Not much is known about Marie-Jeanne Lamartinière, not even when she was born or died. The formerly enslaved mulatto is known primarily for being a soldier during the Haitian Revolution and fighting beside her husband Louis Daure Lamartinière, especially at the siege of Crete a Pierrot. Several eye witness accounts claim seeing Marie Jeanne leading the charge at Crete a Pierrot.
One account of Marie-Jeanne goes, “Crête-à-Pierrot besieged by a French army of over 12,000 men. Dressed in a suit like a Mamluk, she wore a shoulder gun and a cutlass attached to a steel belt. A kind of cap which imprisoned her opulent hair, overflowed. In the rain of projectiles, Marie-Jeanne stretched from one end to the other of the walls, sometimes distributing cartridges, sometimes helping to load the guns. And when the action became more intense, she bravely rushed to the forefront of soldiers and played the rifle with a furious enthusiasm. ”
After the death of her husband on November 2, 1802, she falls ill and retires to the sugar plantation her husband left her in Leogane. While there Dessalines visits her to pay his respects to her husband and thank her for her service. After her recovery, she becomes Dessalines’ personal bodyguard and head of his security detail. Other accounts say that she was only his mistress and the position of bodyguard was given to her so as not to illicit suspicion from his wife, but what remains true is that the only assassination attempt on Dessalines that succeeded was the one time she was not guarding him on October 17, 1806.
After Dessalines’ murder, she retires once again, and for good. She later marries a close friend of her dead husband and a man that served with her at the siege of Crete a Pierrot, Jean-Louis Larose.
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