1915, July 27–28: (Polynice’s Three Shots and the Dismemberment of Guillaume Sam): The exact number of persons massacred remains in disagreement — Chargé Dav…

1915, July 27–28: (Polynice’s Three Shots and the Dismemberment of Guillaume Sam): The exact number of persons massacred remains in disagreement — Chargé Davis contented himself with nearly two hundred, Girard reported 160, Kohan said 168, and H. P. Davis gave 167. Whatever the toll, 1915 had now taken its place with 1804, 1848, and 1883. After one final volley — feigning to be rescuers, then finishing off the unwary few who stirred — Charles-Oscar Étienne and his accomplices quickly departed, he for the Dominican legation, leaving the jail yard to the dead and to the blue flies that buzzed slowly in the sun. British Minister Kohan reported to Lord Grey that events were now taking the usual course of Haitian revolutions: the peuple souverain paraded the streets firing salvos into the air, a committee of safety was being organized, and when the sovereign people marched to the prison to liberate the prisoners — a proceeding which formed part of the routine of a revolution — they discovered one of the bloodiest crimes in the blood-sodden history of Haiti. Not a family in the elite but mourned a victim, or like Edmond Polynice and the Chatelains of Gonaïves, mourned three. Survivors drifted through the town seeking their dead — everywhere little processions headed by two men carrying on a plank on their heads the body of some victim, followed by friends or relatives whose curses against the president mingled with those of the people who stood in the streets and watched. After verifying what the jailers had done to his sons, Edmond Polynice left to others the task of recovering their broken bodies amid the enormous pietà at the prison. Garbed for the occasion, tradition says, in morning coat and gloves, he went to the Dominican legation, sent in his card to Charles-Oscar Étienne, and when the latter appeared in the doorway, shot him three times very precisely, one round for each dead son. Dragged into the street by the crowd, Étienne’s body was shot at, hacked at, and defiled by every passer-by, and by evening had become an unrecognizable pulp of flesh. Next morning, someone doused the stinking remains with cooking oil and let fire cleanse the gutter of whatever bones and offal the dogs and birds of prey had left.