1844, April: (The Piquet Revolt of Acaau and the Armée Souffrante): While Hérard marked time in Azua, disaffection burst forth at home — despite the grand pr…

1844, April: (The Piquet Revolt of Acaau and the Armée Souffrante): While Hérard marked time in Azua, disaffection burst forth at home — despite the grand promises of the Praslinites, the cultivators of the South had reaped no benefits, and into the place of Salomon, who had been packed off to exile, now stepped Louis Jean-Jacques Acaau, an old congo and former junior officer, who rose against the government. In early April 1844, at Camp Perrin behind Les Cayes, Acaau called forth 2,000 cultivators from the mountains and valleys, armed with machetes, a few rusty muskets, and the homemade spears from which the peasants took their name — “Piquiers,” soon corrupted into “piquets” — and their armée souffrante had two objectives: to overthrow Hérard and install a noir in the Palais National, and to loot the towns and divide up the properties of the rich mulâtre proprietors of the South. Shaded by a conical straw hat, bare feet adorned by spurs, armed with a huge war machete and a brace of pistols, the giant Acaau presented a fearsome figure, and the pride of his army was Manman Pimba — an old French 16-pounder. On April 5, at Carrefour Quatre Chemins a half-mile outside Les Cayes, the government soldiers offered a quavering defense before the defenders broke and ran after what contemporary accounts described as “desperate fighting,” in which the armée souffrante suffered one man killed and three wounded. In the Grand’Anse, half-naked piquets burst into Jérémie and Anse-à-Veau, then struck east toward Miragoâne and Port-au-Prince, and like Wat Tyler’s peasants in 1381, their war cry was “Down with the bailiffs!” — for in the eyes of the piquets, the law and its agents signified, with no little justification, usury, exploitation, and expropriation.