La Marmelade. Taken by the insurgents; retaken by Toussaint.

In the course of Vendémiaire, Year 10 (October 1801), a conspiracy was hatched at the Cap whose ramifications reached to Port-Margot, to La Marmelade, to Le Dondon, and in short throughout the province of the North. On the morning of 25 Vendémiaire (17 October) General Moyse left the Cap, gathered several hundred horsemen and rode through the Plaine du Nord, organizing the insurrection that was to break out on 29 Vendémiaire. And indeed in the night of the 29th to the 30th of that month (21 to 22 October) insurrectionary movements showed themselves in almost the whole department of the North. Two hundred and fifty whites were massacred, in the plains as in the mornes. The signal of revolt was given at a moment when a tranquillity restored by terror reigned on every side. Moyse was undertaking a war whose aim was the extermination of the whites, the union of the Black and the mixed-race people, and the independence of his country. It was said in the countryside of the North that Dessalines and Christophe had consented to the governor’s plan for the restoration of slavery.

Toussaint was at Les Verrettes, preparing to go to the eastern part to organize the tribunals there according to his Constitution, when General Dessalines, who was with him, received a letter from Les Gonaïves informing him that the greater part of the North had risen. The governor had not the slightest hint of this conspiracy. After sending orders to the 4th demi-brigade, in garrison at Saint-Marc, to set out for Les Gonaïves, he went with his usual speed to La Petite-Rivière de l’Artibonite. He resolved to stifle at once, by the greatest sacrifices, an insurrection whose principles could in his view only subvert all society. On 2 Brumaire he reached Les Gonaïves. Colonel Vernet had already marched out at the head of a battalion of the 7th and a detachment of the Gonaïves battalion, advancing on the town of Plaisance, which the insurgents held. At his approach the rebels abandoned the town after committing great excesses there. As they withdrew they announced that General Moyse would soon come and put himself at their head. Toussaint, who had left Les Gonaïves to set up his headquarters at Cocherel, returned there as soon as he learned the extent of the insurrection. He ordered Dessalines to drive the insurgents from the heights of Plaisance, and resolved to fight General Moyse in person. He went at once, with two companies of his mounted guard, to the town of Louverture (Ennery), where order was kept by the energy of Commandant Claude Martin. He learned that the insurgents had seized La Marmelade; on 4 Brumaire he marched against them, preceded by a squadron of his guard and followed by two companies of the Gonaïves battalion commanded by Citizens Jean Charles and Coco. As soon as he came upon the insurgents he had them charged with the bayonet; they abandoned La Marmelade and fled in the greatest disorder, charged by the dragoons. They took refuge toward La Souffrière, promising to return soon with General Moyse. Toussaint sprang upon them and overthrew them at La Souffrière, at the Ravine Dorée, at Fond Bleu, at the Grande Rivière, in the quarter of Périgourdin and at the Rivière Dorée, and dispersed them completely in the woods.