Province of the North. Bonnet sent there to announce Christophe’s new dignity

“Headquarters, Port-au-Prince, 21 October 1806.” The minister of war and of the navy, É. Gérin; the general commanding the 2nd division of the West, Pétion; Yayou and Vaval, brigadier generals; the adjutant-general and chief of staff, Bonnet; Marion, Verret, Lacroix and E. V. Mentor, adjutants-general; Francisque, Bauregard, Wagnac, Dieudonné, Lamarre, Sanglaou, J. L. Mentor, Bourdet, Terrien, Métellus and Gédéon, colonels; Adam, Cadet, Bastien, Baude, Aquerre, Frédéric, Destrade, Flambert, Caneaux, Boyer, Lefranc, Lafontant, Borgella, Levêque, Delaunay, Gireaud, Clermont and Bordes, battalion commanders; Chervain, commissary of war; Imbert, Gille the younger, Bigot, Castaing, Lamitié, Gardel, Silvain Legendre, Destouches, Dorman, Sabourin, Viau, Libéral; other obscure names follow.

The council of generals met and decided that Adjutant-General Bonnet would leave for the province of the North with the mission of officially announcing to Christophe his new dignity. Bonnet was instructed to spread everywhere along his way, both going and returning, that the people wished to have a Constitution in which individual liberty and the inviolability of property and of national representation would be enshrined. No better choice than Bonnet could have been made to fulfill this delicate and even perilous mission, given how little sincerity existed between the West and the North. He was one of the best educated of the Haitian senior officers, and he possessed civil courage in a high degree besides. He embarked for the North on 22 October, accompanied by some thirty young citizens of Port-au-Prince, with dispatches addressed to Christophe. Pétion had written to Christophe that the army had proclaimed him general-in-chief, that it awaited him in its midst, and that he was sending him his chief of staff, Adjutant-General Bonnet, to give him a faithful and detailed report of the position of the West and of all that had happened.