Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [78]
Then someone shouted from the top of the fort, Come up! Advance! We have the order to receive you!
I had not heard any order like that. But the French soldiers all began to walk forward when they heard this cry. Lamartinière stood very still. He did not look like he knew what was happening there in front of him. I wondered what spirit might be standing in his head. It was very quiet, and we could all hear the feet of the French soldiers shuffling on the road.
Then came three cannon shots from the mountain above Port-au-Prince. Lamartinière trembled, from his feet to his head. A wave went through his body and his right arm swept down. Fire! he said, and Magny gave the same order, Feu! Feu! Then the muskets and the cannons all shot together and a great many of the French soldiers fell down all at once, hundreds of them, as if a broom had swept them down. But behind them more were coming.
I did not know if Maillart had been shot down or not, though I had seen him moving forward with the others. There was a lot of noise where we were, but I could also hear cannons firing in the bay of Port-au-Prince. I got my horse then and rode around behind the fort and down to the road to the north. The soldiers in the fight were too busy to notice me, and I wanted to see what was happening on the bay. I looked back once as I rode toward the water. The French soldiers were still marching on the fort. They did not stop to reload at all, but kept coming with their bayonets, steadily and keeping close together. They did not seem to care how many of them were shot down. I saw them go over the lip of the earthwork like ants going into a sugar jar.
When those three cannon shots were fired, they did begin killing the blancs in Port-au-Prince, as Lamartinière had promised. Many blancs were taken down to the Savane Valembrun where they were shot, but I did not know that until later. I rode to the waterside where I could see the bay and the town harbor. Fort Bizoton was quiet because the French soldiers coming over the land had taken it already, but the other forts were fighting the ships on the bay. It seemed that I could not stop watching this, though it was terrible to see. The ships moved too quickly and the guns of the forts could not follow them. The firing from the ships was very strong and they kept firing till the guns of the forts stopped talking back, and then the forts themselves were blown in splinters in the air.
In all my life I never saw such power. I thought then that Toussaint must have seen such a picture in the eye of his mind already, when he first looked at those ships in Samana Bay.
Saint Marc was far from where I was, to the north of Port-au-Prince. I could not go there with a battle to pass through, and anyway it was too late for Dessalines to come. I turned from the water and rode into the plain of Léogane. Toussaint had told me to go south once I had given his word to Dessalines. He had a word to send to Laplume, who commanded for him in the Southern Department. Since I had not found Dessalines yet anyway, I was not really sure which way I should go. Djab-ladi l’ap manjé moin . . . I could not think how to get this devil to stop biting me at all. At evening I was riding south away from the fighting, when a big gang of men stopped me on the plain.
They did not seem so friendly when they stopped me. They looked at my uniform with hard eyes. These were maroons, though not all of them had run away from blanc masters before the rising. Men still ran from the plantations even now, since Toussaint had ordered that all must work, and set soldiers of the army above the men who must work with their hoes in the cane fields. In this rule there was no man harsher than Dessalines himself. That was why these