The legionaries of Jacmel carried the position of Tavet after a vigorous assault, and Birot lost a hundred and fifty men.

But what seemed still more to assure the triumph of Rigaud were the hostilities of which the district of Jacmel became the theater. Birot had been observing the camp at Tavet for several days: this inaction was not to the taste of the young and ardent legionaries whom he had under his orders. Only a captain of Beauvais’s temperament could believe in the impossibility of a collision between two camps animated by an equal rage, separated by scarcely a musket shot. And so, with loud cries, they demand battle of Birot. And on 18 thermidor (5 August) the position of Tavet is carried, after a vigorous assault. Birot lost a hundred and fifty men. Laplume can rally the 11th only at the Béloc plantation, in the commune of Léogane. He declared that he had lost only twenty men in this action. It was then that Beauvais ought to have drawn the sword from the scabbard and declared for Rigaud: there is no doubt that he would have decided the outcome of the struggle favorably. Birot, remembering the irresolution of this general, almost repented of his triumph. Two days later he abandoned Tavet, returned to Besnard, where he left the command to Battalion Chief Gauthier, and went back into Jacmel to have a wound that he had received in the head treated. Beauvais, on the following {{*décadi*|the tenth and last day of the republican ten-day week}}, while reviewing the garrison, publicly blamed Birot for the attack on Tavet. “For my part, he concluded, I have no fear of Toussaint’s bullets; I fear civil war, which will rouse all the passions. I regret my brave grenadiers; I sincerely regret the unfortunate men who perished in the attack on Tavet, an unfruitful attack since you did not know how to keep your conquest. You will be personally responsible for this war, you, Colonel Birot. For my part, I shall do my duty (1).”