March 4, 1802 · Southern Province Theater
March 4, 1802
At a small earthen fort called Crête-à-Pierrot on the Artibonite River, approximately 1,200 Haitian soldiers under Dessalines held off 12,000 French troops for three weeks in March 1802. The defenders, surrounded and massively outnumbered, sang the Marseillaise — France's own revolutionary anthem — to mock their attackers and affirm that they were fighting for the same ideals France claimed to represent. Dessalines's men conducted sorties against the besieging French, inflicting heavy casualties. When they eventually broke out in the night of March 24, they had humiliated Napoleon's veteran army and made the French realize this would not be the quick reconquest they expected. French casualties at the siege alone exceeded 1,500.
Commanders