Christophe, commanding at the Cap, had general Pierre Michel and several brigade chiefs put to death.

It was at the Cap that the council of war was established which was to try the prisoners; but Christophe found officers cowardly enough to massacre on the road those who were being sent there. A man named Charles, a captain in the 1st regiment, had sixty-eight of these unfortunates, whom he was bringing from the Gonaïves, shot between the Chabaud and Letort plantations; a man named Raymond, of the same corps, had twenty-eight massacred whom he was bringing from the Borgne. Christophe had arrested at the Cap all those on whom his infernal caprice fell, without distinction of color: General Pierre Michel, his former colonel and his benefactor, the brigade chiefs Barthélémy, Leveillé (1), Thomas Mondion, Moline, a privateer captain, and Pierre Paul, a municipal administrator, fell on 13 thermidor (31 July), victims of his rage. And because a venerable European old man, M. Brun-Lafont, a magistrate, had gone to present to Roume, in the interest of justice, an extract from the Memoirs of President Dupaty on the prudent use of witnesses in criminal matters, in order to communicate it to the members of the council of war, Christophe had him summoned to the government house; there, without respect for the age, the character and the praiseworthy intentions of the magistrate, the monster, thirsting for crimes, beat him senseless with a stick and drove him out with kicks, his head covered in blood (1). Christophe, in spite of the establishment of the council of war, also had the most peaceable and most inoffensive citizens carried off every night from the arms of their weeping families and had them executed on the place de la Fossette. Roume complained of these crimes, but in vain. At last, on 4 fructidor (20 April), Roume wrote to Christophe: “What may have been done is beyond remedy, and I see in it only the consequence of the unhappy state in which the colony has remained plunged for so long; but be quite certain, citizen commandant, that if these abuses were to continue any longer, from the moment that I learn of it, I shall cease all my functions and embark on a vessel to go back to France. And if I were prevented, I should see no other place fit for me than to commit myself to the jail as a prisoner, to share the lot of the other prisoners there; for if I acted differently, I should dishonor myself and debase the august character for which I am answerable.