Fort National. Evacuated by Lamartinière in the night and occupied by the 90th of the line.

Meanwhile the Sainte-Claire battery was firing on the squadron, which had moored broadside along the reefs that separate the two roadsteads. Admiral Latouche-Tréville, by the rapid fire of his broadsides, dismounted every piece in the fortification, which in the twinkling of an eye was ploughed up by round shot. The squadron then turned its fire on Fort Léogane; but the projectiles fell far beyond the redoubt. Eloy Turbet and Barthélemy Marchand urge on the soldiers of the guard of honor and fire their courage. Toussaint’s troops fire without pause on the French, who had resumed their march. Amid the grapeshot and a hail of bullets, General Boudet advanced at the head of his grenadiers, bayonets forward. He mounted to the assault and carried the redoubt. Without losing an instant he entered the town and set off in pursuit of the fugitives. His chasseurs, moving along the Grand’Rue, were suddenly halted by a formidable volley from the 3rd colonial, which held the Place Vallière. The French grenadiers, coming up, threw themselves furiously upon the enemy, who, unable to withstand their impetuosity, fell back as far as the Saint-Joseph gate. The garrison of the fort at that gate had been won over by the citizens. It let the soldiers of the 3rd come in among it. These, feeling no mistrust and believing themselves among brothers, suddenly saw the cannon trained upon them; at the same moment the French, who were already surrounding the fortification, summoned them to lay down their arms, which was done. The town was flooded with white troops. Lamartinière, Magny and Monpoint, with a handful of soldiers, tried to set fire to various quarters before abandoning the town; they had no time, for the French were pressing hard on their heels. Having rallied the scattered soldiers of the guard of honor, they set about carrying off the money chests of the treasury; but, attacked fiercely by a French battalion, they were overthrown and took to flight. Boudet found himself in possession of a sum of two million five hundred thousand francs. Lamartinière evacuated Fort National in the following night and threw himself into the plain of the Cul-de-Sac. He made for L’Étang, taking with him the two French envoys, Sabès and Gimont, and a crowd of other whites, who were massacred, except the first two. Boudet, surrounded by his staff, spent the rest of the night in one of the houses of the Grand’Rue, which was illuminated. French patrols going through the town came upon whites massacred or wounded here and there. The next day Boudet went to the government palace. Father Lecun went there too, followed by all the clergy and a multitude of men, women and children of every color. He came to congratulate the French general on having saved the town from fire and delivered it from the despotism of a monster, of a Toussaint, whose praises he had been singing only a few days before. Several officers of the guard of honor who had fought the French at the Léogane post, among them citizens Thésan and Audigé, had not followed Lamartinière. Boudet had them summoned to the government house and said to them: “Citizens, let us forget the past; you are French; serve the cause of our fatherland with as much courage as you fought with yesterday in that skirmish.” The French general called a skirmish an action in which, out of six thousand men, he had lost 400. “You will keep your ranks,” he went on, “in the French army.”

The white troops did not yet hold Fort National. Had Lamartinière resolved to defend it with as much vigor as he had fought with at the Léogane post, Boudet would have lost half his army. Boudet did not dare to have it assaulted: at that time the fort was as the English had left it, formidable in aspect. As he saw no movement in it, he thought it had been abandoned. He sent to reconnoiter it Captain Audigé, a man of color, whose submission he had received that morning. Audigé, on his return, assured him that it had been evacuated. The 90th of the line went to take possession of it. On the same day the two battalions of the 13th, which had withdrawn into the hills of l’Hôpital during the fighting, came down into the town and submitted to the new government. The French at once set about restoring order and confidence in the town. All the cultivators of the neighborhood were allowed to enter it and to leave it freely. The soldiers of the 3rd colonial were given back their arms and told that they were not prisoners, since they were French. On every side the citizens gave the European troops the best of welcomes. These had received orders to respect the manners and customs of the inhabitants, to treat them well, to receive whites, Blacks and mulattoes with the same cordiality, and to conduct themselves as in Germany, in Italy and in Egypt. By their courtesy and their brilliant uniforms they greatly pleased the Creole women, who would have given them magnificent entertainments had General Boudet not forbidden every kind of public rejoicing: the blood of a thousand whites slaughtered around the town saddened him deeply. In the following days all the commandants of the cantons near Port-Républicain submitted one after another. On 9 February, five days after the occupation of the town, General Boudet learned that Dessalines had appeared in the plain of the Cul-de-Sac. At daybreak he sent two thousand men to occupy La Croix-des-Bouquets. The French took that market town without striking a blow. They put out the fire that had been set to some houses at their approach. Dessalines was at Saint-Raphaël when he learned of the arrival of the French expedition. He had taken 24 hours to reach the plain of the Cul-de-Sac, having covered a distance of 68 leagues. He was accompanied by a battalion of the 7th, which he had picked up at L’Arcahaie on his way. He had stopped only an hour at Saint-Marc to send by sea verbal instructions to Colonel Dommage, who commanded at Jérémie, by a lieutenant of the 4th, Sézaire Savary. He had sent Dommage the order to burn Jérémie and to massacre all the whites. In the upper plain of the Cul-de-Sac he joined Monpoint, Magny and Lamartinière, who were at the head of the guard of honor. It was then that citizens Saint-James and O’Gorman, young white men who were in Toussaint’s guard, had the good fortune to leave their corps, helped in their flight by Captain Patience, a Black man, and to join the French.