Jean-Pierre Boyer, the president who paid France, is born

Jean-Pierre Boyer was born in Port-au-Prince on this day, on a property near the rue du Peuple. He was Petion’s private secretary before he was his successor, and he ruled from 1818 to 1843. He reunited the North and the South after Christophe’s death in 1820, then marched into Santo Domingo in 1822 and held the whole island for twenty-two years. In 1825 he accepted the ordinance of Charles X: French warships in the harbour, and 150 million francs to buy recognition of an independence our ancestors had already won with their blood. He was overthrown in March 1843 and died in Paris on 9 July 1850.