Pétion marched from Léogane with two thousand men against the English camps in the heights of Port-au-Prince.

The English possessed in the heights of Port-au-Prince four camps, la Coupe, Nérette, Grenier, and Formy; Beauvais had already made two painful, perilous and vain attempts against these camps. Pétion set out from Léogane on 25 pluviôse (13 February) at the head of two thousand men; these were the three battalions of the Legion, the regiment of the *troupes franches*, commanded by Nérette (today the 11th), and the remnants of the regiments of Berwick, of the Aube, and of the Seine-Inférieure; passing by the Rivière-Froide, he bivouacked on the Philippe plantation. The next day he skirted the Grenier camp and took position near la Coupe on the Chevalier plantation. When the traveler has passed the morne de la Charbonnière, going south, he meets the Savanettes, which are overtopped by the morne de la Coupe. It was on the summit of this morne, east of the spring, that the fort stood whose ruins can still be seen: an enclosure of regularly built ramparts, surrounded with chevaux de frise and fascines, the position seemed inaccessible. A demi-lune extending from east to west, at the extremities of which stood two bastions whose cannon swept the spring and the high road, was the first work to be carried. The garrison, commanded by an émigré, battalion commander Brunet, consisted of three hundred young and valiant Englishmen.