War broke out again at Port-au-Prince after the hanging of the drummer Scarpin, and the fire of the Sainte-Cécile that followed destroyed more than two thirds of the town.

Meanwhile, in obedience to the treaty concluded on the Damiens plantation, the municipality had convened the districts of Port-au-Prince for the formation of new primary assemblies. These operations moved slowly; minds were uneasy; and in fact, on 21 November, the war began again with greater violence than ever. Scarpin, a Black drummer in the confederation, provoked by a white man of the national guard named Duclos, who was mocking him, ended by seizing this white man bodily and disarming him. Four horsemen of the {{*maréchaussée*|the mounted constabulary}}, who happened to be passing, seized the drummer and led him to the municipality. It was, as one sees, great insolence on the part of a *nègre* to repel the insults of a white man! Scarpin was none the less handed over to a provost court and condemned to be hanged. Beauvais at once sent to beg the municipality not to hasten the judgment. But presently word was brought to him that the unhappy Scarpin had just been hanged from a street lamp. Indignation was at its height; the freedmen, gathered in groups, were putting forward the most violent motions, when there passed on horseback, in the neighboring square, a white gunner named Cadot, who belonged to Praloto’s artillery. Valmé Cortades, carried away and beside himself at the sight of this gunner, brought him down with a shot from his musket. The news spread; the call to arms sounded its mournful note; the troops of the line returned to their barracks and took up arms; the confederates went to their respective posts. The commandant of the place, M. Dusaulnois, accompanied by some officers of the regiments of Artois and of Normandy and of the royal artillery, came to the government house to bring words of peace. Beauvais replied “that the violence committed upon Cadot (1) had been provoked by the terrible and hasty judgment of Scarpin; that, moreover, the army, which seemed to be threatened on all sides, would content itself with remaining on the defensive (2).” This deputation had not yet returned to the municipality when Praloto was seen advancing, leading the train of his artillery. This artillery is mounted under the gallery of one of the houses that border the government square on the north. Pétion, who was at his post behind the government house, leaves the command of it to Lys, his lieutenant, and runs to the palace to ask for orders. Already Caradeux the elder, at the head of the national guard, and the royal artillery with two pieces of cannon, were advancing from their sides. Beauvais entrusts the defense of the government house to Pétion, who hastens to bring up his company and places the greater part of it on the right and left wings: the enclosure wall serves as a rampart for these brave young men. He himself takes his post at the point of greatest danger; already his piece, which his soldiers had nicknamed the Glutton, is placed at the threshold of the gate.

Beauvais and Lambert, stupefied, had not yet recovered from the lethargy into which their excessive trust in the promises of the colonists had plunged them, when Praloto saluted the gate with several rounds of cannon, with ball and grapeshot. Pétion aims in person and replies. Six pieces of cannon arrive one after another on the field of battle. The combat takes on a character of fury difficult to describe. Pétion’s cannon was burning hot; the buckets were exhausted. “A brave man!” cries Pétion. Pons presents himself, makes boldly for the fountain, which is opposite the government house and around which the bullets whistled; he fills his buckets and returns to his post (1). The combat had lasted two hours. Caradeux the elder, at the head of the national guard, the royal artillery, the paid troops and the cavalry, had his line of battle parallel to the whole extent of the front of the government house. The regiments of Artois and of Normandy showed themselves under arms above the walls of their barracks. Everything led Captain Pétion to think that he would soon be attacked in flank by these two corps. Accordingly, while the gunners and some infantry soldiers stop and hold the assailants, he swiftly turns his cannon against the barracks and forces the regiments to abandon the position and to come down into the square. The intrepid Pétion has his piece rolled out beyond the gate and sets himself face to face with this compact mass that tries to advance. It is then that ball and grapeshot run short. No matter; Pétion has his fire fed with stones and pebbles. Beauvais and Lambert see that there is no longer any means of continuing the combat; they order the retreat upon Croix-des-Bouquets, by the gardens of the government house and the quarter of La Coupe. This retreat was carried out in the best order. Beauvais stayed with the rear guard. The confederation left within the enclosure of the government house only twenty dead; it carried off the wounded. The whites had lost more than a hundred men (1).

Doyon, who commanded at Bel-Air, past which Praloto went in order to move against the government house, had on his side followed him, harassed him, and had even taken a cannon from him. Unfortunately, Taillefer, with a company of the national guard, had come to protect Praloto’s march; but he paid with his life for this movement; he was killed near the church. Doyon held his ground at Bel-Air all night and pushed his patrols far into the town. He did not leave it, to go to Croix-des-Bouquets, until the next morning, on account of the progress of the fire.

The fire began simultaneously at Morne-à-Tuf and at Bel-Air. Set alight by the European adventurers who were in the town, it spread rapidly. The whites, far from seeking at the outset to put it out, busied themselves with hunting down the freedmen and their friends, whom various circumstances had prevented from betaking themselves to Croix-des-Bouquets or to the ships in the roadstead. The chevalier Duplan, a *mulâtre*, and Pierre Pellerin, a *nègre*, both free, were assassinated; Kercado, judge-seneschal, who had just married and who was to leave the next day for New England, known for his attachment to the freedmen, could not obtain the compassion of the executioners; he fell pierced with blows in his own house, almost in the arms of his young wife. The tigers did not respect even the female sex; a woman, Marie-Rose, a free Black woman, whose liberal principles were known, was pitilessly massacred, in spite of her entreaties, which should have softened these savage hearts. I have not the strength to relate the death of Mme Beaulieu, a *mulâtresse* full of youth and beauty, and with child. My hand trembles, my heart breaks. Oh! the abbé Ouvière was right to compare these massacres to those of Saint Bartholomew, by giving them the name of Saint Cecilia, for it is on the day of this latter feast that Port-au-Prince was defiled with so much violence and drenched with so much blood.

In this frightful disorder, women and children sought, distraught, their safety in flight. Madame Françoise Papillot was making her way, with her newly married daughter, herself on the eve of motherhood, toward the Saint-Joseph gate; they are met by two national guards, Larousse and Lamothe, who suddenly throw themselves upon them. No tear disarms the scoundrels; no prayer stays their arms. Madame Papillot, already fainting, nonetheless covers with her body, as with a rampart, her young and lovely child, against whom the rage of the executioners seemed more particularly directed; the shot is fired, the ball passes through the mother’s hand, enters the breast of Mme Beaulieu, who falls dead; and with her there trembled and shuddered for the last time the first pledge of happiness that heaven had given to her chaste loves!

Terror kept growing; more than two thousand freedmen of every age and sex rush in a crowd to the shore to reach the boats; many throw themselves into the water; they are pitilessly shot down, while their houses are plundered; for in those moments of horror the {{*petits-blancs*|the poorer white colonists}} clothed and furnished themselves at the expense of their victims.

Praloto, above all, displayed his rage against everything that bore a Black or yellow skin. From Fort Saint-Joseph, where he was encamped, and from which he directed the dagger into the breast of the town, the frightful Genoese perceives a group of about eighty women and children who were trying to reach Croix-des-Bouquets. He immediately turns his artillery upon these innocent creatures; he was about to have them raked with grapeshot when a European moved swiftly toward the unfortunate ones and made them take a roundabout path (1). The fire by then was taking on terrible proportions; four pumps, surrounded by the flames, were successively abandoned to the fury of the fire; in the space of twenty-four hours seven blocks, that is, more than two thirds of the town, were annihilated. The municipality, on the pretext of protecting the lives of the women and children who had been unable to leave the town, had them sought out and lodged in the royal prisons. The young Lamarre (André-Juste-Borno), who later became so great a general, listening only to the generosity of his soul, had flown to the aid of several grief-stricken families. As a reward for his devotion he was incarcerated as well. An enslaved Black man, whose name I regret not to have, had met, for his part, a group of sixty children of color, separated from their parents and running, uttering lamentable cries, toward the Léogane gate; touched with compassion, he had led them to the plantation of Mme Volant, a white woman, who for a long time lavished all her care upon them (1).