The commissioners withdrew to Camp Breda and called to freedom the enslaved who enlisted under the banners of the Republic.

On the morning of the 21st, the government house, continually battered by cannon, threatened to fall in ruins. The commission decided to withdraw through the gardens to Camp Breda, accompanied by Chanlatte and the legionaries. There, on the same day, it took the supreme resolution to call to freedom all the enslaved who should enlist under the banners of the Republic. It was an audacious decision which, it is true, did not follow entirely from its instructions; yet it was commanded by the imperious law of public safety. Galbaud had at his orders six thousand sailors, five battalions of national guards, the volunteers on foot and mounted, while the delegates of France had to oppose to him only three hundred freedmen and two hundred men of the line (1). Galbaud, who thought the commissioners in flight and who already believed himself victorious, ordered the commander of the cordon of the West to arrest them if they presented themselves at that cordon (2).