Henri Christophe

Haitian president (1806-1811) and king (r. 1811-1820)

• Born: October 6, 1767
• Birthplace: Island of Grenada, British West Indies
• Died: October 8, 1820
• Place of death: Sans Souci palace, Haiti

Christophe was one of the three great black leaders of the Haitian revolution. After the removal of Toussaint-Louverture to France and the assassination of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, he was chosen president of the Haitian republic, but his rule proved to be disastrous.

Early Life

Henri Christophe (kree-stohf), who was known as the “Civilizer,” was born on the island of Grenada four years after the island was ceded to Great Britain by France in accord with the Treaty of Paris. For political reasons, Christophe was always imprecise about his family background, but it seems probable that one of his parents was not of pure African descent (his own complexion was not black but a deep red-brown) and that he was born free. Even as a child it is said that he was flinty, argumentative, and unbendable. Before he was ten years old, his father sent him to sea as a cabin boy to the French skipper of a coasting vessel, who in turn found him too much of a handful and sold him to a Saint Dominican sugar planter named Badêche. Badêche set the small boy to work as a helper in his own kitchen and, after getting reports of his neatness and energy, decided to train him as a cook.

Badêche employed Christophe at the Couronne, a hostelry that he owned, but here again Christophe’s initial stay was short. He went off at the age of eleven with a regiment that a French officer raised from mulattoes and free blacks to aid the insurgent American colonists. He was slightly wounded at the siege of Savannah and subsequently sailed back to Haiti. Within ten years of his return to the Couronne, he was in effect managing the hotel. For several years, Christophe apparently stayed clear of the violent turmoil that plagued Haiti after 1789. However, in 1794, at the age of 27, he joined Toussaint-Louverture’s forces and began his fight for the independence of Haiti as a sergeant.

Life’s Work

In 1796, having already ascended to the rank of major, Christophe distinguished himself in a campaign against mulatto commanders and became a colonel. In 1801, when civil war erupted between the mulattoes who held the south and the blacks under Toussaint-Louverture, Christophe again distinguished himself and was promoted to brigadier. After Toussaint-Louverture secured absolute domination over the island with the defeat of the Spanish in Santo Domingo, Christophe was given divisional jurisdiction in a system of military administration that divided the island into districts run by senior military personnel.

With a French attempt to restore dominion over Haiti in 1802, Toussaint-Louverture and his generals, Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henry Christophe (his admiration for everything English prompted him to begin to sign his first name with a y rather than the French i), were beaten back. After running low on food supplies, Christophe suspended hostilities and was given a command in the French army with 1,500 of his regular troops. The surrender and imprisonment of Toussaint-Louverture followed soon after.

As the French forces became weakened with illness, French commander Charles Leclerc was increasingly forced to depend on the black and the mulatto generals, particularly in the face of a revolt as word spread of impending restoration of slavery. As French atrocities against blacks and mulattoes increased, Christophe joined the rebels. With the black and mulatto generals united under Dessalines, the French forces were finally defeated. Under Dessalines, Haiti was declared independent on January 1, 1804. The country was divided into four districts, and Christophe was appointed the general in command of the north. When Dessalines invaded Santo Domingo in 1804, Christophe led the invasion force in the north and quickly overcame French and Spanish troops.

Dessalines was killed in 1806 during an attempt to quell an uprising of generals in the south. Christophe was declared provisional leader, but a constitutional assembly, controlled by mulatto generals, drafted a republican constitution that provided President Christophe with very little power. In response, Christophe led his black forces from the north toward Port-au-Prince, the capital. After some initial success, Christophe was forced to retreat back to the north, where he set up a separate state. The country remained divided for thirteen years, and, in 1811, Christophe declared himself king.

Christophe had many reasons for turning Haiti into a kingdom. Vanity was not the least of them, but neither was it the greatest. A king was still a man of power and splendor, not yet an antique oddity. The title gave him an advantage over Alexandre Pétion—the president in the south—in the eyes of the people of both regions, who had been brought up to honor kings. Christophe also expected his declaration to raise Haiti in the estimation of the white world, where French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was still setting up kingdoms for his relations. It was a valuable reinforcement of his authority in domestic affairs, now that he was about to turn to his long-contemplated but equally long-delayed reforms at home. As king of the blacks, he would have a greater chance to lead his people to equality with white people.

Because Christophe could neither read nor write more than his signature, he imported English teachers to staff the schools that he opened. His organization of the north rested on a combination of benevolent qualities (with certain military despotism) and a nobility that he created and cultivated. Under this system, estates, now in government hands, were given to loyal supporters and the wealthy on five-year leases. Labor was organized along militaristic lines, with a heavy emphasis on hard work and discipline. The workers got one-quarter of the income of the plantations and were also given small plots of land to provide for their personal needs. The system was economically successful, allowing Christophe to raise revenue equaling that of the immediate prerevolutionary period during which Saint Domingue was France’s richest colony. However, the system was rooted—like all monarchies—in firm class divisions and rested on a labor force with few civil and political rights.

The laissez-faire system of the south under Pétion enticed many from the north. Hostilities with the south intensified Christophe’s dislike and distrust of the mulatto population. He began to persecute them. His own people began to distrust him, and he in turn began to distrust everybody. He ordered the construction of the Citadelle, a fortress conceived in fear and built at an untold cost of toil, tears, and blood. The fortress characterized the tyrant into which Christophe had grown. The end came when Christophe, suffering from a paralytic stroke, was deserted by his army and most of his courtiers. In 1820, he is said to have shot himself at his palace of Sans Souci, after which the queen and one faithful courtier dragged his body up the precipitous trail to the Citadelle. Unable to find tools or sufficient men to dig a grave, they buried his body in a heap of quicklime.

Significance

Under the triumphant republic, Henri Christophe’s reputation was denigrated, his name and monuments erased. In 1847, however, he was at last lifted from the bed of lime and given a proper burial in a simple concrete tomb on the Citadelle’s Place d’Armes. Even then he was not allowed to rest in peace. While seeking the treasure that legend said Christophe had hidden in the fortress, someone broke into the tomb; finding nothing, the thief took a finger bone as a souvenir. Others followed, until the walls of the Citadelle that had been constructed to protect the king continued to stand guard over nothing at all.

Bibliography

Beard, John R. The Life of Toussaint L’Overture. Westport, Conn.: Negro University Press, 1970. Beard covers the history of the independence movement under Toussaint-Louverture’s leadership. Contains a chapter on Christophe.

Cole, Herbert. Christophe: King of Haiti. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1967. Cole’s book remains the best biographical scholarship on Christophe. Contains photographs and illustrations of him and his kingdom.

Dubois, Laurent. Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004. A thorough and well-researched history of the Haitian revolution. Dubois emphasizes the historical significance of the revolution—the only successful slave revolt in the Americas—and its subsequent impact on the Atlantic world.

James, C. L. R. The Black Jacobins. London: Allison and Busby, 1980. This book provides a very complete biography of Toussaint-Louverture, Dessalines, and Christophe and gives details of their personal relationship and political agendas. Includes an appendix with a table of events.

Moran, Charles. Black Triumvirate. New York: Exposition, 1957. This biography of Toussaint-Louverture, Dessalines, and Christophe focuses on the political aspect of their lives and work. Includes photographs, illustrations, and an appendix with a chronology of events.

Nicholls, David. From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race, Colour, and National Independence in Haiti. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Reprint. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1996. An overview of Haitian history from 1804 until 1971, including information on Christophe and the other “fathers of independence,” as Nicholls refers to them in his book.

Syme, Ronald. Toussaint: The Black Liberator. New York: William Morrow, 1971. Syme’s book includes a section on Christophe and an extensive bibliography.