Port-de-Paix. Maurepas arrests the French envoys, evacuates and burns the town; Humbert enters its ruins.

On 20 pluviôse (9 February) a French schooner was tacking within sight of Port-de-Paix. A boat put off from it and reached the shore. Two envoys under a flag of truce, Citizens Breton and Bistaret, bearers of the First Consul’s proclamation to the inhabitants of Saint-Domingue, crossed the town and went to the colonial palace to General Maurepas. Maurepas asked them, as though he did not know of the events taking place around him, what the object of their mission was. “We have come to summon you to surrender the town to Captain-General Leclerc; otherwise it will be buried under the fire of the French squadron.” Maurepas, a tall man of calm temper, entirely devoted to Toussaint Louverture, answered them: “I will receive the troops of your general only on the orders of the governor; meanwhile I shall know how to do my duty as a man of courage; I declare to you that you are my prisoners.” He had them tied to each other and then sent off toward Les Gonaïves across the mountain; but their escort massacred them on the way. General Humbert, commander of the French division, seeing that his envoys did not return, entered the roadstead the next day, 21 pluviôse (10 February), with a ship of the line, the Watigny, Captain Gourdon, two frigates, the Furieuse and the Clorinde, and several transports. All at once the four forts of the town fire red-hot shot at the squadron, which for its part hurls death into the redoubts of the town; but the Indigenous do not abandon their posts. * Citizen Poitevin, a man of color, captain of the port, fired from Fort Pageot, set on one of the high quarters of the town not far from the sea, a shot that carried off twenty men aboard the French ship. The squadron at once ceased its fire, made for the channel of La Tortue and signaled: several other warships came to join it. At the same time Maurepas, meeting no opposition among the Black and mixed-race population, had the town evacuated. Men, women and children, Black and of color, climbed the mountain carrying provisions and munitions of war and eagerly dragging field pieces. The white townsmen whom they drove before them were also loaded with munitions. The rains had fallen in abundance; the air was heavy with fog; the river of the Trois-Rivières, in flood, had covered with its waters the roads leading to the interior and made them almost impassable. When the town was partly abandoned, Maurepas, at the head of the 9th, was the first to set fire to his own house; in a few hours Port-de-Paix was all in flames. He withdrew to Fort Pageot, which commands the channel of La Tortue, to follow the movements of the enemy with his own eyes. The squadron was anchored half a league from the town, at the mouth of the Trois-Rivières. There the French landed, 1,800 strong. They formed up on the Lacorne Guédon plantation and set out for Port-de-Paix by the high road. Maurepas had watched their landing on the left bank of the river. He had sent the 1st battalion of the 9th, 400 men, to lie in ambush at the ford of the Trois-Rivières. The French, as soon as they caught sight of the Indigenous, rushed at them with the bayonet, wading waist-deep into the water, General Humbert at their head. From the opposite bank the 9th brought down a great number of them with a well-sustained fire. The fight then came to cold steel with equal fury on both sides. The French, unable to force the passage, withdrew in good order, guided by Indigenous men hostile to Toussaint, and followed the left bank as far as the Paulin plantation, where there was another ford. Finding no enemy troops there, they crossed without hindrance, passed through the Aubert plantation and reached the road to the Gros-Morne. After following it for a few moments they left it and entered a path that led them to the foot of a height called the morne of the Coupe Aubert. There Captain Capoix lay in ambush with a hundred men of the 9th. As soon as he saw the French he opened a most brisk fire on their column; they answered it vigorously. Capoix, struck in the leg by a ball, fell among his men, who, to avoid being surrounded, swiftly gained the summit of the morne. They vanished among the rocks, bushes and trees, carrying off all their wounded. Humbert halted about fifty toises from Port-de-Paix to take his bearings. The town was now nothing but smoking ruins: in his rapid march he had lost two hundred men. A detachment of a hundred sailors from the Watigny showed the greatest intrepidity. The navy had to mourn the loss of the artillery lieutenant Mésoé, the ensign Bordenbach and the midshipman Gelin. The naval lieutenant Lévenard and the artillery lieutenant Rosamel were seriously wounded. Maurepas had abandoned Fort Pageot after having the munitions of the fortification carried off by a battalion of the national guard of the mountain under the orders of Captain Nicolas. Nicolas passed with a four-pounder, without being attacked, within musket range of Humbert’s division, which was worn out with fatigue, and came to join Maurepas, who had set up his headquarters at the Trois-Pavillons, on the Brissot plantation, three leagues from the town. It was a magnificent position, crossed by the high road of the mountain. The Indigenous camp stretched across a plateau flanked by wide ravines, at the bottom of which rapid torrents rolled great stones, tree trunks and other masses with a roar. Maurepas kept the most perfect order around him: the white families were respected on their properties; no theft was committed; the children, the women and the old people of every color, who had taken refuge in the gorges of the mountain, were safe under the protection of several companies of national guards. It is the only quarter where the Indigenous fighting for Toussaint did not massacre the whites at the appearance of the French. The principles of humanity that Maurepas habitually practiced had taken root in the hearts of these brave men. The command of the headquarters of the Trois-Pavillons was entrusted to the battalion commander René Vincent. Throughout the night this officer had the soldiers of the 1st battalion of the 9th cut down all the banana trees in the neighborhood, and made of them a rampart across the high road of the mountain.