Istwa Nou

A gun salute from the palace at two in the afternoon on 27 January 1914 announced that Michel Oreste was leaving. Three men wrote down what happened over the mile to the wharf: the British minister Leech, the American minister Smith, and John Allen of the national bank. Oreste rode in his landau with his wife and the German minister beside him, escorted by cavalry and a crowd of soldiers firing into the air. Madame Oreste bowed and smiled to the crowd along the route. Her husband lost his nerve, stood twice and fired his revolver at his own escort, convinced he was being betrayed. The escort fired back into the crowd and killed several people. He jumped down into the street and was lifted back into the carriage by the guard, then put aboard a cutter from a German warship. As the diplomats made their farewells he mentioned that he had arranged nothing to keep order after he sailed. Within hours British, American, French and German marines were ashore.

With Michel Oreste out of the way, the Zamor brothers and Davilmar Théodore prepared to move south from the North together. As a token of good faith Théodore handed the Zamors a war chest and sent them by the inland road through Hinche and Mirebalais to raise more men. He reached Gonaïves the next day to find the Zamors already there, and was greeted with a volley. They had spent his money on an army of their own. Leech reported it to London as an ordinary specimen of the political class. Battle followed, interrupted by pillage and followed by fire, and Leech noted that Haitian soldiers were poor shots who mostly fired high, and that the beaten side habitually joined the winner, which is what happened. Théodore straggled south with a few followers while Gonaïves burned brightly enough to be seen from Saint-Marc. Oreste Zamor put his men on trains, the first mass military rail movement in Haitian history, and entered Port-au-Prince on 8 February with several hundred camp followers, burros, dogs and roosters behind him.