The members of the Saint-Marc assembly sailed away on the Léopard, and Pétion was named sergeant in his militia company during the campaign against them.

M. de Peynier, for his part, had not gone to sleep; put outside the law by the Saint-Marc assembly, he had ordered a march against it. M. de Vincent, commandant of the province of the North, set out from Cap, in the night of 2 to 3 August, aboard the frigate the Vestale, which was to land him at Gonaïves; he was at the head of eight hundred and forty men, of whom two hundred were of the regiment of Cap. M. de la Jarie was to leave Port-au-Prince in the night of 5 to 6 with six hundred men, of whom two hundred were of the regiment of that city, two hundred *pompons-blancs* and two hundred men of color, as auxiliaries. The troops were to proceed against Saint-Marc by sea, and the militias by land (1). During this campaign, on the Laffitaud plantation, between Croix-des-Bouquets and Arcahaye, Pétion was named sergeant in his company of militia (2). The march of the two columns frightened the assembly; its members, eighty-five in number, found safety only in the magnanimity of that same mother country which they had so greatly outraged. They embarked on 8 August aboard the Léopard, whence the name {{*Léopardins*|the Leopardists, men of the ship the Léopard}} remained with them. Before leaving, they issued an address in which they protested their attachment to the colony and their submission to the laws of the mother country. This address won back many minds: « present, the colonists themselves detested them; absent, they regretted them (3). » This assembly was none the less criminal toward France for having wished to rob her of the fairest of her colonies, and none the less criminal toward humanity for having wished to maintain the abasement of the race of color, in whatever degree it might be found. The National Assembly recalled to the Léopardins the outrages of which they had made themselves guilty toward the mother country; but it pardoned them. And yet, ungrateful children, they sought almost at once to deliver the Queen of the Antilles, that fair jewel of the crown of France, to England, that eternal enemy of the destinies of the mother country.