Difference between revisions of "Philibert François Rouxel de Blanchelande"

Revision as of 22:08, 27 May 2006

Philibert François Rouxel de Blanchelande (aka Blanchelande) (1735 Dijon, France - April 11, 1793 Paris, France) was a governor of Saint-Domingue, from November 9, 1790 to 1792, at the time of the Boukman Rebellion in 1791. Previously he had been the Governor of Trinidad, from June 2, 1781 to 1784,

In late 1790, Blanchelande had Vincent Ogé, as well as 23 of his associates including Jean Baptiste Chavannes, captured in Hinche ¹ . Ogé's subsequent and exceptionally brutal (Kennedy p. 136) torture and death (James pp. 73 - 74) on the stake in Le Cap (on February 6, 1791) further fanned the flames of discontent in the month leading up to the ceremonies at Bois Caiman.

Blanchelande was deported to France on the orders of Sonthonax, three days after the latter's September 17, 1792 arrival in Saint-Domingue. Blanchelande was to be judged for counter-revolutionary actions. He was ultimately executed by guillotine in Paris at the same time as his son who also was his aide. The Scottish writer and historian Thomas Carlyle, in his book The French Revolution, attributes Blanchelande's execution, to him having lost Saint-Domingue to the rebels. (Carlyle Volume III. The Guillotine. Book 3.IV. Terror. Chapter 3.4.VI. Risen against Tyrants)

Note 1: On November 20, 1790. Hinche was then part of the Spanish controlled part of Hispaniola, just east of the French colony Saint-Domingue. Today Hinche is a town in Haiti.

References

• Carlyle, Thomas. (1837). The French Revolution. Available as Project Gutenberg: e-text.
• James, C.L.R. (1989). The Black Jacobins. Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. (2nd Ed., Revised) New York: Vintage Press. ISBN 0-679-72467-2.
• Kennedy, Roger G. (1989). Orders from France: The Americans and the French in a Revolutionary World, 1780-1820. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-394-55592-9.