THE DEATH OF CHARLEMAGNE
The word _caco_ first appears in Haitian history in 1867. The men who
took to the bush in the insurrection against President Salnave adopted
that pseudonym, and nicknamed _zandolite_ those who supported the
government. The semi-savage insurrectionists, flitting at will through
the rugged interior of the country, indifferent alike to the thorny
jungle and the precipitous mountains, saw in themselves a likeness to
the Haitian bird which flies freely everywhere, and in their opponents a
similarity to the helpless caterpillars on which it feeds. The two terms
have persisted to this day.
Haiti has never since been entirely free from _cacos_, though there
have been occasional short periods when the country has been spared
their ravages. Let a new president lose his popularity, however, or
some ambitious rascal raise the banner of revolt, and the
bandit-revolutionists were quick to flock together, beginning their
operations as soon as the mangos were ripe enough to furnish them
subsistence. With the exception of a few ephemeral leaders with more
or less of the rudiments of education, the _cacos_ are a heterogeneous
mob of misguided wretches who have been cajoled or forced into revolt
by circumstances of coercion. Ragged, penniless, illiterate fellows in
the mass, they gather in bands varying from a score to thousands in
number, depending on the reputation, persuasiveness, or power of
compulsion of their self-appointed leaders. The latter, though in some
cases men of standing, are more often as illiterate as their
followers. Now and again one of them, usually with some Caucasian
blood in his veins, has personal ambitions either of making himself
President of Haiti in the long-approved manner, or at least of
becoming powerful enough to force the Government to appoint him ruler
of a province or of a smaller district. Others are merely the agents
of disgruntled politicians or influential “respectable citizens” of
Port au Prince or others of the larger cities, who secretly supply
funds to the active insurrectionists.
[Illustration: The president of Haiti]
[Illustration: A Haitian gendarme]
[Illustration: A street in Port au Prince]
[Illustration: The unfinished presidential palace of Haiti, on New
Year’s Day, 1920]
The backwardness and poverty of Haiti are largely due to the constant
menace of these roving outlaws. Travel has often entirely disappeared
from many a trail; more than one fertile region has been left wholly
uncultivated and virtually uninhabited because of marauding bands of
_cacos_. Cattle, once plentiful throughout the republic, have almost
wholly disappeared, thanks to the fact that their flesh furnishes the
chief means of livelihood and their hides the one sure source of income
for the bandits. The depredations of the _cacos_ have cost the Black
Republic most of its wealth and the greater share of its worldly
troubles.
Some two years after American occupation _cacoism_ took on a new life.
In perfect frankness it must be admitted that this was partly the fault
of the Americans. Next to the cleaning up of Port au Prince the most
important job on hand was the building of roads. If Haiti is to take her
place even at the tail end of civilization, she must become
self-supporting—in other words, able to pay her foreign debts, both
public and commercial. The prosperity of French days, when the island
exported large quantities of coffee, sugar, and cotton, has as
completely disappeared under the anarchy of the blacks as have the old
plantations. What little the country might still export, consisting
mainly of coffee, could not get down to tide-water for lack of highways,
those which the French built having been wholly overgrown by the
militant jungle.
In their eagerness to furnish the country with this first obvious step
to advancement the forces of occupation resurrected an old French law
called the _corvée_. We still have something of the sort in many of our
own rural districts—the requirement that every citizen shall work a
certain number of days a year on the roads. But there is a wide
difference between the public-spirited Americans and the wild black men
into which the mass of Haitians has degenerated. Neither they nor their
ancestors for several generations have seen the need of roads, at least
anything more than trails wide enough along which to chase their
donkeys. But they probably would have endured the resurrected _corvée_
had it been applied in strict legality, a few days’ labor in their own
locality, instead of being carried out with too energetic a hand. When
they were driven from their huts at the point of a gendarme rifle,
transported, on their own bare feet, to distant parts of the country,
and forced to labor for weeks under armed guards, it is natural that
they should have concluded that these new-coming foreigners with white
skins were planning to reduce them again to the slavery they had thrown
off more than a century before. The result was that a certain percentage
of the forced laborers caught up any weapon at hand and took to the
hills as _cacos_. If they have any definite policy, it is to imitate
their forefathers and drive the white men from the island. One chief
announced the program of killing off the American men and carrying their
women off to the hills. The mass of Haitians believe that the world’s
supply of white men is very limited; it is beyond their conception that
there are many fold more of them where these came from. Their ancestors
drove out the French, and they not only did not come back, but the
blacks were never subjected to any punishment—at least any their simple
minds could recognize as such—for their revolt. Why could not a new
Toussaint l’Ouverture accomplish the feat over again?
Our mistake in the matter has been corrected. The American officer who
countenanced, if he did not sanction, these high-handed methods has gone
to new honors on other fields of battle; the young district commanders
whose absolute power led them to apply too sternly their orders to build
roads have returned to the ranks, and the _corvée_ has been abolished.
But the scattered revolt persists, and in the opinion of all but a few
temperamentally optimistic residents, either Haitian or American, is due
to continue for some time to come. That forced labor was not the cause
of _cacoism_, for it is in the Haitian blood to turn _caco_; but it made
a fertile field of ignorant, disgruntled negroes from which the bandit
leaders were able to harvest most of their followers, and it gave added
strength to the chief argument of the rascally leaders—the assertion
that the Americans had come to take possession of Haiti and reëstablish
slavery. To this day even the foreign companies which have no trouble in
recruiting labor for other purposes cannot hire the workmen needed to
build their roads. The thick-skulled native countrymen see in that
particular task the direct route to becoming slaves.
For more than two years courageous young Americans have been chasing
_cacos_ among the hills of central and northern Haiti, with no other
ulterior motive than to give the Black Republic the internal peace it
has long lacked and sadly needed. All of them are members of our Marine
Corps, though many of them are in addition officers of the Gendarmerie
of Haiti, with increased rank and pay. Take care not to confuse these
two divisions of pacifiers, for the gendarmerie has a strong _esprit de
corps_, and a just pride in its own achievements, in spite of being
still marines at heart. For a long time the native gendarmes, of whom
twenty-five hundred, officered by marine enlisted men, have been
recruited by our forces of occupation, were efficient against the
bandits only when personally led by Americans. Merely to shout the word
“_Caco!_” has long been sufficient to stampede a Haitian gathering of
any size. Bit by bit, however, the gendarmes have been taught by
practical demonstration that they are better men than the _cacos_, and
the immediate job of hunting down the bandits is gradually being turned
over to these native soldiers. American supervision, nevertheless, for
years to come will certainly be necessary to eventual success.
Though the world has heard little of it, our _caco_-hunters have
performed feats that compare with anything done by their fellows in
France. In fact, their work has often required more sustained courage
and individual initiative, and has brought with it greater hardships. In
the trenches at their worst the warrior had the support and the sense of
companionship of his comrades and a more or less certain commissary at
the rear; if his opponents were sometimes brutal, they clung to some of
the rules of civilized warfare. In Haiti many a young American gendarme
officer has set forth on an expedition of long duration through the
mountainous wilderness, often wholly alone, except for three or four
native gendarmes, cousins to the _cacos_ themselves, sleeping on the
bare ground when he dared to sleep at all, subsisting on the scanty
products of the jungle, his life entirely dependent on his own wits, and
his nerves always taut with the knowledge that to be wounded or captured
means savage torture and mutilation, to be followed by certain death.
Bit by bit the native gendarmes have been trained to fight the _cacos_
unassisted, and three or four of them have now reached commissioned
rank; but the best of them still require the moral support of a white
leader, and the energetic American youths scattered through the “brush”
of Haiti have the future peace of the country in their keeping.
It must be admitted that the _cacos_ do not constitute a dangerous army
in the modern sense of the word. Their discipline is less than
embryonic, their weapons seldom better than dangerous playthings. One
rifle to five men is the average equipment, and many of these are
antiquated pieces captured from the French expeditionary force under
Leclerc that was driven from the island more than a century ago. Some of
them are of no more use than the _cocomacaque_, or Haitian shillalah,
even when their possessors can obtain ammunition. Such cartridges as
fall into the hands of the _cacos_ are usually wrapped round and round
with paper to make them fit the larger bore of their ancient guns, and
the bullet that comes zigzagging down the barrel is seldom deadly beyond
two hundred yards. But the possession of a rifle, even one worthless as
a firearm, is a sign of leadership that carries with it great personal
pride, and an occasional _caco_ owns a high-powered modern carbine. The
mass of them are armed with machetes, rusty swords of the olden days, or
revolvers even more useless than the rifles.
The lesser military ranks are not in favor among the _cacos_. Every
leader of a band is a general, and usually a major general at that. Most
of them have been commissioned by the _caco_-in-chief—on a slip of paper
scrawled with a rusty pen, or even with a pencil, by the one man on his
staff who can write a more or less legible hand. These “commissions” all
follow the prescribed form which has been stereotyped in Haiti since the
days of Dessalines:
“Liberté Egalité Fraternité
_République d’Haiti_
Informé que vous réunissez les conditions et aptitudes voulues—Informed
that you possess the qualifications and aptitude desired, I hereby
appoint you general of division operating against the Americans and
direct that you proceed with your troops to attack”—this or that hamlet
or village in the hills. The expression “Opérant contre les américains”
is seldom lacking in these scribbled rags, and some of them raise the
holder to higher dignities than were ever reached by mere field marshals
on the battle-grounds of Europe. The “commission,” for instance, of the
“Chief of Intelligence” of the _caco_-in-chief reads succinctly, “I name
you as chief of the Division of Spies to spy everywhere”—an order that
has at least the virtue of leaving the recipient unhampered with that
division of responsibility which has been the bane of civilized warfare.
Incidentally the intelligence system of the _cacos_ is their strongest
point. Like most uncivilized tribes the world over, they have some means
of spreading information that makes the telegraph and even the radio
seem slow and inefficient by comparison. An uninformed stranger, reading
these highfalutin’ “commissions,” might easily picture the _caco_
“generals” as mightier men than Foch and Pershing combined, instead of
what they really are, stupid, uneducated negroes dressed in the dirty
remnants of an undershirt and cotton trousers, a discard straw or felt
hat with a bit of red rag sewed on it as a sign of rank, and armed with
a rusty old saber or a revolver that has long since lost its power to
revolve.
The _cacos_ have a mortal fear of white soldiers. Scores of times a
single marine or gendarme officer has routed bands of a hundred or more,
killing as many as his automatic rifle could reach in the short period
between their first glimpse of him and the time it takes the ragged
“army” to scatter to the four points of the compass through thorny
undergrowth or cactus-hedges which no white man could penetrate though
all the forces of evil were pursuing him. The natives cannot “savez”
this uncanny prowess of _les blancs_, and commonly attribute it to the
sustaining force of some voodoo spirit friendly to the white man. This
belief is to a certain extent a boomerang, for the Haitian gendarmes
often fancy themselves immune in the presence of a white superior, and
more than one of them has bitten the dust because he insisted on calmly
standing erect, smoking a cigarette, and placidly handing cartridges to
the marine who lay hugging the ground beside him, pumping lead into the
fleeing _cacos_. With a white man along how could he be hurt? Up to date
at least three thousand bandits have been killed as against four
Americans,—a major and a sergeant who were shot from ambush, and two
privates who lost their lives by over-confidence.
Captured correspondence shows what a terrible war is this _guerre des
cacos_:
“The Americans,” reads the report of one _général de division_ to his
superior, “attacked us in force on the night of the 13–14th. I found
myself with a shortage of ammunition, but I succeeded in borrowing ten
carbine cartridges and three revolver bullets and was able to hold the
situation in hand.” As a matter of fact the American “force” consisted
on this particular occasion of three marines, and the “general” “held
the situation in hand” by scurrying away through the mountains so fast
that it was a week or more before he got any considerable number of his
band together again.
“I write to tell you,” says another great military genius, “that I had a
cruel battle before Las Cahobas the other day, with one wounded. I also
tell you that I arrested General Ulysses St. Raisin for being drunk and
disarmed him and he is under guard in my camp. Also that General Etienne
Monbrun Dubuisson had a big battle with the Americans last week and
besides having a soldier severely wounded he had one _délégué_ taken by
the whites.”
The Americans who are striving to bring internal peace to Haiti have
come to the unanimous conclusion that the mere killing of _cacos_ will
not wipe out banditism. They have hunted them by every available means,
including the use of aëroplanes. The _cacos_ show a wholesome terror for
the latter, which they call “God’s wicked angels”; they have suffered
“cruel” losses before the machine-guns of the determined American youths
who are pursuing them, but they continue their _cacoism_. All efforts
are now being bent to two ends—to kill off the chiefs and to weed the
country of firearms. In the early days of the occupation the native
caught in possession of a rifle was given five years at hard labor, and
many of them are still serving sentence, though the penalty has recently
been reduced to six months. Every report of “jumping” a band or a camp
of _cacos_ ends now with a regular formula in which only the numbers
differ: “Killed 1 general and 2 chiefs; captured 9 rifles, 6 swords, 11
machetes.”
The tendency of the _caco_ to use his rifle chiefly as ballast to be
thrown overboard when the appearance of a white soldier gives his black
legs their maximum speed has helped this weeding out of weapons, as the
time-honored Haitian custom for opposing warriors to mount a prominent
hillock and hurl foul-mouthed defiance at their foes has raised the
scores of American marksmen. Recently an intelligent propaganda has been
carried on by the gendarmerie to induce the misled rank and file to come
in and surrender their arms, receiving in exchange a small cash
equivalent and a card attesting them _bons habitants_. This offer of
amnesty, which has already shown gratifying results, is brought to the
attention of the bandits chiefly through the market-women, who, swarming
all over Haiti, have always been the chief channel of information for
the _cacos_, with whom they are in the main friendly despite having
frequently been robbed of their wares by some hungry “army.” The chief
drawback to this plan, however, is a certain lack of team-work between
the two corps of caco-hunters. The marines have orders to shoot on sight
any native carrying a rifle—a perfectly justifiable command, since there
is no other distinguishing mark between a _bon habitant_ and a _caco_.
But the result is that the chief who has determined that surrender to
the nearest gendarme officer is the better part of valor, or the _caco_
“volunteer” who has at last succeeded in eluding his own sentries, is
forced to wrap his weapon in banana-leaves and sneak up to within a few
miles of town, hide his firearm, and apply at the gendarmerie for a
native soldier to protect him while he goes to get it.
In most cases the bandits travel in small groups until called together
for some projected attack. But more than one permanent camp, veritable
towns in some cases, has been found tucked away in some mountainous
retreat. The latest of these to be destroyed had seventy-five houses, a
headquarters building (with two hundred chairs), a voodoo temple, and a
cockpit; for the _caco_ remains a true Haitian for all his _cacoism_,
and will not be separated from his voodoo rites, his fighting cock, and
his women except in case of direst necessity.
* * * * *
Of many courageous feats performed by the American youths in khaki who
are roaming the hills of Haiti one stands out as the most spectacular.
Indeed, it is fit to rank with any of the stirring warrior tales with
which history is seasoned from the days of the Greeks to the recent
World War. Hearing it, one might fancy he was listening to a story of
the black ages of Haiti when Christophe was ruling his sable brethren
with bloody hand, rather than to something accomplished a bare half-year
ago by a persevering young American.
Charlemagne Masena Péralte was a member of one of the two families that
have long predominated in the village of Hinche. He was what the
Haitians call a _griffe_, a three-fourths negro. The French priest with
whom he served as choir-boy and acolyte remembers him well as “a boy who
was not bad, but haughty and quick to take offense.” When he had learned
what the thatched schoolhouse of Hinche had to offer, Charlemagne was
sent to Port au Prince, where he finished the course given by French
ecclesiastics. In other words he was a man of education by Haitian
standards. Like many of the sons of the “best families” in Haiti, he
decided to go into politics rather than pursue a more orderly
profession. But politicians are thicker than mangos in the Black
Republic, and for some reason things did not break right for
Charlemagne. Wounded in his pride and denied his expected source of easy
income, he followed the long-established Haitian custom in such matters.
He gathered a band of malcontents and penniless _cacos_ about him and
marched against the capital. The Government realized the danger and
bought Charlemagne off by appointing him commandant of an important
district. A few years later, when a new turn of the political wheel left
him again among the “outs,” he followed the same route to another
official position. It got to be a habit with Charlemagne to force each
succeeding government to appoint him to office.
Finding himself in disfavor with the American occupation, he set out to
work his little scheme once more. It does not seem to have occurred to
him that conditions had changed. Captured, and convicted of _cacoism_ in
October, 1917, by an American court martial sitting in his native town
of Hinche, he was sentenced to five years at hard labor.
A year later, while working on the roads in company with other inmates
of the departmental prison at Cap Haïtien, he eluded his gendarme guards
and escaped. Taking to the bush, he set out to organize a new band of
_cacos_. The _corvée_, then at its height, made his task easier. To turn
the scales still more in his favor, the large gang working on the
highway at Dignon, near his home town, had not been paid in more than
three months, thanks to that stagnation of circulation to which
quartermaster departments are frequently subject. “Come along,” said
Charlemagne, “and _I’ll_ get you your money,” and some three hundred
disgruntled workmen followed him into the mountains.
Within a few months he was signing himself “Chief of the Revolutionary
Forces against the American nation on the soil of Haiti,” and had
gathered several thousand _cacos_ about him. The magic name of General
Charlemagne spread throughout the island. Every leader of a collection
of lawless ragamuffins sought to be “commissioned” by him. He appointed
more generals than ever did a European sovereign. Every lazy black
rascal with nothing to lose and everything to gain joined his growing
ranks. When the simple countrymen would not follow him by choice, they
were recruited by force. He assassinated and punished until his word
became law to any one out of reach of gendarme protection. He spread
propaganda against the American officers, asserted that they had orders
to annex the country, and posed as the savior of Haiti, calling upon the
people to help him drive out the white oppressors as their fathers had
done more than a century before.
As a matter of fact, the patriotism of Charlemagne, of which he
constantly boasted in pompous words, consisted of nothing more or less
than an exaggerated ego and an overwhelming desire to advance his own
personal interests. He had that in common with all the yellow
politicians of Haiti. But he played the patriotic card with unusual
success. Disgruntled politicians and men of wealth who had some personal
reason for wishing the occupation abolished gave him secret aid. The
simple mountain negroes really believed that they were fighting to free
Haiti from the white man, and that under the great General Charlemagne
the task would soon be accomplished. The _corvée_ happened to have been
abolished soon after the “general’s” escape from prison; he quickly took
personal credit for the change and promised the simple Haitians to free
them in the same manner of all foreign interference. Before the end of
1918 he attacked his native town with several thousand followers and was
not easily repulsed. It was decided to put the marines in the field
against him, and for eight months they pursued him in vain. If anything,
the _caco_ situation was becoming worse instead of better. Despite the
“jumping” of many a band and camp by the marines and the gendarmerie,
the central portion of the country was becoming more and more
bandit-ridden. It became apparent that the pacification of Haiti
depended chiefly on the elimination of Charlemagne.
Herman H. Hanneken was a typical young American who had joined the
Marine Corps soon after finishing at the preparatory school on the
corner of Cass and Twelfth streets in his native town of St. Louis.
After taking part in the Vera Cruz demonstration, he was sent to Haiti
with the first forces of occupation, in August, 1915. There he reached
the rank of sergeant, and in due time became in addition a captain in
the Gendarmérie d’Haïti. It was in the latter rather than the former
capacity that he took part in the little episode I am attempting to
report, which was strictly an affair of the gendarmerie as distinguished
from their brotherly rivals in arms, the marines.
In June, 1919, Captain Hanneken was appointed district commander, with
headquarters in the old town of Grande Rivière, famous in Haitian
military and political annals. A powerful fellow of more than six feet,
who had reached the advanced age of twenty-five, he was ideal material
for the making of a successful _caco_-hunter. Having recently returned
from leave in the States, however, and his former stations having been
in peaceful regions, he had little field experience in the extermination
of bandits. Moreover, his extreme modesty and inability to blow his own
horn had never called him particularly to the attention of the higher
officials of the gendarmerie. No one expected him to do more than rule
his station with the average high efficiency which is taken for granted
in any of the hand-picked marines who are detailed as gendarme officers.
Captain Hanneken, however, had higher ambitions. Having familiarized
himself in a month with the routine of his district, he found time
weighing heavily on his hands. He turned his attention to the then most
pressing duty in Haiti, the elimination of Charlemagne. Unfortunately
for his plans, there were almost no _cacos_ in the district of Grande
Rivière. He could not encroach upon the territory of his
fellow-officers; the only chance of “getting a crack” at the bandits was
to import some of them into his own region.
Jean Batiste Conzé, a native of Grande Rivière, was a _griffe_, like
Charlemagne; he also belonged to one of the “best families” of his home
town. But there his similarity with the chief of the _cacos_ ceased. He
had always been a law-abiding citizen, and had once been chief of police
on his native heath. Like all good Haitians, he realized the damage and
suffering which the continued depredations of the bandits were causing
his country. Moreover, he was at a low financial ebb; but that is too
general a condition in Haiti to call for special comment, beyond stating
that a reward of two thousand dollars had been offered for Charlemagne,
dead or alive.
One night Captain Hanneken asked Conzé to call upon him at his
residence. When he was certain that the walls had been shorn of their
ears, he addressed his visitor in the Haitian “creole,” which he had
learned to speak like a native:
“Conzé, I want you to go and join the _cacos_.”
“’Aiti, mon capitaine!” cried Conzé, “Moi, toujou’ bon habitant, de
bonne famille, me faire _caco?_”
“Exactly,” replied Hanneken; “I want you to become a _caco_ chief. I
will furnish you whatever is necessary to gather a good band of them
about you, and you can take to the hills and establish a camp of your
own.”
The conference lasted well into the night, whereupon Conzé consented,
and left the captain’s residence through the back garden in order to
call as little attention as possible to his visit. A few days later,
toward the middle of August, he disappeared from town, carrying with him
in all secrecy fifteen rifles that had once been captured from the
_cacos_, 150 rounds of ammunition, several swords, and a showy
pearl-handled revolver that belonged to Hanneken. He was well furnished,
too, with money and rum, the chief sinews of war among the _cacos_. With
him had gone a personal friend and a trusted native gendarme who was
forthwith rated a deserter on the captain’s roster.
Conzé took pains to be seen by the worst native element as he was
leaving town, among whom he had already spread propaganda calling upon
them to join him in a new _caco_ enterprise. On the road he held up the
market-women and several travelers, taking nothing from them, but
impressing upon them the fact that he had turned bandit. All this was
reported to Captain Hanneken by his secret police. He told them to keep
their ears open, but not to worry, that he would get the rascal all in
good season. One morning a written notice appeared in the market of
Grande Rivière. It was signed by Conzé and berated the commander of the
district in violent terms, calling upon the inhabitants to join the
writer and put an end to his oppression. People recalled that Conzé and
the big American ruler of the town had once had words over some small
matter. Within three days the talk in all the district was of this
member of one of Grande Rivière’s most prominent families who had turned
_caco_.
Specially favored by his rifles, rum, and apparently unlimited funds,
Conzé soon gathered a large band of real _cacos_ about him. When
questions were asked, he explained that he had captured the weapons from
the gendarmerie by a happy fluke, and the wealthy citizens of Grande
Rivière, disgusted with the exactions of American rule, were furnishing
him with money. The new army established a camp at Fort Capois, at the
top of a high hill five hours’ walk from Grande Rivière. Now and then
they made an attack in the neighborhood, Conzé keeping a secret list of
those who suffered serious damage and never allowing his men to give
themselves over to the drunken pillaging that is so common to _caco_
warfare. The people accounted for this by recalling that Conzé had
always been a more kindly man than the average bandit leader. Meanwhile
the new chief continued his recruiting propaganda. He made personal
appeals to those of lawless tendency, he induced several smaller bands
to join him, he sent scurrilous personal attacks on Captain Hanneken to
be read in the market-place. The law-abiding citizens of Grande Rivière,
well aware of the advantages of American occupation and fearful of a
_caco_ raid, appealed to the district commander to drive the new band
out of the region. Hanneken reassured them in a special meeting of the
town notables with the assertion that he already had a scheme on foot
that would settle that rascal Conzé.
At the same time he had as many real worries as the good citizens,
though of a different nature. The first was a threat by the nearest
marine commander to wipe out that camp at Fort Capois if the strangely
laggard gendarme officer did not do so. It would have been fatal to
Hanneken’s plans to take the marines into his confidence; the merest
whisper of a rumor travels with lightning speed in Haiti. Besides Conzé
and his friend the gendarme “deserter,” the only persons whom he had let
into the secret were his department commander and the chief of the
gendarmerie in Port au Prince. Even his own subordinate officers were
kept wholly ignorant of the real state of affairs. In spite of this
extreme care, he was annoyed by persistent rumors that the whole thing
was a “frame-up.” Conzé, ran the market-place gossip, was really a
_zandolite_, a “caterpiller” in the pay of the Government and the
Americans. General Charlemagne, stationed far off in the district of
Mirebalais, had been warned to look out for him, a more or less
unnecessary “tip,” since it is natural to Haitian chiefs to be
suspicious of their fellows. In vain Conzé sent letters written by his
secretary, the “deserted” gendarme, in proper _caco_ style—most of them
dictated by Hanneken—to the big chief, offering the assistance of his
growing band. For a month he received no reply whatever. Then
Charlemagne wrote back in very courteous terms, lauding Conzé’s
conversion to the cause of Haitian liberty, but constantly putting him
off on one polite pretext or another. These letters, always sent by
women of _caco_ sympathies, were a week or more old before the replies
came back through devious bandit channels, and the situation often
changed materially within that length of time, upsetting Hanneken’s
plans. Meanwhile Conzé cleared the region about him, built houses for
his soldiers, and made Fort Capois the talk of all the _cacos_. Each new
recruit was given a draft of rum and what seemed to him a generous cash
bounty, and better food was served than most of them had tasted in their
lives. Still Charlemagne would have nothing to do with him beyond the
exchange of polite, non-committal notes.
At length the _caco_-in-chief sent one of his trusted subordinates to
report on the situation at Fort Capois. General ’Tijacques marched into
Conzé’s camp one evening at the head of seventy-five well-armed
followers, every man with a shell in his chamber. His air was more than
suspicious, and he ended by openly accusing Conzé of being a
_zandolite_.
“If I am, go ahead and shoot me!” cried the latter, laying aside his
weapons and ordering his men to withdraw. ’Tijacques declined the
invitation, but all night long he and his men sat about the fire, their
weapons in their hands, while Conzé slept with the apparent innocence of
a babe. When morning broke without an attack upon him, ’Tijacques was
convinced. He kissed Conzé on both cheeks, complimented him on joining
the “army of liberation,” and welcomed him as a brother in arms. When
Conzé presented him with a badly needed suit of clothes, a still more
desired bottle of rum, and money enough to pay his troops a week’s
salary of ten cents each, he left avowing eternal friendship.
A day or two later Charlemagne sent another of his generals, Papillon,
on a secret mission to arrest Conzé and bring him to his own camp. It
was merely a lucky coincidence that Hanneken had decided on that very
night to “attack” Fort Capois, as he had already done several times
before. Conzé, who made three nightly journeys a week to Grande Rivière
on the pretext of getting more money from the inhabitants friendly to
his cause, and entered Hanneken’s house through the back garden, was
instructed how to conduct himself in the affair to avoid personal
injury. For all that, the American had hard work to keep his gendarmes
from wiping out the camp entirely. In the midst of the fighting he
slipped aside in the bushes and, smearing his left arm with red ink,
wrapped it up in a bandage generously covered with the same liquid. Then
he sounded the retreat, and the gendarmes fell back pell-mell on Grande
Rivière. The next morning the market-place was agog with the astonishing
news. The _cacos_ of Fort Capois had repulsed the gendarmes! Moreover,
the great Conzé himself had wounded the redoubtable American captain! It
would not be long before the bandits descended on Grande Rivière itself!
Some of the frightened inhabitants seized their valuables and fled to
Cap Haïtien.
For days Captain Hanneken wandered disconsolately about the town with
his arm in a sling. When his own officers or friends joggled against it
by accident, he cried out with pain. His greatest difficulty was to keep
himself from being invalided to the rear, or to keep the solicitous
marine doctor from dressing his wounds. News of the great battle quickly
reached Charlemagne. Meanwhile the agent he had sent to arrest Conzé met
’Tijacques on the trail.
“You’re crazy!” cried the latter when Papillon whispered his orders.
“Conzé is as sincere a _caco_ as you or I. I will myself return to
Charlemagne and tell him so.”
The report of ’Tijacques, added to the news that Conzé had wounded the
accursed American commander, as well as repulsing his force, won the
confidence of Charlemagne—with reservations, of course; he never put
full confidence in any one, being too well versed in Haitian history. He
invited Conzé to visit him at his headquarters. There he commissioned
him “General Jean,” thanked him in the name of Haitian liberty, and
promised to coöperate with him. Incidentally, he relieved him of the
pearl-handled revolver that had once belonged to their common enemy,
Hanneken. It was too fine a weapon to be carried by any one but the
commander-in-chief, he explained. Before they parted, he promised the
new general to join him some day in Fort Capois.
Meanwhile the “deserted” gendarme had joined Charlemagne’s forces and
had so completely won his confidence that he was made his private
secretary. He found means of reporting conditions and plans now and then
to Hanneken. Conzé and Charlemagne entered into correspondence in
planning a general attack on Grande Rivière. Here Hanneken well knew
that he was playing with fire. If anything went wrong and Grande Rivière
was taken, nothing could keep the _cacos_ out of Cap Haïtien, the second
city of Haiti and the key to all the northern half of the country.
Besides, how could he be sure that his agents were not “double-crossing”
him instead of Charlemagne?
Negotiations continued all through the month of October. Toward the end
of that month Charlemagne, his brother St. Remy Péralte, several other
generals, and many chiefs arrived at Fort Capois, bringing with them
twelve hundred bandits. In company with “General Jean” they planned a
concerted attack on Grande Rivière. At the same time the programs of two
other assaults, on the towns of Bahon and Le Trou, were set for the same
date. The chief value of the latter was that they would keep the marines
busy and leave the larger town to the protection of the gendarmes.
Charlemagne’s forces were to approach Grande Rivière from the Fort
Capois side and to charge across the river when they received the signal
agreed upon. Conzé’s men were to descend upon the city from the opposite
direction, and “General Jean” was to give the signal himself by firing
three shots from an old ruined fortress above the town. As it was well
known that Charlemagne never attacked personally with his troops, but
hung back safely in the rear, it had been arranged through Conzé that he
await events at a place called Mazaire and enter the city in triumph
after the news of its capture had been brought to him.
On the night set, the last one of October, Captain Hanneken ordered ten
picked gendarmes to report at his residence. With them was his
subordinate, Lieutenant William R. Button, who had just been let into
the secret. The doors guarded against intrusion, Hanneken told the
gendarmes to lay aside their uniforms and put on _caco_-like rags that
had been gathered for the occasion. The two Americans dressed themselves
in similar garments and rubbed their faces, hands, and such portions of
their bodies as showed through the tatters, with cold cream and
lamp-black. Then the detail sallied forth one by one, to meet at a place
designated, where rifles that had been secretly conveyed there were
issued to them.
The pretended cacos took up their post at Mazaire behind a bushy hedge
along which Charlemagne must pass if he kept his rendezvous. While they
lay there, Conzé and his following of real _cacos_, some seven hundred
in number, passed close by them on their way to attack Grande Rivière.
This had been reinforced with a large number of gendarmes and a
machine-gun manned by Americans under the personal command of the
Department Commander of the North, all barricaded in the market-place
facing the river. Conzé gave the preconcerted signal, and Charlemagne’s
army dashed out of the foothills toward the stream. It was only the
over-eagerness of the barricaded force, which failed to hold its fire
long enough, that made the _caco_ casualties number merely by the dozen
rather than by the hundred.
At the height of the battle Charlemagne’s private secretary, the
“deserted” gendarme, crawled up to Hanneken and informed him that the
_caco_-in-chief had changed his mind. With his extraordinary gift of
suspicion, he had smelled a rat. He would not come down to Mazaire until
the actual winner of the battle came to him to announce the capture of
Grande Rivière.
To say that Captain Hanneken received the news quietly is merely another
way of stating that he is not a profane man. Here he had planned and
toiled for four months to do away with the arch _caco_ and break the
back of the rebellion that was holding up the advancement of Haiti, only
to have all his plans fail through the over-suspicion of the outlaw
politician. He had run the risk of having the headquarters of his
district captured, with dire, far-reaching results that no one realized
better than himself. He had played the part of a dime-novel hero,
descended to the rôle of an actor, which his forceful, straight-forward
nature detested, only to be left the laughing-stock of his
fellow-officers of the gendarmerie, to say nothing of the “kidding”
Marine Corps, in which he was still a sergeant. Incidentally, he had
staked the plan to the extent of eight hundred dollars of his own money,
which there was no hope of recovering through the devious channels of
official reimbursement if that plan failed, though as a matter of fact
this latter detail was the least of his worries. It was not a question
of a few paltry dollars, but of success.
If all these thoughts passed through his head as he lay concealed in the
bushes with his dozen fake _cacos_, they passed quickly, for his next
command came almost instantly. It was by no means the first time in this
hide-and-seek game with Charlemagne that he had been forced to change
his plans completely on the spur of the moment.
“Button,” he whispered, “we will be the successful _caco_ detachment
that brings the news of the capture of Grande Rivière to Charlemagne.”
Led by Jean Edmond François, the “deserted” gendarme and private
secretary of the _caco_-in-chief, the little group set out into the
mountains. Charlemagne, said the secretary, had come a part of the way
down from Fort Capois, but had camped for the night less than half-way
to the town. It was nearing midnight. Heavy clouds hung low in the sky,
but the stars shone here and there through them. For three hours the
detail stumbled upward along a difficult mountain trail. Neither of the
Americans knew how soon the gendarmes would lose their nerve and slip
off into the night, frightened out of all discipline by the dreaded name
of Charlemagne. There was no positive proof that they were not
themselves being led into an ambuscade, and they knew only too well the
horrible end that would befall two lone Americans captured by the
bandits. To make matters worse, Button was suffering from an acute
attack of his old malaria, though he was too much a marine and a
gendarme officer to let that retard his steps.
The detachment was halted at last by a _caco_ sentry, who demanded the
countersign. It happened that night to be “General Jean,” in honor of
Charlemagne’s trusted—with reservations—ally, Conzé. François, the
“deserted” gendarme, gave it. The sentry recognized him also as the
private secretary of the great chief. He advanced him, but declined to
let the detail with him pass without specific orders from Charlemagne.
The secretary left his companions behind and hurried on.
The disguised gendarmes mingled with the _caco_ outpost and announced
the capture of Grande Rivière, adding that the population was eagerly
waiting to receive the great Charlemagne and his doughty warriors.
Shouts of triumph rose and spread away into the night. In all the years
of American occupation no town of anything like the size of Grande
Rivière had ever been taken by the _cacos_. It was the death-knell of
the cursed whites, who would soon be driven from the great Republic of
Haiti, as they had been many years before.
Nearly an hour after his departure the secretary returned, to report
that Charlemagne had ordered the detachment to come to him immediately
with the joyful news.
“But,” added François, “there are _six_ series of outposts between here
and Charlemagne’s headquarters. There isn’t a chance in the world that
we can pass them all without being detected, and _cacos_ swarm
everywhere along the trail. It is a question of turning back, _mon
Capitaine_, or of leaving the trail and sneaking up over the mountain
through the brush.”
[Illustration: A Haitian country home]
[Illustration: A small portion of one collection of captured _caco_ war
material]
[Illustration: The _caco_ in the foreground killed an American Marine]
[Illustration: Captain Hanneken and “General Jean” Couze at Christophe’s
Citadel]
“And lose ourselves for good and all,” added Hanneken, in his ready
“creole.” “Nothing doing. Take the lead and keep to the trail.”
The first outpost advanced the detachment without question. The score of
negroes who made it up seemed to be too excited with the taking of
Grande Rivière to be any longer suspicious. Some five minutes later the
group was again halted, this time by an outpost of some forty men. Their
leader scrutinized the newcomers carefully one by one as they passed,
the latter, in turn, shuffling along with bowed heads, as if they were
completely exhausted with the climb from Grande Rivière, which was not
far from the truth. Several of the bandits along the way were heard to
remark in their slovenly “creole,” “_Bon dieu_, but those niggers are
sure tired.” The third and fourth outposts gave the party no trouble,
beyond demanding the countersign, except that casual questions were
flung at them by the _cacos_ scattered along the trail. These the
disguised gendarmes answered without arousing suspicion. Perfectly as he
knew “creole,” Hanneken avoided speaking whenever possible, and left the
word to François, fearful of giving himself away by some hint of a
foreign accent or a mischosen word from the southern dialect, with which
he was more familiar. No white man, whatever his training, can equal the
slovenly, thick-tongued pronunciation of the illiterate Haitian.
At the fifth outpost the leader was a huge, bulking negro as large as
Hanneken, and he stood on the alert, revolver half raised, as the detail
approached. The giving of the countersign did not seem to satisfy him.
He looked Hanneken up and down suspiciously and asked him a question.
The captain, pretending he was out of breath, mumbled an answer and
stalked on. It happened to be his good luck that he is blessed with high
cheek bones and a face that would not be instantly recognized as
Caucasian on a dark night. Button, on the other hand, seemed to arouse
new suspicion. He was carrying an automatic rifle and, in order to
conceal the magazine, bore it vertically across his chest, his arms
folded over it. The negro sentry caught the glint of the barrel and
snatched Button by the arm.
“Where did you get such a fine-looking rifle?” he demanded.
Hanneken, scenting trouble, had halted several paces beyond, his hands
on the butts of the revolver and the automatic which he carried on his
respective hips. It would have been easy to kill the suspicious negro,
but that would have been the end of his hopes of reaching
Charlemagne—and probably of the two Americans. For though the disguised
gendarmes were all armed with carbines, they would have been no match
for the swarms of _cacos_ about them, even if their taut nerves did not
give way in flight under the strain.
Button, however was equal to the occasion.
“Let me go!” he panted, jerking away from the negro leader. “Don’t you
see that my chief is getting out of sight?”
The black giant, still suspicious, yielded with bad grace, and the
Americans hurried on. The sixth outpost was the immediate guard over
Charlemagne, about thirty paces from where he had spread his blanket for
the night. François gave the countersign, took two or three steps
forward, whispered in Hanneken’s ear, “he is up there,” and slipped away
into the bushes. The gendarmes had likewise disappeared. The Americans
advanced to within fifteen feet of a faintly blazing camp-fire. On the
opposite side of it a man stood erect, his silk shirt gleaming in the
flickering light. He was peering suspiciously over the fire, trying to
recognize the newcomers. A woman was kneeling beside the heap of fagots,
coaxing it to blaze. A hundred or more _cacos_ were lined up to the
right, at a respectful distance from the peering chief.
Two negroes, armed with rifles, halted the Americans, at the same time
cocking their pieces. Hanneken raised his black, invisible automatic and
fired at the chief beyond the fire, at the same time shouting, “Let her
go, Button!” in an instant the kneeling woman scattered the fire with a
sweeping gesture and plunged the spot in darkness. Button was spraying
the line of cacos to the right with his machine-gun. The disguised
gendarmes came racing up and lent new legs to the fleeing bandits. When
a space had been cleared, Hanneken placed his handful of soldiers in a
position to offset a counter-attack, and began groping about the
extinguished fire. His hands encountered a dead body dressed in a silk
shirt. This, however, was no proof that his mission had been
accomplished. Some of Charlemagne’s staff might have boasted silk
shirts, also. He ran his hands down the body to a holster and drew out
the pearl-handled revolver which he had loaned to Conzé, and which had
been appropriated in turn by Charlemagne. The _caco_-in-chief had been
shot squarely through the heart.
When daylight came, the hilltop was found to be strewn with the bodies
of nine other bandits, while trails of blood showed that many more had
dragged themselves off into the bushes. Among the wounded, it was
discovered later, was St. Remy, the brother of Charlemagne, who
afterward died of his wounds. The captured booty included nine rifles,
three revolvers, two hundred rounds of ammunition, seven swords, fifteen
horses and mules, and Charlemagne’s voluminous correspondence. This
latter was of special value, since it contained the names of the good
citizens of Port au Prince and the other larger cities who had been
financing the _caco_-in-chief. Most of them are now languishing in
prison. But let me yield the floor to Captain Hanneken’s official diary
of the events that followed. Its succinctness is suggestive of the
character of the man:
Nov. 1, 1919.—Killed Charlemagne Péralte, Commander-in-Chief of the
bandits. Wounded St. Remy Péralte. Brought Charlemagne’s body to
Grande Rivière, arriving 9 A. M. Went to Cap Haïtien with the body.
Received orders to proceed to Fort Capois next morning. Went to
Grande Rivière via handcar, arriving 9 P. M. Wrote report re death
of Charlemagne. Left Grande Rivière with seven gendarmes, via
handcar to Bahon, arriving midnight.
Nov. 2.—Left Bahon 1 A. M. with seven gendarmes. Arrived 200 yards
from first outpost of Fort Capois at 5 A. M. Crawled to 150 yards
from outpost and remained there until 6:30 A. M., waiting for
detachment from Le Trou to attack at daybreak, when six bandits came
in our direction. Opened fire, killing three. All bandits in various
outposts retreated to main fort. Advanced and captured the first,
second, and third outposts. Got within 300 yards of fort when they
opened fire from behind a stonewall barricade. They fired a cannon
and about 40 rifle shots. Crawled on our stomachs, no cover. Fired
the machine gun and ordered the gendarmes to advance 15 yards and
open fire. Kept this up until we arrived within 150 yards, when we
espied the bandits escaping. Entered fort, burned all huts and
outposts. Left Fort Capois at 9 A. M. Arrived in Grande Rivière 2 P.
M., very tired.
The most exacting military superior cannot but have excused this last
somewhat unmilitary remark. Fatigue does not rest long on Captain
Hanneken’s broad shoulders, however, and he soon had his district
cleared again of the _cacos_ he had imported for the occasion. The
two-thousand-dollar reward was divided between Conzé and his one
civilian assistant. Captain Hanneken, Lieutenant Button, and the
gendarmes who accompanied them, were ordered to Port au Prince to be
personally thanked by the President of Haiti and decorated with the
Haitian _medaille d’honneur_, a ceremony against which the captain
protested as a waste of time that he could better employ in hunting
_cacos_. At this writing he is engaged again in his favorite sport in
another district. His Marine Corps rank has been raised to that of
second lieutenant, while Conzé has been appointed to the same grade in
the Gendarmérie d’Haïti, with assignment to plain-clothes duty.
The death of Charlemagne has probably broken the back of _cacoism_ in
Haiti, though it has been by no means wiped out. Papillon, with
’Tijacques and several other rascals as chief assistants, is still
roaming at large in the north, and the youthful Bénoît is terrorizing
the mountainous region in the neighborhood of Mirebalais and Las
Cahobas. But the gendarmerie, assisted by the Marine Corps, may be
trusted to bring their troublesome careers to a close all in good
season. One of the chief problems of the pacifiers at present is to
convince the ignorant _caco_ rank and file that the great Charlemagne
is dead. His superstitious followers credit him with supernatural
powers, and many a captured bandit, when asked who is now his
commander-in-chief, still replies with faithful simplicity, “Mais,
c’est Charlemagne.” The public display of his body at Grande Rivière
and Cap Haïtien produced an effect that will not soon be forgotten by
those who witnessed it, but even that has not fully convinced the
cacos hidden far away in the mountains. So great was the veneration,
or, more exactly, perhaps, the superstition, in which he was held that
it was found necessary to give him five fake funerals in as many
different places, as a blind, and to bury his body secretly in the
out-of-the-way spot, lest his grave become a shrine of pilgrimage for
future _cacos_.