1872, January–June: (Spain, the Hornet Affair, and German Gunboat Diplomacy): Haitian relations with Spain remained sour over Haiti’s enthusiastic support fo…

1872, January–June: (Spain, the Hornet Affair, and German Gunboat Diplomacy): Haitian relations with Spain remained sour over Haiti’s enthusiastic support for abolition in Cuba’s Ten Years’ War. When Haiti sheltered the rebel gunrunner S.S. Hornet, the Spanish navy blockaded her in Port-au-Prince for eleven months until, in January 1872, the U.S. Navy defied Spain and escorted Hornet to Baltimore — American diplomacy, pro-Haitian for a change, balked Madrid’s hope that the affair might afford pretext for a sharp blow at Haiti. Within six months, however, German gunboat diplomacy made Spain’s bluster seem deferential: on the morning of June 11, 1872, two German corvettes — S.M.S. Vineta and Gazelle — steamed into Port-au-Prince on what was ostensibly a debt-collecting foray but was in fact a reminder of who had won the Franco-Prussian War. Commodore Batsch demanded indemnities totaling £3,000 before sundown; when the government temporized, he simply cut out and seized two Haitian warships that, in Firmin’s account, had been anchored with the negligence characteristic of Haiti’s armed forces. Only when, through St. John’s offices, money was hastily raised from the tills of foreign merchants did Batsch return Haiti’s navy — but with a calling card of special Hohenzollern finesse: the German boarding parties had spread the Haitian flag on each ship’s bridge and smeared it with excrement, an act Firmin called the republic’s first contact with the methods of German diplomacy. Haiti’s protest was ignored by Berlin, Batsch retained his command, and within seven months was sent back to Port-au-Prince for a two-day “visit of courtesy.”