Three regiments and a multitude of cultivators surrounded the Cap; Hédouville issued a proclamation and released Rigaud from Toussaint’s authority in letters to Rigaud and Beauvais.

Toussaint until then was not hastening, as may be imagined, to answer Hédouville’s summons; he was gathering forces. At last, on 1 brumaire (22 October), three regiments and an innumerable multitude of cultivators surround the Cap. Hédouville, without force to cause the national authority to be respected, addresses the same day to the residents a proclamation in which he protests “his attachment to liberty and to equality, the good that he wished the colony, which had been hindered by the émigrés welcomed in the West and the South; he points out their maneuvers to good citizens and exhorts them to rally around the constitution.” In the night he addresses to Rigaud and to Beauvais two letters in which he denounces to them “the perfidy of Toussaint, sold to the Americans, to the English and to the émigrés; he releases Rigaud from all obedience to himself and gives him the command of the department of the South, of which the limits in the West extend, according to the law of 4 brumaire, Year VI (25 October 1797), from the Pointe du Lamentin to the river Neybe.”