Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [132]
The French blanc soldiers were coming on our trail the whole time, as fast as they could follow through the fire and smoke, through country they did not know well, though it was open country and simple enough. Lamartinière kept to the rear with men with long guns who fired on the blanc soldiers from a distance and then fell back. This shooting slowed the French down only a little, since our men were commanded not to stand and fight. When the blanc soldiers saw they were not going to get any battle, they turned their hands to putting out the fires. Some of the field hands saw them doing this, and they went back to join them. That looked bad to me when I saw it. I thought from the first that Dessalines was wrong to burn their houses, and that his action might cost more than it won.
All the blancs from the plantations on that plain we rounded up like they were cattle, and made them hurry along with us toward the mountains in the east. Dessalines did not kill any of them at first, but only took them prisoner. It was hard marching for them that day. There were some hundreds of them, and none had time to get anything to carry with them except whatever was near their hands when they were taken. There were women and children too, of course, and no food or water for them that day. In the heat of the afternoon some of them began to fall down on the ground, crying that they could not go any farther, but when Dessalines ordered these to be shot, the rest of them went on somehow.
When we had reached the shadow of Morne Cabrit, Dessalines gave all these prisoners to Morisset and Toussaint’s guard, to take them over the mountains and hold them at Mirebalais, until Toussaint would say what to do with them. At the foot of the mountain he left Lamartinière with the men of the Third on the Habitation Jonc, which he had not burned, telling him he could stand to fight the French blanc soldiers as long as he wanted to if they came there.
Then Dessalines took the rest of his men, and Riau also, across the pass at Morne Lacoupe. He meant to cross the Rivière Froide and get onto the low road between Port-au-Prince and Léogane, but the General Boudet had seen ahead of this plan, so that we found French blanc soldiers waiting for us on the other bank of the river, many—we had not known there were so many blanc soldiers in all the world. Also, a lot of the field hands had joined the soldiers, because Dessalines had been driving them so hard in that part of the country that they thought the French blancs could not be any worse, and maybe they would be better.
Dessalines was so angry at this that his two jaws ground his teeth together and bubbles came out the corners of his mouth. But the day was not done yet. We left the bank of the Rivière Froide and went into the mountains again. The French blanc soldiers did not try to follow, because the night was coming. They stayed on their side of the river. Still Dessalines kept moving, by trails so narrow and so steep the riders must get down and pull their horses from the front and push them from behind. There was no place for all the foot soldiers on these trails, so they crossed by climbing vines that hung down the cliff walls, with their cartridge boxes and their guns swinging from their backs.
That was the way that I, Riau, had meant to go alone, but Dessalines crossed it with all his army in the dark. At dawn we came into Léogane and found there were not any French blanc soldiers waiting for us there at all.
It was the same at Léogane as it had been at Port-au-Prince before, between the white general Agé and Lamartinière. There was a white commander at Léogane who wanted to let the French blanc soldiers into the town at once, but his second, who was named Pierre Louis Diane, had said that they must wait until an order came from Dessalines. When Diane met us he smiled and laughed, but his voice shook a little, and his hands too. He had