The King’s man seizes the colonists in their own council chamber

White colonists in Saint-Domingue had been agitating for autonomy from Versailles, and the militia ordinances had them close to open revolt. While the Conseil superieur of Port-au-Prince was sitting, Monsieur de Rohan had the chamber surrounded, walked in and had the men he called mutineers seized on the spot. He shouted at them: Ah, my fellows, I will teach you to be rebels against the orders of the King. Twenty years later these same planters would demand liberty for themselves in the name of the French Revolution, and refuse it to everyone they owned.