French reprisals trapped colonial soldiers between two lethal fates.

Evidence

For colonial soldiers throughout the colony, time was running out. They knew they might fall prey at any moment to the increasingly indiscriminate violence exercised by the French against colonial troops whose loyalty they suspected. Even if they survived these reprisals, they might end up dead at the hands of the victorious insurgents. Rumors were spread among the colonial troops that the French troops were preparing to leave the colony. It was time, such rumors suggested, to make a choice between joining the insurgents or dying at their hands. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 1019