Sanité Bélair

Suzanne Bélair, known as Sanité, was born around 1781 in Verrettes, in the Artibonite region of Saint-Domingue, now Haiti, a free woman of colour, an affranchie. In 1796, at about 15, she married Charles Bélair, an officer in the revolutionary forces who became a close lieutenant of Toussaint Louverture, and she joined the struggle alongside him.

She urged her husband to side with the movement for independence, and rose in the revolutionary army to the rank of sergeant and then lieutenant, a remarkable career for a woman in the Haitian Revolution. She did not limit herself to supporting duties. She fought, and earned the nickname of the tigress, one of the few women to serve as soldiers in the war.

In 1802 Napoleon sent a large expedition under General Charles Leclerc to restore slavery and French rule. Toussaint Louverture was captured and imprisoned, but Sanité and Charles carried on fighting. In a surprise attack at Corail-Mirrault, French forces led by Répussard captured Sanité. When Charles heard that his wife had been arrested, he gave himself up so that they would not be separated.

Both were condemned to death. Charles was to be shot, and Sanité, because she was a woman, was sentenced to be beheaded, although she asked to die by firing squad like her husband. Accounts say that she watched him face the firing squad, and called to him to die bravely, as he had asked her to do. When it was her turn she refused to be blindfolded and was executed proclaiming that freedom was better than slavery. The sources date their deaths to 5 October 1802, though one gives Charles's as 15 October.

Sanité Bélair is remembered as one of the heroes of the Haitian Revolution. In 2004, for the bicentennial of Haitian independence, her likeness was placed on the 10 gourde banknote, the only woman in the series, and artists and writers have kept her story alive. A little over a year after her execution, in January 1804, Jean-Jacques Dessalines proclaimed Haiti's independence.