Lamatte. Submits to Dessalines; a deputation receives him

Pétion, who had left Port-au-Prince with his division of 7,800 men, arrived at Le Mirebalais on 21 February. This division was composed of the 11th, 12th, 21st, 22nd, 23rd and 24th of infantry, two companies of the 1st artillery regiment and two squadrons of the 1st regiment. Pétion had under his orders Brigadier General Magloire Ambroise. From the 19th the communes of Hinche, Lamatte and Neiba, terrified, had hastened to submit to Dessalines. The inhabitants of those districts furnished him with provisions in abundance and a multitude of horses and mules. On the 20th the 3rd demi-brigade and the cavalry entered the canton of Les Sarrasins and bivouacked on the Desvarieux plantation. When Dessalines arrived there with the divisions of Gabart and Pétion, he reviewed them and said to the soldiers in Creole: “My brave men, let not courage and perseverance forsake you in this great enterprise; it is wholly national; we are going to reunite to the empire more than two thirds of its territory; we are going to Santo Domingo, where the remnants of our former oppressors still breathe, where the infamous Ferrand commands, who has sworn our extermination and the servitude of our children.” The soldiers answered him with great acclamations and gaily took the road to Lescahobes. To reach Santo Domingo the Haitian troops had to cross great distances: from Jérémie to Santo Domingo, 193 leagues; from Le Cap, 90 leagues; from Port-au-Prince, 135; over high mountains, across wide and deep rivers and vast plains covered with grass and thorny shrubs, without shelter from the heat of the sun.

On the morning of the 23rd a deputation of the inhabitants of Lamatte came out to meet the Emperor, who entered that town at noon. After taking a little rest there, the troops continued their march in the night of the 24th to the 25th. By starlight they crossed part of that long and superb valley of San Thomé, watered by the rivers Rouan Débert and Matayaye, which stretches thirty leagues between Lescahobes and San Juan. At daybreak the army saw immense savannas unfold before it, cut by countless small rivers and streams; and at one in the afternoon the emperor came in sight of San Juan, after crossing the fine river that bears the name of that town. He at first believed he would meet strong resistance there; but his army entered it without hindrance at three in the afternoon. The garrison and the whole population had evacuated it and withdrawn toward the source of the river Yaque, almost at the center of the island. After entrusting the command of the town to Squadron Leader Isaac Borel, one of his aides-de-camp, and leaving a garrison of three hundred men there, Dessalines set out for Azua on the 27th at six in the morning, by the valley of San Juan, watered by the river of Diae, which rolls its waters from north to south. The troops halted at a ford of this river, spent the night there, and resumed their march on the 28th at 5 in the morning. They had scarcely covered three leagues when Squadron Leader Barthélemy Mirault, who was at the head of the advance guard, brought to His Majesty three Spaniards he had just taken prisoner. These declared that the enemy was camped only three leagues away, under the orders of Commandant Viet, and that they had been sent out as scouts. At nine o’clock Barthélemy discovered several sentries posted behind a stone rampart raised on a mornet; he informed the emperor, who ordered him to go and reconnoiter the enemy. Barthélemy, followed by Dessalines’s staff and a few dragoons, dashed upon the French vedettes, who took to flight; they were pursued relentlessly, and in less than an hour they had fallen back into the main camp, where Viet commanded in person. It was a fortification raised across the high road on an eminence commanded on either side by two mountains. The French and the Spaniards called it the Tomb of the Indigenous, because they boldly declared that the Haitians would be destroyed and buried there. The emperor himself approached within a hundred paces of the position to examine it: it was lined with cannon, girded by a ditch, and flanked by cardasses, aloes and other thorny plants that seemed bound to make it unapproachable; the deepest silence reigned there.(c)