Léogane. Attacked by night by Romaine and Courlonge and relieved by the battalion of freedmen.

During this interval the quarter of Léogane was being ravaged by a Spanish griffe named Romaine Rivière, who had taken the title of prophet and called himself the godson of the Virgin Mary. He signed himself Romaine the Prophetess. Through superstition he ruled the bands of captives he had raised in the mountains. He said Mass, delivered the whites to every kind of torture, and claimed that he did so by the orders of the Virgin. Léogane, which recognized the authority of the confederates of the Croix-des-Bouquets, was nonetheless ceaselessly exposed to his fury. Labuissonnière, captain-general of the men of color of that town, preferred to come to terms with Romaine rather than recognize the authority of Port-au-Prince, where Praloto held sway. But Romaine’s bands committed so many cruelties at Léogane, pillaging, raping and murdering, that the freedmen asked the commissioner Saint-Léger to send them five hundred men of the troops of the line to protect them. Saint-Léger could obtain nothing from the municipality of Port-au-Prince, which formally refused to succor the mulattoes. He then turned to Bauvais and Pinchinat, who sent a battalion of freedmen from the Croix-des-Bouquets to Léogane to await the civil commissioner there. Saint-Léger left Port-au-Prince on 5 March aboard the frigate Galatée. A few days after the civil commissioner’s arrival at Léogane, Romaine the Prophetess and Courlonge, his lieutenant, came in the middle of a night (from 11 to 12 March) to assail the town. They entered it, pillaged it, and made themselves masters of the cannon and the munitions. But the battalion of freedmen protected Saint-Léger, attacked Romaine’s bands with fury, retook the cannon and drove them from the place. The next day the seamen of the Galatée and the men of color of Grand-Goâve and Petit-Goâve, who had hastened to the aid of the people of Léogane, drove the mountain men far off. Saint-Léger, following up his success, gave a man of color named Sinclar command of a division, which reached Trou-Coffi, Romaine’s headquarters, dispersed his band and nearly took him prisoner. From then on Léogane was delivered from the fury of this impostor.