Chapter VII: Hither and Yon in the Haitian Bush (3)

Such stories always hover about those mighty monuments that seem impossible without supernatural aid, yet no one who has beheld the success with which the forces of gravity have been derided in this incredible undertaking, incredible even in the enormousness of the structure itself without taking into account its extraordinary situation, will question its cost in such details as a few thousand more or less human lives. Obsessed with the idea that the French would try to reconquer the country, Christophe had resolved to erect a stronghold that would be an impregnable place of resistance against them, or at worst a “nest-egg of liberty,” which would afford certain refuge to the _défenseurs de la patrie_ until better days dawned for them. There he stored vast quantities of grain and food, of ammunition, flints, bullets, powder, soggy heaps of which are still to be found, clothing, tools, and a gold reserve amounting to more than thirty million dollars. His enemies saw in the citadel only a pretext to indulge his innate barbarism, to decimate his people for the mere pleasure of playing Nero. It may be that this is not a just verdict. Christophe felt that he incarnated the soul of his black brethren and that belief made him wholly insensible to any other consideration. The mere fact that his lack of perspective and his ignorance of such details as the feeding of a long-besieged garrison made his seemingly impregnable fortress an utter waste of effort may speak poorly for the instruction which his French masters gave him, but it does not belittle the actual accomplishment of his superhuman undertaking.

Christophe as violently died as he had lived. Stricken with apoplexy in the church of Limonade, he attempted to cure himself by heroic measures, such as rum and red-pepper baths. Finding this of no avail and refusing to outlive his despotic power over his subjects, he shot himself through the head. Barely was his body cold, if we are to believe current stories, when his officers and retainers sacked the palace of Sans Souci in which it lay, the wealth of many Haitian families of this day being based on the spoils from this and his other royal residences. The corpse was carried to the citadel and covered with quick lime, but tradition asserts that it retained its life-like appearance for many years afterward and was on view to all who cared to peer through the glass heading of the vault until a later ruler decreed this exposition “indecent,” and ordered the remains to be covered with earth.