Baní (Bany). Dessalines crosses its beach; a French brig fires on the retreating Haitians.
On 28 March at two in the afternoon the Haitian cavalry spread through the country around Santo Domingo, gathered in bands all the Spanish natives it could reach and set them on the road to the former French part, driving them like herds, men, women and children. Dessalines left Gaillard at sunset and crossed the beach of Baní during the night.
At eleven o’clock on the night of the 28th the infantry evacuated its positions with such order and silence that General Ferrand did not notice it until daybreak the next day; but our troops were already far away. The Haitians put everything to fire and sword along their way. The horses, mules and other beasts of burden which, worn out with fatigue, could no longer follow the army were mutilated. Dessalines wished to deprive his enemy of everything he could not take with him. The Spanish men and women who could not keep up with the rapid retreat of our soldiers were likewise mutilated. It was heartrending to see women carrying infants at their exhausted breasts, and girls young and beautiful given over to the fury of an unbridled soldiery. Generals Geffrard, Pétion and Magloire Ambroise used all their influence to calm the rage of the troops; and in their divisions most of the prisoners were spared.
When the Haitians entered the valley of Baní, skirting a rocky and wholly exposed beach, they were met by the sharpest fire from a French brig that had moored broadside on not far from the shore. Gabart, Pétion, Geffrard and Gérin avoided this murderous fire by leaving the beach and entering the gorges of the heights of the river Ocoa. They had not wished to lose uselessly even a few men. The emperor quickened his march, wishing to reach Marchand, his capital, before the arrival of the French troops which, he believed, were to land in Haiti. In four days’ march he went from Santo Domingo to Marchand. There he learned with fury that he had raised the siege for nothing, for no danger threatened the country. He had covered more than a hundred leagues in the space of four days over dreadful roads. He had feared being surprised in the East by the arrival of a French army, as Toussaint Louverture had been in 1802. Geffrard’s division went back to the department of the South; Pétion’s to the second division of the West; Gabart’s to the first division of the West, or the Artibonite.