March 1802 · Haitianmonth known
Marie-Jeanne Lamartinière holds Crête-à-Pierrot
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At the siege of Crête-à-Pierrot in March 1802, Marie-Jeanne Lamartinière fought alongside her husband and Dessalines against Leclerc's expeditionary force, in military dress, carrying a rifle and a machete. The defenders were outnumbered several times over and they held long enough to break the French timetable, then cut their way out at night. Here is why she is on this timeline and not in a footnote. In 1935 the Ligue Féminine d'Action Sociale sent a message of solidarity in the name of all Haitian women to the women of Ethiopia resisting Mussolini, and the figure they reached for was Marie-Jeanne at Crête-à-Pierrot. A hundred and thirty three years later, Haitian feminists were still using her as the proof that the nation's founding included women under arms. The citation is the event. What a country remembers on purpose is itself a historical act.
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