EXTRACT FROM LE TOUR DU MONDE VOL. XXXVIII. 975eme LIV. pp 162-224
Translation by Brian D. Oakes
A couple of notes on the translation:
The 3rd of November 1871, at 10 o'clock in the morning, the Caraïbe entered into the port of Cap-Haïtien, melting the waves at a prudent speed, due to the numerous reefs with which it is seeded. It had rained copiously the night before. Traces of mist like a white crepe veiled the mountain tops; the sea was a lugubrious black; the steamer had a sad look. We deserted the cabins. All the passengers had gone up to the deck loaded with its suitcases. Leant over the rail, I was looking over the side not able to see the port. We had not therefore arrived. All of a sudden the steamer stopped. Captain Dardignac came up at that moment on the bridge.
Will there be any mishaps, Captain? I asked him.
The captain looked at me with his creole nonchalance and answered:
We have arrived.
- You want to laugh, Captain?
- Not at all, Here is the Cap.....
- Where?
- Right in front of your eyes.....
To the right, that house that curves,
under a red tiled roof, with its superimposed
double row of arches is the port office.
A bit further, towards Picolet, spreads Carenage,
a suburb of fishermen and porters.
In front you have the customs and the stores of consignment merchants.
The Cap, this! I disappointedly exclaimed. The Cap! it's here, the ancient Guariko, the capital of Guakanagarick, the hospitable kacik of Marien who encouraged Christopher Columbus to settle in these parts? It's here the grand and rich city, seat of the Northern juristiction and of a Council of the Admiralty, the town of which Moreau de Saint-Méry left a babylonian description and that was nicknamed the Paris of Saint-Domingue?
- Yes, it's Cap-Haïtien....† replied the Captain.
Meanwhile, at the sound of the canon, signal to anchor, canoes detached themselves from the wharf, powered by oars, coming alongside the steamer. Waiting for the passengers to disembark, the boats danced on their side, violently thrown about by the mouvement of the waves, agitated by the paddlewheels, like nut shells on a lake where a mute swan has stirred up the water while swimming. I decended into one of these canoes to be transported to shore with my baggage.
Upon putting my foot on the small planked wharf, that juts out in front of the port office, I, along with the other passengers, had to submit my passport to the examination of the commandant and have it registered. This first formality accomplished, it was necessary to go to the Place (Fortress?), under the surveillance of a police officer.
At the Place, the sentry, undoubtedly tired from his prolonged watch, was sitting in front of the guard house, on whose wall leant his rifle, a tiresome burden, ripping apart lengths of sugar cane with his beautiful teeth.
Leaving the office of the Place, I went to take my baggage from customs, where I would find my porter. Even though we had agreed on a price on one piastre, he demanded four more.
I asked about an hotel. I did'nt have a great deal of choice. The only one was near the Whites (Marché des Blancs) market, in Neuve (New) street, parallel to the Saint-Louis pier. I took myself there.
The general manager of the Traveler's Hotel was Mr. Oswald Durand, the poet of Rires et Pleurs (Laugh and Cry).
I informed myself of the price of a room which was settled upon, after a short discussion, at one and a half piastres per day. The agreement set at that figure, I asked for my card. The meals that were served me, and that I would not have touched under any other circumstances, appeared seasoned with ants dignified for Apicus; and, as I was very tired, I slept on a frame, -- a type of camp cot built simply of a ship sail stretched on a folding-bed in a damp corner reserved for wayfarers, -- as perfectly as on the best mattress, in a snug alcove. Everything is rest and bed to the traveler.
The next day, after my breakfast, I started to visit the city.
Cap-Haïtien, as named by the locals, or Cap-Hayti, as it's called by the English and Germans, has a full history. Pirates founded it in 1670; the Spanish took it many times. Ogé and Chavannes were broken upon the wheel there; Sonthonax tore up Colbert's Black Code there; d'Esparhês, d'Hinisdal, de Lassalle, de Montesquion-Fezenzac came there; Leborgne, Rey, Kerverseau left there; Villaret-Joyeuse blockaded it with a mighty fleet; the army of Paris was decimated there by yellow fever; Toussaint-Louverture was put aboard ship there with his family on the Héros; General Victor-Emmanuel Leclerc died there; President Sylvain Salnave was born there.
From 1640 to this day, that is to say in less than three centuries, Cap has experienced four terrible fires. : the first was lit by the Spanish en 1690, the second, by Bouckman, the 10th of June 1793, during the uprising ignited by the conflict between the governor Galbaud and members of the second civil commission; (no mention of a third fire in the text) the fourth, by Henry Christophe in 1802, upon the arrival of the expeditionary force.
Add to that the earthquake of 1842 and innumerable bombardments. The last dates from 1865; it was the work of Bull-Dog, naval warrior of England, at the instigation of president F. Geffrard, who used foreign cannon to fire on his own citizens! Also the old colonial city is no longer recognizable. As soon as he takes his first steps inside, the traveller is overtaken by sad disillusionment. We are, in effect, far from the landscape that pervaded Cap-Français, the Cap of the reign of Louis XV.
During that prosperous period they counted six monumental fountains, not to mention those of the prisons, barracks, Jesuit college, and Religious convent. Eight locations, Champ de Mars, Place d'Armes, Place Montarcher, Place Royale, Place Saint-Victor, Place Cluny, all of these largest properties had their uses and their charms. At present the daily market is held on the latter one.
How the Cap looks different today! I walked, bruising my feet on the roughness of an uneven pavement, in the streets whose sloping sides are traversed with ditches that serve as drainage canals for rain runoff.
To the left and the right, the colonial houses are in the process of falling down brick by brick. The sun, the moon, the rains have dug the bricks, crumbled the mortar. Everywhere roofs are caving in, the openings yawning wide. The doors have lost sections, but their hinges remain. Weedy grasses cover the entryways and the lower rooms with their melancholy vegetation. The wall panels, torn by large lizards, hold up against all rules of geometry. Festoons of lianas replace the fallen eaves.
What has become of the public monuments erected by the French? None of them has survived.
The governor's palace is just a vestige. Christophe burned it in 1802 with his own hand. He wanted the soldiers of General Leclerc to find only ashes. Two statues, headless and heartrending, lay amongst the remains, far from their pedestals, producing the effect, in the moonlight, of decapitated cadavers leaving their tombs.
The treasury offered the same view.
Built in 1774, in front of the theater, on the south side of Place d'Armes, that served it as a churchyard, and restored in 1825, under president Boyer, by Mr. Besse, the French architect, the old paroissial church, simple in construction, like a Basilica, reminds one of a pie from which the upper crust has been removed. She no longer has a roof and her bell tower is truncated. On the other hand, her walls, almost intact, have not suffered from the earthquakes. Solitary guardians of this abandoned temple, where the faithful no longer go to kneel, are two stone saints, Peter and Paul , are still upright in their tight niches, nestled between their columns on the façade of the church on each side of the great doors, above the lowest entry.
Near by we see other ruins, separated from the church by a wide street. This building, who's purpose I did not know, had been built by Christophe. The remains of the torn-down walls haphazardly rise up with bizarre silhouettes.
Notably there is one pile of debris that has retained the shape of a disemboweled tower remaining standing.
The plant named Sans-cesse (without-end), because of its non-stop flowering, amuses itself by decorating all these deserted places, mixing the racemes of its pretty little tender pink five petaled flowers with the saffron color of the rapidly multiplying thistle species, transforming the ruins to an indistinguishable wild flowerbed where the anolis hopping along the tree trunks push out their roots as if in the soil and to which the friendship vines, wrap themselves around, producing golden wigs.
A few hundred houses, saved from the disasters that I have mentioned, have been rebuilt since. Of one floor or more, of pitch-pine, of brick, of different dates, black, white, yellow, red, put up in a haphazard way having nothing to do with order or beauty, hear and there in the middle of the ruins too large now for the old town.
In compensation for this poverty, there are two monuments, or in truth, two grandiose ruins that the traveler who visits the Cap, either for business or pleasure, cannot in good faith avoid visiting and that the Capois' show to foreigners with great pleasure and with even greater pride : these are the place of Sans-Souci and the Laferrière citadel, the residences Christophe preferred to this good city that he had demolished.
They spoke to me with an enthusiasm that I thought was stained with chauvinism; but, thanks to M. Karnes Gourgues, one of the most distinguished lawyers of the bar in Cap, I was made clear to me that, in reality, this enthusiasm is not at all exaggerated.
These marvels are not far from the city, close together, and it is easy to visit both in the same trip.
Without having to bother myself with preparations for the trip, seeing that my guide had taken care of everything, we started on our way at about four o'clock in the afternoon the 26th of January, mounted on excellent little horses, light and vigorous, with nervous legs and hard heads. The island could produce many of these horses, if the owners of these hattes (steeds?) were to apply themselves to improving the race. We were armed with a letter of recommendation from General Nord Alexis for the authorities we were likely to meet on the way.
To leave the town we passed the mouth of the river Haut-du-Cap {footnote: Since my trip a suspension bridge has been built over the river} in a ferry; then we followed the shore on a sea that was coming in, sending waves and foam up to the harnesses of our mounts.
We then went by Saline, leaving to our right the fort Saint-Michel, taken in 1802 by the native General Petion, and retaken on the same day by the French General Clausel, and to our left, Petite-Anse, a village that merits mentioning on three accounts.
Firstly, she sits on the presumed site of the principal village of Guakanagarick; next, the first plantings of bamboo, brought from Martinique, were planted in 1759 on the Porte-Lance plantation, in this commune; lastly, during the colonial troubles, Christophe commanded here for a short time with the grade of captain of the gendarmerie.
The route to Milot, six good lieues (27 km), is terrible at this time of the year as the rains change all the roads into an abyss of mud and stone.
After having crossed the Grand-Pré savanna, the battlefield upon which Christophe wanted to attract the white troops, because his black hoards would have the advantage, and having crossed a torrential river overflowing the bridge that has kept the name of a Frenchman who had his throat cut on his orders, we made our entry into the village in a less than triumphant manner at about 8 o'clock in the evening.
It was pitch black. All on the huts were closed up. After much going back and forth, and after many fruitless requests for information, we found refuge at the home of a mulatto well named Mr. Jolicoeur, who welcomed us with an earnestness above all thanks. We passed the night in a hut that he had built a few steps from his own temporary habitation, on straw mats placed on the ground, wrapped in covers that we had the foresight to bring with us, as, in the mountains, the weather is cool and humid.
Rising with the sun, we broke a biscuit that we ate with a good cup of hot coffee accompanied by a grog of old brandy, Next, getting back up on our horses, that Mr. Jolicoeur had let roam the night before in a field of grass where they had the leisure to pasture all night, we took ourselves to the commandant of the commune, the General of the Turenne Jean-Gilles brigade. He was not there. His lieutenant, at the presentation of the letter from General Nord Alexis, took a soldier from his post who led us first to the San-Souci palace, named after the chateau built near Potsdam by Frederic II of Prussia.
This site is found on the lower slopes of the mountain Bonnet-†-l'Evêque.
In the past, said my guide while walking, a raised road led up to the entrance composed of two iron gates with a complicated locking mechanism. Aldive {footnote: a rum distillery} and a State armory were on the right outside of the walls. Also outside the walls to the left was the church with a rotunda covered with slate, where a triangular pediment surmounted the entrance decorated with four columns. Behind the church we could see the Council chamber.
Iwill tell you a story about the Council chamber. --I'm listening to you even harder, if that's possible.
They had just finished building this group of buildings. Only one master roofer was busy putting up the last tiles. The king, who was inspecting the work, stopped in front to get an overall view. At a certain moment he took out his snuff-box, plunged his fingers in and began to inhale a large dose this macouba (?) that he had imported from Martinique for his noble nostrils. It seems that the master roofer, who, from the top of the roof, was following the movements of the king, also had the snuff habit.
But having lost his modest rat's tail (must be some form of snuff), he had had to go without for several days, an intolerable privation for him, as he would have voluntarily argued with Aristotle that :
Snuff is divine and has no equal.
The temptation was strong. There was a torment of Tantale. Not being able to resist, the master roofer descended, advanced on the king, stopped a dozen paces from him, gave a military salute, and bowed three times.
--And now! You, what do you want? Demanded Henry I. --Sire, sire, he replied. It has been nearly eight days that I have been without my snuffbox. Would it be indiscrete of me to ask for a pinch from Your Majesty?
--Come, come; take, take, continued Henry I, in this feigned condescension lay the cruel game. He turned at the same time to his Royal-Dahomey soldiers that followed him all the time, wearing, rolled around their legs, in their boots, the lianes † lampes, terrible switches with which they executed his orders, he added :
--If he has the bad luck to sneeze, beat him to death!
This order, heard by the master roofer, completely cooled his desire to try the royal macouba. A convulsive movement started all his extremities to trembling, leaving him tottering.
--Come, come, said Henry I.
The master roofer, overtaken by surprise, stayed frozen to the spot, while his wild eyes jumped from Henry I to his Royal-Dahomey troops who had prepared their switches, and to his mute companions, but mostly concentrated on the principle actor of this tragic comedy.
--Come, come, take some more, the king, who could not stand a moments hesitation to obey him, commanded with impatience.
Our snuff taker took some more without sneezing. The king continued to hold out his snuffbox.
--Sire, sire blubbered the craftsman,
it is too kind of you, I believe I am abusing. --No, No, replied Henry I, whose irritation seemed to be increasing, or I whip on the spot
The master roofer, trembling, plunged his fingers again into the snuffbox, which seemed to him very full. No sneeze, even a muted one, was heard.
--Come, come, again, again,commanded the king.
The snuff taker, terrified, opened his big eyes and said :
--If I may, sire? --What! Said the king stridently, take it to the last shred.
The meaning of these last words were very clear. The order given to the guards did not need clarifying. The master roofer complied without hope. The effect of the royal macouba was being felt. His olfactory membrane was burning; but he suppressed his sneezes, accepting this unusual torture in silence, before the impassive king and his silent soldiers.
When the contents of the snuffbox were finished, without the taker having let escape the least nasal sound, which is prodigious [under the circumstances. You understand he had to do the impossible in order not to sneeze], the king said to him:
--To the devil, scoundrel! You are lucky. My steward will give you two gourdes, a snuffbox, and a bottle of my macouba that you find so good. Go.
And content with having fulfilled this whim with the Domitien (Domitian?) or to the Cambyse (?), Henry I returned to the palace.
They say from that day forward the master roofer never took snuff again.
Here we are in the court of honor, continues my guide; it was heptagonal. The actual palace was composed of a central pavilion and two living-quarter wings that terminated in square pavilions. A large door on each side of which was a lion guarding a chest full of gold, gave access to the ground floor that was used for a warehouse and storage for products that came out of the royal mills (factories). An outside double stairway led up to the first floor. The queen lived in the left wing and the king in the right, next to which was a huge billiard room, because Christophe practiced, with ivory billiard balls, making cannonade shots with human heads.
In the central court, enclosed by a railing of iron bars alternating with cement pillars, was a caïmitier (type of tree) nearly as famous, but under another name, as the oak tree of Louis IX. The black despot took pleasure in passing judgement in its shade, which most often meant the loss of life. On the sides and opposite the palace, were the lodgings of the princes, the barracks, and the stables. The various buildings were surrounded by beautiful gardens filled with freshness, greenery, and laced with irrigation canals.
It was in the upper room of his pavilion, where he slept, that Cristophe Henry I died.
The 15th of August 1820, we saw him struck by apoplexy in the church at Limonade, bending over and back brusquely three times; the last time he hit his head so hard on the wall that he cut his head and blood flowed copiously. You could still see, not too long ago, a bloody stain on the same wall. From that day the king felt very ill. Justamont, a white doctor saved by Christophe from the massacres of 1804, but who, in a fit of furry, he had killed by repeated beating in 1810, was no longer there to tend him. The bad news spread with a desperate rapidity. The 2nd of October, he hears of the defection of the 8th infantry regiment at Saint-Marc; three days later occurs the death of his lieutenant, Jean Claude, whose head is taken to Boyer; lastly, when he could hardly stand up for being so feeble, they bring him the announcement that, on the morning of the 8th of the same month, his troops in Cap have rebelled.
He tries to ease his pain and orders that they prepare a bath of hot peppers, tafia (fresh rum), pepper, and macouba for him on the spot. He hoped to find a little bit of strength from this heat-producing infusion. On getting out of the bath he felt less weak, but, when he tried to get up on his horse, it proved impossible despite all his efforts to get his leg into the stirrup and onto the saddle.
Two guards approach and help him, by holding him under the arms, to get to his rooms. His courage could not substitute for his weakness. There, he called for the queen Marie-Louise and their children. They, believing that his intention was to have them perish with him, as he had lost all hope of living, remained deaf to this last appeal.
So Henry I, the king who was half hero half tiger, who wanted to transform his people, who didn't bother about the means to accomplish it, this king who had been the terror of his entourage and his kingdom, realized at the supreme hour that it is not by cruelty that you win the hearts of your people or affirm ones' power. Left by his loved ones, hated by the people of the north, unpopular throughout the island, seeing himself about to fall into the hands of his enemies and possibly a victim of remorse, he takes his pistol from the desk close at hand and discharges it into his heart.
In care of his family, his body is transported in a hammock to the citadel that we are going to visit. There was no other shroud available.
These ruins having been explored, and Milot having nothing else of interest to see, we remounted our horses and took off for the mountains, led by the soldier.
After riding for two hours, on a path cut into the rock so steep at times that we had to go on foot getting handholds on scrub and grass, our feet balancing on large stones in the path, pulling our poor mounts by their reins.
At the end of three quarters of an hour of a climb made like a quadruped, at the bend of an arduous path, we discovered with great surprise the citadel, somber, enormous, coming upon us as if to push us back with its formidable prow. We arrived at its foot completely winded.
It is still today a great ruin, which, at 2500 feet altitude, saddens with its shadow the mountainous crest of Bonnet-†-Evêque, just like a castle on the Rhine. Presents itself inaccessibly in the middle of the clouds.
At this moment we cannot take in its massiveness, even though we can touch it. Nowhere, in France, in England, in the United States, have I seed anything as imposing. The Laferrière citadel is truly a wonder.
Our guide tied up the horses in the high grass, and we enter by an archway in a guardhouse. Three soldiers in rags were warming themselves by a small fire on the flagstones.
Henry Christophe, the terrible Titan of Laferrière, Mr. Karnès Gourgues tells me, was elected president by 50 votes against 14 for General Paul Romain and one for Alexandre Petion; but, when his friend Juste Hugonin wrote to him from Port-au-Prince that with the new constitution he would not have the power of a corporal, he firmly took on June 2, 1811, despite the senate, the royal title that escaped him when he was at a party at Fort-Liberté where a bean cake was cut for him. This is, they say, the origin of the civil war between the north and the south that would last 9 long years.
From January 1804, being only the General of Division, Councilor of State, and Commander in Chief of the Northern Department, on the orders of Governor General Dessalines, he started to build this fortress based on the plans of a colored man, an engineering officer, Henri Barré. All of the people were forced into labor. The young inhabitants, even the most delicate, carried stones, bricks, boulders on their heads. When they fell under their loads the soldiers got them back up again with lashes from their switches. The black despot forced nature in more ways than one.
Having completed his citadel after the assassination of J.-J. Dessalines, he transported his archives, his treasury, that P. Boyer would pillage, as well as arms and war munitions, which, ultimately, he would never use. Behind the walls of this impregnable refuge he braved the assaults of the soldiers of the Republic. It seems that only God could dismantle this new Babel. During the year 1817, lightening fell on the citadel igniting the gunpowder magazine, this blew up part of the construction.
With a word from my steward our guide took a fagot from the fire and, blowing with all the force of his lungs on this improvised torch, he lit our way and preceded us into the somber galleries of this nether world.
The interior of the citadel in not only doleful it is also tumbledown.
We enter into a courtyard. On the right is the exterior wall of the fortress. On the left is a dor by which we enter into a darkened room. This is the bathroom. The walls are cracked. We follow a corridor. It takes us to a vaulted billiard room. Beyond that is the treasury, a low room full of stagnant water where there remains but two iron strongboxes, empty and rusting. After that are the jail cells, with deep trap-dungeons. By a stairway, on which the mosses and grasses have spread a velvet green carpet, we went up to the first floor. We are in the king's rooms, naked as a cave. The walls are covered in lichens. You could say they have leprosy. The rain, filtering through the disjointed stones of the crumbling ceiling, has formed, on the flagstones, calcareous deposits over which I trip.
Our guide's light goes out. While he is relighting it we stop in the courtyard. All the plants of the ruins have installed themselves there and are prospering. In the middle rises the tomb of Prince Noel, brother of Henry I's queen, who mysteriously disappeared. This tomb is of a square shape. They say it is empty. The powder magazine is in front of us; everywhere there are piles of stone cannonballs. We continue climbing. Through a hole in the wall I look out over the countryside. The view is too vast. We cross the barracks ; they could house 10,000 men. We cross the upper batteries, and we see the long cannons on their broken, tottering gun-carriages; many empty gun ports.
On top of the ravages of time, says my companion, has followed the depredations of the junk dealers. They have taken all of the good pieces that were still in place and sold them as scrap metal.
We continue our explorations. To the right, here are the lodges. I look in. They are full of rifle balls. On the walls the names multiply. We remount. The climb becomes difficult. We clamber from terrace to terrace. This operation occupies our hands and our feet. The shrubs grow like feathers on the brow of this immense fortress, buffeted by the winds, they let fall on our heads drops of rain that have remained on their leaves.
We arrive, not without pain, at the summit.
From there, in good weather, you can see in one look the magnificent northern plain, which, from the Massacre river all the way to Port Margot, covers 180 square lieues (~800 sq. km.). Christophe, a short time before his death, thought to raise again this extraordinary edifice!
Leaning on a wall, stiffening myself against the attraction of the abyss, I contemplated. Beneath me, at the foot of Bonnet-†-Evèque, lay the palace of San-souci looking like a large pile of rocks; before us I saw the Cap, a demolished city, protected by the Bande-du-Nord, where the Cormier plantation is located, where, in 1758, J.-J. Dessalines was born, and not at Grande-Rivière, as the historian T. Madiou mistakenly stated; to the left and the right, as far as the eye could see, an expanse of forest, plains without end, of which Guayubin, Grande-Rivière, the Massacre river, the Haut-du-Cap river, spread their dark greenery out from their sinuous whiteness; innumerable hamlets, carried on the backs of the mountains or hidden in their folds, and that can be seen when turning of one's feet like a weathervane, towards the four corners of the compass; Limbé, celebrated by the ferocious crimes of Makandal; Acul-du-Nord, visited by Christopher Columbus in 1492; Dondon, birth place of V. Ogé; Quartier-Morin, where the first experimental plantings of sugarcane were made; Limonade, where they found the anchor of the Nina, that sank on the night of December 24 to 25 in 1492; Grande-Rivière, the Guaraouai of the Indians, the Sainte-Rose of the colonists, witness to the uprising of J.-B. Chavannes; Sainte-Suzanne, whose coffee is famous; Terrier-Rouge, in the neighborhood of which C. Columbus situated the Nativity fort; Fort-Liberté, just before Fort-Dauphin, where you find fort Labouque, state prison under Soulouque and birth place of Bruno Blachet in 1760; Ouanaminthe, called Guanaminto by the Indians; above Grand-Yaque, 14 lieues (~60 km.) from Cap, in the Dominican Republic, is San-Francisco de Monte-Plata, that raises much sought after cattle; further still, Puerto-de-Plata, at the foot of its dazzling mountain, that the Spanish believed, due to an optical illusion, covered in snow and named Sierra de Plata. Furthest away, the sea, brilliant from the rays of the sun coming out from the clouds that blocked it and following the capricious contour of the coast, made a sparkling frame for this landscape to which I could find nothing to compare.
When we came down from the citadel, and before leaving Bonnet-†-Evèque, we went to see Ramier palace, another destroyed fort, done by her neighbor, of course. We made an outside tour of this place. At the foot of the walls, lying in the grass, were cannons and mortars of all sizes.
It was nine o'clock. We put ourselves back in the saddle. Now it was necessary to go back down the Bonnet-†-Evèque, which is more perilous, if not more difficult, than going up. Briefly, after three hours of careful walking on steep slopes, we discovered amongst the trees, the ruins that we had visited in the morning. Soon after we were in front of our host's door.
At the sound of our horse's hooves, Mr. Jolicoeur appeared on the scene. We entered into his house, where, on a square table decorated with the best dishes from his cupboard, awaited one of those creole plantation meals, thanks to which, if one has a good appetite, one is marvelously restored with pois-riz (rice and beans), boiled plantains, that replace bread, and the compulsory tasso.
During the meal, Mr. Karnès Gourgues recounted several anecdotes, amongst which the following :
By the various acts that I have told you about, he tells me, you know already that, according to the king, everyone must cede to his impetuous desires. The following fact will prove to you that he executed people without any real proof or indices of their guilt. He thought and acted like Tiberius.
Conqueror of the Southern troops at Sibert, the 1st of January 1807, he marched, with his army uncontested, on Port-au-Prince. The Generals Petion, Yayou, Lys, and Caneaux would shut themselves up in the city and organize the defense, in such a way that the king, thinking that he could take it without firing a shot, found himself reduced to putting the city under siege. He set up his general quarters on the battlefield, where he had remained master, and from there directed the military operations.
One day, he sent Colonel Ambroise to bombard the town. He went the artillery store, confided to the care of Captain Stanislas Desroches, to get the munitions he needed. The Captain naturally gave him the quantities asked for and drew a receipt.
Unfortunately during the attack, due to incompetence, the Colonel was repulsed by those under siege and, forced to abandon his batteries, would return in disorder to camp with his artillery men.
The king welcomed him with reproaches that smacked heavily in the face of the soldier.
--Colonel, you are a coward, and you will be shot. --Sire, it is not my fault : I was short on ammunition. --You should have had it. --Sire, the keeper of artillery stores refused to give me them.
With this response, that stated the extenuating circumstances, the king, overtaken by a fit of anger, went to the store. Captain Stanislas Desroches, sitting at his desk, was quietly playing chess with one of his friends, Captain Etienne Léo, who died as commander of the Department of Cap, and who's tomb you will see on the Champ de Mars, next to the alter of the nation, under the palm of liberty. --Captain, said the king to the officer who stood up at his entrance, you refused to give munitions to Colonel Ambroise? --What, sire? But that's not true. If Your Majesty wishes.
And, on uttering these words, the Captain went towards the desk on which there were two pistols. Henry I thought that he wanted to use these arms
Bayonet that scoundrel! Ordered the king to his soldiers in a tone that demanded no hesitation.
Ah! My poor wife! exclaimed Captain Desroches; and he immediately fell, pierced with wounds.
On the order of the king, the officers who accompanied him arranged, forthwith, the taking of an inventory of the materials entrusted to the Captain. Upon opening the drawer of the desk, one of the first papers on which they put their hands was the receipt of Colonel Ambroise, a receipt which the king had not given the Captain time to show him, and a letter from his wife announcing the birth of their third child.
Henry Ist , going back on his hasty decision, but too late, took under his protection the three children he had just orphaned so unjustly. He would place them in the Royal school, installed at Milot and that was directed by Mr. Hippolyte Gélin, who, sent from France with several other young creoles by the Civil Commissioner of Roume, in 1799, had undertaken their studies at the Liancourt college.
After having dined with the appetite of cavaliers, nothing else held us in Milot; the good weather had returned and we dreamed of returning to Cap. We decided, for varieties sake, that instead of taking the road upon which we had come, we would take the big road built by Henry Ist for his personal comfort across the plain of Grand-Prè, where one will find the remains of a famous camp built by him.
By the road we are taking, better kept then than it is today, Mr. Karnès Gourgues tells me, Henry Ist delivered himself to Cap, surrounded by the major officers of his court and followed by his guards.
A wagon driver, with his wagon and his oxen, was coming in the opposite direction. The wagon driver, -- where is the flattery, that is due the courtiers, as they say, going to sit? -- the wagon driver, in order to appear agreeable to His Majesty, started to rave against his oxen, to one of which he had given the name Pétion. --Hey Pétion! Hey useless hack! Hey trollop! Here is a worthless Pétion, lightning strike me!
Henry I heard these insults, and stopping, called over the wagon driver. --Ah! You call your ox Pétion, why? He asked.
--Well sire--, he replied, satisfied ahead of time of the response he was about to produce, --it is because Pétion is a bad mulatto, who makes war against Your Majesty. And when I whip the ox I feel I am hitting your enemy.-- --To hell, scoundrel! Exclaimed the king, this is how you show your lack of respect for my fellow countryman!..
And he who is named Dessalines, called the jumping emperor during his life, and devouring hydra after his death, he added :
--Whip this insolent to death!.
The order was executed to the letter. Whereas the ox, Pétion, and his yoke companion followed, at their own pace, the road home, the wagon driver was left to die in the ditch like a dog. As such was ordained the justice of the king.
Galloping at full speed, like true couriers, we arrived, at about five o'clock in the evening, at Fossette, second suburb of Cap, opposite to Carénage, by crossing, without getting too wet, a ravine that becomes a torrent after it rains, when Mr. Karnès Gourgues tells me :
You see? --Yes, and? --Coming out of the theater, that was built in forty days, even though it was necessary to redo the carpentry, and that is today the home of the Haïtienne, the king was returning to San-Souci at about midnight. During the show the rains had fallen in abundance. The royal procession found a torrential river in the ravine that they had easily crossed two hours earlier. Do you know what the king did to cross it? --My goodness, no. --It's very simple. He ordered a squadron of horsemen to descend into the ravine that broke and divided the current in such a way that his carriage rolled across without even getting wet.
My companion was just finished speaking when we heard, in Dauphine street, where we had entered, a bizarre song :
C'é pa moé qui di (It's not me who says Tête à Lénave gro, gro; that Lenave's head is big, big; C'é August' qui di It's August who says Tête à Lénave gro, gro; that Lenave's head is big, big
I turned my head towards where the voice had come from. On the sidewalk was sat some deformed, I don't know what, that sang some incomprehensible, I don't know what. It wasn't a human like any other; it was a mixture of Vulcan, Caliban, and Quasimodo. I had never seen a more hideous being. Short like a gnome, with a stomach like a Hindu idol, the head, -- is it really head one should say? -- heavily caved in between the shoulders and bristling with a black, frizzy wool, the hands and feet webbed, the mouth made like a mask, armed with teeth like a shark, this monster, that we cannot call by any other name, was there, crouching, singing his unintelligible song for me, not doubting the attention of which he was the object, that all Paris would go to see, that would dethrone Millie-Christine and the Dog Man, if he was used by one of those showmen that know how to make such money as to make all the theater directors jealous, with the living freaks of nature.
At first, he had attracted me; but now that I had seen him, he saddened me.
What is this wonder of ugliness? I asked my companion. --This species of missing link? It is Sovereign, the storeroom guard of Mr. Nemours Bernardin.
To get away fast from this poor man, I gave the spurs to my horse.
I was so tired on entering the Travelers Hotel, right to the door of which Mr. Karnès Gourgues had accompanied me, that, without hearing the hotel manager-poet, who was probably asking me if he had to serve me a meal, I entered into my lair and threw myself, fully clothed, onto the cot which felt as good to me as on the first night I slept in it, a very acceptable bunk.
A couple of notes on the translation:
Comments in ( ) are my own or question words for which I have no
translation or do not know the meaning of. If anyone else can
help me with these it would be much appreciated.
Comments in { } are footnotes of the author that I have
introduced into the body of the text.
Comments in [ ] are La Selve's text comments in parentheses.
I would very much appreciate any comments or suggestions anyone
has on the translation job. Would anyone be interested in editing
this text into readable English once it is completed?
name: Okap.html
created: 18 May 1997