Moyse appeared before Fauché at seven in the morning, and Rigaud’s troops drove the army of the North back in the battle of Fauché, which cost about fifteen hundred lives.

Pétion, after sending Boyer and the others on ahead, under pretext of visiting the advance posts, came as far as the place where the 11th was bivouacking. He declared his plan to Nérette and urged him to imitate him. Nérette made no attempt to turn him from it; he told him, however, that at the invasion of Port-au-Prince by the English he had joined them, thus deserting the flag of the Republic, which had caused him many pangs of remorse; that from then on he had promised himself never to abandon, whatever it might be, the banner under which he should find himself (1): a confession which did not prevent this same Nérette from abandoning Toussaint, like Laplume, at the moment of the arrival of the French.

Pétion had rejoined Courville, Hiriart and his servants; but he did not see Boyer, who, believing him already ahead, had continued his march as far as Grand-Goâve. This absence, whose reason he did not know, caused him anxiety for his young lieutenant; ever great of heart, he did not hesitate to retrace his steps, despite the danger that surrounded him; and it was only after beating the woods and waiting a long time that he took up his road again toward Grand-Goâve. He did not arrive there until daybreak. He passed the first post of the army of the South, established half a league from the town of Grand-Goâve, commanded by Jean-Louis Compas at the head of a battalion of the 4th and regularly fortified. He reached the block-house. Welcomed fraternally by Toureaux, and still more by Desruisseaux, his old and faithful comrade, with whom he had saved Léogane against the English, he confirmed to them the march of the army of the North and announced to them that they would not be long in being attacked. Indeed, Moyse, at seven in the morning, appeared before Fauché; the fight lasted three quarters of an hour: Compas fell back into Grand-Goâve and went up to the block-house, where all the other posts had already concentrated.

The army of the North took possession of the town at ten o’clock: one battalion of the 4th occupied the left of the block-house, another the right; several battalions established themselves on the Place d’armes, and the bulk of the army camped at Fauché, with Moyse. Each side watched the other.

Rigaud arrived from Petit-Goâve at three in the afternoon. He was astonished that the enemy had not yet been charged, and had the battle announced by two cannon shots: the balls passed beside Dessalines and Laplume, who at that moment were chatting on the Place d’armes, at the foot of a tamarind tree (1). He ordered Faubert, with his 2nd demi-brigade, to take the right by the wood of Tauzin and fall upon the enemy’s left; Geffrard (1), with his 4th, to take the left and, along the shore, fall upon the right. He himself, with the 1st and 3rd, the artillery and the cavalry, advanced to the center by the high road.

Moyse, for his part, had formed his left of a battalion of the 4th and another of the 9th, his right of the other battalions of the 9th. He reserved to himself the command of the center, formed of two battalions of the 4th and of the 11th (2).

Rigaud’s vanguard went into the fire head down. It suffered from an advance post, placed in the cane fields of Tauzin and commanded by Gabart, surnamed the Valiant. Rigaud ordered Battalion Chief Compas to dislodge this post: the sappers, ax in hand, cut down the live hedges. Then a partial engagement of the most bitter kind begins between a battalion of the 4th of the South and one of the 4th of the North. Compas is dangerously wounded; yet his attack was so sharp that Vaillant Gabart falls back upon the town. The action becomes general. Pétion, with the artillery, crushes the troops of the North. Success seems certain, if Faubert comes to engage as vigorously as Geffrard is doing. But that brigade chief has been led astray by his guides.

Nevertheless, the army of the North yields to the troops of the South the site of the town. The fighting continues farther on, rendered still more deadly by ten barges armed by Rigaud, under the command of Panayoti (1), which were coasting along the shore (2). Rigaud pursues the fire as far as Fauché. It is before the gate of that plantation that he receives a bullet in the hand (3). It is said that at the news of his wound the soldiers seemed to lose countenance, and that they asked for their flags in order to effect a retreat: “Your flags! your flags! here are your flags! cries Rigaud, showing them his wounded hand, which a white handkerchief, all bloodied, enveloped; here are your flags! follow them (1)!”