On 11 April 1797 Colonel Thomas Maitland of the 62nd Regiment of Foot landed in Port-au-Prince, and wrote in a letter to his brother that British forces in Saint-Domingue had been "annihilated" by the yellow fever. Service in Saint-Domingue was extremely unpopular in the British Army owing to the terrible death toll caused by yellow fever. One British officer wrote of his horror of seeing his friends "drowned in their own blood" while "some died raving Mad". Simcoe used the new British troops to push back the Haitians under Toussaint, but in a counter-offensive, Toussaint and Rigaud stopped the offensive. Toussaint retook the fortress at Mirebalais. On 7 June 1797, Toussaint attacked Fort Churchill in an assault that was as noted for its professionalism as for its ferocity. Under a storm of artillery, the Haitians placed ladders on the walls and were driven back four times, with heavy losses. Even though Toussaint had been repulsed, the British were astonished that he had turned a group of former slaves with no military experience into troops whose skills were the equal of a European army.