head of 700 men, stood firm to receive the 2,000 men who formed the center division. The 4th was met by a brisk, sustained and murderous fire and was charged with the bayonet; Dommage, overthrown, took flight; terror seized his soldiers, who threw down their muskets, crying: every man for himself. Dessalines, indignant, ordered Colonel Laurent’s division to cross bayonets against the 4th to stop it and force it back into the fire; it was in vain; the fugitives, who had not the daring to face about, hurled themselves furiously on the bayonets of their comrades in arms and forced a passage. Immediately after this check Dessalines ordered the 8th to close its ranks and attack the enemy. As the colonel and the battalion commanders of that corps had been wounded at Fond-des-Nègres, he gave its command to Gabart Vaillant. Rigaud had just drawn up his soldiers by platoons at the entrance to the town. The 8th, at the charging pace, boldly attacked the enemy with street-firing; the smoke grew so thick that the combatants could no longer see one another; they were shooting at each other almost point-blank, at a distance of ten paces; yet, yielding to numbers, Rigaud ordered street-firing in retreat; he had two pieces of cannon that swept away whole lines of the enemy at every moment. Gabart rushed the guns with the light company of the 8th, seized them, and had the gunners bayoneted on their pieces. At the same moment Clervaux, having turned the Rigaudins, appeared on the field of battle with 4,000 men. The infantry of the South, crushed under the fire of 6,000 men, took flight. Rigaud, whose horse, hat and clothes were pierced with bullets, put himself at the head of his cavalry, which numbered only 50 dragoons, and charged the 8th; but he was checked again and again by the musketry. He was withdrawing toward the shore fort, having crossed the town, when Dessalines launched against him his whole cavalry, 1,500 strong. Squadron Commander Desravines, at the head of this cavalry, cut the dragoons of the South to pieces. Rigaud was several times nearly taken in the rout. A captain of the dragoons of the Artibonite, named Charlotin Marcadieux, was about to kill him when he recognized him; he let his saber fall and helped him escape. All the fugitives who had rushed to the seashore to reach the boats from Les Cayes were taken prisoner by the cavalry. Dessalines, having sent Laplume’s division in pursuit of the enemy, ordered his troops to bivouac. It was noon; the army was resting when suddenly the sentries gave the alarm, and the cries To arms! To arms! rang through the town. It was a body of 300 men coming from Anse-à-Veau under Colonel Piverger, who, believing the town of Aquin to be in Rigaud’s hands, had come silently to form up on the parade ground opposite the house Dessalines occupied. Dessalines had only time to escape by a hidden door and to order the 3rd battalion of the 4th to attack the enemy; at the same time the general alarm was beaten throughout the town; the troops assembled, and the Rigaudins, surrounded on every side, defended themselves with rare courage. When the cavalry charged them they took flight; Adjudant-General Blanchet and Colonel Batichon reached the woods and escaped death; but Piverger, though his arm had been shattered by a bullet, went on fighting valiantly. He was about to fall victim to the fury of the soldiers when Dessalines rushed to him, made a rampart of his own body, and cried out: Do not take his life, he is a brave man! Nevertheless the officers of the 4th wanted to run him through with their swords; Dessalines took him by the arm, led him to the balcony of the house he occupied, and surrounded him with respect and care; suddenly a musket shot rang out, and the bullet whistled past Dessalines’s ears: it was an officer of the 4th who, trying to bring down Piverger, had nearly killed his own general. This officer was arrested and thrown into a cell; nothing more was heard of him.

Two flags, a bronze four-pounder, two twenty-four-pounders, provisions and Rigaud’s portfolio of papers had fallen into the hands of the victors.

One is keenly struck by General Rigaud’s incapacity as a man of war; no plan can be discerned in his defense; he has 14,000 men to fight; he can oppose 1,800 to them, and yet everywhere he appears with 800 or 700 men; his small army is dispersed; it is beaten piecemeal; no directing mind can be seen; a complete absence of intelligence, no concert in operations, no rallying point; the colonels quartered at Anse-à-Veau, at Côtes-de-Fer and elsewhere, receiving no orders, seek out the enemy on their own and break themselves one after another against a compact mass directed with intelligence and energy.

Two days after the battle of Aquin (7 July 1800, 18 Messidor), Dessalines, having left the rest of his army under the orders of Brigadier General Laplume, set out from Aquin for Anse-à-Veau with 800 men. A distance of ten leagues separates Aquin from Anse-à-Veau. Dessalines could not reach the latter town the same day because the rivers were in flood. He spent the night on the Piémont plantation, two leagues from Anse-à-Veau. On the 7th, at two in the afternoon, the Rigaudins had evacuated that town after giving it over to pillage. Dessalines entered it the following day. Many cultivators and a great number of townspeople, weary of the war, came to make their submission to him. He sent to Toussaint Louverture those who were pointed out to him as the most influential; it was to send them to their deaths. He assembled the population on the parade ground and had the amnesty of 1 Messidor read to them.