Marie-Claire Heureuse Félicité
| Marie-Claire Heureuse Félicité | |
|---|---|
| Empress consort of Haiti | |
| Reign | 1804-1806 |
| Spouse | Jean-Jacques Dessalines |
| Father | Bonheur Guillaume |
| Mother | Marie-Sainte Lobelot |
Marie-Claire Heureuse Félicité (Léogane 1758 – Gonaïves 1858), was the Empress of Haiti as the spouse of Jean-Jacques Dessalines.
Bakground
She was born in a poor but free family as the daughter of Bonheur Guillaume and Marie-Sainte Lobelot. She was educated by her aunt Elise Lobelot, who was the governess of a religious order. She married Pierre Lunic, the wheel-maker of a monk order. She became a widow in 1795.
The siege of Jacmel
During the siege of Jacmel in 1800, she made herself a name for her work for the wounded and starving. She managed to convince Dessalines, who was one of the parties besieging the city, to allow some roads to the city to be opened, so that the wounded in the city could receive help. She lead a possession of women and children with food, clothes and medicine back to the city, and then organized for the food to be cooked on the streets.
Life with Dessalines
21 October 1801, she married Dessalines. She was described as kind, merciful and natural, with an elegant and cordial manner, and starkly contrasting to her spouse in the fact that she showed kindness to people of all colours. She legitimized the children produced from the adultery of her spouse. She was a great opponent to the policy of her spouse to the white French people of Haiti: she saw to the needs of the prisoners, and she did not hesitate, despite the rage of her spouse, to save many of them from the massacre on the whites arranged by her spouse: she is said to have fallen to her knees before him to beg him to spare their lives. She is said to have hid one of them, Descourtilz, under her own bed. She was made Empress in 1804.
Later life
After the deposition and death of her spouse in 1806, she denied the offer from Henry Christophe to move in with his family. As the property of her spouse was confiscated, she lived in poverty in Saint-Marc until August 1843, when she was granted a pension 1.200 gourdes. When Faustin I of Haiti became Emperor, he idealized her late husband and enlarged her pension because of this admiration; Claire, who felt no sympathy for this attitude, refused to touch the money. She moved in with her granddaughter, and lived in poverty until her death.