Fort Bréda. A four-pounder taken here by the Indigenous

On 22 Vendémiaire (14 October), in the night, the sky was brilliant with stars and a soft breeze stirred the leaves of the palms that covered the plateau of the Haut-du-Cap. Pétion woke the soldiers of the 10th and the 13th in silence, had them take up arms, and marched with them against three weak posts held by a hundred men of the white troops. These troops, surrounded by more than 1,800 men, offered no resistance and laid down their arms. The Indigenous seized a howitzer set up at the Welche bridge, which twenty-five Poles were guarding, and two four-pounders, one mounted at Fort Bréda, the other placed before the house that Clausel occupied. Clervaux had under his orders only fifty men of the 6th. Had Pétion had more confidence in his soldiers, he would have surprised the Cap and carried off Leclerc, by the admission of the French generals themselves. The insurgents formed a square, placed in their midst their baggage and the whole Black and mixed-race population of the Haut-du-Cap, and set out for the Morne Rouge. Pétion put forth all his energy to restrain the fury of his soldiers, who wished to cut the throats of the white prisoners. When he reached the Morne Rouge, he halted his troops, placed himself in their midst, and told them that they were undertaking a national war and not a war of party; that they would have to live amid the greatest privations, which would be a happiness for them compared with the fate that awaited them in the towns; that they would no longer shed their blood either for France or to satisfy the ambition of one of their own; that they would fight for their own liberty, for the independence of their country; that they would keep the tricolor flag, because it was the flag that had emancipated them, the one under which they had rescued from degradation their race, which men now sought to debase again; that henceforth they would have for their device the Phrygian cap with these words: Liberty, Independence or Death. “The blood of our brothers cries to us for vengeance,” he added; “if we do not triumph over our tyrants, at least, dying as free men, we shall not have the shame of having outlived slavery.” Pétion, then thirty-two years of age, had all the fire of youth. At the same moment he tore the French arms from the flag he held in his hands and flung them far from him. Cries of long live liberty! War to the death on the French! broke out in the ranks. The Indigenous wanted to rush upon the white men and slaughter them. Pétion placed himself between them and the prisoners and cried out: these unfortunate men are soldiers who have only done their duty; they are not responsible for the crimes of their chiefs. The guilty ones are the generals and the colonists who incite them to become cruel.” These words did not calm the fury of the soldiers of the 10th and 13th. Pétion went on: “Strip them; they will find clothing at the Cap; but I declare to you, if you make an attempt on their lives, I shall give up the command, I shall cease to be at your head, I shall become a soldier in your ranks. We have at the Cap almost all the soldiers of the 6th colonial; perhaps they will send them back to us in exchange.” The prisoners were stripped and sent on to the Cap. Delattre, page 67, speaking of Generals Pétion and the others on this occasion, says: “They sent back to Captain-General Leclerc some white gunners whom they had at their disposal, and had him told that they gave him three days to evacuate the colony.”