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1806-10-17

Dessalines killed in an ambush at Pont Rouge

Haitian

On 17 October 1806, year III of Independence, the emperor presented himself before the Pont Rouge and was killed in an ambush. General Etienne Elie Gérin, the emperor’s minister of war, wrote the next day from Port-au-Prince to General Henri Christophe, at Milot, giving him the title of general in chief. “In commanding this ambush, I had given the most positive orders to arrest him so that he might be tried, and by no means to kill him; however, at the moment when I cried halt, he seized one of his pistols, fired a shot, and made movements to retreat and save himself, whereupon that gunshot went off which struck him, and then a volley. The fury of the soldiers went to the point of mutilating and hacking his lifeless body.” This is not true. Dessalines made no movement to save himself; on the contrary, Dessalines had made himself odious to his fellow citizens by his despotism and his tyranny, the usual faults of great warriors, as soon as he had climbed the steps of power. Colonel Charlotin Maacadieux perished defending the emperor. There were a few wounded on the side of…

Rouzier tells this under the entry PONT ROUGE.

Source  ·  p. t. III, p. 451 Sémexant Rouzier, Dictionnaire géographique et administratif universel d'Haïti (t. III) (1927), p. t. III, p. 451