Petit-Trou. Taken by Dessalines; prisoners shipped from here to Saint-Marc.

A schooner out of Petit-Trou, believing the town still in the hands of the army of the South, came to anchor in the roadstead of Anse-à-Veau; she was taken and given over to pillage. There fell into Dessalines’s hands three twenty-four-pounders, 5 dismounted eight-pounders, 3 swivel guns, 102 twenty-four-pound shot, five eight-pound shot, eleven sponges of different calibers, eleven priming horns, a bullet mold, and a barrel and a half of powder.

The next day, 9 July (20 Messidor), at 4 in the afternoon, he marched on Petit-Trou. A distance of five leagues separates that town from Anse-à-Veau. Having come within a quarter of a league of the town, he divided his army into two columns. The first was entrusted to Colonel Paul Louverture, and he himself, at the head of the second, entered the place; there he found horsemen and gunners feeding the fire that had been set to the houses. At the first volley they received they abandoned the town. In vain did Dessalines have cannon fired at the many boats laden with families that were making for the open sea to reach Corail and Jérémie; he could not sink them. As at Anse-à-Veau, many cultivators came to make their submission to him. Dessalines, who had brought along the prisoners taken at Aquin, shipped from Petit-Trou to Saint-Marc Colonel Piverger, a captain of the Legion of the West and a great number of officers of the army of the South. Far from imitating his generosity, Toussaint will have them all shot. Yet in his proclamations he urged Dessalines to respect property and persons while making the arms of the Republic triumph, to maintain order, to restore agriculture in the subdued districts, and above all to avoid the shedding of blood.