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:
Once installed, what I wanted to see before anything else and without delay was the historic bridge, witness, the 17th of October 1806, to the assassination of Dessalines.
The journey being only five to six lieues (25 km.) to get to and from Sibert, the plantation on which Christophe defeated Pétion, required no more than a morning. In order to have a ride I addressed myself to Mr. Baudet in the Rue des Casernes. He gave me his chestnut mare, a fine beast of Dominican origin, that he rented only to gentlemen. I was very touched at this mark of high distinction that four piastres amply paid. His kinsman, Mr. Toulmé Duplessis, graciously offered to accompany me.
Pont-Rouge is almost at the gates to Port-au-Prince.
We left the city by the Saint-Joseph gate, next to which is a church, recently constructed following the plans of Mr. Brébant, a french architect; we took the road to Croix-des-Bouquets and, after leaving fort Lamarre on the left, we arrived, after a short gallop, before a small bridge composed of a single gothic arch with rough stone parapets, traversing a stream bed that is dry most of the year and that would not be worth visiting if it had not been rendered notorious by the assassination that my companion, a well educated young man who went by a name dear to the Haïtian Muses {See. La Litterature Noire}, told me, according to B. Ardouin and T. Madiou, as he could not tell me like Enos at the siege of Troy : I was there.
It was at Marchand that Dessalines learn about the revolt of Mécerou in the South. With this news, he cried : "I want my horse to tread in blood all the way to Tiburon" Not knowing that Christophe had been proclaimed head of the revolution, he wrote to tell him to be ready to enter into the campaign. He also sent to General Pétion the order to march on Les Cayes at the head of the troops of the western second division.
The command of Marchand having been confided to Vernet, minister of finance, he, exhausted, directed the rebellion himself. Those who were called to the dangerous honor of accompanying him were : the generals Mentor and Bazelais, the colonels Roux and Charlotin Marcadieux, the secretaries Dupuy and Boisrond-Tonnerre. The 1st and 2nd battalions of the 4th half-brigade formed the escort.
Arriving at Saint-Marc, he ordered the 3rd battalion of the 4th , that was holding the garrison, to join the first two. On leaving the town, he met one of his aides-de-camp, Delpêche, on the main road, who, fleeing the insurrection, had left Petit-Goave to join him, and who recommended to the emperor that he not approach Port-au-Prince with an imposing army. Dessalines, as immovable in his plans as he was decisive in his actions, without asking him for any clarification, called him traitor, and ordered him out of his sight. Delpêche, mortified, took off towards Saint-Marc, entered there, changed horses, and pushed by blind faith, hurried to follow the emperor. Soldiers of the 3rd battalion of the 4th would bayonet him at Lanzac.
Entering into Arcahaie, Dessalines so a thick smoke on the south coast At this moment, he said, "my compatriot Pétion is giving fire to the revolutionaries." He sent forward the six companies of the 3rd half-brigade that he found in the town, under the command of Colonel Thomas and of the Battalion Chief Gédéon "Do you have the heart, he asked his two officers, to march in blood all the way to Les Cayes?" and he added "The southern Department will soon be a solitude such that you will not even hear the sound of a cockcrow."
Thomas and Gédéon replied that they would do their duty. Towards ten o'clock in the evening, the 16th , they were not more than three kilometers from Pont-Rouge. A traveler, who was ahead of them, announced in the city that the vanguard of the emperor's army were approaching.
The Generals Guérin, Vaval and Yayou went out together leading the soldiers who marched in disorder and who had been won to the side of the republicans through their promises. As for Colonel Thomas and the Battalion Chief, they were questioned "There is nothing to consider, Guérin told them, choose between death or holding to the revolution." They said they would make no decision without first seeing Pétion. They were taken to the office of the military division where he was to be found. Thomas, who showed hesitation about leaving the emperor was consigned to the Place. Gédéon, who freely took the side of the insurrection, was placed immediately at the head of the 3rd half-brigade lined up on the Vallière square and to which Pétion gave a sign of his confidence by not disarming them.
Gédéon advised Guérin that the emperor had recommended to them that they wait for him at Pont-Rouge and that he wanted, on arriving, to see him at this post from afar. Guérin pushed him to undress and put the uniform on an adjutant-major of the 21st of Léogane, who resembled him. This officer was placed at the Pont-Rouge, at the head of a battalion of the 15th , in order to better draw the emperor into the trap.
The 17th, at five o'clock in the morning, His Majesty left Arcahaie, followed only by his general staff. The 4th half-brigade, that could have escorted him, was sent to Montrouis for accouterment. Continuing the journey several locals were met coming from Port-au-Prince. Asking what was going on in the town, they replied that there was nothing extraordinary going on. The emperor continued riding with no idea of what was ahead.
Coming to Drouillard, a plantation that we just passed on our left and where there were a number of workshops, we heard no cries announcing the revolt.
At nine o'clock, already being two hundred steps from Pont-Rouge, the emperor turned towards Boisrond-Tonnerre, who was next to him :
"--Do you see Gédéon in the middle of the bridge? He asked. He is a slave to discipline. I will reward him."
He whom he took for Gédéon was the adjutant who had taken the uniform, as I had the honor of telling you previously.
"--But, sire" observed Colonel Léger, a Southern officer making up part of the general staff, "either I am singularly mistaken, or those are Southern soldiers"
-You see poorly replied Dessalines. "What would they be doing here?"
At that same instant he heard the order to prepare arms and cries of : Halt, emperor! Halt, emperor!
With that impetuousness that was his alone, he threw himself into the middle of the bayonets.
Soldiers he cried, "don't you recognize me? I am your emperor!"
He grabbed a coco-macaque (sword?) that was suspended from his saddle, swung around like a windmill, and turned back the bayonets that threatened him. Sergeant Duverger, on the 15th , ordered the fusilier Garat to shoot. He fired. The emperor, who was not hit, charged his horse at full gallop. A second shot was fired from the ranks of the 16th, and Dessalines, hit this time, cried out : "Help me, Charlotin!"
Marcadieux ran towards his friend, wanting to cover him with his body. The squadron chief Delaunay, of the South, smashed his head in with his saber. Dessalines remained in his saddle. Yayou plunged his dagger into his chest three times and killed him. He fell like an inert mass, at the feet of his assassin, all running with blood, that had gushed onto his clothes. The officers who had been with him, seeing him dead, fled, except Mentor, his councilor, who cried : The tyrant is dead! Long live Liberty! Long live equality!
There followed a terrible scene.
They stripped the emperor; leaving only his shift; they cut off his fingers in order to easily take the rings that his hands were covered in. Meanwhile Yayou ordered several grenadiers to take away his mutilated body. The soldiers obeyed with terror. They said that Dessalines was a papa-loi. When they had put him on a litter made from their rifles Who would think, said Yayou, that this miserable thing made Haiti tremble not quarter of an hour ago!
This unrecognizable and hideous mass of skin and bones, to which remains no human appearance, was taken to town, and thrown on Government Square. While the people disgraced the disfigured remains of the supreme chief, not so long ago their idol, a poor fool, named Défilée, was passing by. She asked who was this executioner. Dessalines they replied. When she hear this name her wild eyes became calm; a ray of reason shone in her troubled minds. She ran to get a coffee bag, threw in the scraps of flesh full of blood and dirty with mud that the wild pigs were already fighting over, she took them inside the cemetery, she spread them on a tomb and knelt beside them. Pétion sent two soldiers who interred them without any religious ceremony accompanying this clandestine burial.
And so perishes the cruel Jean-Jacques Dessalines, called Jacques Ist , Governor General, and then Emperor of Haiti, whose outcome was none the less singular to that of his successor, Henry Christophe. Born in 1758, at Cormier, a plantation of the Bande-du-Nord, next to Cap-Français, he had been raised by Duclos, a white colonist whose name he kept, as was the habit with slaves, who took the name of their master, until the time when he was bought, very young still, by Dessalines, a free black in the service of whom he would remain until the age of thirty-three as a maitre d'hotel, at which time he became Governor General.
In 1791, he joined the bands of Bouckmann and Jeannot. He then joined into those of Jean-François and Biassou. Soon he would leave the flags of the S.M.C. to follow Toussaint-Louverture and to rally with the French Republic, whose commissioners had proclaimed general freedom. He would receive the epaulettes of a captain. Following that he was noted for his implacable hatred against the colonial party. When they organized the indigenous troops, composed exclusively of blacks and mulattos, he was promoted, in October 1794, to the grade of Chief of Battalion, by Governor Laveaux, at the request of Toussaint-Louverture. In 1795, he became Colonel of the 4th colonial half-brigade, and two months after, Brigadier General. He fought the English and made no small contribution to their expulsion from the Artibonite. After the deportation of the premier des Noirs (Toussaint), he attempted to reconcile the two castes Black and yellow, he said, that the refined duplicity of the Europeans had tried so long to divide, you are today but one family. Keep between you this precious agreement: it is the assurance of your happiness, and your triumph. It is the way to be invincible.
In October 1802, when Paris was readying to re-establish slavery, the blacks and the mulattos, momentarily united through a common interest, took up arms, and the war of independence started. Dessalines appeared. He ripped the white from the tricolor flag, and putting together the red and the blue, he symbolized the alliance between the African and his descendants. Later, recognized emperor by those he had liberated, he exacted his most atrocious vengeance and abandoned himself to the most tyrannical despotism. His firmness became opinionated; his liberty degenerated completely; his courage was pushed to temerity; his justice was often nothing but cruelty.
As Mr. Toulmé Duplessis has completed his succinct biography of Dessalines and as I felt ardent hunger pains, we put our horses to the gallop, and, without stopping in Drouillard, where the President F. Geffrard had built a very productive model guildive (foundery?), we covered in less than an hour - I must eulogize Mr. Baudet's Chestnut mare - the distance that remained before entering into Port-au-Prince.
We made a stop in the street Magasin-de-l'Etat, at the door to the Traveler's Hotel, owned by a Guadeloupian, Mr. Louizy Gratien, to whom I had become a pensioner (guest).
It was the beginning of December. There was much talk about the return of the President from the South. The communal council was preparing a reception that would be one of the most beautiful ovations that was ever made to a Head of State, if you go according to the strange report of the official chronicler of this official tour.
The august personage was to arrive by the Leogane road.
This road became, for a short time, the meeting place of idle (unemployed) and the objective of people out for a walk. Many workers were building an arch of triumph at the head of the bridge which crosses the Bois-Chêne stream.
On the side that faced the countryside, Mr. Colbert Lochard had painted a dragon, a sword held in one claw, next to a Cérès (god of harvests). A Minerva faced an archer.
The other side was no less decorated. The eyes of the oxen that passed by were attracted by the red robe that adorned Justice, holding her balance in the right hand and a sword in the left.
The long awaited day, put back day after day, finally arrived. The 12th of December, at the first light of dawn, the inhabitants of the town were on their way. To see their bustling manner, their impatient attitude, their party dress, you might think that the return of the first magistrate of the republic revolutionized the apathetic habits of its good administrators.
They were spread along the paths, around the arch of triumph, and along the seashore right to Carrefour. The population of the suburbs, also flocked to these festivities, moving like a flood on the road that fresh branches of thick foliage covered with shadow.
The calinda and the chica, national dances, joined men and women, who swirled to the sounds of the bamboulas.
The calinda and the chica, of which the liveliness and attitude express nothing but pleasure and joy, remind one of the dances of the bayadères (Indian dancing girls) and the ghawasys (?). This is not the only thing to come from Africa. There is another, known for a long time, that are part of the Voodoo ceremonies, a dark African cult, more bloody than that of Moloch (a Phoenician divinity to whom human sacrifice was made), and introduced to Saint-Domingue by the Aradas. It is outlawed, or at least barely tolerated.
But, do you hear that loud explosion?
It is the salvo fired at fort Bizoton, to announce the President.
His Excellency passes under the arches of leaves, and, splitting the crowd, arrives before the main arch of triumph that is dominated by -- I forgot to mention it before -- his image carved in wood, holding in one hand the national flag, and in the other crumpling the Constitution. Above it we read:
TO NISSAGE SAGET SIGN OF AFFECTION, THE CITY OF PORT-AU-PRINCE IS GRATEFUL
His aides, uniformed and armed in the french style, are riding indigenous horses. In their rapid gallop, the wind stirs the tufts of white plumes that cover their helmets, the sabers rattle on the sides of their mounts. The people, enthralled by the martial appearance of the presidential cortege, cry: Here is the Chief!
The orchestra, perched on top of the arch of triumph, play symphonies; hurrahs break out. The Communal Magistrate, Mr. Marcellus Adam, surrounded by his council members, waits on horseback under the grand arch. Once quiet had returned, he pronounced a long discourse, that the President listened to till the end, his head bare, despite the ardor's of the noonday sun, and to which he responded in few words.
The people applauded. It was a head-splitting noise, a storm of voices.
The President got down from his horse, pressed the Communal Magistrate against his breast, thanked him in profusion, embraced all the officials that were there, as well as all his friends that he recognized in the crowd and to whom he addressed the first greetings. Next, he walked amongst them, on the dusty road.
His Excellency stopped in a house where a drink was served to him. Accompanied by Mr. Delices Lorbourg, who served as my guide, walking almost on his ankles, I followed him into the enclosure.
After restoring himself, Nissage Saget left this devoted house and re-crossing the crowd stopped before the door. Loud acclamations could be heard, and the cortege, taking up again its' interrupted march after about an hour, directed itself, through the streets of the city, towards the cathedral, where a Te Deum of thanks was sung.
Leaving the church, the President went to the National Palace, to the sound of artillery blasts from all of the forts. In the afternoon, the authorities and notables went to present their respects. At night, fireworks lit up many parts of the town. The humblest huts like the finest mansions were illuminated. The streets were filled with an unaccustomed liveliness till late into the night.
Haitians have caressing voices, their hair is ebony black, a dazzling skin color, white, yellow or black, an elegant height, and a gracious and majestic walk.
A rich woman empties the fashion stores of Paris and displays in town the most expensive pieces of cloth, the most numerous trinkets, and skirts deployed one on top of the other.
In her house she almost always wears a shift of the most exquisite simplicity.
The women of the country wear gingham dresses, straight and high-necked, that they tighten at the waist or that they let loose, indifferently.
Don't believe that the rich prolong their naps in the hammock or, that the hands are idle, their lives are in balance, forgetful of the rapidly passing hours. Fortunes are rare. They almost always marry without a dowry, so they must work.
Haitian mothers nurse their babies and always remain clean and in good health.
Free of the torture of swaddling clothes, the extremities of young creoles rarely show the least deformity.
The maternal tenderness of the Haitians is too often blind; no whim in their children that they won't pardon; no fantasy that they won't satisfy; they even prompt them. As an example I give you the following trait, which paints a large number of creole children. - Mon vlé gnon zé. {I want an egg - Gnia point. There are none - A coze ça mon vlé dé. Then because of that, I want two}
The manner that well-off families in France raise their girls has bad consequences in my opinion.
Those protected girls, dazzled by the civilization in the middle of which they blunder, of which they can only see the vulgar or dangerous exterior, find themselves alienated once they return beneath their palm trees.
Since 1865, the year in which the Port-au-Prince theater burned, the city had no shows {In 1875 a new theater was built, with a state subsidy, by Mr. Montbrun Elie}. A Cuban, Mr. Jose Lacosta, sometimes organized a show with the participation of a few youth.
December and January are festive months. Families reunite. They entertain guests. Balls, dances, parties of all kinds follow one after the other.
I had a lot of material to observe, notably at Mr. Charles Miot's home. The elite of both sexes, the high-life, were assembled in his rooms, delighted to find themselves a such a party, as the host offered to his guests, not a simple party, but a musical and literary night, if you please, that brought to the tropics, the most delicate pleasures of civilization. In front of the wild flower garden, the musicians and the reciters appeared prouder than Talma (Napoleon I's favorite actor) in front of the king's loge.
A few days after this party, I participated at the wedding of Miss Elise Elie, today Mrs. Fatton, the youngest daughter of General Dufrêne, who was Soulouque's Minister, with the title of Duke of Tiburon.
The ceremony was beautiful. A large crowd filled the nave and the aisles of the cathedral, a large square of little architectural value, freshly whitewashed and more similar by its simplicity to an Anglican temple than to a Catholic church. There are three altars at the back of the chancel. That on the right, dominated by a crude painting of the Virgin, is dedicated to her; that on the left, decorated with a statue of Christ carrying the cross, is placed under the invocation of Saint Joseph. The principle altar, very simple, was decorated with candles and flowers, and the chancel with a scarlet colored velvet tapestry with yellow borders, following the Gregorian tradition. A metal railing with small cross bars and a door to match, separated the sanctuary and the nave. The organ was placed in an open gallery, at the entrance to the church, above the main door.
The president, who was in the wedding party, came, accompanied by a single aide-de-camp and two police officers, of whom their attire left a lot to be desired. A bad pair of madder-colored pants hung down on their heel-worn boots, a doubtful-colored frock-coat, wrongly buttoned, left visible a shirt that did not come from the most brilliant cleaner. Wigs, like bushel-baskets too big for their heads, were falling on their necks. A saber, hanging from a belt, completed this military uniform.
Nissage Saget, in city clothes, correctly fit out, held a light walking stick with an ivory handle. A gold chain, big enough to tempt the biggest pick-pocket, shined on his coat, open to the waist. He had the lively look of a 'Sunday best' salesman. A Haitian, to whom I confided my remark, assured me that the President had not been a tailor, but a mender.
Besides the marriage, there is the placement. This word requires explaining. In defiance of the Catholic priests, who strive to develop their moral standards, the people of the lower class don't marry, they are placed. A man asks for a young lady from the parents. Following certain conditions that vary to infinity, they give their consent. It often occurs that the man, tiring of his companion, throws her and the children out penniless. If, over the past years, the consecration of marriage has become the fashion in the upper class families, the act of divorce that Henry Ist called "the ever-gnawing worm of morals" isn't any less frequent.
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?
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