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Primary sourcePainting1806

Woman Killed in the Massacre

Manuel López López · 1806

A hostile 1806 engraving illustrating a Bonapartist pamphlet attacking Dessalines, showing a mutilated woman and dead child.

This propaganda engraving was made to attack Dessalines's rule in a hostile biography published shortly after Haitian independence.

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Hand-colored engraving of a landscape with trees and hills. In the foreground a naked, mutilated female body lies on the ground, with a dead child beside her. A man in the background, and a woman's head at right with arm outstretched. Spanish verse caption in italic script below.
Manuel López López, engraving for Louis Dubroca's Vida de J. J. Dessalines, 1806.

About this source

What it is

This hand-colored engraving by Manuel López López was made in 1806 to illustrate a book by the French pamphleteer Louis Dubroca about the life of Jean-Jacques Dessalines. It shows a dead, mutilated woman and a dead child in a landscape, with a Spanish verse caption below.

Why it matters

Dubroca was a Bonapartist writer hostile to Haitian independence, and this image was created as propaganda to turn readers against Dessalines and the new Black-led state of Haiti. It reveals how European writers and artists used shocking, racially charged imagery to discredit the Haitian Revolution rather than explain it.

Look closer

  • Who made this image, and what was he trying to make readers feel about Dessalines?
  • What does the caption language tell you about the attitudes of the people who created and read this book?
  • What is left out of this image that might give a fuller picture of events in Haiti at the time?

This painting is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Jean-Jacques Dessalines on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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Scan of a printed broadside headed 'Armée Indigène' with 'Liberté ou la Mort' above. It has three columns of French text, a signature block of names including Dessalines, and a footer reading 'Au Port-au-Prince, de l'imprimerie du gouvernement'.Document

Primary source

Haitian Declaration of Independence

Louis Boisrond-Tonnerre · 1 January 1804

Title page of the 1805 Constitution of Hayti, printed in French with the heading 'CONSTITUTION D'HAYTI' over a list of names and preamble text, with red library stamps in the upper area. Page is aged and tan-colored.Document

Primary source

Constitution of Hayti

Jean-Jacques Dessalines · 1805

Black-and-white engraving titled DESALINES. A man in a tricorn hat with feathers raises a curved sword in one hand and holds a severed head with curly hair in the other. A woman's body lies on rocks at right, with tents and figures in the background.Painting

Secondary source

Desalines

Manuel López López · 1806

Large painting of two uniformed men standing either side of a stone tablet inscribed with text, hands on it, under a radiant figure of an old bearded God with outstretched arms in clouds above, with the Hebrew letters of the divine name. Chains lie on the ground at their feet; a battle scene and crowd fill the background.Painting

Secondary source

The Oath of the Ancestors

Guillaume Guillon-Lethière · 1822

Front cover of a worn, dark red leather-bound book, shown against a pale background. The cover is scuffed and faded, with a small lighter mark near the center and a raised spine edge on the left side. No title or text is visible.Book

Secondary source

La vie de J.J. Dessalines, chef des noirs révoltés de Saint-Domingue

Louis Dubroca · 1804

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