Henri Christophe

For the Belgian football referee, see Henri Christophe (referee).

Henry I
King Henry I of Haïti
President of the State of Haiti
Term	17 February 1807 - 28 March 1811
Predecessor	Jacques I as Emperor of Haïti
King of Haïti
Reign	28 March 1811 – 8 October 1820 (&100000000000000090000009 years, &10000000000000194000000194 days)
Coronation	2 June 1811
Predecessor	State of Haiti Himself as President of the State of Haiti
Successor	Monarchy abolished Jean Pierre Boyer as President of Haiti Next reigning monarch was Faustin I, starting in 1849.
Consort	Marie-Louise Coidavid
Full name
Henry Christophe
Born	6 October 1767(1767-10-06) Grenada
Died	October 8, 1820(1820-10-08) (aged 53) Cap-Haïtien, Haiti
Burial	Citadelle Laferriere, Haiti

Henri Christophe (who chose for himself an anglicized name Henry Christopher) (6 October 1767 – 8 October 1820) was a key leader in the Haitian Revolution, which succeeded in gaining independence from France in 1804. On 17 February 1807, after the creation of a separate nation in the north of Haiti, Christophe was elected President of the State of Haiti. On 26 March 1811, he was proclaimed Henry I, King of Haïti. He is also known for constructing the Citadelle Laferrière.

Early life

Born Christopher Henry, probably in Grenada, the son of Christophe, a freeman, he was brought to Saint-Domingue as a slave in the northern region. In 1779 he may have served with the French forces as a drummer boy in the American Revolution in the Chasseurs-Volontaires de Saint-Dominigue, a regiment composed of gens de couleur (mixed-races residents of Saint-Domingue). They fought at the Siege of Savannah.

As an adult, Christophe worked as a mason, sailor, stable hand, waiter, and billiard maker. He worked in and managed a hotel restaurant in Cap-Français, the capital of the French colony of Saint-Domingue, where he became skilled at dealing with the grand blancs, as the wealthy white French planters were called. The political skills he learned at this time also served him well when he became an officer in the military and leader in the country. He was said to have obtained his freedom as a young man, before the Slave Uprising of 1791. Sometime after he had settled in Haiti he brought his sister Marie there, where she married and had issue.

Beginning with the slave uprising of 1791, Christophe distinguished himself in the Haïtian Revolution and quickly rose to be an officer. He fought for years with Toussaint Louverture in the north, helping defeat the French, the Spanish, British, and finally French national troops. By 1802 he was a general under Toussaint Louverture.

Failed military invasion and Dominican Genocide of 1805

French troops posted on the eastern part of the island (mainly in Santo Domingo), led by French Marie-Louis Ferrand, started mobilizing. Ferrand ordered his troops to seize all black children of both sexes below the age of 14 years old to be sold as slaves. This provoked Dessalines, who decided to invade the eastern side, looting several towns like Azua and Moca and finally launching a siege to the city of Santo Domingo, the stronghold of the French.

The Santo Domingo towns of Moca and Santiago witnessed some of the most barbaric acts of the passing of Haitian general Henri Christophe (Hispanicized as Enrique Cristóbal). One account of the era, the "Memoria de mi salida de la isla de Santo Domingo el 28 de abril de 1805" (Memoirs of my leaving the island of Santo Domingo the 28th of April 1805) by contemporary barrister Gaspar de Arredondo y Pichardo, reveals that "40 [Dominican] children had their throats cut at the Moca's church, and the bodies found at the presbytery, which is the space that encircles the church's altar..." This tragedy, without peer in the history of the island, was just one of many documented accounts of the genocide perpetrated against the Dominicans by General Christophe, under the orders of Dessalines, who was on retreat from the Spanish side of the island after their bloody (and failed) invasion attempt of 1805.

On 6 April 1805, having gathered all his troops, General Christophe took all male prisioners to the local cementery and proceeded to slit their throats, among them Presbyter Vásquez and 20 more priests. Later he set on fire the whole town along with its five churches. On his way out he took along, fashioned like a herd, 249 women, 430 girls and 318 boys, a steep figure considering the relatively low population of the town at that time. Accounts by Alejandro Llenas report that, besides the 997 prisiones he took from Santiago alone, some other towns where not so fortunate, since "Monte Plata, San Pedro and Cotuí were reduced to ashes, and their residents either had their throats slit or were taken captives by the thousands, like farm animals, tied up and getting beaten on their way to Haiti."

After failing to capture the strategically important city of Santo Domingo, which was garrisoned by the French army, Dessalines suffered a huge setback from this military failure (Santo Domingo being his main objetive of the whole incursion), and was forced to retreat back to Haiti. Before he left, and quoted from his own military gazette, "he gave the order to its commanders posted in conquered communities, to round up all dwellers and subdue them to prison, in so, at first command, have them stomped by mules and other beasts upon arriving to the haitian side."

Independent Haiti

After the French deported Toussaint Louverture to France, and fighting continued under the Vicomte de Rochambeau, Jean Jacques Dessalines recognized that the French wanted to re-enslave the local black population. He led the fight to defeat French forces. As leader, Dessalines declared the independence of Saint-Domingue with its new name of Haiti in 1804.

In 1806, Henri Christophe was aware of a plot to kill Dessalines; seeing an opportunity to seize power for himself, he did not warn the self-proclaimed Emperor. The plot was said to involve Alexandre Pétion, a competing "gens de couleur"; as a half-white, Pétion held a weak position among the majority of black leaders and population and possibly viewed assassination as the surest way of removing Dessalines. However, this allegation has not been proven; other sources clear Pétion's name from the plot and say that he has been tied to it only on the basis of such conjectures. In any case, Dessalines was assassinated, and Christophe was elected to the newly-created position of president, but without real powers.

State and kingdom of Haiti

Feeling insulted, Christophe retreated with his followers to the Plaine-du-Nord of Haiti and created a separate government there. Christophe had suspected that he would be next to be assassinated. In 1807 Christophe declared himself "président et généralissime des forces de terre et de mer de l'État d'Haïti'" (English: President and Generalissimo of the armies of land and sea of the State of Haïti). Pétion became President of the "Republic of Haïti" in the south backed by General Jean Pierre Boyer, who had control of the southern armies.

In 1811 Henry made the northern state of Haïti a kingdom and had himself crowned by Corneil Breuil, archbishop of Milot. An edict of 1 April 1811 gave his full title as

Henri, par la grâce de Dieu et la Loi constitutionelle de l'État Roi d'Haïti, Souverain des Îles de la Tortue, Gonâve, et autres îles adjacentes, Destructeur de la tyrannie, Régénérateur et bienfaiteur de la nation haïtienne, Créateur de ses institutiones morales, politiques et guerrières, Premier monarque couronné du Nouveau-Monde, Défenseur de la foi, Fondateur de l'ordre royal et militaire de Saint-Henri.

Henry, by the grace of God and constitutional law of the state, King of Haiti, Sovereign of Tortuga, Gonâve, and other adjacent islands, Destroyer of tyranny, Regenerator and Benefactor of the Haïtian nation, Creator of her moral, political, and martial institutions, First crowned monarch of the New World, Defender of the faith, Founder of the Royal Military Order of Saint Henry.

He renamed Cap Français Cap-Henri. It is now called Cap-Haïtien.

Christophe named his legitimate son Jacques-Victor Henry heir apparent with the title Prince Royal of Haïti. Even in documents written in French, the king's name was usually given an English spelling. He had another son who was a colonel in his army.

Christophe built for his own use six châteaux, eight palaces and the massive Citadelle Laferrière, still considered one of the wonders of the era. Nine years later, at the end of his monarchy, he increased the number of designated nobility from the original 87 to 134.

Politically, in the North, Christophe was caught between reinforcing a version of the slave plantation system in an attempt to increase agricultural production, or handing out the plantation land for peasant cultivation (the approach taken by Alexandre Petion in the South). King Henry took the route of enforcing corvée plantation work on the population in lieu of taxes alongside his massive building projects. As a result, Northern Haiti during his reign was despotic but relatively wealthy. He preferred trading with English and American merchants rather than French and Spanish merchants who did not recognize Haiti an as independent country; he ordered that Africans from outside the country be brought to Haiti to work on his vast projects instead of being traded to other Caribbean countries where they would be held as slaves. As a result, numerous Africans who were originally brought by the French as slaves came to Haiti. He made an agreement with Britain that Haiti would not threaten its Caribbean colonies; in return the British Navy would warn Haiti of imminent attacks from French troops. In 1807 the British Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act of 1807 with the intent of abolishing the importation of African slaves into British territories. Because of increased bilateral trade with Britain, Christophe gathered an enormous sum of British pounds for his treasury. By contrast, Petion's Southern Haiti became much poorer because the land-share system in force there destroyed agricultural productivity.

Nobility and heraldry

One of Christophe's first acts as king was to create an elaborate Haïtian peerage (nobility) of his own design, originally consisting of 4 Princes, 8 Dukes, 22 Counts, 40 Barons, and 14 Knights ("chevaliers"). Christophe also founded a College of Arms to provide armorial bearings for the newly ennobled.

This provoked mocking in Europe, where the term "Haitian nobility" became a synonym for improvised aristocracy created by an upstart government.

End of reign

Pierre Nord Alexis 17th President of Haiti

Despite his efforts to promote education and establish a legal system called the Code Henry, King Henri was an unpopular autocratic monarch. In addition, his realm was constantly challenged by that of the South, which was ruled by gens de couleur. Toward the end of Christophe's reign, public sentiment was sharply against what many perceived to be his feudal policies, which he intended to use to develop the country. Ill and infirm at age fifty-three, King Henry shot himself with a silver bullet rather than face the possibility of a coup. He was buried within the Citadelle Laferriere.

Pierre Nord Alexis, President of Haiti from 1902–1908, was Christophe's grandson.

Michèle Bennett Duvalier, First Lady of Haiti from 1980 to 1986, was Christophe's great-great-great-granddaughter.

Cultural representations

• La Mort du Roi Christophe. Note présentée par la noblesse d'Haïti aux trois grands alliés, a 1820 chanson written by Pierre-Jean de Béranger.
• Drums of Destiny, novel written by Peter Bourne and published by G.P. Putnam's Sons in New York in 1946.
• The Kingdom of this World novel by Alejo Carpentier, first published in Spanish in 1949 in Mexico DF as El Reino de Este Mundo.
• Henri Christophe: A Chronicle in Seven Scenes, a play by Derek Walcott.
• La Tragédie du Roi Christophe, a 1963 play written by Martinican Aimé Césaire.
• Henry Christophe was also the inspiration for Eugene O'Neill's fictional character The Emperor Jones

References

• Cheesman, Clive (2007), The Armorial of Haiti: Symbols of Nobility in the Reign of Henry Christophe, London: The College of Arms, ISBN 978-0950698021 .
• Griggs, E.L.; Prator, C.H., eds. (1968), Henry Christophe and Thomas Clarkson: A Correspondence .
• James, C.L.R. (1968), The Black Jacobins .
• Vandercook, John (1928), Black Majesty: The Life of Christophe, King of Haiti, New York: Harper and Brothers Publishing .

External links

• Christophe genealogy
• Haitian American Historical Society Savannah Monument Project
• Marvin T. Jones's blog "Photographing Haiti's Citadelle Henry"

Preceded by Jacques I Emperor of Haïti

President of the State of Haïti 1807–1811 King of Haïti 1811 – 1820

Succeeded by Jean Pierre Boyer President of Haïti