Saint-Rémy holds that the decree of this date, said to have been issued at Gonaïves to protect the French who remained, is apocryphal, since Dessalines was then in the South.

This decree, which would have established, in favor of the unfortunate French who remained on the island, a semblance of legal and protective forms, is evidently apocryphal: on 22 February Dessalines was in the South, far from the Artibonite; he never had a secretary of the name of B. Aimé; and what truth must declare is that this pretended decree has never been mentioned in any writing published in Haiti; that Chanlatte says, on the contrary, that “the people asked Dessalines for the slaughter of the French and that he carried out this slaughter spontaneously, without awaiting an answer (1);” what truth must further declare is that this decree was in the end extracted and translated from a manufactory then suspect in the matter, that of the English (2), who, in the interest of their philanthropic mercantilism, have not always scrupled to make history to their taste (3).