Sauvant la caisse!...

Abstract

Deposed Haitian President Faustin Soulouque carries two armfuls of cash, while running away from a large crowd of people.

SOULOUQUE, Faustin (1782-1867) was President of Haiti until 1857. He proclaimed himself Emperor in 1849 by the name of FAUSTIN I. In 1856, he was forced to resign and left Haiti in 1859. He lived in Jamaica for a few years, then returned to Haiti where he died in 1867.

Emperor Soulouque and his court were the butt of caricaturists, mainly Daumier and Cham. It is interesting to note that Cham was the grandson of Comte de Noé, the former owner of Toussaint Louverture in the days of slavery in Saint Domingue.

Once Napoleon III had succeeded in 1851 to control the liberal press by introducing stringent press laws, it was no longer possible to discuss the political situation under this regime openly in the papers. Some editors went abroad to build up a new opposition and a Charivari Belge was founded which criticized openly the French Government. Those editors who stayed behind had to find “substitutes” replacing the King without risking being closed down by the Government - like in the times of Louis-Philippe.

Daumier used the Haitian Emperor Faustin SOULOUQUE as an exotic replacement for Napoléon III. Soulouque had come to power in 1848 and (like his French counterpart) became Emperor in 1849. He was crowned in an elaborate ceremony, imitating the Napoleonic pomp under Bonaparte, whom he admired deeply. His court exhibited a perpetual masquerade of imperial glory. During his exile in Belgium, Victor wrote biting articles on “Napoléon le Petit”, mentioning the Haitian Emperor but aiming at the French King. Any use of the epithet was a constant cause for Republican joy; everyone knew who was really meant, when the name Soulouque was mentioned.

Daumier made over 20 lithographs during the Second Empire using Soulouque as an exotic surrogate for the French King. He dressed him in the fantastic uniform of a field marshal - similar to the one Napoléon would be wearing during military manoeuvres. When France was suffering heavy losses during the Crimean War, Soulouque appeared again in military garb, this time wearing a Napoleonic hat and commanding his black soldiers to storm into the open fire of the enemy towards certain death. The situation of the French army during the Crimean engagements had been similarly hopeless.

Soulouque was eventually overthrown in 1859 by a liberal mulatto, Nicolas Geffrard , 1806-1879 and fled to Jamaica in exile. Daumier took the artistic liberty depicting him in exile in Paris, a city the real Soulouque had never seen in his life. Napoléon’s fate was similar to that of the Haitian emperor in that he too was chased out of the country in 1871 and went to exile to England.