1814, October–November: (The Medina Affair and Henry’s Fury): The commissioners had mixed fortunes: in Jamaica, Dravermann was felled by a stroke and returne…

1814, October–November: (The Medina Affair and Henry’s Fury): The commissioners had mixed fortunes: in Jamaica, Dravermann was felled by a stroke and returned to France, while Lavaysse and Franco de Medina both caught yellow fever but survived — Lavaysse was courteously received by Pétion in October 1814, who conceded that reasonable indemnities could be arranged for the colons as part of a final settlement that included independence and recognition. Franco de Medina entered the North from Santo Domingo in late October and was promptly arrested; when his papers were examined, Henry found a copy of Malouet’s instructions stating that the most numerous class, the noirs, should remain in or return to their situation prior to 1789. Henry read no further: Medina was clapped in irons to be judged as a spy and herald of re-enslavement, and under duress confessed to nonexistent plots between Bonaparte and Pétion and to French designs for using the republic as a base against the Kingdom of the North. After a propaganda funeral in Notre-Dame — whose roof had finally been rebuilt — where the unfortunate commissioner was exhibited on a platform beside an open coffin while Msgr. Brelle obligingly chanted a requiem, Medina was brought before a military commission headed by the implacable Marmelade and sentenced to death, and in November 1814 he was executed in the prison at the Cap. (2)