Toussaint Louverture - Madison Bell [133]
Heavy rain on February 20 slowed the French advance; nevertheless Rochambeau managed to occupy the heights of Morne Barade on the night of February 22, hours or minutes before Toussaint arrived there. The battle began in the darkness; by daybreak the French had forced the defenders out the bottom of the ravine onto the flat ground of Perisse Plantation. Here Toussaint was able to rally his honor guard cavalry and organize a desperate charge which scattered the French and drove Rochambeau's men back into the mouth of Ravine a Couleuvre.
That same morning, General Vernet was retreating, inch by inch, before Leclerc and Hardy's advance on Gonai'ves. Toussaint, exhausted and frustrated by the outcome at Ravine a Couleuvre, rode his horse into the town's cathedral and tore down the cross, shouting that he would no longer serve this Jesus who had betrayed him. A more warlike spirit had apparently mounted his head. Gonai'ves could not be held, but Leclerc found the town in ashes, as he had found Le Cap. Toussaint, now collapsing with fever as well as exhaustion, rode south to Pont d'Ester, where his family and army were waiting.
Ravine a Couleuvre was a loss for both sides. Toussaint had not been able to hold key terrain, but he had gotten away with his army more or less intact. According to a report Leclerc filed a couple of days later, six hundred of his men had been killed outright and thirty-five hundred wounded. The French were able to win engagements, but establishing real control over the country was a different and much more difficult matter.
For Toussaint, the worst consequence—the one he most feared—of the drawn battle at Ravine a Couleuvre and the loss of Gonai'ves was being completely cut off from Maurepas and the Ninth Regiment at Port de Paix. Now Leclerc was able to support Humbert and his detachment (which had been taking a beating from Maurepas since their landing) by sending reinforcements toward Port de Paix via Gros Morne (another route which Vincent had explained to him). At around the same time Maurepas received inaccurate but disheartening news that Toussaint had been completely demolished at Ravine a Couleuvre. Still worse, a rebel commander of the Ninth, Lubin Golart (who had sided with Rigaud during the mulatto-black civil war), attacked him from the direction of Jean Rabel. Surrounded by three hostile forces and out of communication with his commander, Maurepas surrendered to Leclerc on February 25.
La Crete a Pierrot, March 4-24,1802
Dessalines, meanwhile, had been playing cat and mouse with Boudet since the latter's landing at Port-au-Prince two weeks earlier. On February 24 he slaughtered all the whites of Saint Marc and set the town afire, beginning with his own opulent residence, as Christophe had done at Le Cap. Boudet rushed to the rescue but arrived too late, and while the French general stared aghast at the hundreds of scorched corpses in the ashes of Saint Marc, Dessalines slipped south to his rear. He would have succeeded in destroying Port-au-Prince this time if Pamphile de Lacroix, commanding during Boudet's absence, had not hastily enlisted the aid of two large maroon bands led by Lafortune and Lamour Derance, both disaffected by Toussaint's harsh labor policy and the severe repression of the Moyse rebellion. Lamour Derance, who had been skirmishing with Dessalines before the French invasion, was willing to accept the enemy of his enemy as his friend.
Dessalines doubled back across the plain of Cul de Sac, razing the plantations and rounding up white prisoners. On February 28, he met Toussaint above the town of Petite Riviere, on a hilltop called