A curious affair occurred towards the end of 1847. A senator of the name of Courtois had written an article in a newspaper at which the President took offence; though Courtois was a scurrilous writer who had been previously tried for an insolent article, but who had been triumphantly acquitted when it was found he only insulted the foreign community, and had on this last occasion written some reasonable comments on the attitude assumed by General Similien and his followers. The Senate, to please the President, sentenced Courtois to a month’s imprisonment. But when Soulouque heard of this, he went into one of his ungovernable passions, assembled his generals, called out his troops, and condemned Courtois to death, and ordered the immediate execution of the culprit. The sentence would certainly have been carried into effect had not our agents, Consul Ussher, Vice-Consul Wyke, and the French Consul-General Raybaud interfered, and persuaded Soulouque to pardon him; he was, however, banished. And Senator Courtois, who owed his life to foreigners, had spent his best energies in abusing them!
Throughout the spring of 1848 an uneasy feeling appears to have pervaded the country that some calamity was about to take place. On the 9th April the rabble assembled round the palace and demanded that the respectable Ministry then in power should be dismissed. As this movement was evidently encouraged by Soulouque, they resigned; but all were assembled at the palace on the 16th April, when suddenly the guards, who had been drawn up before it, opened fire upon the crowd in the galleries and rooms, and a sauve qui peut followed. General Dupuy told me that in a moment he comprehended that a massacre of the mulattoes was meant; he sprang on a horse, and dashed for the high iron railings that surrounded the palace gardens, jumped down, and although closely pursued, managed to get over these high rails, how he knew not, and escaped. Celigny-Ardruin, less fortunate, was severely wounded, and as he lay on a sofa was reviled by the President, who said he should be shot. Consul Ussher was present in the palace during this scene, and acted admirably, with his colleague of France, in trying to save those who had not been able to put themselves under their direct protection. He ran the greatest personal dangers, and narrowly escaped being shot by the excited soldiery.
From the palace the massacring passed on to the town, where every mulatto who showed himself was shot; many assembled in groups to defend themselves, but only hastened their fate, whilst hundreds ran for refuge to the Consulates. The news spread to the southern department, and murder and plunder followed in every district, and the property of the mulattoes was given to the flames. A few black generals who tried to preserve order were shot as accomplices of the mulattoes in their supposed conspiracy. The President was delighted with the energy of his supporters in the south, and went in person to thank them. On his return he pardoned six innocent men, and thus gained a little popularity among his cowed adversaries. It is pleasant to know how our acting Consul Wyke worked to save those menaced with death. But even he had little influence over the faithless President, who would grant a pardon at his intercession, and then shoot the pardoned prisoner. After General Desmaril and Edmond Felix had been executed in 1849 in the market-place, and died after receiving twenty discharges, Soulouque went with his staff to inspect their mangled bodies and gloat over the scene. Naturally Celigny-Ardruin did not escape; he was shot, but Wyke was enabled to save many others and send them out of the country. In fact, the chiefs of the mulatto party who escaped death had all to go into exile.
In January 1849, I may notice, Soulouque had abolished the Ministry and named as Secretary-General Dufrène, and as Minister of Finance Salomon, the present President of Hayti; and in April, invigorated by his massacre of the mulattoes, invaded Santo Domingo with a numerous army. He had some success at Azua and St. Jean, but he was surprised at Ocoa by General Santana, and the whole Haytian army fled before 500 Dominicans. And these were the descendants of the men who fought so bravely against the French. It was after this defeat that Soulouque returned to his capital, and, full of anger at his discomfiture, committed the judicial murders previously recorded.
All black chiefs have a hankering after the forms as well as the substance of despotic power, and Soulouque was no exception to the rule. He therefore decided to follow in the footsteps of Dessalines, and was elected Emperor, August 26, 1849. A fresh constitution was naturally required, and this was a strange medley of republican and aristocratic institutions. Soulouque did not disappoint his generals, and created a nobility: four princes and fifty-nine dukes headed the list, to be followed by innumerable marquises, counts, and barons. This contented the chiefs, and quiet reigned for a short time.
In 1850, England, France, and the United States united to oppose diplomatically the war with Santo Domingo; during these long negotiations the Haytian Government appeared influenced by the conviction that to concede independence to Santo Domingo would introduce the foreign element into the island, and, by the development of the eastern province, end in robbing Hayti of its independence. A year’s truce was obtained, however, in October 1851. The negotiations were admirably conducted by our agent, Consul-General Ussher. One of the difficulties against which the diplomatists had to contend was the personal feelings of the Emperor, which had been outraged by the Dominicans calling him a rey de farsa, an opera bouffé king. There is no doubt but that they really did look for assistance abroad, owing to the poverty of the country arising from their eight years’ war with Hayti, and the internal dissensions which always follow national financial pressure.
On the 18th April 1852 Soulouque was crowned Emperor under the title of Faustin I. He had no fear of exciting discontent by lavish expenditure. He paid £2000 for his crown, and spent £30,000 for the rest of the paraphernalia. He was liberal to his nobility, and had few internal troubles after he shot his Grand Judge Francisque and four companions for supposed conspiracy, and had condemned Prince Bobo for some imprudent words.
Soulouque, it is fair to say, gained the good opinion of many of our countrymen on account of the protection which he generally accorded to foreigners, and a supposed predilection for the English, which the manly and conciliatory conduct of our agents had greatly fostered, and which contrasted with that of the French agents, who brought a fleet to Port-au-Prince under Admiral Duquesne to threaten to bombard the capital (1853). No events occurred worthy of record, except the interminable negotiations to induce the Emperor to conclude peace with Santo Domingo, which occupied 1853 and 1854.
The year 1855 was enlivened by a very comic quarrel between the Haytian Government and the Spanish agent. The Emperor had decided that every one that passed the palace should show his respect for his office by raising his hat. It appears that a Spanish employé did not observe this formality, and was stopped by the guard, who insisted on his complying with it. The Emperor, attracted by the altercation, put his head out of a window of the palace and cried, “Qui moun-ça sacré f—— blanc qui veut pas saluer mon palais, f——?” The Spaniard had a long discussion with the Haytian Foreign Office, and would not accept the denial by the Emperor of his having used these words—in fact, there was much ado about nothing.
In spite of all the efforts of the foreign agents, Soulouque in December 1855 marched with all his forces to attack the Dominicans—those under his personal command numbering, it is said, 15,000 men. But in January 1856 he was disgracefully beaten by the enemy. His troops fled at the first volley, and losing their way in the woods, fell into the hands of their enemies, who did not spare them. The Emperor, furious at his defeat, shot several superior officers for treachery or cowardice, and then returned with the remains of his army to his capital, where he was received in mournful silence, amid the scarcely-concealed murmurs of the people; the muttered curses of the women at the loss of their relatives being particularly remarked.