Marcail. Toussaint camped there behind Boudet, section of the Savane Brûlée

To open communication with Maurepas, of whose fate he was ignorant, the former governor resolved to take Plaisance and not to halt until he was deep in the mountains of Port-de-Paix. He ordered Adjudant-General Fontaine to attack a fort built on the Bidourête plantation. The Indigenous delivered the assault and carried it. Reinforcements sent out of Plaisance to drive them from it were repulsed with loss. Then General Desfourneaux in person set out at the head of 1,500 men. Toussaint hastened to meet him. They came face to face on the Laforestrie plantation, between Bidourête and Plaisance. The Indigenous general divided his army into two columns. The right was entrusted to Gabart, the left to Pourcely. Pourcely was ordered to fall upon Desfourneaux from the rear by crossroads while Toussaint fought him from the front. The action began on the right with fury. Gabart, at the head of the grenadiers of the 4th, overthrew Desfourneaux, who retreated in good order, although he was vigorously charged by sixty dragoons. Toussaint saw that the French general, finding no obstacle on the left, was maneuvering to take him in the flank along a path bordered by precipices on one side and overhung on the other by sheer rocks. He sent an aide-de-camp to Pourcely, who came back to tell him that the left column had certainly lost its way, for he had not seen it. Pourcely, in fact, a native of Jean-Rabel who did not know the district of Plaisance, had lost himself in the woods with all his troops. Toussaint left Gabart to answer the enemy’s fire and moved to the left with his dragoons and 100 grenadiers. Suddenly he sees in the front rank of the French a Black battalion of the 9th of Port-de-Paix, commanded by Golart. He no longer doubted that Maurepas had submitted. He rushed forward alone to within twenty-five paces of his former soldiers and said to them: Brave comrades in arms, could you fire on your brothers? The whites alone are our enemies. The soldiers of the 9th, moved and shaken by these words, throw down their arms and fall at Toussaint’s knees, crying: Long live the governor! long live our general! The French, drawn up in line of battle behind them and witnesses of this scene, fired a tremendous volley into them: they broke and threw themselves into the woods. This unhappy turn spread disorder in the ranks of Toussaint’s grenadiers. They retreated along the path we have spoken of, and Adjudant-General Fontaine evacuated the Bidourête fort. Toussaint, following the road through a hail of bullets, ran the greatest dangers. He saw several officers fall at his side, among them a young man who had come to meet him bearing a letter from Dessalines, and who was struck by a ball as he handed it to him. From this missive Toussaint learned that the garrison of the Crête-à-Pierrot was still putting up a vigorous resistance. When the enemy had ceased to pursue him, he joined Pourcely’s column, which had strayed in the woods, to Gabart’s, and hastened to the relief of the garrison of the Crête-à-Pierrot. He took up a position behind Boudet’s division, northeast of La Petite-Rivière de l’Artibonite, on the road to the Petits Cahos, on the Marcail plantation, in the section of the Savane Brûlée. It was barely eight in the evening when he heard a heavy fusillade: it was Lamartinière evacuating the fort, as we have seen. Toussaint at once took the road to the district of Marquez, in the Petits Cahos.