NAPOLEON'S SISTER

Waipa Post, Volume 32, Issue 1929, 2 November 1926, Page 7

NAPOLEON'S SISTER

THE iSTORY . OF HAITI

In a corner of a dark 'and neglected crypt in Rome, It was stated, recently, there 'lay a half-open coffin. It contained the body of Pauline Bonaparte, princess, sister of (the gre'at Napoleon, who died in 1825. One or two privileged people were Hooking 'curiously at all Jhat is- 'left of a very beautiful woman, passing her by and talking softly. The mere mention of ■Pauline's name sets the clock back over a hundred years, says a London paper. A 'lovely woman, she danced her way through a terrible epoch and shared in the glory of the chief tryant of Elurope. When this girl from Ajaecie was seventeen she married one of her brother's officers — General Leclerc.

Witty, beautiful, Pauline flitted in and out of 'that socieity, the .darling of many, and bore her brother's domineering ways cheerfully enough. What she thought when Napoleon ordered Lederc out to Haiti is not recorded, but she went with 'him, and. there the shallow of her dancing figure fell across the lives of a little people fighting in the cause of liberty. Pauline would have been simply astounded had someone said that" a hundred years after her death ishe! would he almost forgotten and that one of those islanders, a poor negro, would be numbered among the immortals.

The hero was Toussalint, the African slave who became the liberator of the oppressed people of Haiti. White was the soul of Toussaint —white with ideas of goodness and justice, white with suffering. He conceived a scheme of constitutional government for his people who lived undejr the French flag, and sent it to Napoleon. The people of Haiti, originally negroes imported from Africa into slaverly, had early in the years jo'f the French Revolution been granted their liberty, and Toussaint was anxious to make strong fhe bulwarks, of his country's peace. His scheme of government aroused Napoleon's secret fear that there was going to be in Haiti a stronger man than himself.

Napoleon's; reply was to take' away the liberties of Haiti and put the poor AMcans back into a state of slavery. To etaforce this edict and suppress the inevitable jrevolt he sent out the pretty Paulirie's- husband with 35,000 men. There was war deadly and bitter, there was agony in Haiti, but the general's wife found means of amusing hersejlf. She had the gayest of p'arties, and the officers thought they were very fo'rtuhaite: in having among them a brilliant and beautiful woman whose gospel always was "let us dance to-day for to-morrow we die." 'The morrow came, and Pauline did not die. Thousands of others did, for yellow fever came to Haiti, ami those who had not fallen by the sword were devoured by pestilence. Napoleon's Pauline did not 1 die, but her husband saint had been takem prisoner by an act of foulesft treachery, sent to Paris and thrown into a dungeon. Another morrow came, and again Pauline di not die, but her husband did, with, overwhelming suddenness. Pauline took his body home to Paris, bursting in on Napoleon with her story of all that was left of the expedition to quell Haiti—2s,ooo men dead in battle and .firom plague; 8000 in holspital; only 2000 /left whole, and Haiti still an unconguered land. A year later Pauline was dancing again in Rome:. She was then princess, wife, of Camillo Borghese. Four months before her marriage poor Toussaint had died, in the dungeon where Napoleon hatf flung him. It is very probable that Paul Line Hid not even know Chat her famous brother had caused the death of tihis brave man. She went on her way, creating many scandals, living her life in accordance with her whims and desires, and she was only 45 yelars when she tfied.