Crête-à-Pierrot. Debelle’s attack repulsed.

Lamartinière and Magny, foreseeing that they would be attacked during the night, ordered an officer who had their confidence to keep watch around the fort, to give the alarm as soon as the enemy showed himself, and to return at once afterward into the redoubts. The officer went to his post and saw some scouts asleep, their heads resting on their fists. He had a sergeant seized and bayoneted in silence. He asked the soldiers, struck with horror, whether this was how one watched over the safety of liberty. War demands such severity; otherwise victory, ashamed of weakness, betrays it and guides the enemy’s standards. After this execution sleep fled. Some cultivators armed with muskets slipped through the trees and approached the scouts. They were well received; they were friends who watched the movements of the French and gave the garrison an exact account of them. They announced that the European troops were not far off and might attack the fort at daybreak. As soon as dawn shone on the horizon, the sentinels redoubled their attention. All at once the echoes of the mountain repeated the sound of musketry: a French column had just crossed the Artibonite, after overthrowing Dessalines at a considerable distance from the Petite-Rivière, and was coming out by a wooded path. It was Generals Debelle and Dévaut, who, on their way to the Verrettes, were marching at the head of a division of 2,000 white troops and a Black battalion of the 9th from Port-de-Paix, commanded by Colonel Bodin (4 March). The French column, meeting no further resistance, advanced confidently to carry the fortification with the bayonet. When it had reached the edge of the ditches, it was met by the most violent grapeshot and overthrown. Dévaut, struck in the chest by a ball, fell among his men. Debelle was gravely wounded under the arm by a round of grapeshot. The French trumpets sounded the retreat. While the whites, pursued by the Indigenous cavalry, reached the Petite-Rivière in disorder to rally, the Black soldiers of the 9th colonial carried by main strength, through the waters of the river, a carriage in which they had placed General Debelle, and covered the retreat. The French had lost one hundred men. The chef de brigade of artillery Pambour took command of the European division.