Nobility and Heraldry
As king, Christophe created an elaborate Haïtian peerage (nobility) of his own design, originally consisting of four Princes, eight Dukes, 22 Counts, 40 Barons, and 14 Knights ("chevaliers"). Christophe founded a College of Arms to provide armorial bearings for the newly ennobled.
Europeans mocked his creation, and there the term "Haitian nobility" became a synonym for any improvised aristocracy created by a new government.
Read more about this topic: Henri Christophe
Famous quotes containing the word nobility:
“If there be no nobility of descent in a nation, all the more indispensable is it that there should be nobility of ascent—a character in them that bear rule, so fine and high and pure, that as men come within the circle of its influence, they involuntarily pay homage to that which is the one pre-eminent distinction, the Royalty of Virtue.”
—Henry Codman Potter (1835–1908)