The gates of Jacmel were opened to the women and children, whom Dessalines received and whom Christophe drove back or threw into a well.

Then Pétion suffered at the sight of the women and children dying before his eyes for want of the feeblest nourishment. But, though himself reduced to the ration of four ounces of bread, he rejected several summonses that Dessalines made to him to surrender with the honors of war. It is with iron, thunder and lightning that he means to bring about the evacuation of the place. It was already five *décades* (ten-day weeks of the republican calendar) since he had thrown himself into it. It had lost, whether in the combats or through famine, about three thousand persons, of the garrison and of the population together. A council of war decided on evacuation. On Saturday 10 ventôse (1 March) the gates of the place were opened to the women with their children. These unfortunates, whom the pangs of hunger tortured so cruelly, made their way, some toward the Ménissier plantation, where Dessalines was, others toward Fort Pavillon, where the brigade chief Christophe was. Those whom instinct had led to Dessalines were received with that humanity which is owed to woman and to misfortune. But those who had the misfortune to go out on the side where Christophe was were first driven back by cannon fire, then picked up dying, brought before him and hurled, with their children, into the well of the Ogé plantation. Thus it was that this tiger never ceased to prelude that chain of horrors which makes his name the terror of humanity.