Girard takes apart the founding story of the Haitian flag, in which Dessalines slices the white band from the tricolor at Arcahaye in May 1803 and Catherine Flon stitches the halves together. Tracing the tale from Madiou and Ardouin through Duvalier-era revisions, he shows that each version served a black or mulatto claim on the revolution, and that the date, the place and Flon herself have no archival basis; the French admiral's report describes a black and red flag. What the archives do show is borrowing. Every rebel banner descended from the tricolor, the motto echoed French republican slogans, and the coat of arms copies the engraved letterhead of a French general serving under Leclerc. Reading the insurgents' own letters of 1802 and 1803, Girard argues they fought first as French republicans defending the 1794 emancipation law, and turned to independence only in the last months before the break.