Le Cap. Burned by Christophe’s troops on the night of 4 February; public buildings destroyed; losses put at 100,000,000 francs.

Christophe, followed by his staff, went to the municipality, reproached Télémaque sharply and with threats for having had the two proclamations posted, and told him that the town would be burned and evacuated. The mayor had the courage to declare to him that he would try to oppose this act of barbarity. He at once ordered the municipal guard, in Christophe’s presence, to patrol the town to keep order there, and he warned the citizens to provide themselves with water to fight the fire. Christophe, who knew the devotion of the national guard to France, tried in vain to confine it to its barracks. It went through the streets and calmed the fears of the families. As soon as night had fallen on the town (4 February), Fort Picolet gave the signal for the fire with a round shot fired at the squadron. Christophe was the first to set fire to his own house, a magnificent building whose interior had just been coated with tar. In an instant the flames broke a passage through the roofs; the citizens, driven back by the soldiers with blows of their musket butts, made vain efforts to put out the fire. The women, the children, the sick and the wounded, mingled together, distraught, laden with their most precious belongings, poured in tumult out of the town, followed by the national guard and the municipality. The soldiers, distributed through the different quarters, spread the fire with order and discipline, throwing combustible matter into the rooms and onto the roofs. Above all they made haste to destroy the public buildings. By eleven o’clock at night the fire had wrought such ravages that the town had become almost one immense pyre. The troops then gave themselves up to the most frightful pillage. On every side could be heard the groans of the fleeing crowd and the clash of arms; the flames, leaping from the burning roofs, met in arches above the streets; tall houses collapsed; a thick smoke whirled in the air, and the fire, having devoured one quarter, stretched out toward new prey, coiled about it and swallowed it up. The burning breath of the breeze carried sparks and brands far off and spread the fire with frightening speed. No power could then have mastered the blaze. The flames devoured the offices of the comptroller and of the navy, the registry, the government palace, the barracks, the state storehouses and the great church; the explosions of the arsenals made the earth tremble; masses of stone and beams hurled into the air fell back upon the wretched fugitives and crushed them. At daybreak Télémaque, the national guard, the women and the children reached the summit of La Vigie amid the greatest dangers. From there they looked down on the smoking ruins of Le Cap: walls blackened by the flames and split open. Captain Ignace, at the head of 40 grenadiers, came to order the whole crowd, on Christophe’s behalf, to go to the L’Espagne plantation. Télémaque refused to obey; whereupon Ignace in his fury set fire to two large houses standing on the summit of La Vigie and filled with women, children and the sick. They had to come down from the morne to find shelter from the heat of the sun. Christophe, fearing the outcome of a fight with the national guard, did not dare to attack the population, which would not follow him, and withdrew toward the Grande Rivière. The citizens, for their part, had shown themselves so patient only because they dreaded the massacre of their wives and children had they come to blows with the 2nd colonial.