Le Cap. Trial and execution of Charles Bélair and Sannitte behind the cemetery.

It was then, in the first days of October, that General Charles Bélair was landed at the Cap. Six hours after his arrival he was brought before the commission that was to try him. It was composed of General Dugua, president, Brigadier General Clervaux, Brigadier Generals Dubarquier and Claparède, and the chef de brigade Abbé. It sat in the house of the general staff. After the reading of the indictment by the reporter of the commission, the adjudant-commandant Boyé, and after the other customary formalities had been completed, Charles Bélair and his wife, his accomplice, were brought into the hall. “The accused, having been examined separately and heard, as well as their counsel in their defense, the president ordered that they be taken back to their prison.” * The courtroom having been cleared, the commission declared unanimously that Charles Bélair was guilty and that Sannitte was convicted of complicity in her husband’s revolt. “The commission, considering the military rank of Charles and the sex of Sannitte, his wife, condemned the said Bélair to be shot, and the said Sannitte, his wife, to be beheaded.” (13 Vendémiaire, Year 11.)

On the afternoon of 13 Vendémiaire (5 October) Charles Bélair, together with his wife, was led between two platoons of white soldiers to the rear of the cemetery of the Cap. When he was placed before the detachment that was to shoot him, he heard calmly the voice of his wife exhorting him to die bravely. At the moment he was raising his hand to his heart, he fell, struck in the head by several balls. Sannitte refused to let herself be blindfolded. The executioner, for all his efforts, could not bend her down over the block. The officer commanding the detachment was obliged to have her shot. ** The crowd was seized with horror at the sight of this last execution. It dispersed, silent and moved. Charles Bélair and his wife would have saved themselves had they trusted less in Leclerc’s clemency. But Sannitte, from the first days of the insurrection, did not feel she had the courage to bear the fatigues and privations that are suffered in the mountains. Charles, for his part, had not resolution enough to withdraw to the Bahoruco, from which he could have fallen upon the plains. Such is the fate of most of those who, undertaking the bold design of overturning an established order of things, then recoil before the dangers and fatigues that unfold before their eyes. Madame Charles Bélair had always shown herself inexorable toward prisoners during the civil war between Toussaint and Rigaud. What a difference between her and Madame Dessalines! The latter, at the peril of her life, was always the protectress of the unfortunate, Black, mixed-race and white. Had Charles Bélair not perished, and had he held the chief command of the Indigenous, the war of Independence would certainly not have been conducted with the vigor that Dessalines gave it. Besides, Dessalines, more capable, more daring, and the senior of the Indigenous generals, would not have yielded him the command.