About this period it was that Andrew Rigaud first made his appearance at the head of the revolted slaves: he was a man of colour, and had the command at Aux Cayes. With about two thousand of the rebels he marched from his station and besieged Tiburon; but the fort which was manned by some British soldiers, who defended it with their usual intrepidity, and who afterwards sallied forth, attacked the besiegers in the field, and put them to the rout with great slaughter.
During the interval occasioned by the non-arrival of the reinforcement from England, the planters who were, in the first instance, favourable to the cause of the British, began to shew some symptoms of displeasure; and the tardiness with which the operations were carried on, and the absence of that decision which the urgency of their situation required, induced many very powerful individuals to relinquish all further adherence to the party in which they had engaged, and to join the republican standard.
On the 19th of May the force which had been so long looked for arrived under the command of General Whyte, who, with Commodore Ford, proceeded at once to deliberate on the measures which it would be adviseable to adopt for the capture of Port au Prince. On the 30th the ships of war, consisting of four ships of the line, three or four frigates, and several smaller vessels, anchored off the city. The land forces amounted to only about fifteen hundred men capable of doing duty. The next morning a flag was sent to summon the city to surrender, to which no attention was paid, and it is even said that the letter was returned unopened. The commissioners, Santhonax and Polverel, were known to be in the city with a considerable force; and it was expected that a powerful stand would be made, for the preservation of this important place. Fort Bizotton, which is situate on an eminence to the southward of the city, commands the Leogane road and the southern entrance in the harbour. The land-side was attacked by a body of troops under the gallant Major Spencer, whilst a simultaneous attack was made on the sea-side by two of the ships of war. Captain Daniel of the forty-first regiment, with about seventy or eighty men, took advantage of a thunder storm which happened about eight o’clock, entered the breach which had been rendered practicable, and carried the fort at the point of the bayonet. The captain was severely wounded, and some of his men and officers fell. The city soon surrendered, and the commissioners evacuated it on the fourth of June, the birth-day of the then sovereign of Great Britain, George the Third, when the British troops entered and took possession of it together with the shipping in the harbour. It was the intention of the republican commissioners to set fire to the city, but the prompt and decisive attack of the British gave them no time for carrying so destructive a design into effect.
This capture was of great consequence to the cause of the British as far as their proceedings had gone on; it gave confidence to the soldiers, and inspirited the colonial troops who had joined their standard; but it afterwards proved to be the grave of many a British officer and soldier: sickness began to rage amongst the troops to such an alarming extent, as is generally the case in the autumnal months, that it was found necessary, for the preservation of the post, to erect additional lines of defence, fearing that in their then condition the enemy might try to regain the position. To accomplish this, the troops were subjected to incessant toil, first in the sun, and then during the night exposed to all the pernicious vapours arising from heavy rains which fall during the rainy seasons. In point of booty the capture of Port au Prince was a very fine acquisition, although the commissioners carried off with them every thing valuable which it contained, consisting of upwards of two hundred mule loads. They were accompanied also by upwards of two thousand of the inhabitants, who followed in their career. Finding however that they had lost all their influence in the colony, and that Rigaud and Toussaint L’Ouverture had obtained possession of the whole, they thought it expedient to leave the island, and return to France, where they received the congratulations of the government, whose representatives they had been appointed to carry into operation the most injudicious decrees that could possibly have been framed for the internal government of any colonial appendage.
The value of the captured property has been variously estimated: a writer of some authority says, that “In the harbour were found two and twenty top-sail vessels, fully laden with sugar, indigo, and coffee, of which thirteen were from three to five hundred tons burthen, and the remaining nine from one hundred and fifty to three hundred tons, besides seven thousand tons of shipping in ballast; the value of all which at a moderate computation could not be far short of four hundred thousand pounds sterling. One hundred and thirty-one pieces of cannon regularly mounted in batteries were on the lines.”
After the reduction of Port au Prince, a further reinforcement arrived under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Lennox, consisting of about six hundred men, but on their passage from the windward islands to Jamaica, to which latter place they first sailed, sickness broke out amongst them, by which more than one hundred died on board, and a hundred and fifty were left at Port Royal in the last stage of disease. It is impossible to describe the mortality that prevailed amongst the troops in St. Domingo. When active operations were likely to be attended with a beneficial result, the commander-in-chief was prevented from taking advantage of the positions which he held, by the epidemic which at the time so lamentably raged. There could not be produced eight hundred British soldiers in a condition for the field, and many of them had only a short time previously been discharged from the hospitals; of course they were not equal to the fatigue of active service, nor were they in the least fit for a duty which rendered it necessary to expose them to the pernicious humidity of the night air. The commander-in-chief, General Whyte, was seized with this malignant fever; and his health was so much impaired by the effects of disease, and anxiety for the fate of his officers and men, who were daily dying around him, that he was compelled to leave the island and return to England, when the command devolved on Brigadier-General Horneck.
From the departure of General Whyte in September 1794, until the arrival of General Williamson in the month of May following, nothing of any material consequence ensued, except some skirmishes between the posts of the British and revolters, attended with no decisive result on either side. During this short period of inactivity on the part of the British, Rigaud, collecting a strong force, advanced towards Leogane, which at that time was defended by some colonial troops, and succeeding in his attack upon the place, he inhumanly murdered the French planters who fell into his power, and afterwards advanced upon Port au Prince; but in his attempt upon Fort Bizotton which commanded his advance, he failed, having been repulsed by the garrison, with great slaughter, whence he retreated, for the purpose of making another effort for the recovery of Tiburon. He left Aux Cayes with a force of three thousand men with four small armed vessels, and on the 25th of December they commenced the attack on the place. The fort, which consisted of only about four hundred and fifty men, defended it with great bravery; and after the loss of two-thirds of their number, the remainder sallied forth, cut their way through the revolters, and reached Irois in safety.
In the vicinity of St. Marc, Colonel Brisbane, who commanded there, had much to do in keeping the insurgents in check, who had at this time become exceedingly bold in their movements, and seemed determined on the most vigorous operations, both offensive and defensive. The colonel with a few British and some colonial troops, obtained advantages over them in several skirmishes in the plains of the Artibanite; but whilst he was engaged there the mulatto inhabitants of St. Marc, who had pledged themselves most solemnly to observe the strictest neutrality, violated their pledge, and in the most cowardly manner put to death all whom they found actively engaged against the French republic. The garrison defended themselves in the fort, from whence they were relieved in a short time by a vessel of war from Cape Nicolas Mole. The white inhabitants also of St. Marc, many of whom were the most forward to hail the arrival of the British and to place themselves under British protection, engaged in a plot for the destruction of Colonel Brisbane, but that officer, ever on the alert, discovered and successfully defeated their designs.
At Port au Prince a similar conspiracy was brought to light, the object of which was the destruction of the garrison and all the English people by those very French inhabitants who joined in hailing with acclamations the arrival of the British force before the city. Such abominable treachery did not go without its commensurate punishment; the conspirators were seized, and about twenty of the principal ones, amongst whom were several French officers of rank, were condemned by the sentence of a court-martial. Of these conspirators fifteen were shot on the 18th of February, 1795, and the remainder were sent off the island.
General Williamson, who had been previously appointed commander-in-chief in the West Indies, arrived in the island in May, and immediately proceeded to place every station in the best state of defence that his very limited means would allow. He endeavoured to strengthen the whole line of posts from St. Marc to Jeremie, and not having a force sufficient to enable him to secure all points by a strong cordon of British and colonial troops, he resorted to a measure which, although at the moment it might have been one of expediency, was not likely to be advantageous in the end. To augment his force he formed several corps of negroes, whom he purchased of the French planters, and placed them under the command of officers of the line; but their inefficiency was soon discovered, and they became not only a very unserviceable, but also a very ungovernable body. General Williamson retained the command but a very short time; his successor, General Forbes, completed the arrangements of his predecessor, and remained entirely on the defensive.