1855, November – 1859, January 15: (The End of Empire: Defeat, Collapse, and the Fall of Faustin): Faustin’s last attempt to subjugate Santo Domingo began in…

1855, November – 1859, January 15: (The End of Empire: Defeat, Collapse, and the Fall of Faustin): Faustin’s last attempt to subjugate Santo Domingo began in November 1855 as the imperial army — losing deserters at every step, jettisoning equipment, half-starved before it even reached the frontier — advanced in the traditional three columns, and though the Dominicans initially fell back under General Santander, on December 22 they struck at Santomé in the south and Cambronal in the north, repelling the invaders despite the fighting spirit of troops under Geffrard who alone saved the Santomé battle from utter disaster. On Christmas Eve, at Savana Mula, Santander attacked again, and at Savana Larga on January 24 the Dominicans once more prevailed — to raise morale, Soulouque had already begun shooting his own generals, starting with Voltaire Castor, then Dessalines, then Béliard, and after them a disconsolate file of beaten colonels. By 1857–1858, world depression had hit coffee and cotton prices, there was no money left, and merchants along the Grand’Rue in Port-au-Prince shuttered their doors; on December 20, 1858, Geffrard slipped out of the capital by night aboard a sailboat and made for Gonaïves, where a revolutionary committee was waiting, and on the 22nd the empire was pronounced dead and the republic again proclaimed. At 4:00 A.M. on January 15, 1859, Geffrard’s troops surprised the emperor in his own house — the whole town rose with acclamation to welcome the republic — and Soulouque, “very old and getting infirm, much broken in spirits,” walked slowly to Batterie St. Clair and boarded a British transport for Kingston, presenting the captain £2,000 from one of his coffers of personal valuables on arrival at Port Royal. (18)(19) The historian Démesvar Delorme issued the mordant epitaph: “This imperial government whose very character was violence and which reigned by terror, had all possible power to set on foot reforms that alone could change the face of Haiti — this government was absolute, it was obeyed to the merest gesture, it lasted ten long years, and it undertook nothing, absolutely nothing.”