Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [465]
Rochambeau occupies the destroyed town of Mirebalais, repelling Dessalines from the Cahos onto the Central Plateau and cutting him off from the besieged fort.
MARCH 22: Rochambeau arrives on the right bank of the Artibonite, completing the encirclement of La Crête à Pierrot. Rochambeau demolishes the redoubt recently established outside the main fort. Lamartinière, commanding in Dessalines’s absence, raises red flags of no surrender, no quarter at La Crête à Pierrot. The French begin three days of bombardment of the main fort, with the artillery corps commanded by Pétion.
In the north, meanwhile, Christophe raises rebellion against the French around the Northern Plain.
MARCH 24: An order to evacuate is smuggled into the fort of La Crête à Pierrot, from Dessalines to Lamartinière, who manages against all odds to cut his way through the French lines by night and escape with about half of the 900 men Dessalines left there. The March battles around the fort have cost the French 2,000 casualties. Toussaint joins Dessalines at Morne Calvaire and learns that the fort has surrendered. He is too late to execute the plan to capture Leclerc.
MARCH 25 : Rochambeau’s soldiers enter the fort at La Crête à Pierrot and murder all the wounded who remain there. In Europe a treaty is signed to ratify the Peace of Amiens.
MARCH 28 : Toussaint meets the French emissaries Sabès and Gimont at Chassérieux, his Grand Cahos headquarters, and sends them to Boudet with a letter to Napoleon. Hardy raids Toussaint’s property at La Coupe a l’Inde, and captures Toussaint’s warhorse, Bel Argent.
MARCH 29 : Toussaint, pursuing Hardy, fights an engagement with him at Dondon. Christophe attacks from one side, Toussaint from the other. Though Christophe is nearly taken prisoner, Hardy is chased down the road to Le Cap. APRIL: Yellow fever breaks out in Le Cap. Toussaint learns of the signing of the treaty confirming the Peace of Amiens.
APRIL 1 : Leclerc writes to Napoleon that he has 7,000 active men and 5,000 in the hospital—omitting to say that another 5,000 are dead. He also has 7,000 “colonial troops” of variable reliability, including many black soldiers brought over by turncoat leaders.
APRIL 2 : Following the battle at Dondon, Christophe pursues Hardy to the gates of Le Cap. At this point, Toussaint’s forces have retaken Saint Michel, Marmelade, Saint Raphael, and Limbé, and have isolated Mirebalais. Leclerc returns to Le Cap to support Hardy.
APRIL 3 : The Havre Flushing Squadron arrives with 2,500 fresh troops for Leclerc.
APRIL 26 : On a promise of retaining his rank in French service, Christophe arranges his submission to Leclerc in a meeting at Haut du Cap, and turns over 1,200 troops to the French. But Toussaint still holds the northern mountains with 4,000 regular troops and a larger number of irregulars. Leclerc writes to the Minister of Marine that he needs a total of 25,000 European troops to secure the island—i.e., reinforcements of 14,000.
MAY 1: Toussaint and Dessalines offer to submit to Leclerc’s authority on similar terms as Christophe.
MAY 6 : Toussaint makes a formal submission to Leclerc at Le Cap. Leclerc’s position is still too weak for him to obey Napoleon’s secret order to deport the black leaders immediately. While Toussaint retires to Gonaives, with the 2,000 men of his honor guard converting themselves to cultivators there, Dessalines remains on active duty. Leclerc frets that their submission may be feigned.
In May, the generals Hardy and Debelle die of exhaustion and their wounds. At Port-au-Prince and Le Cap, surviving French troops suffer heavy losses to the yellow fever epidemic.
JUNE: By the first week of this month, Leclerc has lost 3,000 men to fever. Both Le Cap and Port-au-Prince have become plague zones, with corpses laid out in the barracks yards to be carried to lime pits outside the town. Deaths are proportionately higher among the officers and civilians of high rank. Sailors in the fleet