This might help you. Beware what those French write. Her name...

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This might help you. Beware what those French write.

Her name was Marie-Louise not Luisa.

She was born in Haiti, from a freedman.

Maybe she had light complexion but she only died in Pisa Italy.

Her daughters died before her, they never married.

One of her son was killed the "crown prince".

I believe there was another son. You can research it. This is what I found:The Site is:
webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/history/earlyhaiti/marie-louise.htm
"MARIE-LOUISE was born in Cap Francois in the days of its glory.

Her father was a publican and his inn flourished under the high sounding name of Hotel de la Couronne.

It was a noted hostelry in the town and was patronized by the best people of the city and the country round about.

About its court yard were dwarf palms, mangoes, and other semi-shrubs, and from seats beneath them one could look at mountains looming up in the east, their domes courting clouds, fleecy-white or blue-black, according to the season, while between them and the city were plains -- The Plaine du Nord -- upon which spread plantations, rich in sugarcane and coffee-trees, owned by planter-emigres from far off France.

The soil of these plantations was rich, and the richness was transferred to the pockets of the planters.

They and their families came to Cap Francois to empty their pockets and the Hotel de la Couronne captured a part of the contents.

There were high doings in the wine room when the planters came to town. The vintage of their homeland warmed even their tropic-boiled blood until it sometimes sizzled.

They sung songs, told stories and played billiards and the tips they flung to their attendants were lavish.

Because of patronage the Hotel de la Couronne was a public place without reservation; also a publication place.

Everything that could be called news was
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rehearsed within its wine, room, and comments of all kinds made by those who listened.

Not only was there news of The Plaine du Nord, but also from la belle France.

The French planters liked this possession of the homeland.

Their life here was one of ease, and while they leisured riches flowed in; but their wives did not share their liking.

A white woman aged twice as quickly in Saint Domingue as in the home country.

Their husbands, they said, loved beauty and youth, so turned away from them when both had fled. Judging from the stories told in wine rooms, this must have been so; for their polygamous souls extolled the beauties of negro mistresses, who somehow did not seem to grow old.
Saint Domingue presented a curious mixture of population at this time. Not only were there one hundred black slaves to every white person, but there was a vast number of persons of mixed blood.

The display on street parades was varied and remarkable, and perhaps might be called magnificent.

The carefully housed French women palely white; their white husbands bronzed by the Caribbean sun; their offspring by black wives yellow in all shades; and natives ebon black.

Such a parade suggested all kinds of stories and formed a singular historic background.

Because of this mixed blood there were many grades of society.

White blood in any degree conferred freedom on the fortunate possessor, and yet it did not bring happiness.

The half-breed aped the white man and wanted to be white, but that class did not want him to be. The law guaranteed
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equality, but it was a fiction.

There was a line of demarkation between the two. It was possible in Saint Domingue for a black man to be free. Free and easy masters permitted such a thing, either as a gift or by purchase, if the would-be purchaser had the money.

Because of this, Coidovic, the owner of the Hotel de la Couronne, was a free man.
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CHAPTER II
Marie-Louise
Coidovic lived a life outside his hostelry.

He had a wife and daughter, both of whom he loved.

The wife, like himself, had been born a slave; but the daughter had been born free. Coidovic had picked up quite a little education, and, because of his surroundings, a varied one. It was irregular, however, and unsatisfactory to him. He wanted his daughter to have one obtained in the regular way; so she was sent to schools.

He wanted her to have accomplishments-music and painting -- such as white women possessed, so he employed teachers in these arts.
Marie-Louise was of a sunny disposition.

She inherited this from her father, perhaps, for he was of easy feeling.

He knew the hard knocks of life, and how hard it was to climb.

He was considered successful, but it had not soured him. He was a fatalist.

He could account for his success in no other way. Other people had tried harder and failed; so he was ready to hold out a helping hand to those who tried to rise; but the mother would have liked to see her daughter put on the dignity her position warranted.

Marie-Louise was sunny.

As a child she played with all the children who came her way, black or white with the shades between; played in the palm shaded streets and the Place d'Armes of Cap Francois; or with the naked black urchins in the clay-baked alleys or compounds.

Station made little difference to her.
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As she grew older and more domestic, she was quiet.

She listened to the stories told by old femmes of all colors in the streets of Cap Francois, and to those of the French women who tarried in the waiting salon of the Couronne.

Strange stories they all told. There was the old woman slave who scrubbed the floors of the hotel.

She had been born in Africa, and the wild life she recited and yet longed for awakened a kind of awe in Marie-Louise.

Her unknown ancestors must have shared that kind of life only three generations before her. Then Adele the free woman, who brought stories of duplicity and fraud from the plantations of the Plaine du Nord along with her vegetables and fruit.

Then the French women of the waiting salons.

They were so unhappy they did not care who heard their stories.

It was possible for a white man to love a negro, but a white woman could not love even a negro saint.

Then she heard of far-off France that these white women were always longing for; and of the richness there with which even the French furnished houses of Saint Domingue could not vie. Marie-Louise gained an education not to be had in the public schools, and had an historical knowledge not to be found in text books.

Her mother denounced this knowledge as out of the regular course; but her father sympathized with it, it was so like his own. He had not thought of it as valuable in his own case, but when he heard it from his daughter's lips -- his daughter who was educated -- it aroused a new interest and value.

"You are a wonder," he told Marie-Louise.

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"You should be a queen; you know so much about the people and have such an interest in them."
Coidovic could not conceive of any possibility that could make her a queen.

When he made the declaration before his wife, she flung up her head
"She's too common and undignified," she said. "Nothing of that sort could happen to her."
Nevertheless, Marie-Louise grew up into the same sunny-faced woman she had been as a child.

She was loved by all the people of Cap Francois and the plantations outside.

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CHAPTER III
The Boy from St. Kitts
One day during Marie-Louise's girlhood, there came a new possession into the Coidovic household -- a boy slave about twelve years old. He had been bought from a French naval officer in the fleet of M. le Comte d'Estaing, which had put into the harbor of Cap Francois.

This boy had been born on the Island of St. Kitts.

He had endured the same life as all slaves -- six years of naked freedom and then work. At seven he had been apprenticed to a mason kept on his master's estate.

Five years he worked at this, and after efforts showed he learned the trade well. It was hard work, however, and at the age of twelve, he ran away -- or to be more exact -- he changed masters, for the French sailing master who received him on board his ship claimed him as a slave.

He had never had a name until on board this ship, when the sailors dubbed him Christophe because of the island he came from, and the name followed him through life.
The ship on which he took passage put into the harbor of Cap Francois.

As she entered the harbor it was discovered to be in the midst of a French naval fleet of twenty-four ships, under the command of M. le Comte d'Estaing.

This fleet was bound for Savannah on the American mainland to aid the Americans who were fighting to free themselves from their British overlords.

The admiral
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had been recruiting fifteen hundred soldiers with which to assist the Americans colonies, with twenty-two hundred more from Guadeloupe a n d Martinique.

The fleet reached its destination, stayed a month during a rainy season and then returned to the island homes of the soldiers.

The young officer had no further use for a servant, so he sold Christophe to Coidovic.

Christophe was of rather a surly disposition, but no one could withstand Marie-Louise's sunny smile; so they became close childhood friends and sweetheart as the years passed.

He had a fund of new tales for her to listen to and meditate on. Most of her old stories had to do with the island she lived on and France, the country the white planters came from. Now she learned there was a land to the west of Saint Domingue -- a great nation -- and they were fighting for independence from England.

She listened to his description of the soldiers he marched with the negro troops from the West Indies, the regulars from France and the hard-featured farmers from the American colonies; but mostly she liked to listen to the stories of a Saint Domingue mulatto, Chavannes, who had become Christophe's chum.
Chavannes had been greatly impressed with what the Americans were fighting for freedom.

Why could not freedom be had in Saint Domingue?

This greatly impressed Marie-Louise.

She was free -- but why could not Christophe, her best friend, also be free?

Christophe was stable boy about the hotel, and the light-hearted, half-drunken planters
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tossed him many a gold piece as a tip when he brought their horses to the block.

That put an idea into the head of Marie-Louise.

"Keep them," she said, "and I will make father sell you your liberty.

Then you will get what Chavannes is talking about."
The idea took root in Christophe's brain.

The work of stable boy was not strenuous, so Christophe had many hours of leisure.

These he passed, for the most part, in Marie-Louise's company.

She read to him, mostly books of history, to which he listened eagerly.

She was reading about the English colonies one day, when he interrupted her as a sudden thought took possession of him. He was from an English colony.

All English people had at least two names.

He had been named Christophe by a French captain, but he was going to have an English given name to go with it. Henry was the name he picked out.
"But the French people have Henris," interrupted Marie-Louise.

"Yes; but did you not tell me they spelled the name differently?" inquired Christophe.

"Yes, with an i instead of a y," admitted the girl.
"Then mine shall be spelled with a y," declared Christophe.

"Then if that be your desire, it shall be Henry, and I will be the first to so address you," and she held out her hand.
Henry grasped it and looked into her clear eyes for a moment, then drew her into his arms and kissed her.
"You are a darling," he whispered.

The cycle of childhood friendship ceased at that moment and the commune of lovers began.

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Very shortly Christophe was taken from the stable and put into the billiard room to keep the score of the planters.

It was a better place.

The tips were more numerous and larger.

The stenchy overalls of the stable boy were exchanged for a white starched coat and shirt.

"You look much nicer," commented Marie-Louise.

"Thank you," returned Christophe.

"I feel nicer; and I am grateful to you for the advancement, for I suppose it was your influence that obtained it for me."
"Father ought to be willing to do something for his daughter," was the only comment of Marie-Louise.

The change was an education to Christophe, and the roll of teacher changed from Marie-Louise to the first.

The planters talked over their billiards and their wine, and the longer they played and the more they drank the more they talked.

They said things not intended for slave ears. The wine loosened their tongues and blurred their intellects.

Christophe listened with amazement and then coolly digested what they said; and within the short tropic twilight told what had been said, with his disgusted reflections to Marie-Louise.

It was as new to her as to Christophe.

First it amazed her as it had her lover.

Then she cogitated upon it. Then it was that Christophe became teacher.

What he had heard the planters say was that Saint Domingue was a powder barrel and liable to blow up at any time. There were, they said, twenty thousand planters with five hundred thousand black slaves, and
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between them were twenty-four thousand people neither white or black, and the three classes were opposed to each other.

If the slaves ever found out the power of numbers, it would be death to the whites; also, if the jealousy of the mulattoes increased to the boiling point, so they could join the blacks, the boiling would become fiercer.

But they were so jealous that they would not unite.

Marie-Louise listened and thought as she listened to Christophe.

"There may be a revolution," she mused.

"A black kingdom may take the place of the white one. Chavannes' dream may come true."
"It will mean bloodshed," interposed Christophe.

"Oh, I hope not!" exclaimed the gentle Marie-Louise.

Another thing the planters talked about, and that was the homeland of France.

They were having a revolution across the sea. The king had been beheaded and a new order set up. The people had torn down the Bastille and declared all men were brothers.

If the idea should ever cross the ocean to this province, then all would be doomed.

France was rather of a misty far-away land to Christophe and Marie-Louise, a wonderful land when they thought of the fine furniture which adorned the houses of the French planters, and the flowing dresses which robed their wives and daughters.

But the people -- the common people -- who had driven out the king, must be kind, even if savage, to be willing to clasp hands with all men as brothers.

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One night as the twilight deepened and the two sat under the pepper tree in Cordova's court-yard, Christophe took a bag from his pocket and emptied the contents into Marie-Louise's lap. The heap was composed of shining golden francs.

"There's what your father paid for me, with enough additional for annual interest.

Do you think he would sell me my freedom?"
Marie-Louise gathered the golden heap into her hand, put it back into the bag and returned it to Christophe.

"Keep it until I tell you to see father," she said.
The next day at nightfall, the two met under the pepper tree, she said
"You can see father now."
The next night at their meeting, Christophe said
"I have earned my first money as a free man today, because of you, I suspect -- and your father would not take any interest.

Said my work ought to be interest enough, also, I suppose because of your influence.

I don't know how I can thank you or repay you; but if a life of devotion will lessen my debt, I will gladly give it. I am poor, but I may be richer; and when I am, I am coming to claim you!"
"Don't wait for riches!" exclaimed Marie-Louise.

"Time is flying; war is threatening; and we are sure only of the present!"
"You are a prize, Marie-Louise !" throbbed Christophe.

"I hope I deserve you!" and in the closing twilight their lips touched in a betrothal kiss.

Claude, April 18 2008, 9:13 PM

Topic: CITADELLE: Laferrière. H. CHISTOPHE Mégalomanie

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So who are we supposed to believe? If Maria-Luisa, Henry Christophe's wife was in fact Italian and white she could not... read more >
Lionne, 18-Apr-08 8:12 pm
This might help you. Beware what those French write. Her name was Marie-Louise not Luisa. She was born in Haiti, from... read more >
Claude, 18-Apr-08 9:13 pm
King Henry created the finest mansion in America, rising four stories above a broad open terrace where fountains... read more >
Claude, 18-Apr-08 9:30 pm
Pour Natasha: Article par :Aime Cesaire (Il est mort je crois 17 Avril 2008) La tragedie du roi Christophe, Le premier... read more >
Lalionne, 18-Apr-08 9:43 pm
Il y a quatre chose que nous ne pouvont recourrer: La Pierre apres le lancement Le mot apres l’avoir dit ou l'avoir... read more >
Tasha, 18-Apr-08 10:18 pm
Natasha, On rejette l'hyptothese de 'Christophe megalomane' et on refute l'information que Marie-Louise fut une... read more >
Rubens F. Titus, 21-Apr-08 9:49 pm
Bonne replique! Henry Christophe est l'un de ou le plus progressiste leader de notre histoire. L'appepeler un... read more >
Vieux Tonton, 27-Apr-08 3:35 am
je partage to sentiment, il ya des haitiens qui sont pragmatics et conscient de leur situation, tu en fais partie... read more >
Jojo, 27-Apr-08 12:16 pm

 

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