In 1825 a French fleet appeared off Port-au-Prince and Charles X offered recognition of Haitian independence in exchange for 150 million gold francs, to compensate French colonists for their lost property — including the value of the people who had freed themselves. President Boyer accepted under the guns. The sum was roughly ten times Haiti's annual revenue; Haiti borrowed from French banks to make the first instalment, beginning a cycle of debt that lasted more than a century. The principal was later reduced to 90 million but the loans and interest continued, and the final payments on the associated debt were made in 1947. A 2022 New York Times investigation traced the transfers in detail and estimated the long-run cost to Haiti in the tens of billions of dollars. No account of Haitian poverty that omits this is complete, and Haitians do not omit it.