Pétion and Rigaud meet on the bridge of the lake at Pont-de-Miragoâne; the two-hour conference ends in anger.

Pétion arrived at the Pont-de-Miragoâne on 1 December. He asked Rigaud for an interview. The latter advanced with his army, which the lake alone separated from that of the Republic. The conference took place the next day in the presence of the two staffs, on the bridge of the lake itself, which they had hastened to restore. This conference lasted two hours (1).

Pétion, with a praiseworthy moderation, reproached Rigaud for having thrown himself into a mad enterprise that might ruin the country. Rigaud flew into a passion. Enumerating all the accusations then raised against Pétion, he ended by declaring that he had done no more than yield to the freely manifested will of all the residents of the South, and that he was resolved to obey that will.

Rigaud’s language had a sonority wholly contrasting with the calm of Pétion’s. Delva could not refrain from speaking and asking Rigaud whether he had forgotten the misfortunes of the first civil war and whether he wished to see them renewed. It is said that at these words Rigaud, in his boiling impatience, drove with great blows into the planking of the bridge, between his feet, the sword he held in his hand, and that he then wounded himself. (1) Pétion immediately ordered General Delva to withdraw from the conference and to go and remain under arrest at Petit-Goâve.

When Rigaud had become calmer, Pétion proposed to him to leave things in statu quo and merely to make an offensive and defensive concordat against the North. This concordat was signed then and there. The two generals separated immediately without giving each other any mark of cordial politeness, and the two armies took the road back to their cantonments.