At 4:00 a.m.,[2] "more than 300" Caco rebels,[1] many wearing stolen uniforms of the Haitian gendarmes,[2] commanded by Benoît Batraville, attacked the city.

[1] It turns out that the city's garrison of US Marines and Haitian gendarmes were ready for the assault, since a citizen who heard the Cacos coming informed the former.

[2] One Caco group attacked the city's slums and set a block on fire, which lit up "the entire surrounding countryside".

[1] One of the defenders' patrols, a detachment of ten US Marines led by Lieutenant Gerald Thomas, met a Caco force on the waterfront that was headed for the National Bank.

Thomas spotted the head of a column of Cacos emerge from a side street and ordered his Marines who were hidden by the darkness of the arcade into a hasty ambush.