Pierre François Venant de Charmilly was a senior officer in the French army and the leader of the colonists of Saint-Domingue when the island was ceded to the English in 1794.
Biography[]
Elected President of the Colonial Assembly of Santo Domingo, he wrote to William Pitt in November 1790 to ask him to come to the aid of the colony. Then he went on a delegation to Cuba and the United States in the fall of 1791, in order to hide the extent of the demands made by the settlers of the island from the English of Jamaica. In August 1792, he emigrated to England. He then became a colonel in the service of the army of England.
He was then the negotiator and representative of the colonists of Santo Domingo when the island was ceded to the English in 1794, by the Treaty of Whitehall.
Later, he was made a knight of the Royal and Military Order of Saint-Louis.
Pierre François Venant de Charmilly died in Ghent, Belgium on May 9, 1815. He was the author of a work on the colony of Santo Domingo, in response to a work by Mr. Bryan Edwards of Jamaica, part of whose content he had wished to refute.