On March 31, with a strong wind blowing out of the north, the town went up in flames. The fire was the climax of what was to be called the “Prestan Uprising,” a brief reign of terror that was set off by another bloody affair in Panama City, the work of the former Panamanian president, Rafael Aizpuru. Though the French had been uneasy from the beginning about the incendiary quality of Panamanian politics—it will be recalled that de Lesseps was warned his first day on the Isthmus about Aizpuru —the violence of what happened seems to have caught them completely off guard.
