disastrous enterprise, to employ his talents in restoring his country to the dominion of France. Pétion joined Dessalines, Christophe, and Clervaux when they revolted and turned against the French, and aided in gaining the final independence of the Island. He was commanding a battalion of mulattoes, under the government of Dessalines, at the close of the empire.
Christophe, therefore, as soon as he heard that he had a rival in Pétion, rallied his forces, and started for Port au Prince, to meet his enemy, and obtain by conquest what had been refused him by right of succession; and, as he thought, of merit. Pétion was already in the field; the two armies met, and a battle was fought.
In this contest, the impetuosity of Christophe's attack was more than a match for the skill and science of Pétion; and the new president was defeated in his first enterprise against the enemy of his government. The ranks of Pétion were soon thrown into irretrievable confusion, and in a few minutes they were driven from the field—Pétion himself being hotly pursued in his flight, finding it necessary, in order for the preservation of his life, to exchange his decorations for the garb of a farmer, whom he encountered on his way, and to bury himself up to the neck in a marsh until his fierce pursuers had disappeared.
After this signal success, Christophe pressed forward to Port au Prince, and laid siege to that town, in the hope of an easy triumph over his rival. But Pétion was now in his appropriate sphere of action, and Christophe discovered that in contending against an experienced engineer in a fortified town, success was of more difficult attainment than while encountering
