On 30 March 1844 a Haitian army under General Jean-Louis Pierrot attacked Santiago de los Caballeros, the main city of the Cibao in the north of the newly proclaimed Dominican Republic. The defenders, a young and largely untrained force led by General José María Imbert, held a line of improvised forts against repeated assaults until the Haitians gave up and marched home. Dominicans remember the day as the Battle of 30 March, one of the two victories that made their independence stick.
A republic five weeks old
The Dominican Republic proclaimed its independence from Haiti on the night of 27 February 1844. Haiti answered with an invasion meant to recover the territory. According to the historian Juan Daniel Balcácer, quoted by El Día, President Charles Rivière-Hérard led the southern thrust himself while General Pierrot commanded in the north.1
In the south the Haitians were beaten at Azua on 19 March. In the north the threat remained. Santiago was small and open, and Diario Libre notes that many Dominicans doubted it could hold out against a long attack. On 27 March the governing junta called on Imbert, commander of operations in Santiago, to organize the defense. He had trenches dug and the city fortified; Diario Libre and El Día place his main position at the fort called Dios, Patria y Libertad, facing the savanna of Santiago. Money for weapons was raised from wealthy citizens with the help of Matías Ramón Mella and Pedro de Mena.2
Assault after assault
Pierrot split his army and approached the city in two columns of more than 2,000 men each, entrenching at Gurabito. Diario Libre's account has the fighting begin at midday on the Dominican left, at Fort Libertad. The Haitian infantry came on in column and was thrown back, regrouped and attacked again. Each time it ran into the Dominican cannon, above all the guns under José María López, and the musketry of Fernando Valerio's men.3
A last, desperate assault failed in the same way. The historian Adriano Miguel Tejada, cited by Diario Libre, credits Valerio's charge with sealing the victory and also names Pedro Eugenio Pelletier, Achille Michel and Colonel Ángel Reyes, whose battalion La Flor was raised from the young men of Santiago. After about five hours of fighting, Diario Libre says, the Haitians asked for a truce to collect their dead and wounded.4
How many fought and fell
The numbers are uncertain. El Día, following Balcácer, speaks of hundreds of Dominicans defeating some 10,000 Haitians. Diario Libre stresses only that the young, untrained Dominican army was clearly outnumbered.5
Diario Libre gives the Haitian losses as about 600 killed and more wounded. Imbert's own report claimed that his side had not lost a single man killed or wounded, which he called a miracle. That claim comes from the victor and is best read as such.6
Independence confirmed
Pierrot negotiated a safe withdrawal with Imbert and marched back to Haiti in disorder, leaving cooking pots and drums along the road, according to Diario Libre.7
The nineteenth-century Dominican historian José Gabriel García wrote that the victories revived public confidence in the national cause, and Balcácer calls the battle a great stimulus to the new national identity. Dominican tradition also honors Juana Saltitopa, known as La Coronela, who is remembered for supplying and rallying the soldiers in the fight; Acento presents her role as part of the historiography, but it rests largely on popular memory. Diario Libre notes that the battle is still marked every 30 March with official ceremonies.8
