Toussaint Louverture

by Madison Smartt Bell

  Hedouville, whose successes in the Vendee had relied on diplomacy as much as battle, arrived in Saint Domingue better supplied with gentleness than with force: the home government had allowed him scarcely any fresh European troops. Kerverseau, having sized up his situation, advised him to display confidence, though he had very little material strength: “I must tell you then, that despite your character as Agent of the Directory, Toussaint will be more powerful than you. An order signed by him will have more force than all your proclamations, than those of the Directory, than all the decrees of this Legislative Corps. But all his power will be yours, once he is certain of your principles.”33

  Hedouville installed himself in Cap Francais on April 20, 1798. Toussaint, wary of the newcomer, was not there to meet him; in a series of letters, he excused himself by citing his campaigns against the English invaders on the west coast and the distance over difficult terrain. In view of his notoriously rapid movement all over the colony, the latter explanation was not very convincing. In fact, Toussaint was busy conducting his own negotiations for a British withdrawal with General Thomas Maitland, who had arrived to take over the British operations in Saint Domingue just three weeks before Hedouville's landing.

  The adventure in Saint Domingue had not turned out as the British hoped. They had not been able to make the area of the colony they occupied anywhere near as profitable as it had formerly been for France. They earned something better than £500,000 from exports during the occupation, which, on the other hand, cost them more than £7 million in money, as well as about 20,000 casualties. At Maitland's arrival, the British had only 2,500 European soldiers under arms, plus a few thousand black and colored troops of doubtful reliability, while Toussaint was reputed to have 20,000 men to bring against them.

  Having driven the British from Mirebalais and the interior, Toussaint was now able to put pressure on the cordon of forts which protected Arcahaie. In March 1798, he broke through it. Though the formidable Lapointe was still holding out for the British in Arcahaie itself, Toussaint's advance allowed him to seriously threaten the British positions to the north, at Saint Marc, and to the south at Port-au-Prince. The British situation in the Western Department looked less and less tenable.

  Maitland had studied the rivalry between Rigaud and Toussaint and concluded that the two generals were unlikely ever to cooperate. He believed that Laplume, who since the overthrow of Dieudonne had commanded a large force for the French republic just to the south of British-held Port-au-Prince, was a quasi-independent third factor; for Laplume's loyalty to Toussaint was never certain. The British general knew that possession of Port-au-Prince would greatly empower whichever leader it was yielded to. If Toussaint got the prize, the British would still have both Laplume and Rigaud in a buffer zone between Port-au-Prince and the British post at the port of Jeremie toward the western tip of the Grande Anse. Furthermore, by dealing with Toussaint, Maitland might drive a wedge between him and Hedouville, whose arrival made an easy exit for the British less likely.

  On April 23, Maitland offered to withdraw all British forces from the west of Saint Domingue, on condition that the French colonists who had collaborated with the British be granted amnesty. Over the next few days, Toussaint negotiated that the forts and their cannon would be turned over to him intact—a major and rather surprising concession. The accord was signed on April 30, and not until the following day did Toussaint write to Hedouville at Le Cap to notify him of the fait accompli. Teeth presumably clenched, Hedouville approved his action, noting marginally that French law and the French Constitution permitted no one to come to terms with proscribed emigres. But Hedouville could not influence events in the Western Department from where he sat, and troops commanded by Christophe Mornet and Toussaints brother Paul were already advancing toward Port-au-Prince across the Cul de Sac plain.

  A great many Frenchmen chose to depart on British ships; those who remained were understandably apprehensive. Laplume was also present in force outside Port-au-Prince, and when he struck a peace agreement with the mulattoes of Croix des Bouquets, Bernard Borgella, the grand blancs mayor, sent a delegation to thank him. Then Christophe Mornet arrived in Port-au-Prince to assure Borgella that the transition would be orderly. A Frenchman in the town described Mornet's men:

  His tattered troops, covered in a few rags molded to their trunks, true sans-culottes, starving and in want of everything, naturally should have breathed nothing but pillage; so far from anything like that, not only did they not commit the lightest insult, but we even saw them, upon entering a city evacuated by the enemy, go without rations for two days without a murmur. Where are the European soldiers who, in such a case, could maintain so exact a discipline?34

  When Toussaint entered Port-au-Prince soon afterward, the amnestied French colonists came out to receive him with tremendous fanfare—doubtless born of their relief at the extraordinary self-control of the black troops already occupying the town. Toussaint appeared with extreme modesty, wearing a plain field uniform without epaulettes, his customary head-cloth tied beneath his tricorner hat. He declined the most extravagant gestures of the welcoming whites, declaring, “Only God should walk beneath a dais; only to the sole master of the universe should one offer incense.”35 He had, however, promised to respect their property, and he backed up the promise by sending the stray cultivators of the region back to work on the plantations. On May 26, he announced to all citizens of Port-au-Prince: “The times of fanaticism are no more; the rule of law has succeeded that of anarchy”36 When the British fleet sailed on May 28, Toussaint arranged aTe Deum in the Port-au-Prince cathedral to celebrate.

  The evacuation of the west left the British with only two posts in the colony. Though the naval bases at Jeremie (threatened by Rigaud at nearby Tiburon) and at Mole Saint-Nicolas (which Maitland judged could not withstand a siege backed by the artillery which Toussaint could bring to bear from land) were valuable to the defense of Jamaica, Maitland judged that they were not worth their cost. On July 27, he reported to Governor Balcarres of Jamaica that he was on the verge of deciding to evacuate Saint Domingue altogether.

  Throughout the summer of 1798, Maitland received emissaries from both Hedouville and Toussaint, still with the goal of promoting dissension between them—as Hedouville warned Toussaint in a July 5 letter. Aside from the particular differences developing between the agent and the general in chief, the traditionally contentious division of power between Saint Domingue's civil and military authorities was there for Maitland to exploit. On July 30, he decided to close the deal with Toussaint, having concluded (as Kerverseau had done) that as commander in chief of the army the black general held the real reins of power.

  The accord for the evacuation of Jeremie, signed by General Huin for Toussaint and Colonel Harcourt for Maitland on August 13, was immediately put into practice; the English were gone from the south by August 23. This agreement, as well as the one for the evacuation of Mole concluded on August 30, contained favorable terms for emigre colonists which were irritating to Hedouville—not to mention that Maitland had promised earlier that he would surrender Mole to no one but Hedouville himself. But to complete the undermining of the agents authority, Toussaint and Maitland signed a secret agreement at Point Bourgeoise on August 31: a nonaggression pact and trade deal which lifted the British blockade from Toussaint's Saint Domingue, and gave him a free hand within its borders so long as he honored a promise not to export the black revolution to the British Caribbean colonies. (Toussaint kept his end of the bargain a year later by betraying a conspiracy to raise a slave revolt in Jamaica.) The arrangement concluded, Maitland and Toussaint repaired to the last British base at Mole, where the white general treated the black one to a festive dinner, and afterward gave Toussaint the elaborate silver service used at the meal, with the compliments of the king of England.

  Toussaint and Maitland shared amiable feelings toward members of the grand blanc group in exile, and Toussaint let Maitland know that he would welcome the return
of such refugees not only from the United States but also from Jamaica—meaning that the French collaborators who had fled the Western Department with the English would be allowed to come back almost right away. Hedouville, for his part, was expelling grands blancs pardoned by Toussaint as emigres, though not so fast as Toussaint was admitting them.

  Toussaint's policy gave him a burst of popularity among the whites of the Western Department. The ladies of Port-au-Prince, who had caught on to his taste for elaborate religious ceremonies, took up a collection for a thanksgiving mass. Toussaint, far less reserved than when he had first taken possession of the town, mounted the pulpit to declaim: “I am going to imitate Jesus Christ, whom we adore in this temple—he forgave in the name of his Father; I will forgive in the name of the Republic.”37

  Rumors of the secret treaty with Maitland soon leaked, further damaging Toussaint's shaky relationship with Hedouville. He had called on the agent at Le Cap for the first time soon after he'd taken possession of Port-au-Prince and the west from the English, but had not stayed long, preferring to retire to the security of his own base at Gonai'ves. In July, he visited Hedouville again, this time in the company of General Andre Rigaud. The latter was technically still under order of arrest since his rebellion against Sonthonax and the Third Commission in 1796, and as wary of the new agent as Toussaint was, it seemed. A volatile character, Rigaud was irked that the British had yielded the towns of the Western Department to Toussaint rather than to him, but when the two generals met in Port-au-Prince, they manage to smooth over that difference. United by a common mistrust of Hedouville, they traveled from Port-au-Prince to Le Cap together.

  But once he met Hedouville in person, Rigaud dropped his reserve, so that the agent found him a warmer and more congenial figure than the suspicious, aloof Toussaint. This development reactivated Toussaint's mistrust of Rigaud, and Hedouville, who felt that he would have better luck managing these two generals if they were at odds with each other, encouraged the breach between them by favoring Rigaud. Before he left the south, however, Rigaud had been worried that Hedouville might have him deported to France to face charges related to his 1796 rebellion against the Third Commission, so he had arranged for an insurrection to break out at Anse a Veau during his absence— one that only his return to the south could subdue. As there was no time to call it off, the insurrection began on schedule and Rigaud, now trapped by his own artifice, had to rush home to settle it, leaving Toussaint to sort out his problems with Hedouville alone.

  So far as labor policy went, Toussaint's and Hedouville's ideas were not so very dissimilar. Both wanted to restore the plantation economy by sending nouveaux libres back to work in the cane and coffee fields. Both were inclined to bind the freedmen contractually to plantations for periods as long as three years, and often to the same plantations where they had previously been slaves. When Toussaint undertook such measures himself he thought of them as necessary for the restoration of prosperity, but when they were undertaken by Hedouville, Toussaint could easily be persuaded that the agent was a tool of Vaublanc and the faction in France that was maneuvering for the restoration of slavery in fact, if not in name. One of his letters to the agent makes much of the idea that he, Toussaint, had been set free by the principles of the postrevolutionary French Constitution—and no mention of the fact that he had been free for more than a dozen years before. Toussaint pre-ferred to identify himself with the nouveaux libres as much as he could—but the stringent labor rules were hugely unpopular with that group, no matter who was pushing them.

  Hedouville had brought no significant military force with him, but he did have a team of civil servants with which he intended to replace most of the men Toussaint had appointed to various civilian posts in the government. Like Idlinger, who was in charge of the government's accounting in Le Cap, many of Toussaint's appointees were white Frenchmen, and many were considered to be corrupt, but Hedouville's efforts to replace them with his own people quickly became another sore point. In an effort to interrupt Toussaint's negotiations with the British, Hedouville ordered that enemy envoys should be admitted only at Le Cap, but Toussaint paid no attention to that. When Hedouville rebuked him for his leniency toward the emigres, Toussaint wrote tartly to the Directory, “Ah, since one reproaches the blacks for throwing out their former tyrants, isn't it part of their duty to prove that they know how to forgive—to welcome the same men that persecuted them?”38

  One of the French naval captains told Toussaint “how flattered he would be, after having brought General Hedouville, to return with General Toussaint Louverture, whose services would find in France all the sweetness and honor which they so richly deserve.” The shades of sarcasm and menace in this remark did not escape Toussaint, who responded darkly, “Your ship is not big enough for a man like me.”39 Officers of Hedouville's largely symbolic honor guard persisted in teasing him with the prospect of a perhaps involuntary journey to France, until Toussaint finally pointed to a nearby shrub and said that he would make the trip ‘when that is big enough to make a ship to carry me.”40 Toussaint wore a red head-cloth under his general's bicorne; this mouchwa tet had a Vodouisant significance—it represented a bond between Toussaint and the warrior spirit, Ogoun Ferraille. Hedouville's supercilious young staff officers boasted that four of them would be enough to arrest “the ragheaded old man.” Ogoun did not take the insult lightly; not very long after, a couple of these witty young blades were slain in an ambush south of Port-au-Prince.

  If Hedouville was playing Rigaud against Toussaint, Toussaint was not much troubled by his game. “Let Monsieur Rigaud go take his instructions from the Agent of the Directory,” he said, in a moment of unusual frankness, to one of the French colonists he had amnestied in the region of Port-au-Prince. “I could very well have him arrested, but God forbid—I need Monsieur Rigaud … the caste of Mulattoes is superior to mine …; if I were to remove Monsieur Rigaud, they would perhaps find a leader worth more than he … I know Monsieur Rigaud …; he loses control of his horse when he gallops …; when he strikes, he shows his arm … Me, I know how to gallop too, but I know how to stop on a dime, and when I strike, you feel me but you don't see me.41

  Hedouville's efforts to contain and limit Toussaint's power, via Rigaud or any other counterweight, were rapidly coming to nothing. After the British withdrawal he wanted to reduce the size of the black army, but could do nothing toward this end. He mistrusted Toussaint's cadre of black officers, many of whom were illiterate and thus in Hedouville's view too easily led, or misled, by their white secretaries— who were apt to belong to the suspicious grand ^Zawc/emigre class. And despite all Hedouville's remonstrations and proclamations to the contrary, Toussaint persisted in favoring this latter group, which was not only protected by his agreements with Maitland but also had an important role in his own project for rebuilding the economy of the colony. Most of the civilian bureaucracy was reporting to Toussaint's officer cadre, and the military had infiltrated most branches of administration. Hedouville's struggle to reassert civilian control created still more friction.

  When Hedouville urged him to cut the number of his troops, Toussaint told him, “Ah well, if you are able, you can do it yourself.” The reaction of Toussaint's adoptive nephew Moyse, who then commanded at Fort Liberte, was still more pointed: “That agent wants to diminish the troops, and I want to increase my regiment. If there are no soldiers, there won't be any more general.”42 Moyse was also more and more openly hostile to labor policies which would attach former slaves to their former plantations, regardless of their source.

  In the fall of 1798, rumors began to spread that a massacre of the whites was in the offing. The French Revolutionary calendar's New Year came in late September, and the nouveaux libres circulated more widely and generally than usual during this period, holding dances and assemblies which fed the fear among the whites that an insurrection was being planned. Toussaint sought to scotch the rumor, telling his officers: “Show how absurd is the intention they have
imputed to the blacks, and don't allow any assembly to take place.”43

  In this tense atmosphere, quarreling broke out between soldiers of the Fifth Regiment, commanded by Moyse at Fort Liberte, and planters in the area. Hedouville was alarmed enough by that situation to order Moyse replaced by Manigat, a black magistrate in the town backed by some of the few white troops at the agent's disposal. Moyse was away on a tour of inspection of the countryside when Manigat took over, and when he returned, Manigat declared him a rebel. After an exchange of gunfire between Manigat's supporters and his own, Moyse left town with many men of the Fifth Regiment and began raising the field workers of the Northern Plain in an insurrection against Hedouville. By some accounts, Toussaint met Moyse at Hericourt Plantation and helped coordinate the rising.

  Hedouville sent for help from Toussaint at Gonai'ves, but Toussaint would not receive the messengers, though one was his close friend Colonel Vincent and the other his sometime confessor, the Catholic priest Antheaume. Instead, Toussaint had them briefly imprisoned in the Gonai'ves fort. When Hedouville learned what had happened to them, he resigned himself to leave Saint Domingue. In an address to the citizens of Le Cap, Hedouville blamed the trouble on an emigre plot to make the colony independent of France. By then the population of the Artibonite Valley had joined the insurrection, and Dessalines was marching north from Saint Marc at the head of the Fourth Regiment, with an order in Toussaint's own handwriting and phonetic spelling (which meant that it must have been composed in great haste): “I spoke to you yesterday about Fort Liberte—well, it is now in the power of the white troops by the order of Hedouville … Hurry up and get twelve hundred men ready to march against Le Cap and arrest him before he embarks.”44

  By the time Toussaint and Dessalines reached Le Cap, riding the wave of the huge popular insurrection, Hedouville was already on shipboard, with his honor guard and a handful of local sympathizers, including the mulatto commissioner Julien Raimond and Belley, the retired black delegate to the French National Convention. He sent ashore a few of Moyse's officers whom he had with him in exchange for an assurance that the harbor forts would not fire on his vessel as it departed. Toussaint promptly wrote to the Directory, denying any ambition for independence and blaming the trouble on Hedouville. Though the church of Le Cap had not yet been fully reconstructed since the fire of 1793, Toussaint had aTe Deum sung on the site to celebrate the departure of all enemies from the colony; the French agent was apparently lumped into this category, along with the British troops and navy.