Les Cayes. Geffrard dies; his entrails laid in the parade ground near the tree of Liberty

Such was the state of things at the end of May 1806. Almost all the junior and senior officers, Black and mixed-race, of the province of the South had been won over against Dessalines. General Geffrard, while giving himself up to pleasures, was deeply pondering the means of carrying out his plan. But he was seized with violent vomiting, and on 31 May gave up his life in the bosom of his family. At once it was spread about that he had been poisoned by the emperor’s orders: yet no circumstance gave any foundation to this rumor. Many people of Les Cayes have affirmed that he died of an abscess of the stomach, formed as the result of a fall from his horse at the Platons during a hunting party. The garrison and almost all the inhabitants of Les Cayes attended his funeral, which was celebrated with the greatest pomp. His death spread mourning on every side in the province of the South. His body was carried into the fortress of the Platons and buried there; his entrails were deposited in the center of the parade ground of Les Cayes, a short distance to the east of the tree of Liberty. He was 45 years old.