1917, June 19: (Vincent Reads the Decree: The Gendarmes Load Rifles, Butler Rings the Dinner Bell, and the Assembly Dies): With the decree in hand, the quest…

1917, June 19: (Vincent Reads the Decree: The Gendarmes Load Rifles, Butler Rings the Dinner Bell, and the Assembly Dies): With the decree in hand, the question became who would deliver it — Héraux gloomily predicted the bearer might be shot. By common consent, the politicians nominated Butler, urging his capacity as a Haitian officer in the Gendarmerie. When Butler entered the Chamber he was met with prolonged jeers and hissing, and before Sténio Vincent would read the decree from the tribune, Vincent delivered what Butler described as a vicious assault upon him and all other Americans, denouncing them as foreign dogs and devils dissolving the assembly. As Vincent neared the end of his peroration, the gendarmes — mostly ex-Haitian soldiers and no strangers to such scenes — began to load their rifles. Tables and chairs were upset as members, equally conscious of past events, took cover. To the surprise of all, Butler ordered the gendarmes to unload and, after restoring quiet with the speaker’s traditional dinner bell, Vincent finally read Dartiguenave’s decree and then stormed out of the Chamber, livid with fury, dropping the document — which Butler promptly pocketed. So the deed was done: the National Assembly dispersed, and Dartiguenave with his Council of State reigned in its stead. The dissolution of the assembly — accomplished not by Haitian troops acting on sovereign initiative but by a Marine officer commanding gendarmes whose uniforms were Haitian but whose chain of command led to Washington — marked the moment at which the occupation ceased to operate through the fiction of advisory influence and revealed itself as what Dejean de la Batie had accurately forecast: a disguised military government, distinguished from its predecessors in Haitian history only by the fact that the dictator wore a different uniform.