Haitian revolutionary soldiers sang songs rejecting all family ties

Evidence

A song probably passed down from the era of the revolution runs: “Grenadiers, charge! / There is no mother, there is no father. / Grenadiers, charge! / Those who die, it’s their problem!” There was nothing, the song suggested, other than the battle to be fought—no ancestors, no relatives, no one to go with the soldier into the grave. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 1044

Categorization

• STORYSTEM: The stark lyric ‘there is no mother, there is no father’ is a haunting line that could seed a poem or fictional combat scene built around nihilistic war courage.
• SHARE: This song lyric contrasts sharply with Dessalines’s promise of ancestral reunion in Guinea, showing both registers of war motivation existed side by side.