L’Arcahaie. Dessalines leaves it with his staff alone

On 17 October, at five in the morning, the Emperor left L’Arcahaie with his staff alone, for the 4th, which might have accompanied him, had received the order to fall back as far as Montrouis to be issued its uniforms. On the high road he met many cultivators coming out of Port-au-Prince; he asked them what news there was in that town; they all answered that there was nothing out of the ordinary. He rode on, full of confidence, seeing the plain perfectly calm around him; the trees that lined the road, the laborers’ horses, the belfries of the sugar works, everything seemed to be listening. When he reached Drouillard, a plantation a league from the town with a large workforce, he heard no cry that announced revolt. Soon he caught sight of the Pont-Rouge. It was nine in the morning. He said to Boisrond-Tonnerre: “Do you not see Gédéon in the middle of the bridge? How much a slave he is to discipline! I will reward him.” He was already inside the ambush, which stretched beyond the bridge along the right side of the road, some way deep in the woods. Colonel Léger, of his staff, an officer from the South, said to him: But, sire, I do not think I am mistaken; those are troops of the South. “No,” answers the Emperor, “what would they have come looking for here!”