Santo Domingo. Governor García receives Toussaint’s letter during mass in the cathedral

The governor, Don García, received this letter while mass was being celebrated in the cathedral of Santo Domingo on 6 January 1801. He learned at the same time that Toussaint’s troops had already entered the Spanish territories. He at once had the general alarm beaten and the alarm gun fired. He sent the commanders of the towns and villages orders to oppose the most vigorous resistance to the Black army; and on the same day he answered Toussaint Louverture that he could not comprehend his conduct, that Spanish blood would be shed whenever its shedding might bring some honor to the government of the mother country, and that he would keep the eastern part intact until he had received from the government at Madrid the order to act otherwise. At the same time General Antoine Chanlatte summoned all the citizens to the principal fortification of the town, and all the Frenchmen who were in Santo Domingo to his private residence. In spite of General Chanlatte’s efforts to raise the mass of the population, very few Spaniards assembled; they were hostile to Toussaint Louverture, and yet they showed little inclination to fight. As for the Frenchmen, about a hundred in number, they all answered the call that had been made to them. At length Commissioner Chanlatte, by arming Africans whom he placed in the ranks of a small battalion of Spanish troops of the line, was able to muster nine hundred men. It was with this handful of undisciplined men, without tactics, that he undertook to halt the march of Toussaint Louverture. He placed some companies of the Cantabria regiment in ambush on the banks of the river Nizao, in the department of the Ozama; he sent orders to a few hundred militiamen to guard the passes of Guayubín and Amina, in the department of Cibao.