Istwa Nou

Forty-five days after the ambush that killed Lieutenant Muth, a peasant told the marines where Batraville was sleeping. At daybreak on 19 May 1920 patrols closed on the rocks at the top of Morne Ti Bois Pin, five miles southeast of Lascahobas. The cacos fired first. An automatic rifle cut Batraville down, still carrying the binoculars taken from Muth, and a sergeant shot him with a pistol as he tried to rise and draw. Armed caco resistance ended there, and so did the presidential hopes of Dr Bobo, the mulatto physician for whose ambitions a great many peasants had paid. Marines and gendarmerie together lost 98 killed and wounded across the whole war. Caco dead are counted differently by everyone. A conservative figure for 1915 to 1920 is 2,250. Hans Schmidt put it at 3,250. Roger Gaillard asked whether the total, counting repression and the after effects of the fighting, might approach 15,000, and said the war often resembled a massacre. Not a shot was fired south of the Cul-de-Sac.