THREE

Turning the Tide

With the proclamation of Camp Turel, Toussaint came out from behind the curtain which had hidden his movements in 1791 and 1792, and placed himself squarely on the stage of the military and political theater of Saint Domingue. Still, his political motives remained somewhat obscure in the summer and fall of 1793. In the August 29 proclamation, he declared himself the partisan of liberty. That, however, did not necessarily mean that he intended to fall in with the French Revolution as it was being expressed in the colony by Commissioners Sonthonax and Polverel. Indeed, Toussaint was still at war with the Jacobin commissioners, still fighting, as the proclamation put it, for the king.

The declared royalism of the rebel slaves in the early 1790s has always looked peculiar. Macaya's equation of the kings of Congo, France, and Spain with the three wise men who followed the star seems, at first glance, a piece of perfect nonsense. However, a little better than half of the slaves who had risen in arms had been born in Africa and so had some direct experience of the African style of kingship. What they knew of European kings was conjectural—none had ever visited the Western Hemisphere. The kings of France and of Spain were almost as remote to these New World revolutionaries as the star that had shone on the birth of Christ so many centuries before. On the other hand, the French king had put his signature on the Code Noir, which ordered a more lenient regime for Saint Domingue's slaves than the one which the colonists actually maintained. According to the legend of Bois Caiman, Louis XVI had in some sense been invoked there as the guarantor of the rights that the slaves were rising to claim: three days of liberty per week and abolition of the whip. From African wars and the sale of prisoners, Saint Domingue's slaves knew something about captured and imprisoned kings. By analogy, they could form an idea of Louis's increasingly fragile position as hostage of the Jacobins in France.

If his son Isaac's memoir is to be credited, Toussaint Louverture was the grandson of an African king, and something of that royal atmosphere was even preserved during his childhood, but Toussaint had been born on Hispaniola and never traveled off the island until the very end of his life. What he knew of Africa was legend. He knew as much about France as we do about the moon—yet we know quite a lot about the moon, even if we've never been there.

Just a couple of weeks before the proclamation of Camp Turel, Antoine Chanlatte, an homme de couleur who commanded for General Laveaux and the French at Plaisance, reported the failure of an attempt to win the rebels of that area to the side of the commissioners and the French Revolutionary government. The rebels in question were led by “Toussaint a Breda,” who had a headquarters at Marmelade, a key post in the all-important Cordon de l'Ouest. A movement of some rebel slaves to switch sides was scotched by Toussaint, who declared (in Chanlatte's paraphrase) “that they wanted a king, and that they would not lay down their arms until he was recognized.”¹

But Louis XVI had been dead since January, and Toussaint certainly knew it. Even if his communications with his grand blanc allies in the milieu of Bayon de Libertat had been completely severed by the slave rebellion (which is by no means certain), he had plenty of contact with the Spanish colonial military—of which he was now formally a part. The French Revolutionary government was now at war with the other nations of Europe, and also busy smashing down a Catholic-royalist revolt in the Vendee. Robespierre had become the single most powerful man in France, thanks to his chairmanship of the much-feared Committee of Public Safety, the body empowered to carry out the Terror on all enemies of revolutionary government, be they foreign or French. The guillotines began to run nonstop. Toussaint had some awareness of these developments, and in the summer of 1793 he was still maintaining his royalist bent.

On August 27, just two days before the proclamation of Camp Turel, Toussaint wrote a furious letter to Chanlatte, addressing the colored officer as “the scoundrel, perfidious deceiver.”

“We know very well there is no more King, since you Republican traitors have had his throat cut on an unworthy scaffold,” Toussaint fumed, “but you are not yet where you want to be, and who is to say that, at the moment when you speak, there is not another king? How poorly informed you are, for an agent of the commissioners. One easily sees that your doors are well guarded, and that you do not often receive news from France; you receive still less from New England.”² Here Toussaint clearly meant to let Chanlatte know that his own sources of information were much better, both in Europe and in the newborn United States.

“It is not possible that you Fight for the rights of man, after all the cruelties which you daily Exercise; no, you are only fighting for your own interests and to satisfy your ambition, along with your treacherous Criminal projects, and I beg you to believe that I am not unaware of your heinous crimes … It is among us that the true rights of man and justice Reign!—we receive everyone with humanity, and brotherhood, even our most Cruel enemies, and we pardon them wholeheartedly, and with gentleness we coax them back from their errors.”³ The language of this conclusion is a rehearsal for the proclamation from Camp Turel two days later, and Toussaint even signed the letter to Chanlatte with the name “Louverture,” though it was not a public communication. He would never answer to “Toussaint a Breda” again.

It was extremely rare for Toussaint to express himself with such unbridled passion, and perhaps with a degree of disorientation. The royalist project had run on the shoals, both in France and in Saint Domingue. Louis XVI had died on the guillotine; so had Governor Blanchelande. Bayon de Libertat and most of the rest of Saint Domingue's royalist party had fled from the blazing Cap Francais with Galbaud's fleet. Having landed at Baltimore, they were now doing their desperate best to regroup in the United States (while perhaps furnishing Toussaint Louverture with scraps of information from that country). A year or so earlier, Toussaint had lent his support to a settlement plan that would have put the majority of rebel slaves back to work on the plantations, in exchange for amnesty and manumissions for a handful of the leaders (meaningless to Toussaint himself, who was already free) and an amelioration of the basic conditions of slavery; the latter condition was consistent with the deal supposedly hatched in the original royalist plot for a “controlled” slave insurrection. By August 1793, any possibility of such a settlement had completely disintegrated. For the mass of nouveaux libres it was now liberty or death, and Toussaint Louverture would be the man to lead them to one or the other.

What, in the beginning, had he been fighting for? Prior to 1791 he had been a very successful participant in the economy of the colonial ancien regime. His economic interests made him a natural partner of the grands blancs, as did a number of his personal ties and his involvement in Freemasonry. But Toussaint was ever a proud man, though skilled in camouflaging his pride. He would have been as galled by the virulent racism of colonial society as Vincent Oge and his kind, though far less likely to let his resentment show. By studying history he had trained his foresight; he may have expected from the very beginning that the first insurrection on the Northern Plain would inevitably lead to the abolition of slavery and an absolute reversal of the social hierarchies that had been based on slavery. Or he may have been radicalized by the course of events from 1791 to 1793, as many around him were.

From August 1793 onward, it was clear that he would be fighting to establish permanent liberty for all the former slaves of Saint Domingue. Who would be his allies in the struggle was a much more ambiguous question.

The survivors among the insurrection's first leaders, Jean-François and Biassou, had adorned themselves with extravagant titles (“grand admiral” or “generalissimo”), while Toussaint veiled himself with the description “general doctor.” The Spanish colonial military installed Jean-François and Biassou as generals, while Toussaint became a com-paratively humble marechal du camp. At war with France in Europe, Spain hoped to reconquer French Saint Domingue with its newly engaged black auxiliaries: there were nowhere near enough white troops in Spanish Santo Domingo for any such undertaking. But Generals Jean-François and Biassou preferred to relax on what laurels they had been able to win earlier. Practically all the active campaigning was done by Toussaint, whose successes on the battlefield began to make a real impression.

Toussaint was angling for control of the Cordon de l'Ouest—the string of posts through the mountain range from Dondon in the interior to the western seaport of Gonaives which divided Saint Domingue's Northern Department from the rest of the colony. He had a personal interest in the region, for he and his wife owned large plantations in the canton of Ennery, an area sheltered by the mountains just northeast of Gonaives. These were important establishments from the military point of view as well, since Ennery offered the first line of retreat if Gonaives, exposed on the coast, should prove untenable.

Toussaint also established a headquarters at Marmelade, a village centrally located between Ennery and Dondon. In the early summer of 1793, he took Marmelade from Colonel Vernet, a mulatto who commanded for the French republicans there. Vernet retreated to Pilboreau Plantation on the heights above Ennery, a major crossroads, where he had the ill luck to encounter Commissioner Polverel, who was hastening back to Le Cap from Port-au-Prince. Trouble with Galbaud was in the wind, so maybe Polverel was suffering from stress when he asked Vernet how many men he had brought back from his defeat; when Vernet told him two hundred, Polverel snapped, “Let's say two hundred cowards.”⁴ At that, Vernet took his two hundred men to join Toussaint, who eventually made him one of his most important commanders, and also adopted him as a nephew.

Toussaints hard-fought engagements with Laveaux in the summer of 1793 were meant to protect the approaches from the Northern Plain to Dondon, at Morne Pelee and LaTannerie. Laveaux had won those battles, and his men occupied both La Tannerie and Dondon. Toward the end of June, a member of the French republican garrison at Dondon reported hearing two days' worth of lively cannon fire from the direction of Le Cap; he could also see the “inflamed air” from the burning of the colony's most beautiful city. He was witnessing from afar the outcome of I'ajfaire Galbaud, as Le Cap was sacked and burned by rebel slaves on June 22,1793. At the same time, the Dondon garrison received an order from Galbaud to arrest Sonthonax and Polverel if they should pass through Dondon, but by then it was not the commissioners but Galbaud himself who was on the run, and the French soldiers at Dondon were in no position to do anything but try to get themselves out of what had suddenly become a frightening predicament.

They knew that the camp at La Tannerie had recently (and in their view treacherously) been surrendered to Toussaint. This development cut off their direct line of retreat to Le Cap, and also severed their lines of supply. Anticipating that the rebel slaves would soon make an attempt on Dondon, now that La Tannerie was in their hands, the French decided to try to escape by another route. Furnished with three and a half pounds of bread and a bottle of raw cane alcohol for each man, they set out in the direction of Marmelade, unaware that it too was occupied byToussaint. Perhaps the ratio of alcohol to food in their supplies was poorly calculated, j udging by how they fared along the way.

The way from Dondon to Marmelade goes over dizzying mountain peaks which in those days were covered with jungle. Toussaint, well aware of his enemy's movement, occupied Dondon as soon as the French had left it and laid an ambush for the French troops between Dondon and Camp Perly. Soon the French column encountered another group of rebel blacks ahead and was forced to a halt. The French commander, Monsieur de Brandicourt, ordered a cannon brought to the fore and was making ready to fire on the enemy when several voices cried out from the bush, urging him to come and parley with General Toussaint, to assure proper treatment for several sick men which the French soldiers, in the haste of their retreat, had left behind in Dondon.

With two companions, Brandicourt set out for the meeting, guided by “an officer of the brigands,” and leaving the column in charge of a subordinate, Pacot. One of the men with Brandicourt grew mistrustful, and said that Toussaint ought to meet them halfway. But their guide pointed to a large gathering of blacks not far ahead, saying, “It's there that Toussaint is waiting for you.”

“That's no more than a step away,” Brandicourt said, shrugging off the warning. A misstep as it proved: when the three men reached the appointed spot they were seized, bound, and mocked by members of their own camp who had deserted to join Toussaint the previous night. Presently Toussaint himself appeared and asked that Brandicourt write an order for Pacot to surrender his surrounded troops. Brandicourt, seething with indignation, wrote that Pacot should follow “the most prudent course.” At that, Toussaint grew annoyed and insisted that Brandicourt write a direct order for surrender. As one of his two fellow prisoners reported, Brandicourt, “believing that Pacot would take no step on an order dictated by violence, had the pusillanimity to do it.”⁵

So runs the eyewitness account set down by the soldier captured with Brandicourt. Isaac Louvertures version (written many years later and at second hand) casts Toussaint in a more heroic light: rather than being taken by deceit, Brandicourt is captured fair and square by Toussaint's lieutenant and adopted nephew Charles Belair. Toussaint addresses Brandicourt in almost lyrical terms: “I admire your courage all too much … but I admire your humanity still more; as all retreat for your troops is cut off, you will give the order to avoid the effusion of blood.”⁶

Regardless of their difference in flavor, the two accounts agree on the result. Pacot surrendered without a shot. When Toussaint marched the French column into his camp, his own six hundred men had to steel themselves to stand their ground, for the captured force was more than twice the size of theirs: some fifteen hundred strong.

This bloodless victory put Toussaint back in control of the eastern end of the Cordon de l'Ouest, restoring the line from Marmelade to Dondon and isolating the Northern Plain from the rest of the colony. It increased Toussaint's value in the eyes of his Spanish superior, Mafias, Marquis d'Hermona, who well appreciated both the strategic value and the efficiency of the coup. And it vastly improved the morale of Toussaint's men. At the time he captured Brandicourt, Toussaint had six hundred well-equipped and well-trained troops in his personal force (along with about the same number of poorly armed and untrained men from the area of Dondon and Grande Riviere), but more were joining daily.

The maneuver also gained him a few more French officers. Those of royalist leanings, especially, could make themselves more comfortable in Toussaint's command than in the republican camp of Laveaux, and Toussaint found them very useful for shaping the growing number of his followers into an organized and disciplined army. In the end, Brandicourt himself went over to the Spanish side. Commissioners Sonthonax and Polverel interpreted his forced surrender as an act of premeditated treachery. There had been other events of that kind; Brandicourt's predecessor at Dondon, Monsieur de Nully, had willingly gone over to the Spanish not long before, and Captain de La Feuillee had done the same at Ouanaminthe.

The Cordon de l'Ouest protected the Spanish Central Plateau in the interior, including the towns of Saint Raphael and Saint Michel. In the fall of 1791, Toussaint had sent his wife and sons into this area, where they would be safe from the anarchy spreading all over the Northern Plain. Probably it was during this period that he acquired the livestock ranchland he later told the interrogator Caffarelli that he owned. In the same 1793 campaign which captured Marmelade and Dondon, Toussaint also secured the region of Ennery and made a triumphal entry into GonaiVes, where the inhabitants treated him to “magnificent festivals,” though a Spanish colonel remained at least nominally in command there.⁷ In response to all these piercing advances, Commissioner Polverel is supposed to have exclaimed, “What! This man makes an Opening everywhere”⁸ —one of the origins proposed for the name Louverture.

By 1793, the Saint Michel region was also hosting numerous French emigres whom the Spanish authorities were encouraging to return there. It was one of these, a Monsieur Laplace, who wrote the letter complaining about Toussaint's “useless little posts” along the Cordon de l'Ouest and also accused him of plotting to “assassinate the whites.” In fact, Toussaint preferred, during this period as throughout his whole career, to win whenever possible through diplomacy rather than force of arms. Although many of his positions in the Cordon de l'Ouest were challenged by Chanlatte, among others, Toussaint proved more capable than anyone else of providing real security to inhabitants of the region. His claim to “receive everyone with humanity” and to work with “gentleness” rather than violence is couched, interestingly, in terms like those of charismatic Christianity—and is also justified by his actions. In less than a year Toussaint expanded his personal command from a few hundred to several thousand increasingly well disciplined troops, and he continued to pick up stray French officers who helped him train his force of nouveaux libres. His men were better and better equipped, mainly thanks to Toussaints successes in capturing arms and ammunition from the enemy. Both white and free colored landowners in the region found a genuinely humane reception if they were willing to offer genuine loyalty to him.

Still, Toussaint was not universally popular. Laplace, who styled himself “the deputy of the French emigres residing at Saint Michel, all planters and land-owners of the parishes of Gona'ives, of Ennery, Plaisance, Marmelade and Dondon,” complained to the Spanish governor that Toussaint “preaches disobedience” and “kidnaps and arms all the slaves from their plantations, telling these wretches that they will be free if they want to assassinate the whites.” In his conclusion, Laplace declaims “we demand that the head of the guilty party fall.”⁹ This letter is dated April 4, 1794—a moment when as hindsight shows, Toussaints loyalty to his Spanish commanders really had become rather questionable.

Though the Spanish commanders thought well of Toussaints character and of his abilities in the field, his route to higher rank in their service was blocked by the presence of Biassou and Jean-François. Biassou, who had nominally been Toussaints direct superior in 1791, and who still outranked him in the Spanish service, camped on La Riviere Plantation in the canton of Ennery and began to lay claim to positions Toussaint had taken in that area of the Cordon de l'Ouest— which Toussaint certainly meant to retain as part of his own strategic power base. Quarreling between the black leaders broke down into skirmishing.

Meanwhile, it was becoming reasonably clear from the actions of the Spanish, as opposed to lukewarm declarations they had made to the contrary, that they meant to reestablish slavery in French Saint Domingue, in concert with the French emigres they had invited to return. Most of the latter (whom Laplace represented) were holed up in Fort Dauphin, the nearest port to the Spanish border on the north Atlantic coast. Their properties were peppered all over the interior, as Laplace described them, but for the moment the Spanish military would not support their return to their lands. About eight hundred of these French colonists eventually accumulated at Fort Dauphin, many of them returning from their flight to the United States with Galbaud's fleet. They were both useless and virtually helpless there, as the black leaders would not allow their former masters to be armed.

However, both Jean-François and Biassou had begun actively engaging in the slave trade themselves. They were rounding up women and children, as well as some insubordinate men—mauvais sujets— from their own ranks and selling them off to Spanish slave traders. A letter from Jean-François to a Spanish agent named Tabert craves permission to sell off some “very bad characters” in these terms: “not having the heart to destroy them, we have recourse to your good heart to ask you to transport them out of the country. We prefer to sell them for the profit of the king.”¹⁰ As Toussaint's own fighting force grew from hundreds into thousands, threatening the status of Jean-François and Biassou more and more, these two began kidnapping the families of men who joined Toussaint to sell them as slaves, and Toussaint's men themselves if they could catch them. No doubt this practice influenced Toussaint in proclaiming his own commitment to general liberty and in actually fighting for it more vigorously than before.

Toussaint's immediate Spanish superior, the Marquis d'Hermona, admired him to the point of declaring, “If God were to descend to earth, he could inhabit no purer heart than that of Toussaint Louverture.”¹¹ D'Hermona was undoubtedly taken with the apparent fervor of Toussaint's Catholic devotions (though some more cynical observers claimed that Toussaint was actually plotting and scheming when he appeared to be praying). Jean-François and Biassou, as well as the French colonists represented by Laplace, were constantly trying to damage Toussaint's reputation with the Spanish governor, Don Garcia y Moreno. When d'Hermona was replaced by Juan de Lleonhart, Toussaint's fortunes among the Spanish took a turn for the worse. Moyse, his adoptive nephew and already one of his most important lieutenants, was arrested. His wife and three sons were briefly held as hostages—Toussaint could no longer be confident that they would be safe in the Spanish camp.

In late March 1794, an ambush organized by either Jean-François or Biassou or both of them took the life of Toussaint's younger brother, Pierre, who was shot from his horse at Camp Barade, at the head of the Ravine a Couleuvre a few miles southeast of Gonai'ves. Toussaint, who was present, had a narrow escape. According to Isaac's memoir, Toussaint immediately pressed on from Barade to Saint Raphael, arriving there with four hundred horsemen and in such a thunder that Don Lleonhart thought the town was being taken by the enemy. However, Toussaint did no more that day than register a bitter complaint about the attempts of the other black leaders against him. Returning along the Cordon de l'Ouest toward Marmelade, he raided Biassou's camp at La Maronniere Plantation, with such success that Biassou had to flee into the bush bare-legged, abandoning his horses, carriage, and a jeweled watch and snuffbox. Later Toussaint returned these personal effects to him with his (presumably sardonic) compliments.

Laplace, who apparently sometimes operated as Biassou's secretary as well as spokesman of the French emigres, includes Toussaint's attack on Biassou into the complaint to Don Garcia dated April 4. As of this date, Toussaint's situation vis-a-vis both his former black colleagues and the Spanish command would seem to have become intolerable, but he remained in Spanish service, at least technically, for another month.

By then the Spanish advance into French Saint Domingue had more or less stalled, thanks in part to dissension among the black auxiliaries. The Spanish did control Mirebalais in the interior and Fort Dauphin on the north coast. On the other side of Le Cap from Fort Dauphin, the Spanish held a pocket of territory around Borgne, where (coincidentally or not) Toussaint had been involved in various land transactions before the 1791 rising. The port of Gonai'ves at the western extremity of the Cordon de l'Ouest was occupied by a small garrison of white Spanish troops, but Toussaint's lengthening shadow lay over that town. Given the chilled relations between Toussaint and the Spanish command, by April 1794 the whole length of the Cordon de l'Ouest had begun to look less like Spanish territory and more like Toussaint's personal fief.

Le Cap itself and its surrounding area were held for the French republic by the hommes de couleur whom Sonthonax had installed in the government and military, chief among them the mulatto General Villatte. But Toussaint almost certainly had a line of communication open to Borgne, via Limbe and Port Margot, and both Toussaint and Biassou were sometimes reported to have camped at Port Francais (near today's cruise ship destination Labadie Beach), just over the mountain from the town of Le Cap, which was thus quite tightly encircled.

A narrow road running from Labadie through the pass over Morne du Cap to the area of the Providence Hospital and the uppermost military parade ground of Le Cap allowed the black rebels to threaten the town from that direction, as well as from the southern approach, where Biassou had carried out his successful raid on l'Hopital des Peres in January 1792. If they entered from the pass over Morne du Cap, the rebels would have had access to the ravine which runs from the rear of the Providence Hospital all the way down the slope to the waterfront barracks and battery, through which they could have infiltrated the whole town. Toussaint, however, seemed not to want Le Cap to be overrun by rebels at this time, for he sometimes secretly warned Villatte of planned assaults.

A year before, in April 1793, the royalist colonists of Saint Domingue's Western Department had hoped for an English invasion to save them from the Jacobin commissioners Sonthonax and Polverel. On September 19, less than a month after Sonthonax's unilateral abolition of slavery, a British force landed at Jeremie on the southwest peninsula and was welcomed by French royalist colonists organized as the Confederation of the Grande Anse. Three days later, Major O'Farrel of the French army's Dillon Regiment surrendered Mole Saint-Nicolas, a key port at the end of the northwest peninsula, to a single British ship. The Dillon Regiment, mostly composed of Irishmen, had been alienated by Sonthonax's promotion of mulattoes in the colonial military and warmly welcomed a change of allegiance. This event left the French republican general Laveaux more or less trapped at Port de Paix, on the north coast between the English at Mole and the Spanish auxiliaries at Borgne.

In its first weeks, the English invasion was rather successful at rather low cost. Thanks to their warm reception by royalist colonists, the English soldiers were able to occupy a lot of ground without firing a shot. Indeed it soon developed that this particular batch of redcoats preferred not to fire any shots at all if that could be avoided, but instead to win territory with bribes whenever they could. But since the British were not directly dependent on black auxiliaries, there was nothing to stop them from arming French emigres and colonists who took their part; these men formed militias who were willing and eager to fight. Thus, although the colored general Andre Rigaud held Les Cayes and the surrounding region on the southern peninsula for the French republicans, the British were able to bypass his positions and press as far north as Leogane, threatening Port-au-Prince, where Commissioner Polverel was in residence. To the north of Port-au-Prince, the British occupied Saint Marc and began building fortifications there and at Petite Riviere, a nearby town in the interior, in the foothills of the Cahos mountain range.

Allied with Spain in the European war with France, the British were theoretically supposed to cooperate with the Spanish in Saint Domingue, but in reality the two nations were in competition for possession of the sugar colony's vast revenues—provided either one of them could ever stabilize the situation there. Nonetheless a British delegation called at Spanish-controlled Gonai'ves, where they were greeted by one “Tusan … a Negroe, who they called the Spanish general, commanding the place.”¹² In the end, and despite some interesting proposals, the British and Spanish forces never managed to launch any combined operations against the French republicans; they left it at respecting each other's positions.

In the first eight months of their effort the British managed to gain a third of French Saint Domingue while losing no more than fifty men in battle. However, the tropical climate was equally fatal to all European troops, without any prejudice as to their nation. It was not yet known that malaria and yellow fever were mosquito-borne illnesses, though there was a general awareness that newly arrived troops were healthier in the mountains than cooped up in the miasmal towns of the coast. Occupying the mountains, however, involved combat risks that the British were reluctant to run. Illness soon began to make terrible inroads into their force, though for a while they could compensate by the use of the better-acclimated French colonial militias. The Spanish, in fact, had similar difficulties maintaining European troops in the field, though they could compensate with their acclimated black auxiliaries.

Despite these weaknesses of their adversaries, the French republicans were in a difficult spot. They too suffered from a shortage of European troops, and from the diseases to which new arrivals were prey. The strongest alliances Sonthonax had built were with thegens de couleur and the anciens libres—a significant faction but one vastly outnumbered by the huge mass of black nouveaux libres, who despite the abolition of slavery were conspicuously failing to flock to the republican banner. In April 1794, Sonthonax and Polverel were trapped under British siege at Port-au-Prince, while Laveaux was pinned down at Port de Paix. Communications between these towns and the other republican territories at Le Cap and Les Cayes were interrupted on sea by British naval power and on land by either British or Spanish occupation. Then there were sizable tracts of territory (at Gros Morne, Grande Riviere, Saltrou, and the Cul de Sac plain outside Port-au-Prince) which no one could say who controlled for certain—if anyone actually did control them.

When he looked at the checkerboard that French Saint Domingue had become, Toussaint could see plainly that all three colonial powers were in almost equally precarious situations. The weight he himself could bring to bear might be decisive—wherever he chose to throw it.

Did the British make him an offer? It would have been characteristic for them to have done so. At around that same time, the British made an overture to Laveaux, then in a truly difficult siege situation at Port de Paix, offering him a bribe of fifty thousand ecus to yield his position and change sides. Perhaps the British thought that Laveaux, as a hereditary nobleman serving in the republican army, would welcome the invitation to abandon the Jacobins (as a fair number of officers had already done)—but Laveaux took enormous offense. “You have sought to dishonor me in the eyes of my brothers in arms,” he wrote to the British colonel Whitelocke. “It is an outrage for which you owe me personal satisfaction; I demand it in the name of the honor which must exist among nations. In consequence, before there should be a general engagement, I offer you a single combat, up to the point that one of us falls. I leave you the choice of arms, be it on horseback or afoot.”¹³ Whitelocke apparently judged it impractical to accept the challenge.

Kerverseau claims that Toussaint turned down a similar offer from the British, for no reason of honor but because the price was too low— yet that may have been a simple slander. If the British did try to approach Toussaint, no document of the effort has survived. It is possible that they did not yet understand his importance, for at this stage of the game they seemed to have only a vague idea of the “Negroe, Tusan.” On the other hand, Toussaint himself was extremely secretive and seldom left any trace of unconsummated negotiations behind him.

Sonthonax, of course, and then the more reluctant Polverel had meant for their abolition of slavery to win the nouveau libre rebel slaves to their side. As of April 1794, little had happened to justify this hope. A few bands of maroons here and there, notably the one led by Halaou in the region surrounding Leogane, formed queasy alliances with the commissioners. But most such bands were simply out for themselves, roaming mountainous areas which none of the three colonial powers could honestly claim to control, while the vast majority of nouveaux libres were opposing the republican French as Spanish auxiliaries. When General Laveaux tried to persuade Jean-François to embrace the republican cause in the fall of 1794, his reply was fully as contemptuous as the one Laveaux made to the British envoy—and was also keenly perceptive: “Although I might very well reply to all the chapters of your letter, I omit them because they are almost all detailed in a manifesto which I have circulated among my compatriots in which, without artifice, I let them know the fate which awaits them if they let themselves be seduced by your beautiful words … Equality, Liberty, &c &c &c … and I will only believe in all that when I see that Monsieur Laveaux and other French gentlemen of his quality give their daughters in marriage to negroes. Then I will be able to believe in the pretended equality.”¹⁴

The question put so sharply in this letter was whether the French Revolution really meant to put its money where its mouth was with regard to freedom and equality for the blacks. Toussaint was certainly considering this same question closely by April 1794.

At the same time he had several pragmatic, not to say Machiavellian, reasons to switch sides. Hindsight shows that his chances for advancement in military rank were better with the French than with the Spanish. Toussaint (who didn't take up arms until he was over fifty) had discovered a surprising tactical ability and no doubt wanted to see it recognized and rewarded. Certainly he knew that in the Spanish military he had hit an impenetrable ceiling. But though in the end he would emerge as the highest-ranking French officer in Saint Domingue, in the beginning he accepted a lower rank in the French service than he'd had in the Spanish.

His brother Pierre had just been killed by his ostensible allies, and given his frosty relationship with the Spanish command, his wife and sons were no longer safe in their haven on the Central Plateau. Toussaint seems to have moved them briefly to the area of Trou du Nord on the Northern Plain, but this location was not very secure either. An alliance with the French republicans would include the mulatto commanders at Le Cap, whose power did reach into the Northern Plain.

From a distance, the British looked strong in the areas they occupied. They had several thousand redcoats on the ground, and the grand b fane—mulatto confederations of the west and the south were operating on behalf of the British invasion with some success. But Toussaint knew the value of intelligence, and he probably had intelligence of the weakening of the British force by disease. Also, the British positions were far distant from Toussaint's own areas of strength. The British were strongest on the southern peninsula, and at Mole Saint-Nicolas. They had occupied Saint Marc, the next important port down the coast from Gona'ives, and in April 1794 they looked likely to capture Port-au-Prince. All these areas, except for Saint Marc, were well away from Toussaint's current sphere of influence. Meanwhile, the Cordon de l'Ouest, which he personally controlled, formed a perimeter around the French republicans in the north, and Toussaint considered the string of posts from Limbe through Port Margot to Borgne to be a logical extension of this line. To unite these positions with those currently in the hands of the French republicans would be a strategic thunderbolt. From the British post at Mole to Spanish-occupied Fort Dauphin, the whole north Atlantic coast would become, without interruption, French republican. Thanks to the Cordon de l'Ouest, the republicans could then secure the Northern Plain and practically all of the Northern Department except for a few points on the periphery. Suddenly they would become a serious threat to the British in the south and the west.

Then there was the question of general liberty. Toussaint claimed it had always been dear to his heart. Politically, it was now essential that he embrace it wholeheartedly whatever he may have thought before. There was no other way to assure the loyalty of the great majority of nouveaux libres, who would henceforth be his power base.

Toussaint knew enough of European politics to doubt whether Sonthonax's proclamation of emancipation would prove durable. He knew that what really counted was the abolition of slavery by the National Convention in France. In fact, Sonthonax's proclamation had been ratified months before, in an ecstatic session of the legislature and in the presence of a delegation from Saint Domingue which included the white Louis Dufay, the mulatto Jean-Baptiste Mills, and a full-blooded African, Jean-Baptiste Belley who like Toussaint had earned his own freedom from slavery under the ancien regime. On February 4, 1794, the convention passed, with no opposition, a law which “declares that slavery is abolished throughout the territory of the Republic; in consequence, all men, without distinction of color, will enjoy the rights of French citizens.”¹⁵ With that, the French Revolution had put its money where its mouth was. The decree did away not only with slavery but also with the whole structure of institutionalized racial discrimination that had plagued free blacks and free men of color until 1791.

However, the convention's decree was not officially proclaimed in Saint Domingue until June 8,1794. The usual interpretation is that no news of this momentous event had reached the colony before this date, but such a long delay seems highly unlikely. The transatlantic voyage from France to the Caribbean took more or less six weeks, depending on wind and ‘weather. Thus it is probable that rumors of the national decree ‘would have begun to seep into Saint Domingue and the other French colonies no later than the end of March.

Officially, Toussaint Louverture is not supposed to have known of the decree until June. Yet in his letter to Chanlatte almost a year earlier, he boasted of the quality of the information he got directly from France. It is possible that he had his first inkling of the emancipation decree by the last days of March 1794, just as he was coming to blows with Jean-François, Biassou, and the Spanish military commanders.

On May 5, the emancipation decree was proclaimed in Guadeloupe—a negligible distance from Saint Domingue. On the same date, General Laveaux wrote Toussaint to acknowledge receiving an emissary who “announced to me that the national flag is flying in these two places [Terre Neuve and Port a Piment], and moreover he announced to me the return that you have just made, and that you have declared yourself Republican, and that for the triumph of Republican arms, you have raised the tricolor flag at Gona'ives.”¹⁶

Toussaint had finally made his move, probably—as in the case of most successful politicians—for a melange of pragmatic and idealistic motives. Whether he was influenced by the National Conventions abolition of slavery can never be known for certain. Chances are that at least a rumor of the decree had reached him. Sonthonax had gone so far as to announce it as early as February 27, but that was pure bluff and Toussaint probably would have recognized it as such. Laveaux's May 5 letter makes no mention of the convention's decree, referring instead to the advisability of “following the proclamation of the Civil Commissioners.” Toussaint mentions having actually seen the convention's emancipation decree for the first time in a letter to Laveaux dated July 7.

Laveaux's May 5 letter describes Toussaints move as a “return,” and Toussaint's first reply, dated May 18, mentions that at some earlier point “the ways of reconciliation proposed by me were rejected.” Some circumstantial evidence suggests that Toussaint and the republicans had tried for a rapprochement the year before, in the summer of 1793, before the catastrophic burning of Le Cap at the end of June. On June 4, the black leader Pierrot wrote to Governor Galbaud requesting written confirmation of a rumor he claimed to have heard that the French meant to declare the abolition of slavery. Since Toussaint was encamped with Pierrot at this time (a stone's throw from Le Cap, at Port Francais), he was more than likely a silent partner in this probe. Toussaint was certainly aware of the trouble brewing between Galbaud and the Jacobin commissioners and must have been wondering which faction to back. Galbaud had roots in the grand blanc world to which Bayon de Libertat belonged; Toussaint was not necessarily convinced that even conservative royalists of this stripe would be absolutely attached to maintaining slavery.

After the conflict exploded and Galbaud's supporters had driven Sonthonax and Polverel out of Le Cap, the commissioners proposed freedom for any men among the black rebels who would fight for their cause against Galbaud. That offer was good enough for Macaya and Pierrot, but apparently not for Toussaint, who chose to withdraw, watch the battle from a safe distance, and then consider dealing with the victor. Toussaint always preferred to stand clear of any battle he didn't absolutely have to fight.

Once the Jacobin commissioners had emerged (however shakily) in the ascendancy, Toussaint reopened a line of communication with them, this time via Laveaux, who used Antoine Chanlatte as his emissary. Chanlatte was harassing several of Toussaint's posts along the Cordon de l'Ouest at this time, but also trying diplomacy in between skirmishes. His letter to Laveaux of August 10, 1793, reporting several scuffles and parleys in the area of Marmelade, Plaisance, and Ennery ends with the startlingly offhand remark that Toussaint is in Le Cap and will soon be calling on Laveaux in person. Strange, since earlier in the same letter Chanlatte describes how “Toussaint a Breda” had already rejected the republican overture. There was more than one man named Toussaint among the rebel slaves in the north of the colony, so perhaps it was a different Toussaint who meant to visit Laveaux.

Still, the idea that a clandestine meeting between General Laveaux and Toussaint Louverture might have taken place—just a couple of weeks before Sonthonax's announcement of abolition and Toussaint's proclamation from Camp Turel—is intriguing. If the encounter did happen, how did it go wrong? If it never happened, what was Toussaint doing in those two weeks, and whom was he talking to? At the time that Laveaux and Toussaint might have met, Sonthonaxs proclamation of abolition was in the offing but had not yet come to shore. Toussaint's communications at the end of August suggest that he knew Sonthonaxs proclamation was on the way—and that he meant to beat the French commissioner to that particular punch.

On August 25, Toussaint sent an open letter to a camp of free mulattoes fighting for the French republic from their base in Le Cap— Chanlatte and also Villatte were part of his intended audience. Not long before, Chanlatte had tried to win Toussaint over to the republican cause. In the August 25 letter Toussaint tried to persuade Chanlatte's troops to leave the republic and join him.

“The idea of this general liberty for whose cause you do battle against your friends, by whom was its basis first formed? Were we not ourselves its first authors?”¹⁷ (This last sentence may be the only case where Toussaint identified himself, in writing, with the relatively small population of affranchis who had gained freedom under the old colonial system, rather than with the great mass of slaves in the process of freeing themselves.) He exhorted the mulatto troops to shake free of those who had hypnotized them with “a host of very vague promises”— Sonthonax and Polverel, that is, “two individuals charged with the title of Delegates of the Republic, which itself is not holding up.”

Here, at the end of August 1793, Toussaint put plainly his belief that the French republic would not endure, that the monarchy would return, and that the rebel slaves must look to the restored French monarchy for ratification of the liberty they had claimed for themselves. In the next breath, however, he invoked the most famous passage of French Revolutionary rhetoric, albeit with a particular interpretation of his own: “Recall the sentiments to which your General Chanlatte bears witness, in favor of liberty and equality; liberty is a right given by Nature; equality is a consequence of that liberty, granted and maintained by this National Assembly.”

Like so many of his generation, whether at first or second hand, Toussaint seems to have imbibed the idea of liberty as a natural right from Rousseau. Equality, in his view of things, may be more of a legal matter (and one which had for a long time preoccupied the free gens de couleuf). If liberty is a right to be claimed, equality must then be socially constructed. Toussaint ‘was for both, and by any means necessary: “It's for me to work toward them as the first to be swayed by a cause which I have always supported; I cannot give way; having begun, I will finish. Unite yourselves with me and you will enjoy your rights all the sooner.”¹⁸

The colored troops were no more moved by this call than Toussaint had been a fortnight before by Chanlatte's appeal to join the republic. The reference to Chanlatte in Toussaint's August 25 letter is civil, at least, but perhaps Chanlatte sent a testy reply, for by August 27 Toussaint was denouncing Chanlatte in foot-high letters of flame as a “scoundrel, perfidious deceiver,” and so on. No longer temporizing, he was again at all-out war with the forces of the French republic. “The ways of reconciliation” had failed.

Toussaint's letter of August 25 seems designed to preempt Sonthonax's abolition of slavery, proclaimed four days later. On August 29, when Sonthonax issued his edict in a page of dense prose (written in the phonetic Creole of the period, a language spoken by most of the slaves but read by practically no one), Toussaint was ready with his own proclamation from Camp Turel, which in a succinct five sentences boiled his August 25 letter down to its essentials: / am Toussaint Louverture; perhaps my name has made itself known to you. I have undertaken vengeance. I want Liberty and Equality to reign in Saint Domingue. I am working to make that happen. Unite yourselves to us, brothers, and fight with us for the same cause.

Toussaint was no longer addressing the gens de couleur as a separate group; he was speaking to anyone and everyone in the colony. Let all who heard choose between Toussaint Louverture and the French commissioners who were trying to hypnotize them. For the moment the rift seemed absolute. But Toussaint must have kept a back door open toward Laveaux during the following months, for in the spring of 1794 it seemed that these two had a relationship to resume.

The when of Toussaint's change of allegiance is as mysterious as the why. In a report written well after the fact, Laveaux states that Toussaint had stopped fighting the republican French by April 6,1794. Elsewhere he says that the black leader “placed himself under the banner of the Republic on May 6th.”¹⁹ The apparent inconsistency is not so difficult to resolve. It is logical that Toussaint should have ceased hostilities against the French and opened a line of communication with Laveaux soon after the ambush on his party at Camp Barade in late March and his subsequent retaliation on Biassou's camp at Maronniere Plantation, and just as logical that he should have delayed any further attacks on the Spanish until he was completely ready to commit to Laveaux and the republic. White Spanish troops, after all, seldom ventured west of Saint Raphael, and Biassou, after the whipping he had just taken, had reason to keep his distance from Toussaint, who probably spent most of April between Marmelade and Ennery where neither the Spanish nor the other black leaders could learn much about what he was up to.

The determinedly hostile Kerverseau described Toussaint's shift to the republic this way:

It was then that he put into practice all the tactics of slander and intrigue to corrupt the troops, create an independent force for himself, drive the former chiefs from the quarters they occupied and form from their debris a considerable arrondissement for himself* It was then that he opened negotiations with the French and the English, and that he redoubled his devotional practices, assurances of loyalty and demonstrations of zeal to deceive the Spanish government, evading the orders that were contrary to his projects by stories of imaginary combats in which he had received dangerous wounds, and never ceasing to extract gold and arms for pretended expeditions which he never actually undertook, until finally, after a year of ruses and detours, unhappy with the English who did not put a high enough price on his betrayal, and aware that the president,† informed of his perfidy, was only waiting for the right moment to punish him, he commit-ted himself made a surprise attack on San Raphael, whence that same morning they had sent him, at his own request, provisions and ammunition, then marched on Gona'ives which he seized after slitting the throats of all the Whites who had come before him to implore his protection—and declared himself commander under the orders of the General Laveaux. Such were the exploits with which he signaled his entry under the flags of the Republic.²⁰

Kerverseau never misses a chance to denigrate Toussaint, and this narrative should be discounted accordingly, but the events of this day (whatever its date) do reveal a man capable of absolute treachery, absolute ruthlessness, and absolute hypocrisy—all qualities Toussaint Louverture could claim, along with his more conventionally admirable ones. His requisition of supplies from the very people he meant to attack is classic.

Documents show that black auxiliaries attacked Gonai'ves on April 29, but it is unclear whether this is the moment when Toussaint took control of the port—other accounts give the date of his action as May 4 or May 6. The last date is implausible, as Laveaux's May 5 letter says that Toussaint has already raised the republican flag at Gonai'ves. A contemporary observer, Pelage-Marie Duboys, claims that Laveaux had discussed Toussaint's capture of Gona'ives in advance (with an eye toward using Toussaint's presence there to counterbalance the influence of Villatte, the mulatto commander at Le Cap). By this account, Toussaint permitted the Spanish garrison led by Villanova to depart “with the honors of war,” while the civilian population suffered “the terrible fate of a place taken by force” once the garrison had withdrawn.²¹

Toussaint wrote a couple of letters of his own from Gona'ives on May 5. One was to the town's vicar (“I am most sincerely affected by the harsh necessity that compelled you to leave the House of our adorable creator. Having been unable to foresee such a disastrous event fills my soul with despair”). The other, addressed to “Messieurs the refugee inhabitants of Gonai'ves,” noted: “It is without a doubt painful for me to have been unable to foresee the unhappy events that have just transpired and have obliged you to leave your properties. Such regret can be felt by me alone. Be assured, Sirs, that I did not at all participate and that everything was done without my knowledge and consequently against my wishes. God, who knows our most secret thoughts and who sees all, is witness to the purity of my principles. They are not founded on barbarous ferocity that takes pleasure in shedding human blood. Come back, Sirs, come back to your homes. I swear before our divine Creator that I will do everything to keep you safe.”²²

If there is any truth at all in Kerverseau's report of Toussaints involvement, it is fair to say thatToussaint did sometimes take a certain pleasure in shedding crocodile tears. Those “magnificent festivals” he had lately enjoyed at Gona'ives had evidently slipped his mind. The capture of Gonai'ves was a bloody affair: 500 fled to Saint Marc by boat, and 150 were reported slain. Kerverseau alleges a surprise attack on Saint Raphael, and oral tradition describes a massacre at Marmelade that took place either May 4 or May6.Toussaints May 5 letter to the Gona'ives refugees ends with a cautionary postscript: “On second thought, I request that you do not return until after I have come back from Marmelade, for I am going up there today.”²³ By one account of events at Marmelade, Toussaint attended mass with his Spanish superiors, taking the sacraments with his usual piety, then opened fire on them as soon as they had left the church.

Exactly what happened when can't be known for certain, but what had to happen to fulfill Toussaints program is plain. He needed to secure the whole Cordon de l'Ouest from Gona'ives all the way to Dondon, meaning that he had to purge all Spaniards and Spanish sympathizers from every post along that line. There's no doubt that he did just that, and did it thoroughly. White Spanish troops found at Dondon, Gros Morne, and Petite Riviere were slain on the spot. Toussaints reply to Laveaux on May 18 states calmly and confidently that “Gona'ives, Gros-Morne, the canton of Ennery, Marmelade, Plaisance, Dondon, l'Acul and all its dependencies including Limbe are under my orders, and I count four thousand men under arms in all these places.”²⁴ Thanks to the drastic action he had just taken, Toussaint now had this “considerable arrondissement,” and a considerable army occupying it, to offer to the French republic—on a platter.

Sonthonax and Polverel wrote to Toussaint to congratulate him on joining their cause. ButToussaint had switched sides too late to bail them out of their immediate predicament. On May 19, the British, encouraged by a reinforcement of nearly two thousand fresh troops, launched a full-scale assault on Port-au-Prince, supported by bombardment from ships on the bay, and forced the commissioners to abandon the town. Sonthonax and Polverel made their way to Jacmel on the southern coast, where on June 8, they hailedL'Esperance, the French ship which, with a weirdly bittersweet irony, brought not only the official news of the National Convention's abolition of slavery but also orders that he and Polverel return to France forthwith, to face charges of misconduct and misgovernance of the colony. As the Terror still ruled in France, such accusations strongly implied a swift trip to the guillotine.

The two commissioners wrote a batch of letters to their subordinates, including Generals Laveaux and Rigaud, then embarked on LEsperance as deportees. No replacements for the commission had been sent from France. Before departing, Sonthonax gave the symbols of his authority—a medal and ceremonial sash—to Dieudonne, a black who had taken over Halaou's band after the latter was killed in a contretemps with a mulatto faction. Though his authority to do so was doubtful at this point, Sonthonax formally invested Dieudonne with all the powers he was surrendering as representative of France.

Upon the departure of the commissioners, General Laveaux became the senior French official in the colony. Perhaps Toussaint preferred it that way—he had early marked Sonthonax as a rival. His relationship with Laveaux waxed from the guarded respect of their first correspondence to a genuinely affectionate friendship and partnership. Between 1794 and 1798 Toussaint sent a ream of letters to Laveaux. He spoke standard French as well as Creole, but his spelling was purely phonetic, so he dictated his correspondence to several different secretaries, always reviewing the drafts with great care to make sure that his thoughts were exactly expressed. The letters to Laveaux amount to the largest body of Toussaint's writing that survives.

From the moment that he announced his shift to the republican side, Toussaint was exposed to attack on two fronts—or at least from two directions, as coherent fronts were hard to identify on Saint Domingue's difficult, mountainous terrain—from the English to the west at Saint Marc and from the Spanish and their remaining auxiliaries in the eastern mountains and the valley of Grande Riviere. By some accounts (unlikely as it sounds), Toussaint kept up some sort of diplomatic contact with the Spanish command for about a month after declaring his allegiance to Laveaux and the republic—the Spanish may have hoped he'd have another change of heart and mind—but that did not prevent hostilities from Jean-François and Biassou. On June 15 Toussaint reported to Laveaux an attack by Jean-François which actually succeeded in taking Dondon, an attack on La Tannerie by Biassou the next day, followed on June 11 by a British assault on his post at Pont d'Ester, the next town north of Saint Marc and at that moment the southern frontier of Toussaint's “considerable arrondissement.”

“You see, Citizen General, how I am surrounded by enemies,” he wrote, “on all sides, the right and the left.”²⁵ In the same letter, Toussaint nevertheless proposes an attack on the Spanish force at Borgne, albeit in very coy terms: “I pray you, should it be an effect of your goodness to send out your army around Thursday or Friday, to appear before Borgne to threaten it as if you would attack it, I am sure that, by God's permission, we will have Borgne and Camp Bertin both together, by the maneuvers I will be there to combine.”²⁶ This first joint operation between Toussaint and Laveaux, supported by a movement of Villatte's men from Le Cap, was a smashing success, and had the strategic importance of reestablishing republican control between Le Cap and Port de Paix, and further securing the Northern Plain.

On July 7, Toussaint reports his recapture of Dondon and decisive routing of Jean-François: “he owed his salvation only to the thickness of the brush into which he desperately hurled his body, abandoning all his effects … He saved nothing but his shirt and his britches.”²⁷ Retreating to Fort Dauphin, Jean-François exercised his rage and disap-pointment by slaughtering the eight hundred unarmed refugee grand blancs planters who had been waiting there for a chance to fight for the Spanish royalists and the recovery of their lands. The Spanish garrison colluded in the atrocity, or perhaps felt it was too weak to prevent it; whatever their motive, the Spanish troops shut themselves into the fort during the massacre and refused entry to the helpless French victims, practically all of whom were slain, along with their families. This horrendous and almost inexplicable event, together with Toussaint's reoc-cupation of Dondon, crippled the Spanish project in French Saint Domingue, though Toussaint waited several weeks to deliver the coup de grace.

In the same letter, Toussaint told Laveaux that he had just received word of Sonthonax and Polverel's departure and of the convention's abolition of slavery: “It is very consoling news to all friends of humanity,” he wrote, “and I hope that in the future all will find themselves the better for it.”²⁸ The definitive news of abolition inspired him to take much more vigorous action against the Spanish than he had done previously. The routing of Jean-François from Dondon meant that Toussaint was no longer hedging his bets: all pretense that he might still serve Spain was abandoned. Concerning the massacre at Fort Dauphin, Toussaint wrote to Laveaux on July 19 with an elegant simplicity: “General, you may count on my humane sentiments; I have always had a horror of those chiefs who love to spill blood; my religion forbids me to do it, and I follow its principles.”²⁹ This line has a much stronger ring of sincerity than the rococo phrasing of the letters Toussaint sent to the survivors of his attack on Gonai'ves.

Both Laveaux and Toussaint wanted very much to capture the town of Saint Marc, the strategic key to control of the Artibonite Plain, immediately south of Toussaint's forward post at Pont d'Ester. Since his days in the Spanish service, Toussaint had recognized the British commander there, Lieutenant Colonel Brisbane, as an extremely dangerous adversary. To dispose of him, he tried a combination of force and guile. Brisbane, who had observed Toussaint's activities with the same acute interest with which Toussaint watched his, believed that the black leader was mainly out for himself and perhaps could be purchased for the British cause. Toussaint, hoping to lure Brisbane to Gonai'ves where he could be captured, showed himself receptive to these overtures. The negotiations also gave him a chance to secretly court the mulattoes of Saint Marc and surrounding areas, who since the National Convention's abolition of slavery were cultivating a greater sympathy for the republic.

Brisbane would not put his head in the trap, but in the first week of September Toussaint did manage to lure him in the direction of Petite Riviere, with a feigned offer by the chiefs of that town to turn it over to the British. One purpose of this ruse was to facilitate the defection of Morin, Brisbane's colored aide-de-camp, who led three hundred men out of Saint Marc to join Toussaint's subordinate Christophe Mornet on September 3. The next day, with Brisbane still absent, Toussaint launched a lightning strike on Saint Marc, which then was not well fortified. He overran an exterior camp, whose officer, mysteriously, believed that Toussaint had come to negotiate a switch to the British side. Morin had conspired with colored men still inside Saint Marc to open the gates to Toussaint's army, which briefly took control of the town. But a British frigate sailed down from Mole to bombard Toussaint's men from the harbor, and Brisbane rushed back in the nick of time to recapture the place by land.

Toussaint eluded Brisbane's column and with forty dragoons rode full-tilt up the Artibonite River to capture Verrettes, a key post in the region whence Brisbane had just been hastily recalled. In this maneuver he was aided by Blanc Cassenave, mulatto commander of a unit in the Artibonite area called the Bare-Naked Congos, who had offered his allegiance to Toussaint at Gonai'ves in 1793. With camps at Verrettes, and north of the Artibonite River at Marchand and Petite Riviere (where the British had begun building a fort on a hill called La Crete a Pierrot), Toussaint could control the passes into the Cahos mountains, an area as important to his strategy as the Cordon de l'Ouest. He could also threaten to isolate Saint Marc, where Brisbane was now hastily erecting more serious fortifications and launching an abortive sea attack on Gonai'ves.

Laveaux believed Saint Marc was tottering and might easily fall. Before he sent Toussaint to attack the town again, he tried to soften the target by sending a proclamation to Saint Marc's citizens on Septem-ber 12, 1794, urging upon the gens de couleur this point: “If you have had the courage to fight for those rights which alone distinguish man from the animals, then do have the generosity to recognize the beneficent decree which delivers your brothers from the irons that held them in slavery'³⁰ Although there was at this time a significant movement of anciens libres away from their alliances with the grands blancs and the British, Laveaux's missive had no apparent effect in Saint Marc. Toussaint proceeded to attack, deprived of any advantage of surprise, since Laveaux's proclamation had announced the planned assault—but he did succeed in capturing two forts on the heights above the town. Brisbane was shaken, but held out until he received reinforcements from Lapointe, a mulatto who commanded Arcahaye for the British, on September 18. Three days later, Toussaint gave up his attack on Saint Marc, after fifteen days of continuous fighting.

At the same time, Jean-François was gathering men for a fresh attempt on the eastern end of the Cordon de l'Ouest. On October 4 Toussaint reported his loss of several posts along the Artibonite River east of Saint Marc, which he attributed to “the perfidy of the colored men of that area.'³¹ “Saint Marc would now be ours,” he went on, “if I had not had the misfortune to hurt my hand while mounting a cannon on a carriage. If I had been able to fight at the head of my troops according to my custom, Saint Marc would not have held out an hour, or I would have fallen, one or the other.'³² Instead Toussaint, nursing a painfully crushed hand, had to send his lieutenants Morin, Guy, and Blanc Cassenave into the fray in his place. The failure of the attack was assured by “the terrible treachery of the hommes de couleur who abandoned me to join our enemies.'³³ In fact, three hundred mulattoes had been executed by the British in the wake of Toussaint's September 4 attack, and the survivors were doubtless discouraged from further collaboration with the French republic, at least for the time being. On top of that, Toussaint had run out of ammunition; such shortages would become one of his most chronic complaints to Laveaux. “The first time I attacked Saint Marc it was scarcely fortified at all,” he concluded, somewhat bitterly. “At present it is very well bulwarked; its own ruins serve as its ramparts.³⁴

Toussaint consoled himself for the failure at Saint Marc by whip-ping around 180 degrees to attack the Spanish and Jean-François. By October 21 Toussaint could send the much more cheerful report that he had driven the Spanish out of Saint Michel and Saint Raphael, capturing two officers and about fifty soldiers in the process. The towns were surrounded by horse and cattle ranches; Toussaint sent all the livestock into French Saint Domingue. “That operation accomplished,” he wrote, “I razed the two towns, so that the enemy could not make any attempt on them and so he will keep his distance from us.” In a very casual postscript he adds, “With the sabers of my cavalry I slew about ninety Spaniards—all those who in the end didn't want to surrender.”³⁵

This victory was a huge one, and hugely increased Toussaint's status with the French republicans. A white French general, Desfourneaux, had earlier failed in a campaign for the same objective. If there had been any lingering doubt, Toussaint's success decisively proved his value. As a Spanish officer, he had worn a crest of white feathers in his bicorne hat—an indication of royalist leanings. After this victory, Laveaux gave him a red plume, which Toussaint wore above the white ones ever after; his crest thus took on the colors of the revolution.

Now it was safe for Laveaux to leave Port de Paix and tour the Cordon de l'Ouest; he and Toussaint met face-to-face at Dondon. En route the French general was deeply impressed by what Toussaint had done to restore security and even tranquillity to the region: “Many whites had returned to their plantations … Many white women, whose properties had been invaded by the English, expressed to us how much attention and help they had received from this astonishing man … The parish of Petite Riviere offers the satisfying picture of more than fifteen thousand cultivators returned, full of gratitude, to the Republic: whites, blacks, mulattoes, soldiers, field hands, landowners—all blessing the virtuous chief whose cares maintain order and peace among them.”³⁶ Following this encounter, Laveaux installed his headquarters at Le Cap; Toussaint returned to the campaign against the British.

Saint Marc remained a difficult thorn to pull from French republican flesh, and Brisbane was still a serious threat. Though his troops by now had more than a little training in the European style of warfare, Toussaint was too wary to risk them against the redcoats in the open country of the Artibonite plain. He returned to a guerrilla program of ambush and temporary retreat. Brisbane's offensive, according to the British observer Brian Edwards, was “like a vessel traversing the ocean—the waves yielded indeed for the moment but united again as the vessel passed.'³⁷ Toussaint's various European opponents would make the same complaint through the end of the decade. In February 1795, Brisbane himself was slain in one of these ambushes.

The fight for control of the posts on the south bank of the Artibonite gave Toussaint opportunity for some satisfying victories over grand blanc commanders in league with the British. He must have been practically cackling when, on August 31,1795, he reported the humiliating defeat of one of these, Dessources, who “jumped down from his horse and, with the debris of his army, buried himself in the brush, shouting ‘Sauve qui peut!’ … I scattered bodies over the road for a distance of more than a mile; my victory was most complete, and if the famous Dessources has the luck to make it back to Saint Marc it will be without cannon, without baggage, and finally as they say with neither drum nor trumpet.”³⁸

As these tactics rendered the British at Saint Marc more or less ineffectual, Toussaint was content to forgo another wholesale assault on the town. During this same period he flushed the remainder of Jean-François's men out of the valley of Grande Riviere and established control of Mirebalais, an important town in a fertile valley near the Spanish border, at the opposite end of the Cahos mountain range from Saint Marc. Mirebalais was an area where French planters, both white and colored, had managed to remain on their lands and sustain a defense, and because of its remoteness the town's allegiance seemed to depend on the sentiments of these inhabitants more than anything else. Toussaint's attack which razed Saint Raphael and Saint Michel had carried south toward Mirebalais, but local planters Despinville and Dubignuies encouraged the Spanish troops there to hold out; soon after the Spanish used Mirebalais as a platform for a counterattack on Toussaint's post at Verrettes, to the west along the Artibonite River. But then the locals decided to declare Mirebalais in favor of the French republic (at least temporarily). Toussaint undertook to secure these areas with a network of small camps like those with which he had created his first power base along the Cordon de l'Ouest; a letter of February 6lists thirty-two of these.

Toussaint's successes in the interior had deeply damaged the Spanish-sponsored black auxiliaries there. By the Treaty of Basel, signed on July 22, 1795, Spain and France had ended their conflict, and Spain had agreed to cede its colony in the eastern half of Hispaniola to France. However, the French in Saint Domingue were spread too thin to occupy the new territory, and most of the Spanish colonists stayed on because they had nowhere to go. Flouting the treaty, Jean-François continued to harass Toussaint in the region along the border where the two black leaders had once queasily shared power. Not until November could Toussaint write to Laveaux, with enormous relief, “Thanks be to God: Jean-François is going to leave.'³⁹ Rumors that Jean-François might shift his allegiance to the British invaders had caused the French republican camp some anxiety, but instead he retired to Spain with full military honors, while Biassou went to Spanish Florida with a few hundred of his men. What was left of his and Jean-François's followers then joined forces with Toussaint. Curiously, many members of Jean-François's family declined to accompany him into retirement, but stayed in Saint Domingue once Toussaint assured them of “liberty and tranquility.” According toToussaint's account of the episode to Laveaux, these relatives of Jean-François “had a horror of his principles, which generally tended to harm his brothers, and to perpetuate slavery.”⁴⁰

Between 1794 and 1796, Toussaint began to display unmistakably the same acumen (and sometimes the same ruthlessness) in politics as on the field of battle. His admirers as well as his detractors cannot help but notice that his potential competitors tended to come to harm during these years—not only enemy warriors like Brisbane but also several of his republican brothers in arms. Since the summer of 1793, the mulatto commander Blanc Cassenave had voluntarily reported to Toussaint; popular with his mostly black troops, Cassenave had been successful in engagements with the British outside Saint Marc and had been an important partner in Toussaint's assaults on the town. He had captured the half-built British fort at La Crete a Pierrot above Petite Riviere— a point of importance to Toussaint's strategy in the region—and armed it with a couple of pieces of cannon. But relations between him and Toussaint broke down to the point that Toussaint had Cassenave arrested in January 1795. A long letter to Laveaux describes Blanc Cassenave as “an extremely abandoned, violent man,” accuses him of plotting against both Toussaint and Laveaux, and of stealing eighty pounds of ever-scarce gunpowder.

Toussaint went on to accuse Blanc Cassenave of plotting to set up his own “arrondissement” in the Cahos mountains (where Toussaint had just recently extended his own reach), of keeping spoils captured from the enemy for himself instead of using them for the benefit of the troops, and of generally fomenting discord and rebellion, not only among the field workers of the area but also among the officer corps. (Cassenave briefly won over a couple of officers important to Toussaint: Guy and Christophe Mornet.) One of the differences between Cassenave and Louverture had to do with plantation work in the area: Toussaint had ordered that ground be prepared for planting; Cassenave persuaded the field hands that this labor was tantamount to the restoration of slavery.

Cassenave was imprisoned at Gonai'ves. Before any trial could take place, Toussaint informed Laveaux, most silkily: “During his detention Blanc Cassenave was struck with a bilious choler which had all appearance of an unrestrainable rage; he was suffocated by it. Requiescat in pace. He is out of this world, we owe our thanksgiving to God on his behalf. As for myself, General, in having him arrested I did nothing but my duty; zealously I always seize the occasion to serve the fatherland. I will fight ceaselessly against enemies within and without. This death of Blanc Cassenave demolishes all procedures against him, as his crime had no accomplices.”⁴¹

With a similarly honeyed tongue, Toussaint addressed himself to Dieudonne, leader of what had been Halaou's band of maroons and nouveaux libres outside Leogane, who was suspected by both Toussaint and General Andre Rigaud of contemplating a shift of loyalty to the English in that region. Although Sonthonax had invested Dieudonne with his commissioner's medal and, in theory, his commissioner's powers as well, apparently the impression this gesture had made was fading. Rigaud, ‘who commanded for the French republic in the southern peninsula, ‘was trying diplomatic means to win the maroon leader to his side ‘when Toussaint's missive reached Dieudonne's camp.

“Is it possible, my dear friend,” wrote Toussaint on February 12, 1796, “that at the moment ‘when France has triumphed over all the royalists and has recognized us as her children, by her beneficent decree of 9 Thermidor, that she accords us all our rights for ‘which we are fighting, that you would let yourself be deceived by our former tyrants, ‘who only use some of our unfortunate brothers to charge the rest of them with chains? For a time, the Spaniards hypnotized me in the same way, but I was not slow to recognize their rascality; I abandoned them and beat them well; I returned to my country ‘which received me ‘with open arms and was very ‘willing to recompense my services. I urge you, my dear brother, to follow my example. If some particular reasons*should hinder you from trusting the brigadier generals Rigaud and Beauvais, Governor Laveaux, who is the good father of us all, and in ‘whom our mother country has placed her confidence, should also deserve yours. I think that you ‘will not deny your confidence to me, ‘who am black like you, and ‘who assure you that I desire nothing more in the world than to see you happy, you and all your brothers.”⁴²

The letter goes on in this vein for quite some time; meanwhile, as Toussaint advised Laveaux soon after, the net effect of “your dispatches and mine” ⁴³ was that a mutiny led by Dieudonne's lieutenant Laplume took Dieudonne prisoner and turned him over to Rigaud. However, instead of bringing Dieudonne's band of three thousand to Rigaud as expected, Laplume put it under the orders of Toussaint. With this more or less bloodless coup, Toussaint was able to extend the range of his command much further south than he had ever done before.

Toussaint's reference to the “beneficent decree of 9 Thermidor” may have been a slip of his pen. In the context of his letter to Dieudonne the date of 16 Pluviose, when the French National Convention had abolished slavery, would have made much more sense. There was no special decree promulgated on 9 Thermidor, the date when Robespierre and his faction fell from power and the Terror in France was brought to an end. Within forty-eight hours Robespierre and his closest allies had followed the Terror's hundreds of victims to the guillotine, and a reconstituted National Convention reclaimed the executive functions previously carried out by the dread Committee of Public Safety. France's situation began to stabilize.

In August 1795, the Constitution of the Year III was ratified, reaffirming the rights and obligations of man and of citizen—a category in which the blacks of Saint Domingue were still legally included. In October, Napoleon Bonaparte was named commander in chief of all armies within France, thanks to his role in scotching a royalist insurrection in Paris, and a five-member directory elected by the legislature took over all executive powers. These developments overseas were likely to have been on Toussaint's mind in February 1796, though he had more than enough to think about at home in Saint Domingue.

Toussaint's letter to Dieudonne evokes the themes of black-mulatto racial tension most adroitly, as well as the stresses between the anciens and nouveaux libres: though technically a member of the former group, Toussaint was determined to position himself at the head of the latter. Indeed, conflict had been brewing between the mostly colored anciens libres and the mostly black nouveaux libres almost from the day Toussaint had decided to reposition himself beneath the French republican flag.

Sonthonax had empowered the mulattoes, but just before his recall to France he had begun to shift his weight toward the black nouveaux libres. Perhaps it was in the context of mulatto support of the grands blancs and the British that Sonthonax had remarked to Dieudonne, “You are the representative of France; do not forget that so long as you see colored men among your own, you will not be free.”⁴⁴ Toussaint, though never a strong supporter of Sonthonax, probably agreed with this statement—privately. Up until 1796 he did not show it. In the south, victories by the colored commander Rigaud had been almost as important to the republic as what Toussaint had accomplished in the north and was beginning to accomplish in the Artibonite Valley. But so far, Toussaint's and Rigaud's spheres of influence had not come close to a collision.

With Villatte, the mulatto commander who'd been the supreme authority at Le Cap until Laveaux moved there from Port de Paix, friction came sooner. As early as September 1794 Toussaint began bickering with Villatte over control of posts in the area of Limbe. Toussaint insisted to Laveaux that these must remain under his authority—he felt that his natural cordon extended not only from Dondon through Ennery to Gona'ives but also from Ennery through Limbe, Gros Morne, and Port Margot to Borgne. An unspoken part of Toussaint's grievance against Blanc Cassenave was that the latter was more loyal to Villatte than to himself. Since both Toussaint and Villatte claimed authority around the edges of the Northern Plain, some contention between them was perhaps inevitable. Not long after the death of Blanc Cassenave, another mulatto commander, Joseph Flaville, rebelled against Toussaint's authority. Luckier than his predecessor, Flaville tucked himself under Villatte's wing at Cap Francais long enough for Laveaux to broker a truce between him and Toussaint.

On July 23, 1795, the French National Convention had recognized the services of Toussaint Louverture by promoting him from colonel to brigadier general. Villatte, Rigaud, and Louis-Jacques Beauvais (a third colored officer who was based in the southern coastal town of Jacmel) received the same rank on the same day. Because of the distinction Sonthonax had conferred on him, Toussaint might have seen Dieudonne as just as serious a potential rival as the three mulatto generals. With the maneuver that disposed of Dieudonne, Toussaint also stole a march on Rigaud: Laplume was promoted to colonel by Laveaux on Toussaint's recommendation; thereafter Laplume and the force of three thousand he had wrested from Dieudonne reported to Toussaint.

Although Toussaint had done much to consolidate his personal power and to place it at the disposal of Laveaux and thus of France, the stability he was trying to bring to the colony was not as solid as it might have seemed. A lengthy report he made to Laveaux on February 19, 1796, reveals much about the problems of local dissension which Toussaint confronted, and also about his methods of solving them.

On February 13, while camped at his Artibonite outpost, Verrettes, Toussaint received two letters delivered by a white messenger, Gramont L'Hopital, informing him that the soldiers and field hands had revolted in the mountains above Port de Paix, the town so recently vacated by Laveaux. One of those letters had been dictated by the black commander of the region, Etienne Datty who claimed that he had no idea of the cause of the rebellion. Toussaint wrote back to Datty at once, exhorting him to restore order. But soon after, “two citizens of the mountain of Port de Paix, more clear-eyed and more reasonable than the others,”⁴⁵ approached Toussaint at Verrettes and let him know that “many assassinations had been committed” in the region they had come from.

“Believing that all this might spread into neighboring parishes,” Toussaint reported to General Laveaux, “I decided to leave myself to go to that area and try to remedy, if it should be possible, all the disorders.” He put the fort he had just constructed at Verrettes into a “state of defense” and rode north to Grande Riviere, where he met a third deputation come to let him know that “the Disorder at Port de Paix was at its height,” and that many had been killed. Toussaint had left Verrettes at eight in the evening; after circling through Grande Riviere, he rode southwest to Petite Riviere and halted at his headquarters on Benoit Plantation, where he arrived at eleven at night—in three hours he had covered an astonishing distance, given the difficulty of the terrain.

At six a.m. he rode on to Gona'ives, and stopped at his headquarters there to write letters and to ready a small detachment of dragoons for his expedition to Port de Paix. With this light reinforcement, he rode north from Gona'ives at four in afternoon, and reached the town of Gros Morne (about halfway to Port de Paix) at midnight. There he learned that an officer named Jean Pierre Dumesny had gone in search of Etienne Datty but had been unable to find him.

During Toussaint's halt at Gros Morne a large number of “citizens of all colors who had the Happiness to escape the assassinations which were being committed came to see me and gave me a recital which filled me with horror. As my Horses as well as my dragoons were tired I Gave the order to unsaddle, and to hold themselves ready, I had them given their rations … At three in the morning Jean Pierre Dumesny, having learned that I had arrived in the village of Gros Morne, came to join me and reported that he had not yet been able to find Etienne, that he had presented himself at the appointed rendezvous but had found no trace of him … At four o'clock in the morning I gave the order to the Dragoons to Saddle, and got on the road to Port de Paix by five.”⁴⁶ On such maneuvers is founded Toussaint's reputation for rapid, unpredictable movement and for indefatigability

A couple of miles outside of the town, Toussaint paused to send out a few advance messengers, Jean Pierre Dumesny among them, to try to coax Etienne Datty to meet him for an interview. Then he rode a little further, halting at Ravine Pourrie, where he “had the horses unbridled so they might graze on a little grass.” It would have been full daylight by then; dawn comes quickly so near the equator. After an hour's wait, a couple of horsemen of Datty's troop appeared, then ten armed men on foot. Toussaint notes that while he reproached them vigorously for the riots and killings that had been going on, “they all seemed very satisfied to see me.”⁴⁷ Having sent these people away with new messages urging Datty to present himself, Toussaint rode on, stopping at two in the afternoon at the river of Passe Seguier for long enough to compose a letter to the recalcitrant and thus far invisible Datty. This time Toussaint ordered Datty to meet him at the nearby Andro Plantation.

“I got back on the road; at three o'clock I arrived at Habitation Andro, where I found a black citizen named Baptiste who told me that he served as a herdsman for Citizen Andro, the owner,&also Two black women citizens and an old mulatress, of whom I asked, Why all these disorders?—they replied that they did not Know the cause. As soon as I arrived I wrote to Pageot, Commandant of the Northern Province, to inform him of my arrival, and I sent the said Baptiste, with Two of my dragoons, to carry this letter. At the same moment there came to see me a large number of men and women fieldworkers, who brought me provisions, some fowls and some eggs, and testified to the pleasure they had in seeing me, and that they Hoped that I would settle all these Disorders. I Gave them the order to go find me some forage,* which they did on the spot and seemed to do with pleasure. That seemed to me to be a Good omen and made me believe that settling these things would not be difficult.”⁴⁸

In all these maneuvers one begins to sense the delicate balance with which Toussaint walked the line between French military commander and African chieftain. He had arrived in the unstable region with just a few cavalrymen at his back; if Datty's rebellion were determined, his forces would hugely outnumber Toussaint's, though probably they would be far less well trained and disciplined. In his daylong meander through the area, Toussaint was spreading the news of his presence as broadly as he could, while being careful never to remain in one spot for more than an hour: he had no intention of making himself a stationary target until he had a better sense of the local mood. His letters to Datty were written in French military style, from commander to subordinate—but the verbal messages he sent, parallel to his written communications, must have been more like invitations to a sort of clan meeting. Toussaint drew his confidence from subtle harbingers in the locals' response to him that would likely have passed unnoticed by a European officer. When the field hands brought him offerings of food and willingly followed his directions to find hay for his horses, he was reassured that they accepted the style of patriarchal authority he was trying to assert. Secure in their support, he was encouraged to remain at Andro Plantation till Etienne Datty should come; without that support he might well have been as shy of Datty as Datty was of him.

“At seven o'clock in the evening, Etienne presented himself in conformity to the order which I had Sent him, with about five hundred men of whom a great Part were armed. I had my horse saddled and Gave the order to Etienne To have all the citizens who had come with him form a circle, as well as those who had just come in with the forage.” With these directions, Toussaint managed to mingle Datty's men, whose intentions and loyalties were uncertain, with the field hands who had turned up earlier and had demonstrated their loyalty to Toussaint.

“I mounted my horse&entered into the Circle.” To address the throng from horseback increased Toussaint's air of authority; he was also ready for a swift departure if anything should go wrong.

After having Preached to them the morals of reason and having reproached them for the assassinations which they had committed, I told them that if they wanted to save their liberty, they must submit to the laws of the Republic&be docile—that it was not by such [violent] conduct that they would enjoy their freedom, that if they had some claim or complaint this was no way to get it recognized, and that Jesus had said, ‘Ask and you shall receive, knock at my door and it shall be opened to you,’ but he did not tell you to commit crimes to demand what you Need.

I asked them if they knew me and if they were happy to see me; they replied, yes, they knew I was the father of all the blacks, that they also knew that I had never ceased laboring for their Happiness and for their freedom, but that they prayed me to Listen to them and Perhaps I would see that they were not so far in the wrong as I said that they were.⁴⁹

At this point the encounter (as steered by Toussaint) had become a sort of court proceeding, African style, where grievances could be aired before the assembled community and resolved by the judgment of the patriarch. “I was silent,” Toussaint wrote to Laveaux,

and listened to them. One Among them said, “My General, we all regard you as our father, you are the most precious to us after God, and in you we have the greatest confidence.” I hushed him&told him that if they had considered me so, they would not have behaved as they did; that if they were afraid to address themselves to the Governor-General [Laveaux], whom we must all regard as our father and defender of our liberty, they should have addressed themselves to me&and that I would have worked to obtain satisfaction from the Governor-General of whatever claims of theirs I found to be just&that I would have Avoided their plunging into Crime.⁵⁰

Here Toussaint is reinforcing a chain of command running down from Laveaux through himself to his subordinate officers and thence to individual soldiers and citizens. Though the hierarchy is orthodox, his style of asserting it is not. For the abstraction of European military organization, where all individuals can be replaced in their ranks, is substituted an alternative where the whole apparatus is held together by Toussaint's personal, paternal relationship with all the people under his authority—though he wields his authority in the name of Laveaux and the French republic.

“They replied that all loved the Governor-General, but that it was unfortunate that everyone was not like him.” And then they got down to the real complaint:

Since the beginning of the revolution Etienne has always been our Chief; it is he who has always commanded us; he has eaten all our misery with us to win our liberty—Why did they take the command away from Etienne to give it to someone else against our wishes&why do they treat him as nothing? To ask that question, my General, we took up arms; it is unfortunate for us that we have some bad men among us who have committed crimes, but few of us are implicated in all that. Alas! My General, they want to make us Slaves again; Equality is nowhere here—nothing Like it seems to be on your side. See how the Whites and the hommes de couleurwho are with you are good, and are friends with the blacks till one would say they are all brothers born of the same mother— That, my General, is what we call Equality.⁵¹

This language, too, springs from the core rhetoric of the French Revolution, but here it has taken a peculiarly familial twist. Moreover, while these nouveau libre citizens of the Port de Paix region recognize Toussaint as “father of all the blacks,” they also recognize two sides, it seems: theirs and his.

“They trouble us too much,” the spokesman continued. “They don't pay us well for the harvests we make, and they force us to give our Chickens and pigs for nothing when we go to sell them in the town, and if we want to Complain they have us arrested By the police and they put us in prison without giving us anything to eat&we have to pay still more to get out again.—you can plainly see, my General, that to be dragged around like that is not to be free—but we are very sure that you are not at all like that, from the way that we see that everyone with you is happy and loves you.'⁵²

Once assured that the assembly had completely stated its case, Toussaint commenced his reply: “My friends—I ought not call you so, for the shame you have brought to me and all men of our color makes me see all too clearly that you are not my friends—all the reasons you give me strike me as Most Just, but although you do have a very strong case—”

But here, in the midst of reporting his own oration, Toussaint turned directly to Laveaux (whom he himself often addressed as “father”) to explain, “I used that expression To make them understand that though they might have all the good reasons that One could possibly have, that they were still wrong and that they had rendered themselves guilty in the eyes of God, of the Law, and of men.”⁵³ It was a ticklish matter for Toussaint to convince this audience, whose members were accustomed to resort to arms to settle injustices which looked obvious to them, that in the French republic, to which Toussaint insisted they belong, Law might trump Justice, at least from time to time.

How is it possible, I said to them, that I who have just sent deputies to thank the national convention in the name of all the blacks for the Beneficent Decree which gives them all liberty,&and to assure the convention that they will do their best to deserve it, and will Prove to France and all the Nations by their obedience to the laws, their labor and their Docility, that they are worthy of it,—and that I answered for all and that Soon with the help of France we would prove to the entire universe that Saint Domingue would recover all its riches with the work of free hands—how shall I answer when the national convention demands that I account for what you have just done? Tell me—my shame makes me see that I have betrayed the national convention, that [what you have done] will prove to the national convention everything that the Enemies of our freedom have been trying to make it believe: that the blacks are in no way constituted to be free, that if they become free they won't want to work anymore and won't do anything but commit robbery and murder.⁵⁴

Here for the first time in public (and to the sort of audience he most needed to convince), Toussaint announced his ambition for the colony: he would manage Saint Domingue so as to prove to the whole European world that slavery was not necessary to the success of the plantation economy, that sugar and coffee production could be revived, and the Jewel of the Antilles restored to its former luster—with free labor. But for that project to succeed there was a surprisingly vast cultural rift to be bridged, and almost as soon as Toussaint had finished speaking, that rift began to widen once more.

The people whom he had addressed swore up and down to sin no more, to be good and obedient and peaceful, that they desired nothing more than to have Toussaint restore order among them. Toussaint exhorted them to prove these good intentions by returning to their plantations—and to work. Once they were gone he turned to Datty and pointed out that by no means all the inhabitants of the region had been present for this talking-to. Datty admitted that there were still three camps of rebels on the mountain above Port de Paix. Toussaint loaned Datty a secretary to draft a letter ordering those camps to report to Toussaint at Andro Plantation. That letter sent, Toussaint and Datty shared a supper. At ten thirty that night, Datty took his leave, promising to appear with the remaining rebels the next day. “I had the ration given to my dragoons,” Toussaint wrote, “who had eaten nothing all day but a few bananas which the field hands had brought me, as I said before. I told them to pay good attention to their horses, and passed that night without anything new happening.”⁵⁵

By the next morning, however, it became clear that Etienne Datty had again slipped his leash. He sent emissaries but avoided appearing in person before Toussaint as he had promised, and the rest of the rebels remained where they were. Toussaint began sending letters once more.

Headquarters, Habitation Andro,
29 Pluviose, year 4 of the French Republic, one and
indivisible.

Toussaint Louverture, Brigadier General, Commander in Chief of the Cordon of the West, to Etienne Datty, Commander of the Africans

Immediately upon the reception of my letter, I order you to present yourself before me at Habitation Andro with all the citizens of the mountain and all those that I saw yesterday. My dear Etienne, I believe you to be too reasonable, not to Know what obedience is; I believe that you will present yourself right away, and spare me the pain of repeating this order.

Salut

(Signed)
Toussaint Louverture⁵⁶

But Toussaint's belief was disappointed: Datty did not reappear, nor did he send a direct reply. Instead Toussaint received a letter from “the Citizens in arms at Lagon,” explaining that since Datty had so often been entrapped in the past by “Beautiful Propositions” they themselves had restrained him from returning to Toussaint.

This cat-and-mouse game went on all day, with numerous exchanges of letters and circuits of messengers. By this time, Datty's insubordination was unmistakable, and the use of force seemed the inevitable next step. A white French officer might have taken it, but Toussaint had a different turn of mind. “Etienne's refusal made me spend the whole night considering what line I ought to Take. I reflected that if I used force, that might occasion Much more evil than there had so far been. At six in the morning, I decided; I left to go Find Etienne. I took with me Jean Pierre Dumesny, my Secretary,* and four of my dragoons.'⁵⁷

No wonder it took all night to calculate the risk of entering a rebellious encampment with this merely symbolic escort: in very similar circumstances, Toussaint had taken Brandicourt prisoner. But this gamble paid off: “I arrived at Camp Lagon at six-thirty; seeing me arrive, Etienne came before me; I scolded him and asked him Why he had Disobeyed, and what he could have been thinking of. He apologized and said that it was his troops who had kept him from coming. When I got down from my horse, all the Citizens, armed or not, came to tell me Good Day and to tell me how glad they were to see me.”⁵⁸ The peaceful approach, however risky, allowed Toussaint to reoccupy his patriarchal role. The men of Datty's command were ready to recognize him as head of a household that included them all.

Toussaint then took Datty aside for another long session of remonstrance and coaxing, and finally “succeeded in making him hear reason.” Then he inquired about Datty's secretary, one Maguenot (most likely a white Frenchman, one of several who served the black officers as scribes), and learned that he was lurking in another of the three rebel camps on the mountain. Maguenot was the probable author of the letter from “the Citizens in arms at Lagon” that Toussaint had received the day before. Between the lines of Toussaint's report to Laveaux, it appears that at this point Toussaint saw a possibility for laying the blame for Datty's insubordination on this Maguenot.

“ ‘You have a Secretary there who is a cunning, wicked man,’ “ Toussaint suggested to Datty. “ ‘He is deceiving you, I am sure of it,’ and I asked him if he had seen a postscript he had put in the margin of the Letter that he wrote to me and sent by the citizen Gramont [i.e., the first news Toussaint had of the insurrection at Port de Paix, delivered to him at Verrettes], in these terms: The bearer of the Letter is the citizen Gramont, I am in No Way guilty, I am forced to live with wolves.”⁵⁹ Etienne Datty declared that he had not seen this bit of marginalia, which suggests that perhaps he could not read: many of the black officer corps were illiterate and thus at the mercy of their secretaries. With the scales thus fallen from his eyes, Datty told Toussaint “no doubt he [Maguenot] could have put other bad things into the letters which I had him Write to the Governor General and the Commandant of the province, Without my knowing anything of it.”⁶⁰

It may well have been true that Maguenot helped stir up the trouble; it was certainly true that arresting him made it easier for Toussaint to reinstate Datty in his command without any punishment or reprimand—which, given the mood of Datty's men, was clearly the prudent thing to do. Maguenot was sent away under armed guard, while Toussaint and Datty dined together. After the repast, these two returned together to Andro Plantation.

“I arrived at Habitation Andro at four o'clock and found that everyone was there; I ordered Etienne to have them fall into line in front of the house. That being done I made them all Swear to put everything back into good order, to submit to the laws of the Republic, and I Gave them Etienne Datty To Command them.” Whereupon Datty's men cried, “Vive la Republique! Vive la Liberte et l'figalite! Vive le General Laveaux! Vive le General Toussaint!”⁶¹ Then they all began to dance, while Toussaint retired to his room for a long-overdue rest; in the previous seventy-two hours he had taken scarcely more than a catnap. The next day he had to gallop back to Verrettes, for the English had taken advantage of his absence to attack his post there. In partnership with Laveaux, Toussaint had done a great deal to restore stability to much of the colony, but what he'd achieved was still constantly threatened, from both within and without.

Resolving the Datty affair had taken six rather hectic days, and Toussaint had needed to walk delicately over a long line of eggshells to avoid coming to blows with his own people—to the extent that Datty's people were his. Even the style of address of their letters underlines the gap between them: Toussaint is brigadier general in the French army, while Datty (in his own signatures as well as in Toussaint's salutations) is “Commander of the Africans.” One is a French military officer who happens to be wearing a black skin; the other is a tribal leader. It is likely that all or most of Etienne's men really were “Africans” in the sense that, like the majority of the nouveaux libres, they had been born in Africa. The first instinct of these men was to trust the chiefs of their own group ahead of any Creole commander like Toussaint, though Toussaint, who knew how to operate both as a tribal leader and as a member of the French military hierarchy, was able to win Datty's men over, and without any serious show of force. His situation required him to shuttle constantly between these two roles, and he had a remarkable facility for doing just that, as his long report to Laveaux on the Datty affair is intended to demonstrate. A European officer in his place ‘would have been far less likely to grasp, for example, that the willingness of the locals to find hay for his horses meant that they were likely to stand by him in the controversy, but it was through such subtle gestures that Toussaint maintained his connection to his popular base.

Toussaint was black, as he would often remind the nouveaux libres, but he was also (unlike the majority of them) a Creole, born in the colony and adapted to its ways from birth, and furthermore (unlike all the nouveaux libres) he had been a prosperous land-and slave-holding freedman well before the revolution whose principal leader he was now becoming. Much as he labored to disguise them, those differences did create a fissure between Toussaint and the roughly half million people he was trying to mold into a new black citizenry, competent to defend its own freedom on both the political and the military fronts.

The unrest in Port de Paix, settled in Toussaint's favor, is one example of this problem. In the Western Department, the uncertain loyalty of Dieudonne's force was another. This issue too was settled in Toussaint's favor by his letters and intermediaries, at roughly the same time that he himself was halfway across the colony managing the business of Datty. Toussaint wrote his crucial letter to Dieudonne on February 12, the day before he received the first news of the uprising at Port de Paix. Just ten days later, Toussaint was writing to Laveaux about similar trouble in La Souffriere “since Macaya went there with Chariot after having escaped from the prisons of Gona'ives.” Another tribal leader, Macaya had been a far more prominent figure than Toussaint when rebellion erupted in 1791, and with Pierrot had helped Sonthonax wrest control of Le Cap away from Galbaud in 1793. “I only had Macaya arrested because he was corrupting my troops and taking them to Jean-François,” Toussaint wrote to Laveaux.⁶² Perhaps it would be cynical to suppose that he also saw Macaya (like Blanc Cassenave, Dieudonne, and others) as a potential rival for advancement in the French military.

Certainly Toussaint and Macaya were of different breeds. After Macaya's escape from Gona'ives, Toussaint complained to Laveaux, “Every day he holds dances and assemblies with the Africans of his nation,* to whom he gives bad advice. As long as these two men remain at La Souffriere, people of ill intention will find them easily disposed to help them to do evil … It would be most suitable to have Macaya and his cohort Chariot arrested, for they are staying too long in these neighborhoods … [Macaya] will now do all the harm he can so as to revenge himself on me. I pray you, my General, to pay careful attention to that, for if you don't cut the evil off at its root, it may grow very large.”⁶³

The episodes of Datty Dieudonne, and Macaya show that unrest among the enormous African-born contingent of the nouveaux libres was very widespread. At the same time a completely different sort of outbreak was brewing among the gens de couleur.Toussaint's letter about Macaya is sprinkled with equally urgent complaints about Joseph Flaville, the mulatto commander who had vexed him not long before by making certain posts which Toussaint considered to be part of his own command report instead to Villatte at Le Cap. Indeed, Villatte's power and influence there were not only becoming more and more vexatious to Toussaint, but also more and more dangerous to Laveaux and to all French authority in the colony.

Toussaint's situation vis-a-vis these anciens libres was tricky. Like most in Villatte's colored contingent, he had been free well before 1791, and like them, he had prospered in the prerevolutionary plantation economy. His interest in political rights for freedmen was similar to that of the gens de couleur. Unlike them, however, he was black. It seems unlikely that the antipathy between Toussaint and men like Flaville and Villatte was altogether racially based, for Toussaint had mulattoes among his most trusted officers to the very end of his career (on terms like brothers born of the same mother, as Dattys men observed). However, it is likely enough that some colored officers were loath to accept a full-blood Negro as commander in chief, and certain that Villatte would have viewed the rapid growth of Toussaint's power in the Northern Department as a threat to his own position at Le Cap.

Events of the last two years had been extraordinarily empowering to the race of gens de couleur and the class of anciens libres. The grands blancs had been swept out of the north of the colony by the aftermath of I'af-faire Galbaud. Since the ratification of the National Convention had confirmed the abolition of slavery and of all racial discrimination among French citizens, the gens de couleur of the north had reason to believe that they had finally inherited the kingdom of their fathers.

So Laveaux's return to Cap Francais was resented by many in the colored community there, which had restored and occupied many of the white-owned houses in the fire-ruined town, and had occupied the municipal offices. Toussaint foresaw trouble; on February 19 (in the midst of all the other turmoil) he wrote what for him was a frantic letter, advising Laveaux to stay clear of it: “Get yourself to Port de Paix if you can. Follow the advice of a son who loves his father, and don't leave there without letting me know … As soon as I have put my cordon in order I will write you everything I am thinking.”⁶⁴ Either Toussaint never had a chance to write the follow-up letter, or Laveaux did not receive it, or he decided not to take it seriously.

Though never so fiery a Jacobin as Sonthonax, Laveaux did irk some sympathizers of the ancien regime in Le Cap by continuing Sonthonax's policies there: one inflamed observer accused him of setting up a “tribunal of blood.”⁶⁵ Thus there was some hostility on the part of the remaining whites in the north, on which Laveaux's colored enemies could capitalize. It's also possible that the English invaders at Port-au-Prince, using the royalist Colonel Cambefort as their conduit, encouraged Villatte to depose Laveaux from his governorship. Still more probable was some degree of collusion with the mulatto commanders Rigaud and Beauvais, who between them controlled most of the Southern Department. The idea of mulatto rule of the whole colony was constantly sponsored by Pinchinat, an homme de couleur who despite his advanced age was a fierce personality: in 1791 he had calmly suggested, “Let us plunge our bloody arms into the Hearts of these monsters of Europe.”⁶⁶ Pinchinat was a wily politician and skilled propagandist; Lapointe, commander at Arcahaie, declared that he feared the writings of Pinchinat more than an army. Certainly Pinchinat played some part in instigating what become known as I'af-faire de 30 ventose.

On that date (March 20, 1796), the colored officials of Cap Francais imprisoned Laveaux and announced that he had been replaced in his governorship by Villatte. With his accountant, Perroud, Laveaux languished in jail for two days. Then, on March 22, Pierre Michel, a black officer acting on Toussaint's orders, entered Le Cap in sufficient force to rout Villatte and his followers, who fled into the countryside. Laveaux and Perroud were freed and restored to their offices, as a proclamation sent by Toussaint rebuked the population of the town for colluding with the coup attempt. On March 28, Toussaint himself appeared at the head of his army and received a hero's welcome.

In addition to disposing of another of Toussaint's rivals, this episode cemented the quite genuine friendship—and strategic partnership—between Toussaint and Laveaux. On April 1, Laveaux called an assembly on the Place d'Armes of Cap Francais, where he proclaimed Toussaint to be not only “the savior of the constituted authorities,” but also “a black Spartacus, the negro Raynal predicted would avenge the outrages done to his race.”⁶⁷

Toussaint had taken the coup attempt quite seriously as a threat to the stability of the whole colony, or more precisely as a threat to the administration he was building with Laveaux. He knew that the Villatte insurrection might well have gone colony-wide—Villatte had gone so far as to send notice to military officers all over the colony that he was now their commander in chief, and had also set about organizing a new colonial assembly. When Toussaint got the news at Gonai'ves, he immediately sent two battalions, commanded by Charles Belair and Jean-Jacques Dessalines, to reinforce Pierre Michel at Le Cap, while he himself remained where he was, poised to strike in any direction, sending a stream of dispatches and messengers to other towns warning them not to rebel, as well as a report to the French consul in Philadelphia. When he marched north toward Cap Francais he routed Villatte from a fort he'd occupied near Petite Anse; Villatte departed, snarling that he hoped “Laveaux would have his throat slit by the blacks he was caressing.”⁶⁸ In fact, Villatte's party had managed to start a rumor that Laveaux and Perroud had imported two shiploads of chains for the restoration of slavery, and the two Frenchmen were threatened by a black mob until Toussaint opened the general warehouse to let the crowd see that no such chains were there.

In gratitude, and also to secure himself and his government against further suspicion from the nouveaux libres, Laveaux proclaimed Toussaint lieutenant governor that April I on the Place d'Armes, and announced that henceforward he would do nothing without Toussaint's approval. Toussaint, exhilarated, shouted to the crowd: “After God, Laveaux!”⁶⁹ —an exclamation he had recently heard addressed to himself by Datty's men around Port de Paix. On the same day, Dieudonne died in his southern prison, suffocated not by a “bilious choler” but by the weight of his chains.

*This summary of Toussaint's tactics in taking over the Cordon de l'Ouest has a certain ring of plausibility.

†The Spanish governor, presumably.

*These reasons may have included black mistrust for anciens libres Igens de couleur.

*For Toussaint's horses.

*Guybre, a white Frenchman.

*Macaya was a Congolese, an important tribal affiliation.