Petite-Anse. Its general storehouse receives 310,971 pounds of coffee.

Rochambeau, master of the surroundings of Le Cap, could turn his serious attention to the market he had established at La Petite-Anse under the arrangement concluded with the Congos in the month of July. After abolishing all the markets that existed at the Haut-du-Cap, he opened a single general market on 13 August in the village of La Petite-Anse, one league from the town. Sheds and stalls put up by the government were let to citizens on three-month leases. The market was open on Monday and Saturday of each week. To go there one had to carry a permit from the Council of Notables, which issued it for one gourde. The provisions, vegetables and other foodstuffs brought by the Congos were bought and paid for in coin or in dry goods such as linen, cloth and so on. Coffee, cotton and the other colonial produce, finding few buyers because they could not be exported on account of the English blockade of the island, had become almost worthless. Those who bought them paid a vile price. After being weighed on the market scales, this produce was deposited in a warehouse belonging to the State. Rochambeau had receipts issued to the depositors by an official. At the end of the war with England the produce was to be delivered to the rightful owners on presentation of the receipts. The cultivators who frequented the market were admitted only with permits issued by Jacques Tellier and by Cagnet. In the end the government alone bought the sugar, coffee, cotton and indigo. The inhabitants of Le Cap could bring to the market only linens, hats, jackets, hoes, axes, small hardware, herrings, mackerel, salmon and the like. The colonial prefect had the high inspection of this market; Citizen P. Chauveau, a merchant at Le Cap, was its commissary-general, and the maritime gendarmerie policed it. The soldiers were expressly forbidden to bring goods there; they bought only provisions, which they paid for in coin. The Congos, finding great profit in frequenting this market, flocked to it. From 2 to 22 Fructidor (20 August to 9 September) the general storehouse of La Petite-Anse received 310,971 pounds of coffee coming from La Grande-Rivière, the Montagne Noire, Sainte-Suzanne, Vallière, the Bois de Lance, the Grand Boucan, Bois Blanc, the Grande Rivière des Cotelettes, Fond Bleu and La Petite-Anse. Most of the cultivators of these districts had laid down their arms to take up the hoe again; and had Lamour Dérance not been caught in the trap Dessalines had laid for him, civil war would have broken out in the West, and the French would probably have reconquered Les Gonaïves. Yet the successes of Capoix, the daring of Romain, and our conquests in the West and the South had cast the deepest discouragement into the ranks of the Europeans and among those Indigenous who still served the party of the mother country. Many colonists, seized with terror, asked for passports to go abroad, or left secretly on American ships. Admiral Latouche-Tréville, who had long asked his government in vain for leave to return to France, asked the commander of His Britannic Majesty’s naval forces, without success, to grant him passage so that he might withdraw to the United States. Grown rich and weary of the war, he came from the Môle Saint-Nicolas to Le Cap in a gunboat. He declared to Rochambeau that, stricken with a wasting illness, he would certainly perish if he stayed any longer in the colony. The captain-general allowed him to embark for France and charged him to urge the First Consul to send him numerous reinforcements as soon as possible. Latouche-Tréville reached France, where he died in 1804 of the effects of his illness. Captain Barré replaced him in command of the naval forces of Saint-Domingue. General Rochambeau was indignant at the furtive departure of a great number of white citizens. The ranks of the national guard had thinned considerably, and yet soldiers were needed more than ever. The general of brigade Gilbert Néraud, commander of the town of Le Cap, announced to the inhabitants by a public notice that their property would be confiscated if they left the colony without passports. Four days before this notice, the same officer, reviewing the national guard, had declared to the cowards that they could withdraw wherever they pleased; and Rochambeau, for his part, had announced to the brave that he would hold out in the colony longer than he had done in Martinique.