Saint-Marc. Burned by Dessalines; the whites massacred; Boudet enters it without a blow.

Dessalines seized a torch and, accompanied by the chef d’escadron Bazelais, his aide-de-camp, advanced toward his residence, whose building and furnishing had cost him a million francs; he went in and set fire to it with his own hand. The fire spread rapidly through every quarter, and the town was reduced to ashes in a few hours. The next day Charles Bélair gave the town of Les Verrettes to the flames. On 6 Ventôse (24 February) Boudet entered Saint-Marc without striking a blow. He did not find a living soul there. At every step the French soldier was stopped by the many white corpses that choked the smoking streets. Boudet had all these bodies buried and quartered part of the troops of his division in the forts. He pushed reconnaissances as far as the banks of the Artibonite to join Leclerc. But on the banks of the river he met neither French troops nor Indigenous troops. He returned to Saint-Marc, from where he sent a ship to Les Gonaïves to learn whether the captain-general had entered it. Dessalines had withdrawn to Petite-Rivière de l’Artibonite, where he had met Lamartinière and Larose.