1812, June: (Papa Bon-Kè: The Last Siege and the Conspiracy at St.

1812, June: (Papa Bon-Kè: The Last Siege and the Conspiracy at St. Marc): The last spasm of open war between Pétion and Christophe reached its climax in mid-1812, when amid the torrential spring rains Henry marched south for the last time and again laid siege to Port-au-Prince, where Boyer commanded the defenders in a delaying action on the Cul-de-Sac that once again managed to hold the city against Henry’s stubborn attacks. Then followed one of those conspiracies at which Pétion excelled: a camarilla of Henry’s officers was subverted into planning to murder the King during mass at St. Marc, but like so many Haitian conspiracies, this was betrayed. When Henry rode up to the church on June 2, he took personal command of the honor guard — as Toussaint had done with the mutineers at the Cap in 1801 — slowly intoned the names of the plotters, called them out of ranks, ordered the guard to load with ball ammunition, and had them shot on the spot before striding in to mass while a burial party carried off the bodies. There were other defections: the garrison at Mirebalais and the cultivators of the Artibonite, fed up with the rigors of Henry’s stern benevolence, rose against the King, but disaffection was something Henry knew how to quell — abandoning his fruitless siege, executing the disloyal including mulâtre women of Gonaïves whose only offense had been to pray for their brothers in the South, the King quenched the risings and once again retired north.