1843, September–1844, January: (The Constitution of 1843 and the Guns at the Chamber Door): Over heated protest from Honoré Féry, a principled young mulâtre …

1843, September–1844, January: (The Constitution of 1843 and the Guns at the Chamber Door): Over heated protest from Honoré Féry, a principled young mulâtre who objected that it just didn’t look right, the first business of the Constitutional Assembly degenerated into a three-day squabble over what pay and perquisites delegates should vote themselves. The ensuing debate waned only in December, not because the delegates had transacted much business, but because Rivière-Hérard — an old artilleryman — pointedly positioned two 6-pounders in front of the meeting hall, had them shotted to the muzzle with grape, and laid to cover the veranda and open windows of the Chamber. The natural result was that the new constitution was enacted on December 30, 1843, and five days later Charles Rivière-Hérard was inaugurated president of a liberal and highly theoretical document that created a swarm of civil and elective offices — mayors, prefects, municipalities — and, previously unheard of, extended the vote to the peasants. Even while Hérard was being inaugurated, officers and soldiers ranged around the Place Pétion kept interrupting with ominous cries of “Down with municipalities! Down with prefects!” while Adolphe Barrot, the magnificently uniformed French special commissioner, seated uneasily on the dais, began to wonder whether he might safely make it to the harbor where two French warships had been observing the constitutional process since September. What hardly anyone knew was that Hérard, together with his supposedly ardent reformist cousin Hérard-Dumesle, had secretly joined forces with the noir soldiery upon whom the Praslinite liberals were bent on imposing civilian — that is, elite mulâtre — supremacy.