There had begun slave uprisings that were taking small tolls on the lives of whites and their property. Although what was needed was a great unifying leader, these uprisings caused great concern. The man who was to eventually lead the masses was just now joining the slaves. He was a leader from the very beginning because he had natural leadership qualities, even though he was forty-nine years old and could scarcely read and write, and spoke terrible French.
The Mulattoes, for more promises of equal rights, volunteered to fight against the revolting slaves. They were used and again discarded. The Mulattoes, tired of persecution, revolted. They were lead by Rigaud, a trained soldier who had fought in the American Revolution and Beauvais, whose family had been free and rich, and Pinchinot, the politician. They demanded complete equality. If not, they threatened civil war. Again the whites agreed. Six days later, all rights were withdrawn. There followed much fighting and destruction of white property. So now the Mulattoes were fighting the whites, and the slaves were fighting the whites. Fighting was almost everywhere; in some provinces, blacks were leading Mulattoes and in others, Mulattoes were leading blacks with some well-meaning whites thrown in. Destruction, violence and cruelty were the norm. But since the former slaves were destroying the plantations, etc., they were also making it difficult to survive. They were not making progress at winning a war and taking over the country; they were hungry. Fearing that they could not continue and would be eventually defeated, the leaders, Jean-François, Biassou and Toussaint tried to make a deal with the Assembly. They offered to turn against their brothers and bring them back where they belonged, in bondage, for a promise of freedom and political rights for the leaders. No one is perfect and with all the greatness in the life of Toussaint, this betrayal of his brothers must be remembered. The colonists refused the offer. Jean-François promised, "For the freedom of 400 of the leaders and forgetfulness of the past, he would lead the blacks back to slavery." The former slaves were bargained with for a moment and were asked to return the white prisoners as a sign of good faith. This was done but the Assembly again refused to grant freedom to the leaders. Toussaint tried to negotiate and even reduce the number to be freed and given political rights from 400 to 60. The colonists literally laughed at him. Thereupon Toussaint made his decision to fight for the liberation of all slaves and mulattoes, a decision that he never changed. This occurred in 1792.
Toussaint began to train the ignorant blacks in the methods of war; he, as well as his army started from the beginning. By July, 1792, he had about 500 trained troops.
Most of the Mulattoes except Rigaud, who hated whites, were not in as complete a revolt as was Toussaint. They were still looking upon the slave revolt as a huge riot, which would be put down in time, once the division between the slave-owners was closed.
For the next few years, along with the Revolution in France, San Domingo was busy with many intrigues. The Mulattoes vacillated from one position to another. Toussaint and his rivals Jean-François and Biassou joined the Spanish in the Spanish part of the island. Jean-François and Biassou were happy at being armed by the Spanish to kill other whites. Toussaint was only using the Spanish, since he knew that they were trying to use him. He knew that if he helped them to defeat the French, they would eventually restore slavery.
San Domingo was the greatest prize of the French possessions, and it produced great wealth for many, including Saint-Georges' father. It was the richest island in the West Indies. The British along with the Spanish wanted this prize desperately. The Spanish already had a foothold. Now the British had an opportunity to get into the act.
The colonists and the Mulattoes who wanted the restoration of slavery, invited the British to help them regain their "property." The British did not want war with France and had not until this time tried to take the island. Now, however they were able to enter without repercussions. They were welcomed with open arms. It looked to be an easy task to take the island, since the forces there were so divided.
General Rigaud, Beauvais and Pinchinot were on the side of the French and Toussaint, Biassou and Jean-François were with the Spanish; the Spanish were actually allies of the British. In a short time, the British had captured most of the French part of the island. Troops sailing from Barbados captured Martinique, Saint Lucia, and Guadeloupe. The British were already plotting to deal with the Spanish.
Finally the Convention in Paris abolished all slavery in all the colonies.
It declares that all men, without distinction of color, domicile in the colonies, are French citizens, and enjoy all the rights assured under the Constitution.
When the news reached San Domingo and Toussaint, he contacted the Governor of San Domingo, Laveaux, relating that he was ready to help the French. Laveaux, accepted his offer and made him a Brigadier General.
Toussaint started his assaults by first attacking his black brothers Biassou and Jean-François, who were content working with the Spanish, and added their troops to his army. Next, he attacked and completely demoralized the Spanish. Now, he was free to attack the British, which he did. Victory after victory, he began capturing most of the island from the British.
Toussaint, now a French officer, and in charge of an army of about 5000 men, held many strategic positions and continued to inflict losses on the British. In the South, Rigaud and his army contributed their share against the British.
"Helped by the climate, the black laborers so recently slaves, and the loyal mulattoes, led by their own officers, inflicted on Britain the severest defeat that has befallen British expeditionary force between the days of Elizabeth and the Great War. The full story remained hidden for over a century, until it was unearthed in 1906 by Fortescue, the historian of the British Army.6
---Yet they poured their troops into these pestilent islands, in the expectation that thereby they would destroy the power of France, only to discover, when it was too late, that they had practically destroyed the British Army.
Serving under Toussaint were such great soldiers as Dessalines, Henri Christophe, Paul L'Ouverture, his brother and Moïse, his adopted nephew.
Sometimes these troops were without food or adequate weapons. The British tried to find a weak spot, bribing them with offers of money, but with no success. However, the British were successful in paying other ignorant blacks to fight against Toussaint.
Spain and France made peace at the Treaty of Bale on July 22, 1795. Now Toussaint could concentrate more on the British who continued to pour money into the fighting behind the French slave-owners, mulatto slave-owners, and some freed blacks.
The British were losing badly but could not be completely driven out because the Mulattoes continued to conspire with them against Toussaint and the French. If the British were no real threat anymore, the Mulattoes were. The Mulattoes had property, and had received money from the British. Part of their property had been slaves, whom they wanted returned. Most Mulattoes who fought with Toussaint and the French, wanted an independent San Domingo with slavery, and planned to go to great lengths to bring about this situation.
Toussaint was not a brutal man. Whenever he captured the Mulattoes, he would ask only that they take an oath of allegiance to the Republic. Then, he would pardon them. As soon as his back was turned, they would conspire with the British and overturn his victories.
---they were the chief support of the British, who without them would have been driven out long before 1798. They caused Toussaint to lose many of his most important captures.7
Toussaint became very angry and stated that:
Never have I experienced so many treasons. And I take an oath that henceforth I shall treat them in a manner very different to that which I have done hitherto. Whenever I have made them prisoners, I have treated them like a good father. The ungrateful wretches have replied by seeking to deliver me to our enemies.8
Later, a group of Mulattoes took Laveaux, the Governor of the island who was making his headqua
rters at LeCap, and put him in prison and named Villate, the new Governor of the island. Toussaint was enraged and sent Pierre Michel, one of his colonels, to march on LeCap. He also sent two divisions under the direction of Dessalines to LeCap. He arrived a few days later with his personal cavalry-guard but found that the situation was almost under control. Villate had fled with a small group of supporters. Shortly after, a group of black women heard some of Villate's soldiers insinuate that Laveaux had two ships in the harbor loaded with chains to throw the Negroes again into slavery. The black soldiers, who had supported and liberated Laveaux, surrounded him and were going to murder him. Toussaint again interrupted and saved Laveaux's life.
Laveaux realized how powerful Toussaint was and that he would still have problems with the Mulattoes, proclaimed Toussaint Assistant to the Governor, and swore that he would never do anything without consulting him. He called him the savior of constituted authority, the black Spartacus.
Laveaux was sure that Rigaud was also in the conspiracy with the other mulattoes. He felt that even with Toussaint, the colony was in danger, so he pleaded with the Minister in France to send troops and a Commission and "laws and all that is needed to make them respected."
The French government sent a Commission which landed at LeCap on May 11th, 1796. The Commission was composed of five men; Giraud, Leblanc, Roume, Sonthonax and Raymond, whom we remember again as the mulatto who had called for the forming of the corps that Saint-Georges commanded. According to Denys, it was with these men that Saint-Georges returned to San Domingo.
Although Saint-Georges was a mulatto, he was received with open arms by the blacks. And although these were difficult times, there were feasts held in his honor.
Saint-Georges took great caution to find the property of his father. When he finally found it, he discovered that it was deserted and, for want of up keeping, was over-run with weeds. Everything of value had been taken by one or more of the many armies which looted and burned everything they passed.
With nothing to be gained by staying, Saint-Georges, after a short time returned to Paris.
*For a complete history of San Domingo and the life of Toussaint L'Ouverture, see C. L. R. James book, The Black Jacobins.
Chapter VII
Post Revolutionary Days in Paris
In Paris, Saint-Georges was a very disappointed and sad man. His trip had not been successful and seeing the fighting and killing did not please him at all.
The Revolution had brought about great changes in his beloved Paris. Since most of his friends and acquaintances were either dead or in exile, he was almost alone. There was a new class ruling in the social circles. The former aristocrats had their own problems. Saint-Georges was a forgotten man. He wandered around the City, like a foreigner, in this Paris which had made him famous.
There wasn't very much for him to do, but there was a new organization, Le Circle de L'Harmonie (The Circle of Harmony), which Saint-Georges joined to direct some concerts.
He reminisced about the old Paris in which he had lived, had entertained and had enjoyed so much. It was gone. Even with all of its faults, it had been the Paris of fêtes and balls and salons and a million other pleasurable diversions. In that Paris he made many friends and a few enemies. It had disappeared. The old Paris had not been good to peasants, who worked hard, paid the taxes but could hardly improve their circumstances. But St.- Georges had cared and tried to make life better for a few. He was also aware that these negative things about Paris had helped to bring about the Revolution. What more could he have done? After all, he was not a man of politics nor of great power, just a humble mulatto trying to navigate the complicated French life, to produce and perform good music; to bring joy and pleasure to his life as well as to others.
He thought about the new Paris which had forgotten him. The poor still struggled with their survival and hoped that the Revolution would bring a better life. They had no time to concern themselves with him. That he understood.
He thought about how he was treated by the people in the streets who seemed to feel that he was not one of the oppressors and not one of them. They probably felt closer to him because of his color that put him a peg beneath the ruling class, and certainly a peg or two above them. They were also aware of his gentleness, and some knew of his generosity, which was not so common in the ruling class.
He thought about how he was received and treated by his contemporaries. He wondered if had he not been so gifted and talented, how would he have been received. Would they have accepted him just as a man, not a colored man; as a musician, not a multi talented musician? When one is loved, he thought, one does not always know why nor does one really care. To be admired, loved, and treated well is a pleasure. He knew that there were some who really cared for him and that his color, not his talent, made them care more. They were truly friends!
He remembered the many women who professed love for him. Some may have thought of him as a curiosity, but most really cared. After all, when he was with them, he gave them his undivided attention. He was gentle and caring. He believed that the women never felt used by him. He gave them all that he could give. He gave them pleasure, and they returned the deed. He regretted that he had never married or had children. He could have married a woman beneath his station but not one of noble birth. He remembered the rejections that he had received on several occasions when he was a young man. The message was clear. Odet Denys captures clearly the dilemma.
A black man can marry a white woman if she occupies an inferior rank to his in society: she brings to him a dowry of prestige and the privileges of the whites, but he helps her to climb on the steps of the circus in which the human comedy is played.1
St.-Georges decided not to play that game. So, he was old and sick with no wife to care for him and no children to carry on his name and blood. After his great disappointment as a youth, he put away all thoughts of marriage. Now it was too late.
He thought of the advantages that one had in rising above his birth status. How the rich bourgeoisie could purchase positions and titles and pass them on to their children and how marriages could benefit in raising one to a higher position in the Paris of yesterday. He spoke of the Queen, Marie Antoinette, and how she and the King were very tolerant of the conduct of the people. There was a couplet sung by one of the peasants on the birth of her son. They consented to listen without displeasure.
Our charming Antoinette
Had a little fellow, just now,
And I seen the little Princes
Carpet tack.
It rose, and stood up.
I think it's going to be a real nail!2
"Far from being offended by this familiarity, Louis XVI laughed heartedly. The queen did the same."
In Paris, Saint-Georges seemed to have lost his liveliness and his many interests. He just lived form day to day, seemingly without purpose. He now experienced a new kind of loneliness, the loneliness of being without many friends, without being invited to many functions, without the balls and the other fêtes. He knew the other loneliness, that of being lonely in the crowd. Now, he was practically alone. He did, however, have a few friends and acquaintances including Louise Fusil and his good friend La Motte, who helped to give life some purpose for him.
He had become very ill and complained of bladder pains. He sought no medical care and felt that it was not very serious. Later, when he became too ill to take care of himself and needed attention, Nicholas Duhamel, a former officer and friend from the regiment took him in to care for him. His strong, handsome body no longer resembled that of the great Saint- Georges. He seemed to have lost the will to live.
Saint-Georges never recovered to go back to his island country. On June 12, 1799, he died. An ulcer of the bladder had taken him away.
The death certificate stated; Saint-Georges Bologne instead of Bologne Saint-Georges, Joseph, 60 years old. The death certificate also gave the date of hi
s birth, 1739.
Thus a great career had ended. This unusual, generous man died alone with no family and few friends. What a sad and tragic death, alone, without love! A man who had loved and had been loved by so many; a man who had brought so much joy to so many lives was gone.
His best friend La Motte wrote: "At his death, there was no knowledge of any family. His father had had a legitmate daughter...but I searched for her in vain. Perhaps she had emigrated, or perhaps she had died. So far as I know she had never had anything to do with her half brother...This man who was once so sought after...ended with only Duhamel and myself for companions."
For his tombstone, I will quote the final words of those who wrote of him before and from some of those who knew him.
Lionel De La Laurencie wrote:
Thus disappeared one of the most curious and engaging figures of the dying eighteenth century. Saint-Georges was a remarkably gifted man, full of generosity and delicacy of feeling. Liberal and beneficent, he often deprived himself of the necessities of life in order to aid the unfortunate. His contemporaries use the expression 'full and soft' to express his violinist gifts, and, in truth, it really seems to qualify his manner, in which the dual trends of his temperament are united, in a mingling of vivacity, brilliancy and dreamy melancholy. Since November 28, 1912, a street in Basse-Terre bears his name.3
From Henry Angelo came these words:
The Chevalier de Saint-Georges died at Paris, regretted by his friends, and by the few who knew how to feel for, or excuse, the imperfections of humanity---qualities from which none of us can hope to be exempt.
The Black Mozart Page 10
