General Jérôme-Maximilien Borgella dies as the island splits

General Jérôme-Maximilien Borgella died on 30 March 1844, the same day a Haitian army was being destroyed at Santiago. He was born in Port-au-Prince in 1773 and fought through the war of independence. When André Rigaud split the South away from Pétion’s West, Borgella went with him and presided over the Southern assembly; after Rigaud died in 1811 he made peace with Pétion and brought the South back in. Under Jean-Pierre Boyer he governed the province of Ozama in Santo Domingo and commanded the arrondissement of Les Cayes. He died at seventy, in the weeks when the country he had helped stitch together came apart.