Sarthe. Battle of Sarthe against the 5th light.

While the independents were taking possession of Saint-Marc, the emissaries whom General Pétion kept in Port-Républicain advised the boldest of the citizens of that city to send Dessalines an address begging him to come and deliver them from the yoke of the French. The generous conduct that General Geffrard had shown at Jérémie had led many citizens to ask Dessalines for his protection against the ferocity of Panis. The general-in-chief was already on the road to the plain of the Cul-de-Sac when he received this address. He had left Saint-Marc on the evening of 16 September. He was at the head of the 4th, 20th, 8th and 3rd demi-brigades, which furnished an effective force of 6,000 men. The celebrated Larose, of the Arcahaie, commanded the 8th with the rank of colonel. He had made his submission to Dessalines after the arrest of Lamour Dérance, whose zealous partisan he had been. Dessalines, who loved his courage, had sincerely forgotten the past where he was concerned. The general-in-chief waited at the Arcahaie for the artillery of Saint-Marc, which he had also ordered to be dragged into the plain of the Cul-de-Sac, where the French still held the Croix-des-Bouquets, and blockhouses on the plantations Drouillard, Damiens, Santo and Grande-Rivière. On 30 Fructidor, after distributing gabions to the 4th, 20th, 8th and 3rd demi-brigades, Dessalines and Pétion left the Arcahaie at daybreak; and by ten o’clock at night they had already cut every line of communication between Port-Républicain and the points of the plain of the Cul-de-Sac in the power of the French. The Indigenous army was drawn up on the highroad between Sarthe and Drouillard. The 11th and 12th demi-brigades, which came to swell it, brought its number to 10,000 men.

The blockhouse of Drouillard was held by eighty European soldiers. That same night General Pétion set up on a hillock to the right of the road, overlooking the plantation, three guns, two four-pounders and one six-pounder. At dawn on the first complementary day he attacked the blockhouse. At the sixth cannon shot the French hauled down their flag and surrendered at discretion. They had found themselves surrounded by 10,000 men, with no hope of relief. They had been unable to fall back on Port-Républicain, for Dessalines’s movements during the night had escaped their watch.

Almost immediately after the surrender of the blockhouse of Drouillard, Dessalines learned that the French colonel Lux, having come out of the Croix-des-Bouquets at the head of seven hundred men of the 5th light and fifty Black and mixed-race horsemen, was making for Port-Républicain, escorting a convoy of provisions and marching with two four-pounders and two caissons. He at once ordered his cavalry to go and post itself near the blockhouse of Damiens, to hold in check the French who occupied that position. Certain that the enemy would leave the highroad and take to the crossroads, he placed in ambush, in the path that runs between Sarthe and Drouillard, the 11th demi-brigade and two battalions of the 8th, commanded by Colonel Larose. He ordered General Pétion to go with the 3rd and occupy the rise of Chancerelle, to cut off the enemy’s retreat. The center of the French column was to be attacked by the 20th and its tail by the 2nd battalion of the 4th. When Lux reached the Damiens plantation he learned that ten thousand Indigenous troops held the roads leading to Port-Républicain. He halted; it was eleven in the morning. The sun flooded the blue of the sky with its burning rays. The officers of his corps, gathered in a council of war, despairing of being able to pass through these masses of enemy troops, advised him to return to the Croix-des-Bouquets, from which he might throw himself into the Spanish part. Lux, an old man of seventy, indignant at this advice, turned to his soldiers and said to them: “Brave men of the 5th! Masses of brigands could not withstand a handful of your brothers in arms at the savanna of Oblond. What wonders will you not perform today, now that you are all together? At the sight of you this multitude without tactics will take to flight. Forward!” The French, at the charge, entered the path that leads from Damiens to Sarthe. They were full of ardor. With cannon fire they swept away every ambush they met. On the Sarthe plantation they were vigorously attacked by the 8th; but their well-served artillery and their platoon volleys, regular and deadly, struck down a great number of the Indigenous. These, armed with muskets but most of them without ammunition, nonetheless hurled themselves upon the 5th, uttering frightful howls. Lux, on horseback in the middle of a battalion square, stood unshakable in the gardens of Sarthe. The Indigenous 4th and 20th, having no cartridges, watched the combat, motionless on the field of battle. Dessalines, seeing the soldiers of the 8th give way, threw himself among them and revived their courage. At the same moment the two four-pounders fired the most murderous grapeshot. The Indigenous, shaken once more, lost ground. “Forward! Forward!” cried Dessalines, braving death in the front rank. The soldiers answered his call: “General, we have no powder.” Dessalines, boiling with rage: “Take them with your nails and your teeth!” Then Colonel Larose set fire to the canes that surrounded the French. The cries of the Indigenous and the whirlwinds of smoke disconcerted the European soldiers, who, their eyes full of fury, looked like lions wrapped in fire. Larose sprang upon the guns; he was about to massacre the gunners when they spiked their pieces and blew themselves up by setting fire to the caissons: a heroic devotion by which they saved their comrades while depriving the enemy of ammunition. Abandoning the Sarthe plantation somewhat hastily, the 5th light cut its way with the bayonet along crossroads where the Indigenous cavalry could not reach it. It reached Blanchard, where it was able to recover a little.