Grande-Ravine (Petit-Goâve). Its Indigenous warn Lamarre of the sails approaching.

On 29 March the Indigenous of the Grande-Ravine came to warn Lamarre that they had sighted several sails on the waves heading west. The young captain did not doubt that it was an expedition sent by Rochambeau against Petit-Goâve. He had the town set on fire, and its population withdrew into the mountain beyond Fort Liberté. The captain-general had watched with indignation as Jurien and Delpêche landed at Port-Républicain. He had reproached them for their want of energy. “The mulattoes and the Negroes of Petit-Goâve think themselves heroes!” he had cried. “I mean to see them flee at the sight of the caps of the grenadiers of my guard.” Almost the whole corps of the guard of honor, commanded by Brigade Commander Neterwood, together with a battalion of the national guard, had been embarked on a squadron made up of the ship of the line Duguay-Trouin, the frigate Union, a cutter, two schooners, a pilot boat and nine armed launches. The whites celebrated Neterwood’s coming triumph. “What brigands,” they said proudly, “could withstand the impetuosity of the captain-general’s guard?” The French troops landed at noon, unopposed, at Petit-Goâve; they numbered 800 men. The town was nothing but smoking ruins. It was 30 March. Tall bearskin caps topped with red plumes crowned the heads of these handsome grenadiers with their long mustaches and gleaming arms. They were accompanied by 50 mastiffs, to whose voracity the prisoners were to be delivered. Neterwood, finding no shelter from the heat of the sun, resolved to come up with the enemy at once. Having several times vanquished the independents of the North of the island, who were better disciplined and better armed than those of the West, he believed himself sure of victory. He formed his army into two columns. The one he commanded in person followed the road that leads directly to Fort Liberté; the other, guided by an Indigenous man named Sanon-Loup, passed near Chabanne and entered the road of the Roche-à-Zombi. Giles Bambara, who was in the fort, frightened by the boldness of the French, advised Lamarre to abandon the position and withdraw into the mountain. Lamarre answered him furiously: “If you fear death, withdraw; it is here that we must conquer or die.” Giles Bambara fled with his band; there remained in the fort only about a hundred young men of Petit-Goâve, Black and mixed-race, and an old man of sixty named Brouard. The French column commanded by Neterwood attacked the fort impetuously. The guard of honor was several times repulsed without being broken. Whole lines fell under the lead of the Indigenous, who were skilled marksmen. Brouard, Romain and Eveillard displayed rare intrepidity. Lamarre, commander of the independents, braved death standing on the ramparts. The French, despite their disadvantageous position, returned again and again to the charge; Neterwood, in the front rank, sustained their courage. He was on the point of entering the fort when he was struck in the head by a ball. Discouragement spread through the European ranks, and Captain Clermont, sallying from the fort, assailed them vigorously and put them to utter rout. The column that had gone by the Roche-à-Zombi came up in its turn; it was almost annihilated. The dogs the French had loosed on the Indigenous, met by musket fire, turned in fury upon their masters. The whites, pursued without quarter, were for the most part slaughtered. Those who lost their way in the woods were seized by women and led, bound, to Lamarre, who had them shot. Neterwood, placed almost lifeless on a horse, reached the shore and was put into a launch that reached the frigate Union through a hail of bullets. The flotilla, after cannonading the town and burning the barges of the Indigenous, remained another week in the port and then sailed for Port-Républicain. Rochambeau learned with grief of the defeat of his guard of honor. Fearing to sap the morale of his soldiers, he had the wounded landed during the night. Neterwood died of his wound. On his return from Petit-Goâve he was to have married a young and beautiful white Creole woman who had been promised to his valor.