The English frigate Néréide appeared, and Bresseau raised the siege of Curaçao, where Pétion had commanded the artillery, and reembarked for Guadeloupe.

The appeal that Pétion and Dupont made to Bresseau, in the name of their companions in misfortune, was not in vain. Bresseau had the other expatriates brought from Arûba and provided for their needs as far as was in his power; he was even happy to find nearly two hundred brave men, capable of seconding him in the attempt he was meditating against the Dutch colony; feigning then to return to Guadeloupe, he leaves Curaçao on 16 fructidor (3 September), with Pélardy, Jeannet, Pétion and his comrades, etc. On leaving the port of Curaçao, they sighted the Harmonie, the Amour de la Patrie, and the Enfant-Trouvé. Bresseau rallies them; and, arrived before the bay of Saint-Michel, he orders the anchor dropped. They go ashore, they fraternize with the commandant of the fort. Finally, the next day, they land two field guns in the Rostaing manner and march against Curaçao to the cries of Long live liberty!, thereby releasing the enslaved from the obedience owed to their enslavers (1). This army swells rapidly: twelve hundred men camp at Otro-Banda. Under cover of night, Pétion, to whom Commandant Bresseau had entrusted the command of the artillery, raises a battery; this battery, which still bears the name Fort-des-Français, began to cannonade Paounda-Petermain, the eastern part of the town, where the government house and the other public edifices are situated. Pétion’s cannonade reduced the inhabitants to extremity. The governor, M. Lauffer, was on the point of surrendering to Citizen Bresseau when, on 26 fructidor (13 September), an English frigate appeared, the Néréide, commanded by Walkins (1). The Stadtholder party invoked its assistance. Bresseau was obliged to raise the siege and to reembark for Guadeloupe. The English kept Curaçao until the peace of Amiens.