La Tortue. Vincent Louis landed at Basse-Terre and Pointe Palmiste, took the Labatut plantation and burned the hospital and fort of L’Hôpital; Boscus rallied the French at Doubaire

Capoix, resolved to burn the hospital of La Tortue, ordered Commandant Vincent Louis to prepare a landing there. The ruin of this establishment would deprive the French of immense resources. Vincent Louis had rafts built of planks bound with strong lianas, and embarked with 150 picked men of the 9th, under the orders of Captain Gardel. He set out from the Carrerouge of Saint-Louis du Nord at nightfall on a dark night, the night of 6 to 7 January 1803. Two boats manned with oarsmen towed the rafts. The Indigenous, having slipped past the lugger Vautour, under the orders of Captain Fey, which was cruising between Port-de-Paix and Saint-Louis, landed on the island of La Tortue at Basse-Terre and at Pointe Palmiste. Vincent Louis marched at once on the Labatut plantation, which he took without striking a blow. He set free a crowd of Indigenous who were held there in chains, among them his mother, his son, and Placide Lebrun. He immediately sent two of the rafts back to the Carrerouge of Saint-Louis du Nord, where the freed Indigenous prisoners were landed, together with the wife of Colonel Labatut, an old white woman who had been surprised in the great house of her plantation. Capoix treated her with humanity. But some villains stabbed her to death a short time afterwards to take her jewels. Vincent Louis roused several plantation gangs, went over a number of plantations, burning and sacking everything, and drove the French garrison back into the fort of L’Hôpital. This fortification was then attacked, carried and given to the flames. Most of the sick and of the inhabitants escaped death only by hiding in the ravines deep in the woods. At daybreak, Adjutant-General Boscus, who commanded the garrison, succeeded in rallying the remnants of the French troops on the Doubaire plantation. He checked the progress of the insurgents. Vincent Louis went to entrench himself in the interior of the island, striving to organize the insurrection and awaiting the return of the rafts to send Capoix a rich booty. But as soon as the burning of the establishments of La Tortue becomes known at Le Cap, superior forces will be sent against him. He will be driven from the little island, and will reach the mainland only through the greatest dangers.