*   *   *   *  *

Hubert Cole. Christophe: King of Haiti. New York: The Viking Press, 1967.

C.L.R. James. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (1938)

Edourad Gissant. Caribbean Doscourse (2004)  /  Barbara Harlow. Resistance Literature (1987)

Josaphat B. Kubayanda. The Poet's Africa: Africanness in the Poetry of Nicolas Guillen and Aime Cesaire (1990)

Paul Laraque and Jack Hirschman.  Open Gate An Anthology of Haitian Creole Poetry (2001)

David P. Geggus, ed. The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World.  University of South Carolina Press, 2001.

*   *   *   *   *

Part I

January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of Haiti 

The twelve-year struggle was over. What had begun as a protest against cruelty, and continued as a fight for liberty, had ended with independence. The land still shuddered with the terror that had gripped it and the horrors it had seen. The white world that sighed with relief when Toussaint was kidnapped now found itself confronted by an entirely new nation of Blacks, victors of the greatest slave revolt in history.

Dessalines summoned his generals to les Gonaïves to renew the oaths they had taken a year before at L'Arcahaye and to confirm him as governor-general of the state to which they restored the ancient Carib name of Haiti -- the land of the mountains. On January 1, 1804, they swore "to each other, to posterity and to the entire universe, to renounce France for ever and to die rather than live under her domination" -- and proudly dated their declaration "the 1st day of the independence of Haiti." 

The generals returned to their commands -- Christophe in the North, Pétion in the West and Geffrard in the South, while Dessalines occupied himself with drawing up regulations for uniforms and badges of rank, and ordered a capital city to be built at Fort Marchand on his favourite plantation and to be named Dessalines.

There were French soldiers in the former Spanish part of the island and isolated bands of unsubmitted brigands in the South -- notably one led by Jean-Baptiste Perrier, who called himself Goman. To deal with them Dessalines still had need of arms and ammunition and for these he turned to the British once more.

Captain Cumberland sold him the weapons the French had surrendered to him at Les Cayes, receiving sugar and coffee in payment, which he sold in Jamaica and distributed among his crew as prize money. Captain Loring similarly sold the 5,000 muskets that he had taken from Rochambeau's men at Le Cap, though Dessalines grumbled that they should have come free under the terms of the capitulation.

All this was viewed with great misgiving by Edward Corbet, the agent whom the Governor of Jamaica sent to try to renew the Maitland-Toussaint agreement with Dessalines. When Dessalines refused, Corbet protested that the arms the British were supplying might be turned against their own compatriots. But it was soon apparent that Dessalines' immediate victims were to be the remaining French colonists.

Dessalines' Slaughter of French Whites

Many of these, remembering how well Christophe and Toussaint had treated them after the first French exodus, remained behind. Dessalines, in breach of his assurances to the British and the proclamation that he issued before the fall of Le Cap, and on the pretext that they were aiding the brigands, began to massacre the whites in all the towns of the South.

On March 16 Captain Perkins of the Tartar went ashore at Jérémie to investigate these reports, and the following day wrote to Admiral Duckworth

In this same evil mood Dessalines returned to Port-au-Prince and continued his terrible revenge.

Perkins believed that fifty white men had escaped and were still hidden in the town, despite searches by the troops, and that Dessalines had collected plunder to the value of a million dollars.

Christophe had sent Bunel, Toussaint's former treasurer, to negotiate in the united states for the purchase of ships and ammunition. he was firmly convinced that Haiti needed the help of white men to recover from the effects of continuous war and to re-establish its agriculture and commerce. on this point he came into head-on conflict with Dessalines, newly arrived at the cape and thirsting for more blood, and the two men quarreled so violently that a report reached Jamaica that Christophe had taken up arms against the commander-in-chief.

In the end he managed to persuade Dessalines that no foreigners other than Frenchmen should be harmed and set guards on their houses. he also pleaded successfully for the lives of those Frenchmen who had dealt honestly with the Blacks and those -- notably priests and surgeons -- who had served them. Nonetheless, nine tenths of the white French population perished in "the night of horrors" of April 20.

His bloody work concluded, Dessalines published another declaration, pulsating with his own savage enthusiasm, condemning Toussaint for his leniency, praising himself for his ruthlessness:

Dessalines' Rationale for Decimating Whites

There had been panic as well as the primitive lust for revenge in his massacring of the whites. He feared that they would run turn against that was to haunt Haiti for the next decade. Already the generals had made plans to withstand the invasion that they expected Bonaparte to launch. This time they would follow Toussaint's advice to the letter, destroying the towns, laying waste the plains and the foothills, and retreating to the mountains where Dessalines had transferred most of the heavy guns from the coastal batteries and where the mountain sides within range of the guns were planted with yams and bananas to provide food for the garrisons.

Once more he affirmed the oath that had been taken at L'Arcahaye (and ignored in the conciliatory proclamation before the entry into Le Cap):

The extravagances of his language struck an answering note in many hearts. the violent racial consciousness bred from years of hatred and atrocity was expressed in the ordinance that all citizens of the new state should be known as Noirs, irrespective of their shades of colour. In drawing up the Act of Independence itself, one of the committee, amid wild applause, had shouted: "To set out this declaration we need the skin of a white man for parchment, his skull as a inkhorn, his blood for ink, and a bayonet for a pen!"

Dessalines Becomes Emperor

In July Dessalines learned that the senate in Paris had offered the title of emperor to Bonaparte. Determined not to be outranked by a Frenchmen, he drew up a proposal that he should be nominated Emperor of Haiti and on August 14 circulated it among his generals for their signature. On September 2 he was formally acclaimed as Jean Jacques the first, Emperor of Haiti.

The coronation, performed by Father Corneille Brelle, a Breton missionary who had been one of Toussaint's chaplains, took place at Le Cap on October 8 -- seven weeks before Napoléon's at Notre Dame. It was accompanied by much gunfire and parading of troops and simulated in the principal towns of other provinces. On New Year's Day, when the first anniversary of the declaration of independence was celebrated in the rising new capital of Dessalines (formerly Fort Marchand) the troops knelt to present arms to the emperor.

One of Dessalines' first actions as governor-general had been to design new uniforms for his soldiers. These were now beginning to be issued, two thousand of them having been supplied by a Baltimore firm. The Americans were rapidly re-establishing themselves in the market from which Leclerc had evicted them. they had, according to a complaint lodged by the French vice-consul in Philadelphia, entertained Dessalines' officers at a banquet at Les Cayes at the very moment when Frenchmen were being massacred in the city. 

Others had been sending out American Negroes as recruits of Dessalines  army, shiploads of arms and ammunition and even, it was alleged, six hundred white specialist armourers and ammunition workers. For all these services they were paid in coffee, cotton, timber and even --for Dessalines's hoard of silver was considerable -- in dollars.

The island had been so ravaged -- and the expectancy of a French return was so strong -- that even the families of the most influential people were living gypsy existences, sleeping on camp and clothing. On November 11, 1804, Christophe's wife sent him a letter from les Gonaïves. She had gone there after the coronation with her friend, Madame Dessalines, in readiness for the New Year celebrations, and was camping on the sea shore

So long as the British navy patrolled from Jamaica up through the Windward Passage and out into the Atlantic, Dessalines was safe from a French invasion by sea, but there still remained several thousand white and coloured troops in the Spanish part of the islands, commanded by General Ferrand. In March 1805 Dessalines launched an attack in four columns across the frontier, three of them under his command in the south and centre while Christophe advanced from Le Cap along the northern coast and then down to the city of Santo-Domingo.

The Negroes of this part of the island had led comparatively easy lives under their indolent Spanish masters and showed little enthusiasm in welcoming their ferocious liberator -- though their apathy rapidly dissolved at the impact of his cruel and unpredictable temper. Burning and looting his way through increasingly hostile territory, Dessalines arrived before Santo-Domingo on March 6 and was joined by Christophe the next day.

It was a week before the army was fully deployed along both banks of the Ozana river and when Dessalines finally opened his attack on the city he discovered that it was well fortified and the French, with their Spanish and coloured auxiliaries, ready to put up an obstinate resistance. A forthnight later, the garrison received reinforcements from the northeast of the island, brought round by sea. Dessalines, unquiet at leaving the West long unprotected (he had stripped the garrisons to make up his army of twenty thousand men) called off the siege and returned to his headquarters in the new capital at Marchand, setting fire to towns, slaughtering the unwary, and carrying off livestock as he went.

Christophe went back to le cap, where he celebrated his patronal festival -- July 15, the feast of saint Henry the Emperor as well as Saint Swithin -- with parades and speeches. Dessalines arrived during the evening and stayed for a fortnight, so that the civic authorities had the opportunity of repeating the celebrations on July 25 -- appropriately the feast of both Saint James and saint Christopher. 

There were parades in the morning, speeches in the afternoon, and in the evening a banquet and ball at which the emperor entertained the principal citizens. Dancing was Dessalines' passion, second only to bloodletting. He was accompanied everywhere by his dancing master, but despite much practice he remained a clumsy performer, exploding in moments of excitement into wild capering.

Christophe Elevated to Succeed Dessalines

He was pleasing with his reception at Le Cap. Three days later he appointed Christophe commander-in-chief of the Haitian army, an honour for which he seemed destined since the beginning of the year. His name had immediately followed Dessalines' in the list of signatures of the declaration of independence; he had commanded the northern column in the attack on Santo-Domingo despite the presence of Clervaux, who was his senior; and Clervaux recent death of fever at La Marmelade had opened the way to his appointment without friction.

Since Dessalines was empowered to name his successor as emperor, Christophe's appointment gave him in the public eye the status of heir-apparent. His enemies -- those who remembered his close cooperation with the French, or had not forgiven him for murdering Sans-Souci -- were silent or, like Yayou, Sans-Souci's former lieutenant, were transferred by Dessalines to the South.

Although Dessalines was not yet in his fifties, the question of his succession was already exercising the minds of the senior generals and officials. It was evident that he was incapable of administering the new nation and, indeed, when not fighting, showed little interest in anything but dissipation. 

The fiasco of the recent expedition to Santo-Domingo had done a great deal to diminish his credit; his policy of making his subjects work by beatings, bayonetings and decimation had not changed; and a large part of the fruits of this labour was diverted to swelling his personal fortune, which he squandered on twenty mistresses, each of whom enjoyed a regular and handsome allowance from the imperial purse.

The brilliant soldier had proved to be a bad emperor, and it was in many people's minds to get rid of him. To what extent Christophe led the plotting is not clear. His sense of discipline and respect for his seniors fought against his contempt for Dessalines. "That jumping jackass," he said of him at the ball on July 25, and to see the scorn with which the onlookers sniggered behind their hands at the emperor's antics was an affront to his dignity and pride of race.

Source: Hubert Cole. Christophe: King of Haiti. New York: The Viking Press, 1967.