Rigaud’s army and Dessalines fought the two-day affair at Grand-Goâve, in which Octavius held the Tauzin mill hillock against fifteen battalions.

In the meantime Dessalines, who had just been reinforced by the 1st, 2nd and 5th demi-brigades, numbering then nearly six thousand men (5), left his camp at the Acul and returned to Grand-Goâve. In spite of the cannonade from the block-house, he was able to establish his ramparts on the Glaize plantation, at the entrance of the town, and to have an 18-pounder brought up to the seaside, to protect himself against the barges of the South, which in the first affair had done Moyse much harm (1). They watched each other on both sides, when Rigaud arrived on 30 messidor (2). He ordered battle for the next day. At seven in the morning Dartiguenave, with his 2nd demi-brigade, attacks on the right, Geffrard with the 4th on the left. Faubert forms the center, with orders to attack only in the last extremity.

Dartiguenave (3) first dislodges two battalions that occupied the canal of the sugar works, climbs the hill that adjoins this canal, drives back and scatters seven battalions that were encamped there under the orders of Charles Belair. Geffrard, on his side, attacks the right of Dessalines vigorously, while the squadron of the South opens fire with a privateer of the North (4). The army of the North on that side falls back again; it re-enters its entrenchments. On both sides more than three hundred men had been lost. The army of the South had above all to mourn the death of six brave officers: Beaudry, Délande, Vincent, Labbé, Leloup the younger, Greffin the younger and Arnault (1).

On the next day the fighting began again. The hillock of the Tauzin mill, which Octavius defended with a battalion of the 3rd, became above all the theater of an affair so singular that it would be thought fabulous were it not for the unanimity of the testimony. Octavius had deployed his battalion in a triangle on this hillock, which became as famous as the block-house itself. He was attacked there successively and furiously by fifteen battalions, and routed them. He sustained all these shocks as he would have done on a day of mere drill, to use an expression of General Borgella, then a captain of cavalry. The fire was so violent, the musket barrels so hot, that the soldiers applied their urine to them and tore off the skirts of their coats to protect their hands. Toureaux, who commanded the army, feared that Octavius would end by succumbing: he dispatched Captain Segrettier to him to order him to cease fire on one of the angles, in order to send him reinforcements. But the commander, proud of his unheard-of successes, refuses all reinforcement and continues the fire (2).