Toussaint's movements during these first days of the invasion are occluded. By his own generally disingenuous account written in the Fort de Joux, Le Cap was already burning by the time he got his first glimpse of the situation from the height of Grand Boucan. However, almost a week elapsed between Leclerc's first landfall at Point Samana and his landing in force at Le Cap on February 4, and Toussaint, renowned for the speed of his movement, would hardly have taken so long to cover the distance between those two points. Leclerc's messenger noticed that during their parleys General Christophe stood near the cracked door of an inner office, and suspected that Christophe's responses were controlled by someone on the other side. Vincent had predicted that such would be the case—that Toussaint would try to manipulate Christophe without showing his hand to the French, and that under Toussaint's close surveillance, Christophe would not be able to act freely.
Leclerc sent a testy letter to Christophe (whom the civilian authorities and numerous whites in the town were imploring not to oppose the French landing), advising him that eight thousand men were landing at Port-au-Prince and four thousand at Fort Liberte,* and summoning him to surrender the harbor forts immediately. Christophe's reply was intransigent: “You will not enter the city of Le Cap before it has been reduced to ashes, and even on the ashes I will fight you still.'54
Rochambeau, an undiplomatic individual whom a later phase of the invasion would prove to be alarmingly sadistic as well as hotheaded, forced the issue on February 2 by attacking the harbor posts at Fort Liberte, not troubling himself with any peaceful preliminaries. Toussaint's concluding remark at Point Samana had been “France is deceived; she comes to defend herself and enslave the blacks.'55 In the same spirit, the defenders of Fort Liberte shouted, “Down with the whites! Down with slavery!” The battle was bloody, and cost the life of at least one noble French officer. Rochambeau butchered all the prisoners he took. Once this news reached Le Cap there was no turning back and the war was on.
On February 4, Leclerc sailed with General Hardy and a detachment of troops for a landing at Limbe, west of Morne du Cap on the Bale d'Acul, hoping that a convergence movement on Cap Francais might also preserve the rich plantations of the Northern Plain. On the road toward the town this detachment met stubborn resistance, commanded in person, according to one of Hardy's memos, by Toussaint Louverture (whose presence at this place and date suggests that he might well have been in Cap Francais earlier, directing Christophe and stalling for time). In town, as the French forced their way ashore, Christophe set an example by setting fire to his own magnificent residence with his own hands. Soon the whole town, so recently restored from the disaster of 1793, was again ablaze. A doleful procession of civilian refugees climbed to the height of Morne Lavigie to watch the conflagration. Christophe did not offer battle on the scale that he had promised, but instead (probably in obedience to Toussaint's recent order and certainly in conformity with Toussaint's overall strategy) preserved his demibrigade by retreating. On February 6, Leclerc's force, marching north from Limbe, joined one of Rochambeau's columns crossing the plain from Fort Liberte, and the next day Leclerc entered Le Cap to find that Christophe had kept the first part of his vow: the town was nothing but a smoldering ruin.
There were others besides Vincent who had tried to dissuade Napoleon from the invasion; a colonist named Page had warned him, “You will throw eight thousand men into Saint Domingue; they will take up their positions; doubtless Louverture will not have the impudence to fight them; he will retreat into the mountains and leave them to be consumed by the temperature of the towns and the want of fresh provisions.'56 And in an amiable postmortem talk with Pamphile de Lacroix, Christophe remarked that the black resistance should have “known how to fly when it was best, and cover its retreat with deserts it leaves behind it … If instead of fighting, our system of resistance had consisted in running and in alarming the Blacks, you would never have been able to touch us. Old Toussaint never stopped saying so; no one wanted to believe him. We had arms; our pride in using them ruined us.57
LeClerc's Attack on Cap Francais, February 4—6, 1802
“Old Toussaint s” strategy for resistance and his explicit orders in the first days of the invasion were close to what Page and Christophe described. Though his army was well-seasoned, determined, and confi-dent, he was indeed wary of risking it in the open field against veterans of the Napoleonic wars in Europe. His preference was to deny terrain to the enemy by destroying the towns on the coast and scorching the earth of the lowlands, then to fight a war of attrition from the mountains until the invasion buckled under its own weight (as Page had predicted it must). Toussaint had seen what the fever season had done to the unacclimated English invaders and had nothing against letting disease do as much of his work as possible. A February 7 letter to Dessalines put it vividly: “Do not forget that while waiting for the rainy season, which must rid us of our enemies, we have no recourse but destruction and fire. Consider that the land bathed with our sweat must not furnish our enemies the least nourishment. Jam up all the roads, throw horses and corpses into all the springs; have everything burned and annihilated, so that those who come to return us to slavery will always have before them the image of the hell that they deserve.'58
Dessalines was supposed to burn Port-au-Prince, and Toussaint had sent similar orders to his other commanders all over the colony, but the first French movements were so swift, determined, and effective that many of his messengers were intercepted. The courier to Paul Louverture in Ciudad Santo Domingo had actually been given two letters, a false one directing him to receive the French and a true one commanding him to destroy the town and retreat. The French picked off this courier, presented the false letter, and occupied Santo Domingo without firing a shot. In Santiago to the north, the priest Mauviel had been rusticating since Toussaint changed his mind about installing him as bishop of the Le Cap cathedral. He persuaded Santiago's mulatto commander, Clervaux, to yield to the French without a struggle. Thus Toussaint almost immediately lost all the key points he had been at such pains to secure in the Spanish part of the island.
In the west, there were other disasters. Dommage, a trusted commander at Jeremie, failed to receive Toussaint's dispatch. Persuaded by Napoleon's proclamation,* he turned over the town to the French and gave them a firm foothold on the Grande Anse. Laplume, who was similarly seduced and may also have been disaffected since the suppression of the Moyse rebellion, disobeyed the order to burn Les Cayes and the surrounding area, and instead offered his services to the French.
When Toussaint launched his couriers from Point Samana, Des-salines was absent from Port-au-Prince. In his place the white General Age commanded, at least in name—a local cynic reported that Age was constantly drunk and knew more about houses where he could get free libations than he did about his own officer corps. When General Boudet landed his messengers, Age secretly let them know that he had no real power in the situation; actual authority lay with his nominal subordinate, the mulatto Lamartiniere. It was Lamartiniere who arrested Boudet's messengers, who were held as hostages for the next several weeks.
Misled by pride in his arms, Lamartiniere thought he could hold the town without burning it. A couple of days' temporizing gave Boudet time to organize a successful attack on February 5, the day after the forced landing at Le Cap. Lamartiniere had threatened to massacre the white population if Boudet tried to fight his way ashore, but about half of them hid in their houses and came out later to welcome the French soldiers after Boudet had secured the town. Lamartiniere's attempt to blow up the arsenal failed. At Savane Valembrun, on the site where one of “Papa Doc” Duvalier's most notorious prisons would later stand, he executed the whites he had been able to capture, then retreated to Croix des Bouquets.
The first week of hostilities left both sides in a state of shock. The French were stunned by the destruction of Le Cap and by anarchy all over the Northern Plain, where the field hands had uncached their guns and begun to burn, pillage, and
slaughter the white population. (Old friend to liberty though he was, the Abbe Delahaye was among the slain.) For his part, Toussaint must have been rattled by the speed and extent of his losses and by the betrayals of so many of his officers. In a week's time the invasion had practically reduced him to his original “arrondissement” in the Cordon de l'Ouest.
Around Port de Paix, on the Atlantic coast west of Le Cap, General Maurepas was putting up a brilliant resistance to an assault led by the French general Humbert. Port de Paix was so well defended that Vincent had warned Leclerc that it was not worth the danger and difficulty of attacking it and that the artillery defending the harbor was exceptionally well placed. Maurepas, whom Vincent characterized as “extraordinarily hard,”59 killed a third of Humbert's twelve hundred men before blowing up the forts, setting the town on fire, and retreating up the valley of Trois Rivieres with his Ninth Regiment still intact. But for the moment Toussaint was out of communication with Maurepas. When Leclerc decided to revert to diplomacy, Toussaint was willing to entertain the idea. Belatedly, Coisnon got the chance to try his hand.
Toussaint had gone to ground at Ennery, a secure pocket in the mountains just northeast of Gona'ives where he and his wife owned several plantations. Ennery was a crossroads controlling not only the ways to the Gona'ives port but also the length of the Cordon de l'Ouest via Marmelade to Dondon, the way to Borgne via the heights of Limbe and Port Margot, and the way to Port de Paix via Gros Morne. On the night of February 8, Toussaint's sons, twenty-one-year-old Placide and twenty-year-old Isaac, arrived there with their tutor, Coisnon. It had been almost six years since their parents had seen them; their reunion was a tearful one.
Some effort had been spent on cementing the young men's loyalty to France. Before the fleet sailed, they had been entertained by Napoleon Bonaparte in person: a grand dinner at the Tuileries, where Colonel Vincent, Captain General Leclerc, and other dignitaries were among the guests. After presenting Isaac and Placide with fancy dress uniforms and richly ornamented swords and pistols, Napoleon charged them with a message: “When you arrive in your country, you will make it known to your father that the French government accords him protection, glory and honor, and that it is not sending an army into the country to battle him, but only to make the French name respected against enemies of the country.”60
Placide, who had not long before been used as a decoy by Napoleon—he had embarked on an Egypt-bound ship to make observers and spies believe the fleet was sailing for Saint Domingue— seems to have taken these instructions with a grain of salt. At Ennery, it was Isaac who presented Napoleon's argument. “While he spoke, Toussaint kept the most profound silence; his features no longer had the expression of a father who listened; they expressed the withdrawal of an impassive Statesman.”61 Whereupon Coisnon presented the letter which Napoleon had written to Toussaint. This missive, both firm and friendly in tone, announced that Captain General Leclerc was to be appointed as “first magistrate” of the country—a position superior to Toussaint s. It reminded the black leader that Leclerc came with “sufficient forces to make the sovereignty of the French people respected.” It hoped that “you are going to prove to us the sincerity of the sentiments you have constantly expressed in all the letters which you have written to us.” After an equivocal discussion of the Constitution (extremely mild by comparison with Napoleon's real opinion of that document) the letter comes to the point: “What can you desire? The liberty of the blacks? You know that in all the countries we have been, we have given it to the peoples who didn't have it. Consideration, honors and fortune? After all the services you rendered, which you will still render under present circumstances, and with the special feelings we have for you, you should not be uncertain of your consideration, your fortune and the honors that await you.”62
These honeyed phrases were false to the bone. Napoleon was already resolved to reduce Toussaint and other black leaders “to nothingness.” Leclerc had secret orders to arrest and deport the black officers as soon as feasible, and the restoration of slavery in Saint Domingue was part of the hidden agenda.
Toussaint thanked Coisnon for his care of his sons, and told him briefly that he would not treat with Leclerc until the latter had stopped his offensive movements. He spent the rest of the night composing a reply to the captain general, then rode down to Gonaives to attend mass there, on the morning of February 9. On his return to Ennery he sent Coisnon and his sons back to Le Cap with his reply to Leclerc.
Soon after, his wife arrived in Ennery, with a pack train bearing the treasuries of Arcahaie, Saint Marc, Verrettes, Petite Riviere, and Gonaives. Toussaint had a plan to combine all the funds of the various towns into a single war chest if an invasion did come, but he was on the wrong side of the island at the critical moment when the fleet arrived, and the speed of their operations allowed the French to capture some of this money right away. In the many areas where the local commanders decided for whatever reason to yield to the French without a fight, the local operating funds were lost.
Toussaint's reply reproached Leclerc for opening hostilities before delivering Napoleon's letter to him; he was already thinking in terms of a subsequent legal defense. Otherwise, he temporized, asking for a truce and for time to reflect and to pray that there would be no more unnecessary “effusion of blood.”63 This letter threw Leclerc into a rage. He denounced Toussaint as a rebel in the presence of Isaac, Placide, and his aides-de-camp. When he had calmed down he drafted a reply offering a two-day armistice, stating that if Toussaint acknowledged his authority Leclerc would accept him as his second in command, but if he had not done so in two days' time he would be declared an outlaw and “devoured by the vengeance of the Republic.”64
For the third time in as many days, Isaac and Placide crossed the dizzying peaks of the mountains separating Le Cap from Gonai'ves; this time Coisnon was too exhausted to accompany them. At the Gonai'ves headquarters, Toussaint told his sons what would become the kernel of his defense from the Fort de Joux: “My children, I declare war on General Leclerc but not on France; I want him to respect the Constitution that the people of Saint Domingue have given themselves.” Somewhat more recklessly, he added, “I cannot deal with the First Consul, since he has shredded the act which guarantees our liberties”65 —a statement which shows that Toussaint had plainly detected the attitude Napoleon meant to conceal.
Then he asked his sons to choose a side, promising, “I will use neither ruse nor violence to keep you with me.”66 Isaac, the younger, was the first to reply: “You see in me a faithful servant of France, who could never resolve himself to bear arms against her.” Placide, who may or may not have been Toussaint's blood son, said, “I am with you, my father, I fear the future, I fear slavery, I am ready to fight to oppose myself to it, I know nothing more of France.”67 Placide was promptly incorporated into Toussaint's honor guard. Toussaint announced to that elite group and its officers, “He is prepared to die for our cause”—the guardsmen had already declared, “We will all die for liberty”68 Isaac did not return to Leclerc, but remained with his mother and his younger brother, Saint-Jean; he observed much of what followed as a noncombatant.
On February 17, Leclerc issued a proclamation outlawing the generals Toussaint and Christophe, but not the other black officers or soldiers of Toussaint's army, who were told that they would be incorporated into the French forces if they chose to change sides. A similar amnesty was offered to the revolting field hands; if they laid down their arms they would be treated as “stray children,”69 and sent back to their plantations. General Leclerc declared that he was entering the campaign in person and that he would not take his boots off until Toussaint had been brought to submission. If he was faithful to this vow, he must have ended—three months later—with a pair of very smelly feet.
Dessalines, whose ability to move men swiftly over difficult terrain was equal to Toussaint's, was at large with his portion of the army in the area surrounding Port-au-Prince. Though he was not able to destroy t
he capital he kept it in a constant state of alert, while at the same time controlling Saint Marc (where he had built a fine house), threatening Leogane, and terrorizing the plantations in the plain of Cul de Sac. On the Atlantic coast west of Cap Francais, Maurepas had regrouped in the hills above Port de Paix and reinforced himself with several thousand armed field hands. He would have retaken the town if a naval cannonade had not turned back his freshened forces.
On February 19, Leclerc launched a three-pronged attack intended either to surround Toussaint at Ennery or to force him out to the coast at Gonai'ves. With General Hardy, Leclerc began a march south from Cap Francais. Rochambeau was leading a column southwest from Fort Liberte toward Ennery and Gonai'ves via Saint Raphael and the Central Plateau. Boudet marched north from Port-au-Prince.
Leclerc's strategy did not follow Vincent's recommendations in every detail: he had allowed four hundred of Humbert's troops to be killed at Port de Paix, and the remaining eight hundred were tied up in a sideline struggle with Maurepas and the Ninth Regiment. And he had not brought his troops from the Spanish side to occupy Hinche and other key points along the old border where Toussaints line of retreat could be cut off. Rochambeau's column cut a swath across the Central Plateau, but simply passed over this territory without firmly occupying it.
At this point, however, Toussaint was not contemplating a wholesale retreat to the interior. He was determined to hold Gona'ives, the seaport he felt best able to defend, if at all possible, but at the same time he had to meet the threat from Rochambeau. In these early days of the invasion, Napoleon's crack veterans were living up to their big reputation—moving rapidly, careless of the discouraging terrain, and proving themselves very difficult to stop or slow down. Leclerc's advance put such pressure on Ennery that Toussaint was compelled to send his family to a more secure area south of Gonai'ves; nevertheless, Hardy's vanguard captured his youngest son, Saint-Jean, during the family's retreat. Isaac, Suzanne, and a handful of nieces and cousins found shelter at Lacroix Plantation.
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