1883, September 24–25: (The Semaine Sanglante: The Pillage, the Delirium, and the European Ultimatum): Better prepared than the day before, peasants brought …

1883, September 24–25: (The Semaine Sanglante: The Pillage, the Delirium, and the European Ultimatum): Better prepared than the day before, peasants brought in donkeys laden with straw sacks and panniers — when the mob battered in the iron shutters of the Magasin Alexandre Bobo, richest of the Paris importers, they surged among the counters and only when they had been stripped were torches applied. Long after the saturnalia, peasant women of the plain wore French dressing gowns to Voodoo ceremonies while dead-drunk men were decked out with Gibus hats, overcoats, and open parasols. The Reverend C. W. Mossell, a Methodist missionary and American mulatto, testified that soldiers armed with machetes, guns, revolvers, and swords entered his house and took everything — and under the eyes of Mossell’s pregnant wife, soldiers shot down the midwife and her son, as well as an eight-year-old mission schoolchild, and Mrs. Mossell delivered prematurely with the baby dying. Rolling flames consumed the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Finance, and Commerce — effectively the archives of Haiti were once again completely wiped out. Burdel, who knew Salomon well, went to the palace and found the president in bed gripped by a fearful delirium, this colossal man thrashing about with despair while Mme Salomon huddled in a corner. Late Sunday, watching from offshore, the captains of British, French, and Spanish warships sent the senior officer ashore with the blunt message: if Salomon could not stop the fire and pillage, they would land Marines and bombard the Palace. A terse communication signed by eight European nations threatened to sweep the streets and bombard the forts. Salomon received this ultimatum on Monday morning as European landing forces debarked over the quay, and by noon all disturbance ceased as abruptly as it had begun. Though it lasted less than three days, the Semaine Sanglante took uncounted lives — some Haitian estimates as high as 4,000, mostly jaunes — and ultimately cost $588,418 in foreign indemnities alone. As Pastor Picot bluntly stated, it was a war of color, noirs against mulâtres, a war of extermination — and the government had ordered the destruction of the business district because among all its merchants there were not two noirs. That an enlightened president could find or feel that he had to destroy the heart of his own capital starkly illuminated what Heinl called the sad truth: Haiti still amounted to two interlocking but irreconcilable nations.