1888, August 15–September 28: (Légitime vs.

1888, August 15–September 28: (Légitime vs. Télémaque: The Vast Bivouac and the Contest for Port-au-Prince): Légitime arrived in Port-au-Prince from Kingston on August 16, 1888, aboard S.S. Alho — the city was a perfect bedlam, and Commander Chester of U.S.S. Galena reported that a grand salute using fixed ammunition because there were no blank cartridges left at least five killed and twenty-five wounded, with even the warships in the harbor struck by several shots. Behind Légitime stood Boisrond-Canal and the French minister Comte de Sesmaisons, who stoutly supported this devout Catholic francophile. But Télémaque, darling of the North, was still at Gonaïves with 10,000 soldiers. When Sesmaisons went aboard a French warship to Gonaïves — without warrant of his post — and urged Télémaque to come to Port-au-Prince without his troops, claiming yellow fever was bad in the capital, Télémaque’s reply was curt: he would go there with ten thousand soldiers since there were already five thousand at Port-au-Prince. On August 23, Télémaque entered the capital and two of his divisions under Bottex pointedly bivouacked in front of the Palais National, facing Anselme Prophète’s Presidential Guard armed with cannon and mitrailleuses inherited from Salomon — Port-au-Prince was now a vast bivouac of ragged peasant hordes from the North camping in public buildings and on people’s porches. A seven-man gouvernement provisoire was quickly formed — Boisrond, Légitime, Télémaque, Florvil Hyppolite, and three lesser figures — with elections of a Constituent Assembly set for September 17. Long before all returns were in, Télémaque had won in a landslide: the North, Northwest, and Artibonite were solid for him, and even Légitime’s native South gave a majority to his mulâtre opponent.