Place du Gouvernement. The mutilated body of Dessalines is thrown down there

Most of the officers of the Emperor’s staff had fled when he fell. Dessalines dead, no weapon had been turned against them. Mentor, one of his favorites, cried out: “The tyrant is struck down; long live Liberty! Long live Equality!” The body is carried into the town; many times it is let fall, and each time the crowd, rushing upon the corpse, stones it and hacks it with sabers; at last it is thrown down in the middle of the Place du Gouvernement. The face was no longer recognizable; the skull was shattered, the feet and the hands cut off. American merchants, strangers to the violent passions of the moment, hastened to buy several of his fingers for their weight in gold. They attached to the relics of the founder of our independence an importance which the Haitian, carried away by horrible furies, did not then feel. The circumstances of this event, which recall the Septembrisades of the city of Paris and the Théroigne de Méricourt of that day, deserve nothing but the deepest reprobation. The fall of Dessalines had become inevitable because of the excesses to which he gave himself up, because of his violation of the most sacred rights both of the citizens and of the soldiers, his old companions in arms, who had raised him to the summit of greatness. But after striking him down, to tolerate such horrors upon his corpse!…… History will forever brand these infamous scenes, which must not be suffered under any circumstances. Morality already condemns political assassination severely enough, even of the most criminal of beings, without its being accompanied by circumstances that make humanity shudder.