1806, October 8–16: (The Southern Explosion and the Betrayal of Pétion): Within less than a month, Dessalines was proven right: on October 8, 1806, the South…

1806, October 8–16: (The Southern Explosion and the Betrayal of Pétion): Within less than a month, Dessalines was proven right: on October 8, 1806, the South exploded as one Mécerou, a noir proprietor, led the principal men of Port-Salut in an ambush of Moreau Coco Herne, Dessalines’s mulâtre lieutenant who had succeeded the dead Geffrard. As the insurgents marched off Moreau to their camp near Torbeck, lanbi and drumbeat echoed from hillside to hillside throughout the South, with peasants chanting in Creole: “Dyab la kase chenn li pou kenbe Desalin” — the Devil himself has burst his chains so that he can lay hold of Dessalines. Les Cayes and its garrison went over, and Gérin, the Minister of War — a Southerner and mulâtre — required little persuasion to join; at Léogâne, Yayou was Pétion’s man, and with Gérin to his front and Yayou in his rear, Lamarre of Petit-Goâve needed no convincing. In just nine days, by October 16, the revolt reached Port-au-Prince, where Pétion threw off his mask and delivered the city to the insurgents. Meanwhile, the North remained quiet, as Christophe — in close touch with events in the South and with Pétion — used the cover of the uprising to arrest and execute his own rival, Capoix-la-Mort, the hero of Vertières, letting it be said that the deed had been done by Dessalines.