1911, February 7–March: (Simon’s Northern Campaign: Pillage, Restraint, and the Rise of Charlemagne Péralte): When Antoine Simon learned the truth, he cramme…

1911, February 7–March: (Simon’s Northern Campaign: Pillage, Restraint, and the Rise of Charlemagne Péralte): When Antoine Simon learned the truth, he crammed a German merchantman and the warship Nord Alexis — whose name, ironically, no one had remembered to change — with as many soldiers as they could hold, and leaving behind several generals who missed ship, steamed for Gonaïves. There the force debarked and the president himself led the march into the North, while Joseph Jérémie advanced over the mountains to Hinche, probing thence into the heart of old Caco country past Cerca-la-Source, Mont Organisé, and Vallière. Four days later, as Simon neared the Cap, Leconte prudently entered the German consulate, and the government — suddenly recovering its memory of 1904 and the Consolidation scandal — issued a criminal warrant for his surrender as a fugitive Consolidard, but the warrant was rejected by the Germans. Simon seized Fort Liberté on February 7 and — in the same week that a conflagration swept his own Cayes — gave over the North to pillage and slaughter. Joseph Jérémie, by contrast, burned nothing and pillaged little, a restraint that earned him subsequent credit in the central region with the Zamors and with another clan, the Péraltes of Hinche, one of whose leaders — Charlemagne — accompanied him on his march. That the name Péralte enters the historical record here, marching beside the very governmental column sent to suppress Caco rebellion, foreshadows one of the cruelest ironies of Haitian history: the young man who accompanied Jérémie’s column would, within a decade, become the supreme symbol of armed resistance to foreign occupation — and the occupiers who would execute him were the very Americans whose financial interests were at that moment tightening their grip on Haiti’s bank and railroad.