Saint-Marc. Capitulates to Captain Walker; d’Hénin embarks for the Môle; Gabart’s troops pillage the town and strip the women.

Dessalines, before his tour in the North, had announced by dispatches to Captain James Walker, commanding the English frigate the Vanguard, cruising within sight of the Môle Saint-Nicolas, his intention of besieging Saint-Marc. The English captain had begged him not to put its garrison to the sword if it submitted, and to let it go to the Môle Saint-Nicolas. Captain Walker came to cruise before Saint-Marc. As soon as he appeared, General d’Hénin, who was reduced to the last extremity and whose troops had for several days been living on horse meat, sent him an envoy to propose treating for the terms of a capitulation. The English officer for his part sent Mr. Cathcart into the city to tell him that his proposal was accepted. D’Hénin then came himself on board the Vanguard and on 4 September signed the treaty of capitulation. For his part Dessalines, when he was preparing to go into the North, had ordered General Gabart to go and camp at the gates of Saint-Marc, intending himself to come on his return and assault the place. Gabart had established himself before that city at the head of two battalions, one of the 4th, commanded by Pierre Toussaint, a man of color, and the other of the 7th, under the orders of Battalion Chief Pierrot, a Black man. He had summoned General d’Hénin in vain to evacuate the place. He had held the French in check and had covered the passage of the Indigenous artillery, brought out of the Petite-Rivière, which Dessalines had ordered to be dragged toward Port-Républicain to lay siege to it.

On the night of 4 to 5 September d’Hénin and the garrison, which numbered 850 men, embarked on board the vessels in the roadstead, together with almost the whole national guard, which nursed an implacable hatred against the independents. He abandoned the place still furnished with its heavy artillery. The English took him to the Môle, which the French still held. The next day at daybreak Gabart entered Saint-Marc, which he gave over to the most frightful pillage. The women were stripped entirely; they were not left even shifts to cover their nakedness. The soldiers of the 4th and the 7th, in giving themselves to these excesses upon these unhappy women, claimed to be avenging the massacre of the 12th demi-brigade by the French in 1802. These cruel acts of vengeance will spread terror in Port-Républicain, and many Indigenous of that city will flee the soil of Saint-Domingue with the French, dreading the fate of the inhabitants of Saint-Marc. The pillage lasted several days. Order was restored only at the arrival of Dessalines and of General Vernet. Then all the women were brought to the public square; most of them were naked; they were passed in review by the general-in-chief; after making a spectacle of them before his soldiers, Dessalines sent them back ignominiously to their homes. General Bazelais, his chief of staff, had found his mother in the crowd; he had snatched her from this humiliating scene.