1876, March 7 – April 15: (The Revolution Against Domingue-Rameau: From Jacmel to Easter Eve): The barometer was falling despite all countermeasures.

1876, March 7 – April 15: (The Revolution Against Domingue-Rameau: From Jacmel to Easter Eve): The barometer was falling despite all countermeasures. On March 7, 1876, General Louis Tanis at Jacmel — hard hit by a hurricane in September 1875 — proclaimed against the government, and that very morning a filibustering expedition launched from St. Thomas by Boisrond-Canal stormed ashore at Jacmel, greeted by Tanis’s guard, band, and cheering townspeople. A week later, in a comedy of errors, a drunken captain missed Jacmel by twenty miles and landed Boisrond himself at Saltrou where the revolution had not yet taken hold — an ambush nearly killed him and he retired to Kingston. As the government concentrated troops on Jacmel, Croix-des-Bouquets revolted on March 10, followed by Baradères and Petit Trou. Rameau’s response was to cram the jails with hostages, including women and children, and commence executions. The navy admiral ordered to blockade Jacmel promptly opened secret communications with Boisrond-Canal and joined the revolution. The North rose in early April, St. Marc joined on the 12th, and Lorquet — leading a column north from the capital — got as far as Arcahaie, took a look at things, faced his army about, and marched south on Port-au-Prince as the rebel vanguard. When this news reached Rameau, he told Bassett he would put Port-au-Prince to fire and sword and fight over its ashes, ordering General Prophète to lay powder trains in readiness to blow up the magazines. On Easter Eve, April 15, with Lorquet’s advance guard at Croix-des-Missions, Rameau and accomplices rushed to the Trésor — the cast-iron edifice on the site of today’s Catholic cathedral — and began stuffing chests, moneybags, and carpetbags with money from the vault, hauling their trove to the quay where a schooner under Dutch colors waited.