Louis Boisrond Tonnerre, author of the Act of Independence, was executed 220 years ago

The child of thunder

Born Louis Boisrond on June 6, 1776, in Torbeck, in the country's southwest, he was the son of a carpenter, Mathurin Boisrond. According to tradition, he received the nickname "Tonnerre" because lightning struck his cradle without injuring him. A man of mixed race, he completed his studies in Paris, where he went with his uncle Louis François Boisrond-Jeune, the colony's deputy to the Council of Five Hundred. He returned to Saint-Domingue in 1798 and settled in Saint-Louis-du-Sud.

The pen of independence

In 1804, he drafted the declaration that proclaimed Haiti's independence from France. As a historian, he also left behind the *Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire d'Haïti*, an account of the revolution ranging from the arrival of the Leclerc expedition to the proclamation of independence. Joseph Saint-Rémy published this text in 1851, accompanied by a historical and critical notice.

A tragic end

He was arrested on October 17, 1806, the day Dessalines was assassinated at Pont-Rouge, near Port-au-Prince. A few days later, he was killed with bayonet blows in his dungeon. According to the author Charles Philippe Christophe, before dying he traced a quatrain on the wall of his cell, in which he contrasted the crime of his jailers with the peace of a pure heart.