Jean-Jacques Dessalines

The Founding Father of Haiti

Le Fondateur de la Patrie Haïtienne

 

 

Maryse Noël Roumain

 

 

 

May 2012

All Rights Reserved

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Unity, There is Strength

L’Union Fait la Force

(Haitian Flag Motto Adopted by Dessalines)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On January 1st, 1804, on the Public Square of the City of Gonaïves, in Artibonite Valley, north of Port-au-Prince, there was a mass gathering where Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the General-in-Chief of Saint-Domingue’s Indigenous Army, proclaimed Haiti an independent country.

While addressing the generals of the army, he said these words:

“I am asking you to make an oath to forever renounce France; to die rather than to live under its domination; and to fight for independence until your last breath.”

The generals adhered to Dessalines’ invitation saying in unity:

“We swear before eternity and before the entire universe to forever renounce France, to die rather than live under its domination.

We swear to fight ‘til our last breath for our nation’s independence.”

Thirty-two military men of the high ranks of the Haitian army – black and mulatto – signed the act of Independence.

France had occupied the western part of Ayiti which they called Saint-Domingue since the 17^th century. However, while profiting from this rich colony thanks to the plantations of sugar cane, coffee, cotton etc…it imported black people from Africa and turn them into slaves who worked in the fields from the early hours of the day to late hours at night, with no compensation.  The proprietors owned the slaves who were not free.

Dessalines was present at many stages of Haiti’s revolutionary war:

–       He was involved in the struggle since the earlier times of the revolution in 1791 when there was a slave rebellion in the northern part of the country;

–       He fought with Toussaint Louverture against the English and the French in the Spanish army when he thought the king of Spain wanted to abolish slavery;

–       He fought under Toussaint’s command against General Charles Leclerc, sent by Napoleon Bonaparte, came to re-establish slavery on the island of Saint-Domingue;

–       After the Battle of Crête-à-Pierrot, he led the decisive Battle of Vertières (November 18, 1803) against the cruel French General Rochambeau;

–       He created the Haitian flag  on May 18, 1803;

He proclaimed Haiti’s independence on January 1, 1804

–       He adopted a new Constitution in 1805.

Prior to becoming a fierce and merciless warrior and the founder of Haiti’s independence, Dessalines was a slave on the Cormier Plantation near Grande-Rivière du Nord in northern Haiti. At the time, he was named Jacques Duclos since his father adopted the name of the plantation owner. He had two brothers Louis and Joseph.

At Cormier, Jacques Duclos was a laborer and he became commandeur or foreman overseeing and supervising the work of the slaves.

He was bought by a free black man named Dessalines from whom he received his name Jean-Jacques Dessalines.  He worked for his master until 1791, year of the Saint-Domingue slaves’ uprising across the northern plains, in French: Plaines du Nord.

Dessalines joined the slave rebellion led by Jean François Papillon and Georges Biassou; then, he participated in the Spanish military forces against the French where he met Toussaint Louverture.  After the French declared an end to slavery, Louverture joined the French army and so did Jean-Jacques Dessalines.

There, he was Chief Lieutenant to Toussaint Louverture and he became Brigadier General in 1799.

When Napoléon Bonaparte, the French ruler, sent his brother-in-law, General Charles Leclerc at the head of 20,000 soldiers to take control of Saint-Domingue, Toussaint Louverture who had proclaimed the autonomy of the island and an end to slavery fought against the French invaders with help from the indigenous army.  On Toussaint’s command, Dessalines led the Battle of Crête-à-Pierrot and later the famous Battle of Vertières, forcing the French to capitulate.

Dessalines defended the fort of Crête-à-Pierrot where he said to his men while lighting a torch next to a stock of explosives and to mark his determination to defend the fort: “I will blow-up this Fort if the French break through!”

The battle lasted 20 days.  The French military confronted with such determination, were finally convinced they would not be victorious in re-conquering Saint-Domingue.

Toussaint, the general in chief of Saint-Domingue’s army who had freed the slaves was outlawed and made prisoner, then sent to France. Leclerc died of yellow fever like a lot of other French soldiers. The French General and landowner in Saint-Domingue, Rochambeau, was appointed to lead an expeditionary force against the indigenous army. He was accompanied with an additional 40,000 troops.  Rochambeau’s reputation as a cruel, ferocious and sanguinary man was legendary: he was accused to have practiced the most painful torture and to have killed of the most horrible deaths.  He treated both colored men or mulattoes and black men in the most barbarian ways, throwing them in fire and in boiling water.

Dessalines won a major victory against him at the Battle of Vertières, to the south of Cap-Haïtien. This battle, where blacks and mulattoes participated under the leadership of Dessalines and Pétion, delivered the final blow to the French army and its attempt to re-establish slavery in Saint-Domingue. It took place on November 18, 1803 shortly before the proclamation of Haiti’s independence.

Prior to these events, on May 18, 1803, Dessalines had created the Haitian flag, when, at the Congress of Arcahaie, north of Port-au-Prince, he dramatically ripped off the white stripe of the French flag and asked his god-daughter, named Catherine Flon, to sew the red and blue parts together to express the unity between the blacks and the mulattoes.  A motto was adopted for the new nation: “Liberty or death!” Liberté ou la mort! And, later, it was replaced and became: “In Unity there is Strength”.

In 1805, one year after Haiti’s independence, Dessalines and his staff drafted a second Constitution, making the following the laws of the land:

–       Saint Domingue becomes an empire by the name of Ayti after its indigenous Taino name;

–       The violation of property is forbidden;

–       No white man shall be master or proprietor;

–       All Haitians shall be known only by the appellation of Blacks;

–       The first magistrate of the government is the Emperor, Jacques Ier, and Commander-in-Chief of the Army;

–       The crown is not hereditary and the Emperor will designate his successor;

–       Freedom of worship is tolerated;

–       The State confiscates the properties of the French white men;

–       The colors of the flag are black and red;

–       Agriculture and Commerce shall be protected.

Dessalines and his army chiefs adopted the Constitution:

“In presence of the Supreme Being, before whom all mankind are equal and diversity is the law of nature.”

After the proclamation of independence, Dessalines and his advisors, reminding their people of Leclerc’s and Rochambeau’s atrocities, ordered the execution of all French whites on the island because they were considered a threat to Haiti’s freedom.

  Only were spared the Polish soldiers who had deserted the French Army, a group of German colonists based in the northwest, as well as medical doctors, professionals, some white women and other whites who had connections with the army officers.

The Emperor Jacques I took measures to keep the sugar and coffee plantations running and producing to generate crops and income. He encouraged commerce and respected foreign countries. He promoted educated officials and managers including the light-skin elite, the mulattoes.

However, the Emperor was a victim of a secret conspiracy; he was shot and died on October 17, 1806. A woman named Défilé buried his body at Pont Rouge, a locality leading to northern Port-au-Prince.

Dessalines’ wife, Marie Claire Heureuse Félicité, described as kind and merciful, is known as having saved the lives of many Frenchmen.

She was born in Léogâne, south of Port-au-Prince, in 1758.  Her father, Bonheur Guillaume and her mother, Marie-Elisabeth Sainte Lobelot were free blacks and her aunt, Elise Lobelot, was the governess of a religious order. Having married Pierre Lunic, she became a widow in 1795 and married Jean-Jacques Dessalines in 1801.

Claire Heureuse is famous for having helped the wounded and the starving during the siege of Jacmel in 1800 when the “War of knives” opposed André Rigaud to Toussaint Louverture:

She then convinced Dessalines, who was one of the parties besieging the city, to allow some roads to the city to be opened, so that the wounded in the city could receive help. She led a procession of women and children with food, clothes and medicine back to the city, and arranged for the food to be cooked on the streets for the hungry.

She became Empress by the Constitution of 1805. Dessalines and Claire Heureuse had four daughters and three sons – including twins – Dessalines had 6 children by other women who were given the name of their father.

After her husband’s death in 1806, Claire Heureuse received in 1843, an annual pension of 1200 gourdes from the government; a pittance. She lived in poverty in Saint Marc then in Gonaïves, north of Port-au-Prince, until her death in 1858 at the age of 100.

Haitians call the founding father of Haiti “Papa Dessalines.” He was a fierce warrior who wanted Haiti to be independent from France, the slaves free from servitude and the black-skin Haitian as equally respected as the light-skin Haitian.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Henry Christophe, Le Bâtisseur du Royaume d’Haïti

Haiti’s Kingdom Builder

 

 

Maryse Noël Roumain

 

 

 

 

All Rights Reserved

 

 

 

 

« J’apprendrai l’orgueil à mon peuple dussé-je pour cela lui briser les reins de travail. »

(Henry Christophe, King Henry I)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Henry Christophe qui fut le chef de la partie nord de l’île d’Haïti de 1806 à 1820, est connu pour avoir bâti de nombreux palais, châteaux, forts, édifices et spécialement la forteresse gigantesque La Citadelle Laferrière au haut d’une montagne. J’aime me référer à lui comme l’architecte du royaume.

Plusieurs dizaines de milliers d’hommes ont travaillé durant près de dix années à mettre en place les énormes blocs de la Citadelle Laférrière cimentés avec un mélange de chaux. Cette gigantesque fortification avait été construite sur ordre du roi Henry Christophe et sous sa direction pour repousser toute tentative éventuelle d’invasion d’Haïti par l’armée française qui voulait ré-établir l’esclavage sur l’île d’Haïti sur ordre de Napoléon Bonaparte, le Consul Français.

Construite sur le sommet du morne Bonnet à l’Evêque, à 1000 mètres d’altitude, on dirait entre ciel et terre, la Citadelle est munie de 200 canons pointés vers les quatre points cardinaux, d’un dédale d’escaliers, de cours, de cuisines, de salles de garde, de six étages et de réservoirs pour recueillir l’eau de pluie. Elle est capable d’héberger plus d’un millier de soldats.

Henri Christophe avait transféré son royaume à l’intérieur des terres, loin des côtes haïtiennes, à Milot où se trouvait le Palais Sans-Souci qu’il avait fait construire sur le modèle du Palais de Versailles en France. En plus de cette résidence, il avait fait bâtir un hôpital, une imprimerie, une académie d’art, une caserne et d’autres bâtiments. Les ruines du Palais Sans-Souci qui a été presque rasé par un tremblement de terre en 1843 existent encore. Dans ce palais se tenaient des fêtes qui duraient des jours et où toute la cour était présente.

L’ancien esclave devenu Président, puis Roi, après la mort de Dessalines était un « visionnaire bâtisseur » qui voulait construire son pays, Haïti, et y établir un mode de vie à l’image de celui des anciens colons qui venaient d’être vaincus. Il disait : « j’apprendrai l’orgueil à mon peuple dussé-je pour cela lui briser les reins de travail. »

He was born Henry Christophe in 1767 on the island of Grenada located northwest of Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean Sea. The son of a slave mother and of Christophe, a free man or affranchi, he was born as a slave to the northern part of Saint Domingue.  It is written that in 1779, he joined the French forces who participated in the American Revolution and who fought the Siege of Savannah, helping the Americans against the British.

Il est né en

As an adult, Christophe became manager of a hotel in Cap Français, the French colony’s capital now Cap Haïtien. He gained his freedom from slavery before the 1791 slaves’ rebellion in the north. He joined the Haitian rebellion then the Haitian revolution under Toussaint Louverture and he became General in the French Army of Saint Domingue by 1802.

After Dessalines’ death, following the power struggle with the southern mulattoes led by Alexandre Pétion and Jean-Pierre Boyer, Henry Christophe retreated in the northern plains and created a separate government declaring himself “President and Generalissimo of the armies of land and sea of the State of Haiti”.

In 1811, he declared the northern part of Haiti a kingdom and was crowned by the archbishop of Milot becoming “the First Monarch of the New World, Defender of the Faith, Founder of the Royal Military Order of Saint Henry.”

King Henry I created a nobility consisting of four Princes, eight Dukes, twenty-two Counts, forty Barons and fourteen Knights. He gave his first son the title of Royal Prince of Haiti and made him his heir, his two daughters were Princesses and his second son was a colonel in his army.

Henry Christophe or King Henry I welcomed the English to help administer the kingdom. During the 13 years of his rule, agriculture and commerce prospered and the treasury was full.  He contributed a competent administration and adopted a body of laws called Code Henry. He created a school system, building schools and importing teachers, and supported the arts.

Christophe’s aim was to increase agricultural production to recover from the expensive and damaging wars. He had to choose whether to enforce a version of the slave plantation system like Toussaint or Dessalines or to subdivide the land into parcels for peasants’ subsistence farming. The latter was the policy of President Pétion in the South. King Henry chose to enforce plantation work, distributing large portions of land to his military officers, thus instituting a feudal society. During his reign, the sugar cane economy generated revenue for government and officials.

He adopted a system of forced labor known as corvée or unpaid labor in lieu of taxes. On the plantations, the monarch enforced a drastic labor code: all able-bodied men had to work from sunrise to sunset, with an hour off for breakfast and two hours off at midday.

King Henry preferred trading with English and American merchants rather than the French and Spanish.  Because of increased bilateral trade with Britain, Christophe’s government earned an enormous sum of British pounds for his treasury. By contrast, Petion’s Southern Haiti became much poorer because the land-share system reduced agricultural productivity, and exports fell.

In 1820, King Henry I was 53 years old. He had built a lot of edifices, has restored the economy of the north but he was an absolute monarch, having made accomplishments thanks to his subjects’ forced labor, the creation of a nobility that enjoyed privileges and the distribution of property to his military and noble men.  There was unhappiness in the kingdom.

On October 8, 1820, he was attending mass at the Church of Limonade (in Milot) when he suffered a massive heart attack.  He became ill, paralyzed and unable to lead his people.  That was the end.  He was buried at the Citadelle La Ferrière, the fortification he built to prevent a return of the French army.

Following his death, the crown prince was himself killed but the King’s entourage permitted his widow and daughters to stay at the Sans-Souci Palace.

Henry Christophe’s wife Marie-Louise Coidavid was born of black but free parents: her father was the owner of a hotel, Hotel de la Couronne. She married Henri Christophe in Cap-Français in 1793. They had four children: François Ferdinand, Françoise-Améthyste, Athénaïs and Victor-Henri.

In 1811, Marie-Louise was given the title of queen upon the creation of the Kingdom of Haiti. Her new status gave her ceremonial tasks to perform, ladies-in-waiting, a secretary and her own court. She was an active queen. She took her position seriously, and stated that the title “given to her by the nation” also gave her responsibilities and duties. She served as the hostess of the ceremonial royal court at the Sans-Souci Palace.

Marie-Louise and her daughters were given the property Lambert outside of Cap Henry. She was visited by President Jean-Pierre Boyer, who offered her his protection; they were allowed to settle in Port-au-Prince. Le trésor royal de Christophe était estimé à vingt millions de dollars.

 

In August 1821, the former queen left Haiti with her daughters under the protection of a British admiral, and travelled to London. There were rumors that she was searching for the money, three million, deposited by her spouse in Europe. Whatever the case, she did live the rest of her life without economic difficulties.

Elle mourrut en 1851 dans sa résidence italienne.

La reine fut enterrée dans la petite chapelle du couvent des Capucins de Pise où, aujourd’hui encore, elle repose à coté de ses deux filles, les princesses Améthyste et Athénaïs.