Welche Taverny. A four-hour truce for the wounded is agreed there between Sarrasin and Bazile; Sarrasin loads his wounded on the plantation’s carts; the lieutenant colonel of the 14th is left there gravely wounded.

On 13 March General Sarrasin reached the Grande-Crête of Port-Salut, whose summit was held by about a thousand independents under the orders of Bazile. The Indigenous were in a formidable position. General Sarrasin, wishing to cross this morne before nightfall, attacked them vigorously. The fight lasted three hours. The French, after a loss of 200 men, seized the position. Sarrasin had fought like the most intrepid of his grenadiers. He had set out from Tiburon at the head of 1,200 men, and the 14th was reduced to 900. Yet he did not give his troops time to catch their breath. The same day he continued his march, opening a passage with the bayonet through the ambushes he met at intervals along the way. He reached Welche Taverny, not far from Torbeck. He saw the Indigenous troops still drawn up in battle before him. He sent them a flag of truce, who asked to confer with their chief. Bazile came forward with Jean Jacques Sully, his secretary. Sully had abandoned the French cause after the fights of Morne Fendu and Maraudhuc. The officer bearing the flag of truce, addressing Jean Jacques Sully, proposed to the Indigenous a truce of four hours during which the wounded on both sides would be cared for. Bazile accepted it. Sarrasin gathered the cabrouets of the Welche-Taverny plantation, harnessed horses to them, placed his wounded in them, and let his troops rest. After their meal the French took up their arms again and formed in line of battle. Their general sent word to Bazile to prepare to receive his fire. The Indigenous seized their arms, and the French moved off. The 14th was harried relentlessly as far as Houc, where the fighting was of the bloodiest. Sarrasin rode up to his rearguard and signed to the Indigenous to cease fire. Bazile had the musketry stop and advanced up to him. The French general earnestly asked him to take care of his wounded if he were beaten, and promised for his part to give every kind of help to the Indigenous if he were the victor. Bazile granted his request, and the fighting began again. The independents pressed hard on the heels of the French as far as Torbeck. Meanwhile General Geffrard had learned of Sarrasin’s march from an envoy of Férou. He had come out of Camp Gérard with his army, heading for Torbeck, where he meant to await the enemy. He took up his position at the crossroads of Torbeck and in its neighborhood. At daybreak Sarrasin, seeing strong columns deploying to surround him, at once entered the church of the village and barricaded himself in it. Had Geffrard, in seeking the enemy, passed by the Bagatelle plantation, he would have come up with the French before they reached Torbeck and would have exterminated them. Sarrasin, short of munitions, sent a hundred chasseurs down to the seashore the following night; they gathered dry wood and built three enormous pyres, which they set alight one after another. Two frigates anchored in the roadstead of Les Cayes saw these fires. Laplume and Berger, judging that they could only be a signal of Sarrasin’s distress, at once sent several boats laden with arms and munitions along the shore of Torbeck. The sailors landed the munitions, which were distributed to the 14th. That same night General Laplume sent a division of 700 men and two field pieces out of Les Cayes to meet Sarrasin. At daylight Geffrard’s troops began to exchange musket fire with the French who held the church of Torbeck. At the same time the troops from Les Cayes were reaching the Dérodière plantation, through which the river of Torbeck runs. There they met a rampart across the high road, held by the independents. These, fearing to be caught between two fires, abandoned it after receiving two cannon shots. The column from Les Cayes continued its march. It met General Sarrasin, who had left the village church and was going round the crossroads of Torbeck. It opened its ranks and let the 14th pass, which took the right. It formed the rearguard itself. As far as the Quatre-Chemins, at the entrance to Les Cayes, the French did nothing but exchange musket fire with the independents. Sarrasin entered Les Cayes with 700 men of the 14th without having lost a single flag. The French troops had fought with rare courage. Should we be astonished at the prodigies they performed in Europe, running from victory to victory and singing hymns to liberty, when we have seen them display such intrepidity beyond the Atlantic while fighting for slavery? Glory and honor to our fathers, who by their courage and their heroic perseverance drove from the soil of Haiti these intrepid warriors who had already subdued a part of Europe. Geffrard had all the French wounded gathered from the field of battle; they were carried to a field hospital where Indigenous women lavished every kind of care on them. The lieutenant colonel of the 14th light, left gravely wounded at Welche Taverny, was moved by the attentions paid him. He cried out: “I see around me nothing but compassionate souls! Where are the cannibals we were to meet on this island? How greatly we have been deceived by the colonists!” After Sarrasin’s entry into Les Cayes, General Cangé left for the plain of Léogane, resolved to take that town. Sarrasin, admiring the courage of the independents and the loyalty with which they had kept their engagements toward the French wounded, forbade that they be called brigands.