L’Arcahaie. Dessalines sees smoke to the south and sends the elite companies of the 3rd ahead

Dessalines was at Marchand when he had learned, from the letters of Papalier, Lafleur, Gérin, Lamarre, Yayou and Pétion, the news of the revolt of Mécerou at Garata. He had cried out: I will have my horse walk in blood as far as Tiburon. Unaware that Christophe had been proclaimed the chief of the insurrection, he had written to him to hold himself ready to take the field. He had also sent General Pétion the order to march against Les Cayes at the head of the troops of the second division of the West. For the first time a shudder of grave disquiet had seized those around him. Each had the presentiment that he had reached the end of his career. He entrusted the command of Marchand to the minister of finance, Vernet, and left it on 15 October with a weak escort, after ordering the 1st and 2nd battalions of the 4th demi-brigade to follow him closely. He was making for Port-au-Prince, where he was to establish his headquarters while awaiting the junction of the troops of the Artibonite and the North. He himself, although in violent agitation, still seemed full of confidence in his star. He was accompanied by Generals Mentor and Bazelais, by Dupuy, by Boisrond-Tonnerre, by Colonels Roux and Charlotin Marcadieux, and by several other senior officers. When he reached Saint-Marc he ordered the 3rd battalion of the 4th to take the road to Port-au-Prince. On leaving Saint-Marc he met, in the middle of the road, Delpêche, one of his aides-de-camp, who had left Petit-Goâve to rejoin him, fleeing the insurrection, as we have seen. Delpêche urged him to enter Port-au-Prince only at the head of an army. Without asking him for any information about what he had left behind him, Dessalines told him in a fury that he was a traitor, ordered him out of his presence, and declared that he wished never to see him again. He went on his way, led by an inexorable fatality. Delpêche, dismayed, made his way to Saint-Marc, entered it, changed horses, and, guided by a blind fidelity, dashed off after the Emperor; but before he could overtake him he was bayoneted near Lanzac by soldiers of the 4th who were following the high road under the orders of Colonel Jean-Louis Longuevalle. On entering L’Arcahaie, Dessalines saw a thick smoke toward the South. “At this moment,” he said, “my compère Pétion is giving fire to the rebels.” So great was his confidence in this general, who had already gone over to the insurgents. He ordered Colonel Thomas and Battalion Commander Gédéon to set out for Port-au-Prince and to wait for him at the Pont-Rouge, half a mile from that town, with the six elite companies of the 3rd demi-brigade, which was in garrison at L’Arcahaie. In dispatching these two officers he asked them, and Captain Nazerre as well, whether they felt the heart to march in blood as far as Les Cayes. They answered that they would strive not to falter in those pools of blood. He added that soon the department of the South would be such a solitude that not even the crowing of the cock would be heard there. Thomas and Gédéon took the road to Port-au-Prince, twelve leagues from L’Arcahaie, at three in the afternoon of the 16th. Toward ten at night they had come to within a mile of the Pont-Rouge. A traveler who was ahead of them entered Port-au-Prince and announced that a battalion of the 3rd demi-brigade, forming Dessalines’s advance guard, was approaching to enter the town. Generals Gérin, Vaval and Yayou at once went out to meet the 3rd, which was marching in disorder, in small platoons, at irregular distances from one another. The soldier of the 3rd, for whom Pétion was the compass, talking along the road with the cultivators, knew what his chiefs did not; but he hastened his march so as to have time to go over to the insurgents before the Emperor arrived. Gérin, Yayou and Vaval let the several detachments that made up the elite battalion into the town one after another, as they presented themselves at the bridge. When Colonel Thomas and Battalion Commander Gédéon arrived there in their turn, they were taken prisoner. They declared firmly to Gérin that they would make no decision until they had seen General Pétion and conferred with him. Gérin said to them: “There is no room for hesitation; choose between death and your adherence to the revolution.” They were taken before Pétion, at the office of the military division. Colonel Thomas, who showed hesitation in declaring against Dessalines, was confined to the office of the place; and Battalion Commander Gédéon, who embraced the insurrection openly, was at once placed at the head of the 3rd, which Pétion had drawn up in line of battle on the Place Vallière, giving it a mark of his confidence by not disarming it.