Port-Salut. Rose under Trichet, Vancol and Wagnac after Jacquet Giraud’s escape from drowning

As soon as it was learned at Les Cayes that Lafrédinière had revolted, Colonel Berger left the town at the head of 300 men of the National Guard of Torbeck, commanded by an officer of color, Élie Bourry, and marched against Camp-Perrin, which he found abandoned. Lafrédinière and Guillaume Lafleur, not having enough men to resist him, had withdrawn into the woods at his approach. The insurrection that Férou’s emissaries had prepared on every side in the South was breaking out in one quarter after another. An unforeseen circumstance hastened the rising of the Indigenous of Port-Salut, whose minds had long been worked upon by three officers of that commune: Trichet and Vancol, men of color, and Wagnac, a Black man. These three men were in active correspondence with Férou, who exercised great influence over them. The commandant of the port of Les Cayes, Kerpoisson, was having all the unfortunates whom Berger delivered to him drowned beyond the point of Labacou, between Les Cayes and Port-Salut. A Black man named Jacquet Giraud, who had been put on board to be drowned, was thrown into the sea after being bound and pierced with several dagger thrusts. That same day the waves and the current carried him onto the beach. In the afternoon the cultivators of Labacou came upon a body at the edge of the cove that was still breathing, though almost imperceptibly. They carried it into a cabin and brought him fully back to life. The unfortunate man told how he had been arrested, put on board, stabbed and thrown into the waves. Colonel Hamplaya, a white colonist who commanded at Port-Salut, wished to have him arrested again and taken to Les Cayes, where he would infallibly have been shot. But a young man of color raised the work gang of the plantation to which Jacquet Giraud had been carried and opposed the arrest of this unfortunate man, who had just escaped death in so miraculous a manner. That same evening the revolt spread through the whole parish of Port-Salut. Vancol, Trichet and Wagnac put themselves at the head of the insurgents, arrested Hamplaya, and had the generosity to let him leave safe and sound for Les Cayes. They at once sent a deputation to Férou to inform him of their rising and to urge him to make haste and come to lead them (31 January 1803).