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)