1919, April–October 6: (Charlemagne’s Letters: The Gendarmerie of Ex-Convicts, the Wanga of Mme de Thèbes, and the Manifesto to the British Chargé): How high…

1919, April–October 6: (Charlemagne’s Letters: The Gendarmerie of Ex-Convicts, the Wanga of Mme de Thèbes, and the Manifesto to the British Chargé): How high Charlemagne was riding comes through in a letter he wrote to Brigadier General Catlin, who briefly commanded the Marines until his lung, half shot away at Belleau Wood, invalided him home in July. After flaying the Dartiguenave government with evident inside knowledge of ministerial peccadilloes, Charlemagne addressed the Gendarmerie as one of the most important institutions in the country, lamenting that it was unhappily made up of ex-convicts, jitney-drivers, former houseboys, and men of no account, commanded not by American officers who surely would have learned discipline but by Marines dubbed officers for the purpose, having no capacity to discipline that evil creation. Slavery was already re-established, he continued, accompanied by the rape of young virgins, and were only Dartiguenave brought low, Haitians would unite with avid enthusiasm to support the better American element which had already won its laurels in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and the Isles of Hawaii — having thus aligned himself as protector of property and firm supporter of imperialism and Manifest Destiny, Charlemagne got around to Dr. Bobo, a man who alone was capable of offering the safeguards they sought. Catlin preferred to let the issues be settled by the assize of arms and simply filed the letter. There were other letters as well, not from Charlemagne but to him from Port-au-Prince, where his brother Saint-Rémy and sister Marie-Louise acted as agents — these letters, addressed under the code name Maïs Goilte, provided a flow of intelligence spiced with teledjòl, transmitted funds and advice, and recounted contacts with the British legation together with puzzling references to an Englishman, never identified, who was or purported to be a foreign agent of the cause. It was all so grandiose and at times mad: the Englishman, on whom high hopes centered, would buy ammunition and have an interview with King George V, then go to Japan, France, and Russia — Marie-Louise had mortgaged a house to give him $2,000 as expense money. Nor must Voodoo be overlooked: for $500, Mme de Thèbes, a manbo, would hold a neuvaine to cause the gendarmes to become paralyzed and confused, but Charlemagne must first send by urgent messenger — and he did — a pinch of earth from each commune in the North and Upper Artibonite, else the wanga would fail. On October 6, 1919, Charlemagne had a band of Cacos in the hills behind Cabaret, fifteen miles north of the capital, and using the style General-in-Chief of the Revolution in the Republic of Haiti, he addressed a manifesto to the British chargé d’affaires announcing he was at the gates of the capital with the divisions that composed his guard, that he would already have stormed Port-au-Prince save that he did not wish to expose the householders and foreign residents to such harsh calamity, and requesting the minister to concert action with his colleagues and the Papal Nuncio to settle the situation before he was forced to change his mind. Receiving no reply by nightfall, Charlemagne launched his divisions — three hundred Cacos — toward the city. The Marines and gendarmes were ready: within minutes after the Cacos began spilling into Port-au-Prince they came under sharp counterattacks, and soon the raid dissolved in pell-mell retreat.