Les Jumelles. Cultivators held up the French there briefly.

On 13 Ventôse (4 March) he entered the Mirebalais, which had been reduced to ashes by the Indigenous when Rochambeau had penetrated there. On the Chirry plantation lay the corpses of 300 white colonists. At the approach of the French they had been sacrificed with a frantic rage. The whole countryside was in flames, and the French columns marched only through smoking ruins and pools of blood. On 18 Ventôse (9 March) the whole of Boudet’s division was assembled at the Verrettes. It found no shelter there. The entire town, like that of the Mirebalais, had been reduced to ashes. The Indigenous had gathered on the parade ground the whole white population, which had been bayoneted without distinction of age or sex. The French saw with horror these bodies which the warmth of life had not yet entirely left. It is impossible to paint the indignation to which they gave vent. They swore to the insurgents a war to the death, which they had in fact already begun. On both sides all was reprisal. They bivouacked; and so as not to be surprised in the depth of the night, they formed themselves into square battalions and placed their baggage and their cavalry in the center. Toward midnight they received the fire of some Indigenous horsemen who were cantoned not far from the Verrettes. They returned the enemy’s fire; but at daybreak, to their great astonishment, they could see no insurgents. Charles Bélair had wished only to trouble their sleep; for in the torrid zone the European who is robbed of his hours of rest is soon struck by yellow fever and succumbs without fail. They left the Verrettes and attempted to cross the Artibonite. They had already reached the opposite bank when they were assailed by some hundreds of cultivators, who threw them back in disorder to the other side of the river. On 20 Ventôse (11 March) General Boudet, amid a hail of bullets, formed his vanguard of the 13th colonial under the orders of the adjudant-general Pétion, and gave the order to cross the Artibonite. Pétion, hearing the murmurs of his grenadiers, who complained of always being put in the vanguard to bear alone the fire of the ambushes, said to them: “Is it not glorious for you to hold the place of honor? Be silent, and follow me.” He was the first to spring into the river; he crossed it opposite the Labadie plantation, drove off the ambush, and was followed by the whole of Boudet’s division, guided by an Indigenous lieutenant named Claude Labadie and by Saint-James, a young white colonist who had been an officer in Toussaint Louverture’s guard of honor. Both had abandoned Toussaint’s cause, the first at the Verrettes, the second at the Croix-des-Bouquets. The French division reached Plassac, a plantation to the northeast of Labadie and south of the road to the Grands Cahos. There was a powder depot there. The French seized it and blew up all the munitions. From there they went to the Savane Lafortune to seize a sum of money that Toussaint had hidden there; but it had been carried off by the insurgents. Continuing their march, they were obliged to pass through a defile formed by two rocks called the Jumelles. There they were held up for some moments by the brisk fire of a large number of cultivators. At last, on the same day (11 March), they came within cannon range of the Crête-à-Pierrot.