April to 6 October 1919 · Haitianspan
Péralte writes to a British chargé from the hills above the capital
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The surviving letters show how high Péralte was riding in 1919. He wrote to Brigadier General Catlin attacking the Dartiguenave ministers by name, dismissing the Gendarmerie as ex-convicts and houseboys led by marines dubbed officers for the occasion, declaring that slavery had already been re-established, and offering to support the better sort of American in exchange for Bobo's return. Catlin filed it. Letters came the other way from his brother Saint-Rémy and his sister Marie Louise in Port-au-Prince, addressed to the code name Maïs Goilte, carrying money, rumour, and news of contacts with the British legation and an unnamed Englishman who was to buy ammunition, see King George V, then travel on to Japan, France and Russia. Marie Louise mortgaged a house to give him two thousand dollars. The manbo Mme de Thèbes offered, for five hundred, a neuvaine to paralyse the gendarmes, provided Péralte sent earth from every commune in the North and Upper Artibonite. He sent it. On 6 October he warned the British chargé that he stood at the gates of the capital.
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