Moyse sent the army of the North to the Acul, and Pétion, as adjutant general, left it that night to join the South.

At last, on 19 messidor (7 July), Moyse sent the army off to the Acul. It arrived at five in the evening at the Beauharnais plantation, where there was a block-house built during the English occupation. Pétion, as adjutant general attached to this army, busied himself with laying out the camp: that is one of the principal duties of adjutants general. And instead of going to join the generals in the block-house, he came and stationed himself under a dovecote, near the high road. He had at his side Boyer, Courville, Hiriart, his two faithful friends Aly and Bellerose, all on horseback. He was meditating his defection. It was in this position that Senator Georges, then a soldier, met him toward midnight (1).

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.