Why one of the richest free men of colour in Saint-Domingue took up arms in 1790, when his class had most to lose by it, is the puzzle Garrigus sets. Oge's peers backed Julien Raimond's patient lobbying in Paris, which offered to strengthen slavery in exchange for rights grounded in property. Oge spent years hunting for a constituency, failed to win the absentee planters, ran through his money first in Cap-Francais and then in Paris, and remade himself through the colonial militia, buying three uniforms, a colonel's commission and a medal. The militiamen who gathered under his name at Grande-Riviere were poorer men, led in practice by Chavanne, convinced their service had already earned them citizenship. Colonial troops attacked them and produced the revolt whites feared. Reading business papers and notarial records, Garrigus concludes that Oge's break with his own class pulled a larger and more volatile population into colonial politics.