Petit (camp). Indigenous entrenched camp fortified by Pétion; fight after the French landing

Lamour Dérance had left Pétion making his way toward Léogane through the gorges of the Rivière Froide. He had moved to Darbonne, where he had his headquarters, in the plain of Léogane. General Cangé, his first lieutenant, held Sarrebousse. The Indigenous had entrenched camps at Cassagne, at Petit and at Dampuce. Battalion Commander Laucoste, who commanded at Léogane, had set up at Bineau a post commanded by Captain Barthélemy, a Black man; and Fort Ça-Ira was under the orders of Captain Banglo, a Black man, until then attached to the French party. The main force on which Laucoste relied was made up of young Black men and men of color. But most of these young men went over one night to the ranks of the independents. Cangé saw arrive at Sarrebousse the Marions, the Mimi Bodes, the Heurtelous, the two Brisson brothers, men of color, and Colin, a Black man. Lamour Dérance at once named Marion adjutant-general and Mimi Bode colonel. He resolved to attack Léogane. In the following night, 23 Frimaire, the Indigenous carried the Bineau post; Mimi Bode took Fort Ça-Ira without striking a blow, Captain Banglo handing it over to him. The town, its communications with the sea cut, found itself closely invested.

At the same time General Pétion was reaching the Bongard plantation, held by Métellus. Métellus, although he recognized the authority of Lamour Dérance, let Pétion pass, and Pétion came down to the Morne-à-Bateau, on the road from Port-Républicain to Léogane. When the Indigenous troops reached the plain of Léogane, Pétion went at once to Darbonne to Lamour Dérance, with whom he had a long conversation. But he left him without having been able to bring him to submit to the authority of Dessalines. He then went to Sarrebousse to General Cangé, who received him coldly. Nevertheless Pétion easily made him understand how important it was that the Indigenous be closely united and subject to a single authority. Cangé, who had been his companion in arms during the civil war against Toussaint, knew him well enough to know that he would not have embraced Dessalines’s party had he not been convinced that, for the triumph of the Indigenous arms, Dessalines must hold the chief command. Besides, Dessalines was the general officer who had the most influence over the masses; and as a man of war he was the ablest of our generals. Cangé fraternized with Pétion, who mastered him by the ascendancy of his conciliating genius. From that moment he secretly embraced Dessalines’s party and worked for the fall of Lamour Dérance.

Gérin, learning that Geffrard, his former colonel in the civil war, was in the plain of Léogane, left Léveillé in the heights of Petit-Goâve and came to join him with about a hundred citizens of the South. The meeting of these men, who had lost sight of one another since Rigaud’s fall, was a true festival for them. Pétion had the Petit camp fortified and ordered Geffrard to occupy Fort Ça-Ira with the 13th. In the roadstead of Léogane there was a schooner commanded by an Indigenous Black man, Lafleur, who still held for the French. She threw several round shot into Fort Ça-Ira; she even came close enough to the fortification to fire grapeshot on the Indigenous who held it. Geffrard had his arm shattered by a burst of grapeshot; he was at once carried to Sarrebousse. Gérin, who took command of the fort, left Sanglaou there and went to post himself at the Grand-Bassin, between the Petit camp and Fort Ça-Ira, at the spot where the French could most easily make a landing.

When Fort Ça-Ira was taken, the French who had escaped the massacre had thrown themselves into the barges in the roadstead, had reached Port-Républicain and had announced there that Pétion had arrived in the plain of Léogane. General Brunet at once ordered an expedition sent to the relief of Léogane. In the night of 30 Frimaire the frigate Franchise, the brig Lodi and the schooners Tricolore and Nanine, loaded with European troops and national guards, sailed from Port-Républicain. At daybreak the squadron, commanded by Captain Jurrien, having reached the roadstead of Léogane, anchored broadside to Fort Ça-Ira. It opened a brisk and steady fire while the French troops landed at the Acul, a cove not far from the fort. At the same time the garrison of the town, under the orders of Laucoste, made a sortie against Sanglaou and Gérin by the road that leads to the seashore. There was so much skill and concert in the maneuvers of the French troops that the Indigenous, attacked in front and rear, were overthrown on every side. Sanglaou was driven from Fort Ça-Ira and pursued by a battalion of marines and several companies of the 86th. The Indigenous, hard pressed by the enemy, could not halt at the Petit camp, although Gérin showed brilliant valor in trying to rally them there. General Pétion then advanced onto the field of battle at the head of a battalion of national guards commanded by a Black officer, Isidore, rallied the soldiers of the 13th and restored the fight. Energetically seconded by the battalion commanders Jean-Louis François and Moreau, he cut the French column in two: one part was driven back into the town; the other, thrown into the marshes of the Petit plantation, perished to the last man under the fusillade.