Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [464]
FEBRUARY 25: Boudet, delayed by terrain and harried by Dessalines, finally reaches
Saint Marc to find scorched earth and a few hundred corpses of white prisoners. By an intercepted letter from Toussaint he learns that Dessalines, whose army vanished from view, is attempting again to destroy Port-au-Prince.
FEBRUARY 26: By night, profiting from the absence of Boudet, Dessalines attacks the lightly garrisoned Port-au-Prince, but is repelled by Pamphile de Lacroix, supported by maroon bands of Lamour Dérance and Lafortune, who have abruptly switched sides to the French. Dérance and Lafortune ambush the 8th Demibrigade (which had attacked Port-au-Prince in concert with Dessalines) and capture the commander, Pierre Louis Diane. Dessalines retreats across the Cul-de-Sac plain, leaving scorched earth behind him.
Leclerc, leading Desfourneaux’s division and 1,500 of Hardy’s men from Gonaives, advances north to Gros Morne to attack Maurepas. Meanwhile, Lubin Golart, a former commander of Maurepas’s 9th Demibrigade, attacks Maurepas from Jean Rabel. Surrounded and misinformed that Toussaint was completely defeated at Ravine à Couleuvre, Maurepas surrenders to the French.
FEBRUARY 28: Dessalines moves toward Mirebalais, seeking to rejoin Toussaint. He finds Toussaint at Petite Rivière and begins repairing the fort of La Crête à Pierrot on the heights above the town and the Artibonite River.
MARCH 1 : After Toussaint’s departure, Dessalines massacres the white population of Petite Rivière, along with numerous white prisoners he has herded there during his previous movements.
MARCH 2 : Learning that he has been outlawed by Leclerc, Toussaint proclaims Leclerc outlaw. He threatens Gonaives with a feint, burns the town of Ennery, and begins to circle from Ennery through Saint Michel, Saint Raphael, Dondon, and Marmelade, raising resistance as he goes.
Rochambeau, who believes that he is pursuing Toussaint from the banks of Artibonite into the Grand Cahos Mountains, captures a pack train carrying treasuries from the coastal towns.
Leclerc orders a convergence on Toussaint’s supposed position in the mountains above Petite Rivière.
MARCH 4 : With 2,000 men, General Debelle attacks Lamartinière’s garrison of 300 outside the fort of La Crête à Pierrot. His men are decimated when the defenders jump into the ditches recently dug around the fort, and Debelle himself is severely wounded.
D’Henin, detached from Boudet’s division, finds Mirebalais burned by Dessalines.
MARCH 5 : Toussaint takes Bidouret, an outpost above Plaisance, planning to attack Desfourneaux at Plaisance and then proceed to Port-de-Paix to join Maurepas.
MARCH 6 : Toussaint loses an engagement to Desfourneaux in the Plaisance area, confronts soldiers of the 9th Demibrigade, now led by Lubin Golart, and so learns for certain that Maurepas has surrendered at Port-de-Paix. He turns south toward La Crête à Pierrot with the idea of capturing Leclerc by a movement of double encirclement.
MARCH 9 : Boudet’s division unites at Verrettes and discovers 800 whites massacred there by Dessalines.
MARCH 11 : Harassed by Charles Belair, Boudet’s division crosses the Artibonite and reaches La Crête à Pierrot.
MARCH 12 : Recently returned to La Crête à Pierrot, Dessalines declares he will blow up the fort if it is penetrated by the French. Boudet is lured into the same trap as Debelle on March 4, with heavy losses. In the late morning, Leclerc arrives to support Boudet, but the French attacks are confounded by the entrenchments and by cavalry charges by Toussaint’s honor guard, out of the nearby woods. By the end of the day, Leclerc and Boudet are both wounded. Pamphile de Lacroix (the only uninjured general on the scene) moves the troops to a position northwest of the fort. Leclerc determines to lay siege while waiting for the arrival of Hardy and Rochambeau.
MARCH 13 : Dessalines arranges for fortification of a second redoubt above La Crête à Pierrot, and leads a sortie to get gunpowder from the Plassac depot, which Boudet has already blown up on his march from Verrettes.