Two claims about the August 1791 uprising in northern Saint Domingue are tested here against the archival record: that it grew out of a swelling tide of runaway slave activity, and that vodou supplied its organisation and leadership. Geggus reworks Jean Fouchard's counts of newspaper runaway notices, showing double counting and arguing that the advertisements measure police efficiency and press growth rather than flight. Governors' correspondence in the 1780s reported marronage at a low ebb, maroon bands sat where the slave regime later held firmest, and no band is known to have joined the revolt. Turning to religion, he dates the growth of the Makandal legend, separates sorcerer from priest, and notes that surviving ritual language is Kikongo rather than Aja-Fon. Reading Dalmas, Herard-Dumesle and Celigny Ardouin against each other, he places the Bois Caiman oath after the political decision to rebel. Both influences remain unproven.