Toussaint Louverture

by Madison Smartt Bell

  This tortuously mixed message undoubtedly springs from an equally complex mixture of motives. Who is really threatening Laveaux in those ominous opening phrases, the “factions which are gestating in Saint Domingue” or Toussaint Louverture himself? Either way, the warning to leave or face dire consequences would have been difficult to miss.

  It's also difficult to understand just why Toussaint wanted Laveaux off the Saint Dominguan scene, for Laveaux was his strongest, most loyal ally in the French administration, one whom he could sincerely call a benefactor. But Laveaux had been a long time in the colony, and did indeed miss his family in France. And Toussaint, whose information from overseas tended to be quite current, was aware of a counterrevolutionary movement brewing in France, and thus he saw a need for a faithful friend in Paris—a “zealous defender” not only of general liberty but also, especially, of Toussaint Louverture. Laveaux departed to take up his office in France in October 1796, but Toussaint continued to write to him regularly for the next two years, filing the same minutely detailed reports on military and political events that he had done when Laveaux was his immediate superior in the colony.

  Sonthonax was also elected deputy to the French National Assembly in the September 1796 election—whether under pressure from Toussaint or not is less clear. As his conflicts with Sonthonax worsened, Toussaint had a stronger motive to get the commissioner out of the colony, but while some accounts claim that Toussaint threatened to destroy Cap Francais (again!) if Laveaux and Sonthonax were not elected, others say that Sonthonax campaigned for his own election, to the point of ordering Toussaint out of town and sending a friend “through the streets armed with a sword, distributing the list of those who were supposed to be named to the legislature.”14 General Pierre Michel arrived in force on election day, promising to “turn all to fire and blood if Sonthonax and his candidates were not named”15 —but Pierre Michel usually acted on the orders of Toussaint.

  Though elected at the same time as Laveaux, Sonthonax seemed far less eager to leave Saint Domingue. Given his earlier experience of recall, it seems likely that he wanted to use the election to secure a line of retreat for himself in France in case he should be forced out of the colony a second time. On the other hand, some observers suspected that Sonthonax did not ever intend to leave the colony. Instead, he and his partisans who had also won election to the National Assembly in September 1796 would form the core of a new colonial assembly which would make Saint Domingue independent of France. In November 1796, Sonthonax began to write letters to the home government requesting his recall, yet he stayed on for nearly a year longer, and sometimes seemed determined to stay indefinitely.

  Between the election of September 1796 and August 1797, the “factions gestating” began to split the colony between Sonthonax and Toussaint Louverture. At the same time, fissures opened among the five members of the Third Commission. Giraud, almost from the moment of his arrival, had been fearful of “the savage ferocity of the Blacks” and “the refined perfidy of the colored people and the ancien libre Negroes.”16 Giraud believed that Raimond was plotting to slaughter all the whites in the colony, and Sonthonax and Leblanc exploited his fear to isolate Raimond and make him powerless on the commission. (Roume, the fifth commissioner, had been sent to represent the French in Spanish Santo Domingo.) With Pascal, who was now his son-in-law as well as the commission's secretary general, Raimond turned to profiteering from the leasing of plantations confiscated from their emigre owners—an activity which reinforced their relationship with the sector of Toussaint's black officer corps which was enriching itself under this system. Then Giraud disintegrated into nervous illness and returned to France, and Sonthonax and Leblanc had to bring Raimond back into the commission's decision making.

  For his own part, Leblanc began to compete with Sonthonax, courting popularity with the prominent blacks in the region of Le Cap. Toussaint was shocked to be included in these overtures, or he pretended to be, and wrote to the commission as though Leblanc had offered him a bargain with the devil. Thus far, Toussaint had remained on good terms with Sonthonax, with whom he had frequent private conferences during this period. Then Raimond quietly approached Toussaint to warn him that Sonthonax was scheming for independence with the other recently elected delegates to the National Assembly. Wary Toussaint told Raimond that the accusation might stem “from the bitterness you cherish against your colleague, for I know that you don't have a good understanding between you.”17 Nevertheless, he agreed to sound Sonthonax out on the matter without revealing that Raimond was his source. Sonthonax denied any such ambition and promised to send the delegates to France without further delay— though in fact he sent only a few of them.

  Since Sonthonax's return, a quarrel had been simmering between him and Toussaint over the matter of emigres in general. The particular case of Bayon de Libertat brought it to a head. On July 4, 1797, Sonthonax sent Toussaint a remarkably hotheaded letter protesting Bayon's return to Saint Domingue, with a copy of “the law which condemns to death the emigres who return to the territory of the Republic after having been banished, and condemns those who have aided or favored their return to four years in irons. It is in the proclamations of the Commission as well as in the deposition of Bayon that you will read your duty with regard to this man, the brother-in-law of Tousard and the intimate friend of Baron de Cambefort, commander of Saint Marc. I am too much your friend to recommend you a weakness … The Commission, always compassionate, does not ask or require the blood of the guilty man, but only that he purge Saint Domingue of his unworthy presence.”18

  This ultimatum was rash in all sorts of ways—aside from the insult and threat of injury to Toussaint's friend and former master, it was ill considered for Sonthonax to threaten Toussaint himself with four years in irons. On July 18, Toussaint took the matter over the commissioner's head, writing to the Directory in Bayon's defense. Barely five weeks later, Sonthonax himself was compelled to leave Saint Domingue.

  In August 1797, Toussaint called on Sonthonax in the commissioner's house at Cap Francais. Toussaint was accompanied by Raimond and Pascal, but Sonthonax preferred to see Toussaint alone. Their conversation was interrupted, but on August 20 Sonthonax visited Toussaint to continue it—again with no witnesses. The next day, Toussaint summarized both halves of the interview to Raimond and Pascal, who set it down as a dialogue ten pages long. This piece de theatre may very well be a work of fiction but it served as Toussaints justification for pressing Sonthonax to leave the colony:

  TOUSSAINT: Recall, when you proposed independence to me, you personally told me that to assure liberty it would be necessary to cut the throats of all the great planters, and you made the same propositions to other blacks, who reported them to me.

  SONTHONAX: That was a long time ago, but that project was never carried out.

  TOUSSAINT: I'll answer you as Creoles do—If you have a hog that eats chickens, you may put out its one eye, you may put out its other eye, but it still will eat chickens whenever it can.

  SONTHONAX: What's that supposed to mean?

  TOUSSAINT: It means that the wicked are incorrigible. The other time, when you came here, you told the hommes de couleur to slit the throats of all the whites, and the nouveau libre blacks to slit the throats of all the anciens libres. That's what caused the civil war and caused so much French territory to be turned over to the English and the Spanish. And then you left, and you left us nothing but trouble.

  SONTHONAX: How can you have such a bad opinion of me?

  TOUSSAINT: It's a true fact and all the world knows it.19

  How much truth was there in any of this? At least enough to blacken Sonthonaxs reputation. Sonthonaxs exhortation to Dieudonne to fear and mistrust the mulattoes had been a public statement—in Toussaints construction of the dialogue, the rest seemed to follow quite logically. The idea of an independent Saint Domingue had arisen before 1791, and Sonthonax certainly suspected a pro-independence motive in Toussaints resistance to his own authority. T
his dialogue neatly turned that accusation on the accuser. Still, it is not impossible that Sonthonax did have his own dream of leading Saint Domingue to independence.

  His role (as reproduced from Toussaint's formidable memory) is not a noble one. Before the play is over, Toussaint has reduced Sonthonax to pleading:

  TOUSSAINT: Commissioner, this conversation will never be finished, but to conclude it, I tell you that you must prepare yourself to leave for France.

  SONTHONAX: NO, General, let us forget the past.

  TOUSSAINT: Comissioner, you are too well known; the salvation of the colony requires that you leave for France; it is absolutely necessary that you go; her security depends on it.

  SONTHONAX: Let's forget all that, let it all be over; I promise that I will give you all I own—everything that you want.

  TOUSSAINT: I want nothing, I need neither gold nor silver nor anything at all. You must go; the salvation of the colony requires it.20

  And so the stage was set. On August 20, the commissioner received a letter similar to the one earlier sent to Laveaux, though this one was signed by Generals Moyse, Henry Christophe, and Clervaux and several junior officers, as well as Toussaint: “Named deputy of the colony to the Legislative Corps, commanding circumstances made it your duty to remain for some time still in our midst; then your influence was necessary, troubles had disturbed us, it was necessary to settle them. Today, when order, peace and zeal for work, the reestablishment of agriculture, our success against our external enemies and their impotence permits you to present yourself to your function—go tell France what you have seen, the prodigies to which you have been witness. Be always the defender of the cause which we have embraced, of which we will be the eternal soldiers.”21

  Sonthonax sent at once a letter of acquiescence, then stalled for time, and investigated to see if he might find any military support for his staying on among the garrisons of Cap Francais. Toussaint, meanwhile, gathered his own forces at Petite Anse, a few miles outside the town. At four in the morning on the fourth day of Sonthonax's delay, he fired a cannon, then sent the French general Age with a message to Julien Raimond: “If your colleague has not left before sunrise, I will enter Le Cap with my dragoons and embark him by force.”22 On August 24, Sonthonax boarded the ship L'Indien and began his voyage to France.

  “He was still in the intoxication of triumph,” wrote General Kerverseau of Toussaint, “when I arrived at Le Cap. I saw the hero of the day, he was radiant; joy sparkling in his glances, his beaming features announced confidence. His conversation was animated; no more suspicions, no more reserve … He spoke of nothing but his love for France and his respect for the government; he presented himself as the avenger and the support of the rights of the metropole, and all the friends of order and peace made their best effort to persuade themselves of his sincerity”23

  The sincerity of Toussaint's loyalty became a matter of debate in France as soon as Sonthonax arrived there—as Toussaint had certainly anticipated it would. On September 4, 1796, he sent aversion of his dialogue with Sonthonax (so incriminating to the latter) as a report to the minister of marine in France, who supervised overseas colonies; the gist of this communication was to accuse the commissioner of scheming to make Saint Domingue independent for his own personal profit and to bring about that independence through a series of racial massacres in the style of the worst excesses of the French Terror. The accusation had at least some credibility, for Sonthonax had publicly inveighed against the white slave-owning colonists, denouncing them as “a horde of ferocious tyrants” and “bloody men,” rejoicing that such “slave traders and cannibals are no more.”24 Toussaint reiterated his complaints against Sonthonax in a long letter to Laveaux (whose presence in the French legislature he hoped might counterbalance that of the evicted commissioner) and was seconded by letters sent by Julien Raimond to the minister of marine.

  Sonthonax retaliated by accusing Toussaint of pro-independence and counterrevolutionary intentions, starting with the first secret beginnings of the black leader's political and military career in 1791 or before. Toussaint's close association with Catholic priests (the Abbe Delahaye and a couple of others had become part of his entourage since his rise to power) could be made to appear culpable in this context, as could his connections to the grand blancs circle of Haut du Cap, which included not only Bayon de Libertat but also the well-known royalist conspirators Colonel Cambefort and Colonel Tousard. In conclusion, Sonthonax denounced Toussaint as a royalist reactionary to the core: “At the instigation of those same emigres that surround him today, he organized in 1791 the revolt of the Blacks and the massacre of the landowning Whites. In 1793 he commanded the army of brigands at the orders of the catholic king.”25 Thus Sonthonax lent his support to the old rumor of a royalist counterrevolutionary conspiracy behind the original slave revolt in the north. However, it is almost impossible to verify any real fact in this exchange of slanders between Sonthonax and Toussaint.

  In France, the spring 1797 elections had brought a royalist majority to power. In the new National Assembly the dispossessed land and slave owners of Saint Domingue found a vigorous advocate in Vincent Marie Vienot de Vaublanc. His speeches were bitterly critical of Sonthonax, “who has sacrificed everything to the Africans, in the hope of dominating them through each other,” but instead finds himself “reduced to trembling before them and to seeing his orders despised by men who owe only to him the authority with which they abuse him.”26 In Vaublanc's view, Sonthonax had become the prime example of the humiliation of whites brought about by his own misguided policies, notably the abolition of slavery. Vaublanc's rhetoric called more or less openly for the restoration of the ancien regime in Saint Domingue.

  Toussaint Louverture was well aware of these developments and of the menace they represented to liberty for all. One theory suggests that he forced Sonthonax out of the colony as a sacrifice to Vaublanc's faction, which had indeed called for Sonthonax's removal. But Vaublanc's rhetoric was also aimed directly at Toussaint and his officers. “And what a military government! To whose hands is it confided? To vulgar and ignorant negroes, incapable of distinguishing the most unrestrained license from the austere liberty which yields to the law.”27 In September 1797, Laveaux made a speech defending Toussaint against such vitriol, describing him as “a man gifted with every military talent” and “a Republican full of sentiments of humanity”28 and protesting that his loyalty to France was absolute.

  In November, Toussaint himself wrote to the French Directory, reminding the government that he trusted in France enough to send his children there. At the same time he made it painfully clear that preserving liberty for the former slaves of Saint Domingue would be more important to him even than the welfare of his children should circumstance force him to make that choice. The conclusion of this letter, much as it tries to insist on his belief in French support for general liberty, is riddled with doubt and crowned with defiance: “could men who have once enjoyed the benefits of liberty look on calmly while it is ravished from them! They bore their chains when they knew no condition of life better than that of slavery. But today when they have left it, if they had a thousand lives, they would sacrifice them all rather than to be subjected again to slavery. But no, the hand that has broken our chains will not subject us to them again. France will not renounce her principles … But if, to restore slavery in Saint Domingue, you were to do so, then I declare to you, that would be to attempt the impossible; we knew how to face danger to win our liberty, and we will know how to face death to keep it.”29

  France decided to try a diplomatic course. On March 27, General Joseph d'Hedouville arrived in Saint Domingue as the agent of the French government. On March 27, 1798, he landed in Ciudad Santo Domingo, on the Spanish side of the island which had been ceded to France by the Treaty of Basel but into which Toussaint's power did not yet reach. En route overland to French Saint Domingue, Hedouville consulted with Commissioner Roume and with General Kerverseau. The latter was Toussaint'
s sharpest critic in the French military, but Hedouville had also been briefed by Colonel Charles Humbert Marie Vincent, who was Toussaint's greatest military friend and supporter after Laveaux.

  When Toussaint wrote to Laveaux following Sonthonax's forced departure, he blamed much of the trouble on the difficulty of governing by committee, for the Third Commission really had squandered much of its energy on internal strife. Far better, Toussaint reasoned, that France should be represented in Saint Domingue by one sole leader. “I want him to be European, this chief, because I want us not to lose sight of the country from which emanates the power that rules a colony two thousand leagues away from its metropole.”30 Of course, Laveaux himself had met this description better than anyone. The new agent was a different sort of officer.

  Hedouville's recent service in the region of Poitou, which had been a hotbed of counterrevolutionary and royalist uprisings since 1793, had earned him the sobriquet “Pacificator of the Vendee.” Sonthonax, upon his second return to France, had drawn a comparison to Saint Domingue by denouncing Toussaint as “one of the chiefs of the Vendee of Saint Domingue.'31 Villaret-Joyeuse, a partisan of Vaublanc who would later command the fleet that brought Napoleon's invading army to the colony, made that comparison more precise: “Why don't you try in Saint Domingue what you have done with so much success in the Vendee? Saint Domingue is also a Vendee to be reconquered; it is devastated by the double scourge of civil war and foreign war; it's only by force of arms and by energy mixed with gentleness that you will succeed in bringing it into submission.”32