MINETTE’S ARRIVAL IN Port-au-Prince coincided with the expedition of French reinforcements that had been announced several days earlier. The spineless Governor had left and been replaced by someone equally incompetent, who let loose hundreds of undisciplined, pro-revolutionary soldiers on the shores of Saint-Domingue. They came from regiments in Artois and Normandy and were known for their spirit of insubordination. They immediately sided with the “Red Pompoms” and riled the local troops and the people into a frightening state of agitation.
People went to the docks en masse to see them disembark. Minette left Lise and young Jean with Jasmine and hurried to the harbor with Joseph, Nicolette, and Pétion. M de Caradeux, at the head of the “Red Pompoms,” greeted several soldiers with cheers and had his slaves serve them tall glasses of rum. A few moments after their arrival, they were roaming the streets singing revolutionary couplets that joyful groups of children picked up and sung along with them.
That same day, the Colonel, who had received an order from the Governor to leave for the South at the head of enough troops to suppress an insurrection of freedmen, returned to Port-au-Prince victorious, with a large number of prisoners. The crowd of people of color, silent and enigmatic, watched them pass. Among the prisoners was André Rigaud, a young Mulatto with a proud, military bearing who walked with his head held high as he looked attentively all around him.
Pétion pointed him out to Pons:
“That’s André Rigaud, the head of the freedmen who fought at Les Cayes against the white troops.”
“What’s going to happen to him and the other prisoners?” asked Pons worriedly.
“They’ll probably be thrown in prison.”
“To be tortured?”
“No. Even if he hasn’t kept his promises to us, Colonel de Mauduit still wants to handle us carefully. He’ll pardon the prisoners.”
A dozen or so freedmen between the ages of seventeen and twenty surrounded Pétion at that very moment.
“You saw that, right, Pétion,” whispered one of them. “The Colonel is fighting our people and arresting them.”
Pétion slowly brought his hand to his white pompom and tore it off.
“I’m not with them anymore,” he said coldly.
“Me neither,” said Pons, also tearing off his pompom.
The twelve other young freedmen immediately followed suit.
“We can only count on ourselves,” spoke Pétion again, and his gaze, gleaming and harsh, followed the path of the Colonel’s troops.
The Colonel had lost the support of the freedmen. The perfect moment for the planters to avenge themselves had come.
The situation was tragic, for the soldiers from Artois and Normandy, encouraged by the planters, had converted the Colonel’s own grenadiers to their side. Stubbornly refusing to believe the betrayal, he and Captain Desroches, who had warned him, went to the barracks to interrogate the men.
“Don’t go, Colonel,” Captain Desroches advised him. “Your grenadiers have betrayed you, I’m sure of it…”
“I refuse to believe that.”
His arrival provoked a sudden tumult among the soldiers. Rising from their stations and without even standing at attention, they ran into the interior of the barracks.
“Colonel,” insisted Captain Desroches, pulling on the reins of his horse, “don’t go.”
“Forward march, Captain. That’s an order…”
They entered a room crammed with soldiers and as soon as the Colonel opened his mouth to speak:
“Let’s place Colonel de Mauduit under arrest,” shouted one of his grenadiers.
“Bunch of fools,” replied the Colonel, trembling. “You’ve all let yourselves be bamboozled by the planters.”
“Let’s place Colonel de Mauduit under arrest,” repeated the grenadier, seeming far less sure of himself.
Captain Desroches, unsheathing his sword, protected the Colonel with his body.
He was seized and disarmed.
As soon as the news made its way throughout the crowd, Pétion and Charles Pons ran to the Lamberts’.
“Colonel de Mauduit has been arrested,” announced Pétion, his voice choked with emotion.
“Let him figure it out,” responded Roubiou, a young freedman with harsh, accusing features.
“No,” said Lambert, “we’ll help him – if only to prove we’re better than he is.”
“Okay,” agreed Pétion. “Do you want to take charge of this, Pons?”
“Very well,” the young man accepted, conciliatory. “What do I have to do?”
That evening, young Pons, disguised as a woman, fled into a thick hedge separating the Governor’s palace from the barracks’ courtyard. The streets were under military guard by the newly arrived soldiers. At every crossroads, armed planters came out of their carriages to hold lengthy discussions with them. The Vaux-Halls – the theater as well as the pleasure houses – were completely deserted.
Outfoxing the guards, who were in something of a rum-soaked stupor, young Pons managed to get to the door of the room where the Colonel had been imprisoned. In the neighboring room, people were noisily debating his fate. Someone shouted:
“Down with Mauduit!”
Another responded:
“Hang him from the lamppost!”
Pons inserted tweezers into the lock and was about to force open the door and help the Colonel escape when the planters and the half-drunk soldiers burst into the room. Pons headed back into the hedges and stayed hidden there for a long while, listening to the group threaten the Colonel and condemn him for the sacrilege of having joined forces with the freedmen.
“You defeated us with a band of wretches,” shouted one of them.
“You’ll make serious amends for that,” said someone else. “Tomorrow, you yourself will bring back the flags that were removed from the Committee’s great hall.”
Pons quickly escaped the hedges and ran to Lambert’s. Powerless, they watched the execution of the Colonel the next day.
Surrounded by a half-drunk crowd of Whites, he walked with his head held high, carrying the flag. A disheveled woman passed in front of him and shouted, her fists raised:
“Let’s hang him from that lamppost!”
A drunken sailor, jostling the grenadiers, moved toward him and slapped him. Another woman threw herself on him and spit in his face.
Two tears ran down the Colonel’s cheeks. Tearing off his insignia, he threw them to his feet, thus signaling that he was no longer fit to wear them.
An arm raised a sword and dealt the Colonel a blow to the face. A vast wound opened on his cheek, revealing the bone.
Young Pons and Pétion, followed by a few Whites and some freedmen, threw themselves into the scuffle in an attempt to free the Colonel from the hands of his enemies. They were about to carry him off when a soldier thrust a sword into his back. He fell to the ground, blood streaming from his nose and mouth. His bloody corpse was then dragged through the street as people shouted, “Down with Mauduit, friend to sons of bitches…”
In the jail cells, the curious prisoners listened to the sounds of the mob, which intensified with every passing minute.
“They’re fighting!” exclaimed Rigaud, surprised.
“And we’re trapped in here,” whimpered one of his companions, a strapping, dark-skinned young man named Boury. “How awful…”
The guard approached.
“Shh!” said Rigaud. “Everyone pretend to be asleep, as well as you can. And you, Boury, get to work…it’s our last chance…”
They threw themselves to the ground and stayed there unmoving. The guard opened the door of the cell, carrying bread, which he threw on the ground.
“Your meal, Messieurs,” he said mockingly.
Two strong hands suddenly grabbed his neck.
“Squeeze him tight, Boury,” whispered Rigaud, breathless with worry.
The keys fell out of the guard’s hand. Rigaud grabbed them.
Boury continued squeezing the man’s neck although he was long dead. After opening the door to the cell, Rigaud signaled to his companions to stay quiet. He stole a glance into the courtyard; everything was deserted. They were then able to slink along the walls and reach the exit without encountering a living soul.
Once outside, they were immediately engulfed by a vociferous crowd of Whites, brandishing cut-up parts of a human body.
“Down with Mauduit!”
“Where’s his head?”
It appeared at that very moment, at the end of a pike, and was greeted with shouts and insults.
Rigaud and his companions made their way to an out-of-the-way path without being noticed. They walked through the night and arrived exhausted in Mirebalais, where they met up with Beauvais and Pierre Pinchinat who, suspected by the planters, were waiting in the sidelines for the opportunity to react and rejoin the struggle.