Ozymandias

Coming across the remains of a baroque palace in the Haitian countryside is a little surprising, but here it is. This is Sans Souci, the palace of King Henri Christophe, a slave boy who rose to become a general and then ruler of northern Haiti.

King Henri modeled his palace after the original Sans Souci in Potsdam, near Berlin. It was once covered in yellow stucco and french windows, with ornately decorated audience chambers and private rooms for the royal family, and surrounded by fountains, landscaped gardens, and barracks for the palace guard. Here the Haitian nobility, uniformed in precisely-defined forms of dress according to their rank, attended the court of King Henri.

Even more impressive than Sans Souci, though, is the Citadelle, a monstrous fortress perched at the top of the mountain behind it.

The Citadelle was built during the years after the final defeat in 1803 of Napoleon's army by the former slaves fighting for Haiti's independence. It was intended to be the greatest of several fortresses which would defend the country against a renewed French invasion.

It is difficult to convey just how the Citadelle dominates the city of Cap-Haïtien and the countryside around it. This is the Citadelle as seen from Limonade, several miles away - it's at the top of the left-hand peak.

I took a walk up to the Citadelle a few weeks ago, accompanied by Gerard, a friend from Limonade. Gerard had come with me ostensibly as a guide, having visited the Citadelle a couple of times before. However, he turned out not only not to know the route, but after the first half-hour or so of walking, he collapsed exhausted, and I was obliged to hire a horse for him.

The Citadelle originally housed 365 cannon, captured from French warships. This one had been abandoned in the forest on the way up.

It is difficult to imagine the scale of the effort required to build the Citadelle: vast quantities of stone had to be dragged from quarries to the summit of a mountain, in sometimes intense heat. Construction took 15 years, and is said to have involved 20,000 workers. King Henri's subjects, recently freed from slavery under the French, now found themselves pressed into forced labour on this meglomaniac project. Thousands are thought to have died in the process.

In fact the expected French invasion never came. King Henri, with his kingdom in disarray, took his own life in the Citadelle shortly after its completion in 1820.

Your correspondent, having reached the top, chatting with some Chilean visitors. (I am the one on the left, feeling happy that my days of wearing body armour, boots and gloves in 35 degree heat are over.) The UN peacekeeping force, MINUSTAH, is commonly known in Haiti as "touristah" - since its soldiers are mostly seen cruising around taking photographs, or relaxing in nice cafés.

The small town of Milot, lying below Sans Souci and the Citadelle, is a picturesque and comfortable-looking place: it has an electricity supply, good roads, and is surrounded by fruit trees and fields of corn and sugar cane. Even so, when I climed on a taptap (public transport) to take me back to Limonade, and greeted the other passengers with "how are you?", one of them immediately replied with "Lamizè ap kraze nou" - "The misery is crushing us".

This response was partly intended just for me, to make me understand that these people were in need of charity (being white, I am automatically considered to be rich, and so obliged to give money to anybody who asks). But it is also symptomatic of the Haitian tendency for self-deprecation: the belief that everything in this country is bad. Two hundred years after the Haitian army fought off the French Empire and the new country's rulers built elaborate palaces in the jungle, it is hard to find any sign of that pride or self-confidence remaining.