Background
Faustin Soulouque was bom to slave parents who had newly arrived from Africa just before his birth on 15 August 1788 in Haiti.
Faustin Soulouque was bom to slave parents who had newly arrived from Africa just before his birth on 15 August 1788 in Haiti.
Soulouque was illiterate, superstitious, and widely recognized to be almost totally incompetent.
He managed to move up in the predominantly black army to become general of the Palace Guard of his predecessor. General Riche.
Soon, Soulouque made it clear that he was nobody's pawn. He named his own council of advisers and staffed the army with his own loyal black generals. He organized a secret police and a system of personal tyranny to ensure loyalty among his advisers and to suppress organized opposition. The mulattoes, realizing their mistake, soon made an effort to get rid of him by revolution, which was brutally quashed. Most prominent mulattoes were either executed or lorced to go into exile.
On September 20, a new Constitution was approved in Haiti, declaring him Emperor Faustin 1. Black generals, eager for prestige, were provided with peerages, mostly in exchange for a fee: 4 princes, 59 dukes, 2 marquises, 90 counts, 215 barons and 30 chevaliers.
In December 1858 he was deserted by one of his most trusted ministers, Fabre Nicholas Geffrard, who pronounced an end to the empire, made Soulouque a virtual prisoner, and was made president by acclamation. Soulouque and his family, after his signing an Act of Abdication, left for Jamaica. He returned to Haiti in 1867 and lived there until his death.