Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (33 page)

Read Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution Online

Authors: Laurent Dubois

There they received a joyous greeting from many free-coloreds but an

“icy” response from many whites. The relationship between the commis-

sioners and Galbaud immediately degenerated into open hostility. Accord-

ing to one account, when Galbaud complained to Sonthonax about his

actions against whites in the town, the commissioner responded, “Under-

stand, citizen, that the only thing white about me is my skin.” Galbaud re-

torted that he had heard that Sonthonax had a “black soul” but was sur-

prised that he admitted it so readily. The perhaps apocryphal story of the

exchange played on the two meanings of “black,” suggesting Sonthonax as

both evil and a friend of the slaves and enemy of the whites. Another ac-

count described how the commissioners turned down Galbaud’s invitation

to a banquet, prompting the jilted governor to entertain the guests who did

show up by attacking Sonthonax and Polverel. His wife declared that they

should “flee this land of blood” for Paris, where they would gather forces to return to the colony to punish the commissioners and “avenge the whites

for the atrocities committed against them.” Convinced that Galbaud was

spreading sedition, Sonthonax and Polverel arrested and imprisoned the

governor.9

Imprisoned on a ship in the harbor of Le Cap, Galbaud found himself

surrounded by friends. In addition to prisoners locked up by the commis-

sioners (among them de la Boissière), many of the sailors on the ships were

hostile to the Republican commissioners. Galbaud, with the help of “a few

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av e n g e r s o f t h e n e w w o r l d

eloquent men,” launched an audacious plan: seconded by the sailors, he

would lead an attack on Le Cap and depose the commissioners. Several

thousand strong, Galbaud’s supporters stormed the town on the afternoon

of June 20. Sonthonax and Polverel escaped capture thanks to the protec-

tion of a troop led by the African-born officer Jean-Baptiste Belley, and

many soldiers fought back against Galbaud. After several hours the town’s

assailants were forced to retreat to their ships. But the next morning they

came on again with more success. They captured the arsenal of Le Cap af-

ter the white commander of the detachment guarding it ordered his troops

(most of them free-coloreds) not to fire against his “brothers.” The out-

numbered commissioners fled to the outskirts of the city to a camp on the

Bréda plantation that had been set up to defend Le Cap against slave in-

surgents.10

As Galbaud’s followers spread out through Le Cap there was chaos in

the city. The prisons were opened, releasing hundreds of slaves “captured

in the battles against the insurgents.” Many of these freed prisoners, along

with other slaves in Le Cap, managed to obtain rifles and other weapons—

according to one account, free-coloreds distributed weapons to domestics

from stashes in their houses, while many later accused the commissioners

of having ordered the distribution of guns to the urban slaves—and some

began fighting Galbaud’s troops. Random killing, looting, and fires soon

followed. The question of who started the fires would animate colonial po-

lemics for years to come. Republicans blamed the unruly sailors who made

up Galbaud’s troops, while accounts written by whites who fled Le Cap de-

scribed rampant pillaging and arson by slaves. Some claimed that the de-

struction was part of a sinister plot carried out under the direct orders of

Sonthonax and Polverel.11

As they watched the town burn, Sonthonax and Polverel made a bold

declaration aimed at recapturing it. It was “the will of the French Republic

and of its delegates,” they announced, to grant freedom to all “black war-

riors” who would “fight for the Republic.” Any slave who took up arms in

their defense would become “equal to all free men” and receive “all the

rights belonging to French citizens.” They sent officers out to invite any

slaves who wanted freedom to join them. Enemies of the commissioners

would later declare that beneath the offer of freedom and citizenship was a

more sinister invitation: the new recruits were won over with an offer of

booty from the town. Whether responding to the promise of liberty or loot

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[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

“Incendie du Cap Français.” This engraving depicts the burning of the town in late June 1793 during the battle between Galbaud and the commissioners

Sonthonax and Polverel.
Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

or both, a band of insurgents several thousand strong under the command

of Pierrot, who had been camped in the hills above Le Cap close to the

Bréda plantation, stormed into the burning town.12

One merchant noted with disgust that the commissioners had rewarded

“men who for two years had been fighting for their Papa King” while

threatening the lives of those whites who had been defending the “inter-

ests of the mother country.” But the commissioners’ invitation won new

and daunting allies for the Republic. In their official account of the event

to the National Convention, they described how groups of insurgents—

some of whom had already abandoned their “royal symbols” for those of

the Republic—had presented themselves and asked to serve “the nation

against kings.” “We promised them liberty in the name of the Republic,

and declared that all those who took up arms for her would become the

equals of their former masters.” Some still carried Spanish flags or the

white banners of the French royalists, but when the commissioners ex-

plained that it was kings who “made people slaves,” they threw them down

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av e n g e r s o f t h e n e w w o r l d

and took up the flag of the Republic. Mixed together with free men of

color and white troops who had remained loyal, they formed a remarkably

integrated army unit: former slaves, free-coloreds, and whites, united in

the service of the Republic.13

The descent of these new recruits into the town turned the tide of the

battle. Outnumbered, Galbaud’s followers retreated to their ships. As the

Republic’s new allies spread through the city, looting and burning contin-

ued. Some whites were stopped in the streets and detained by bands of

free-coloreds and armed slaves. Many fearful residents scrambled aboard

ships, carrying whatever they could. When the ships weighed anchor and

sailed away, heading for the United States, they were carrying thousands of

white refugees, along with many of their slaves. They would settle in towns

like Philadelphia and Charleston, and many would never return to Saint-

Domingue.14

Within a few days Sonthonax and Polverel returned to the smoldering

city. Together with their old allies—including the free-colored officer Jean-

Louis Villatte, who played a crucial role in restoring order to Le Cap—they

had a new army of black Republicans behind them. They named Pierrot a

general. Born in Africa, a survivor of Saint-Domingue’s slavery, the elderly

Pierrot had since 1791 become the trusted and respected leader of a band

of insurgents camped near Le Cap. Now he was no longer fighting the

French for freedom. He and his followers were free men and citizens, and

he was an officer in the army of the Republic.15

“It is the kings who want slaves,” announced Polverel and Sonthonax.

“It is the kings of Guinea who sell them to the white kings.” “The French

nation,” in contrast, was committed to shattering “all chains.” Calling on

all the slave insurgents to follow the example of Pierrot and come to the

Republican side, the commissioners criticized the “unworthy chiefs”

who were still fighting for the Spanish. These leaders, they claimed, were

themselves slave traders, capturing children in Saint-Domingue and sell-

ing them to the Spanish. (Contemporary reports do indeed suggest that

Biassou, as well as Jean-François, sold women, children, and some men de-

scribed as “troublemakers” as slaves for their own profit.) The choice was

clear: the Republic was for freedom, its enemies devoted to tyranny and

slavery.16

The commissioners sent a letter to Biassou promising him and his

band freedom—as well as improvements for plantation slaves—if he would

l i b e r t y ’ s l a n d

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change sides. Along with the letter they sent an envoy, one of Pierrot’s

lieutenants, the Kongolese-born Macaya, to convince Biassou and Jean-

François to join the French. The rebel leaders responded with a proud

statement of their loyalty to the king of Spain and to all kings. Kings had

ruled since the “beginning of the world,” and if the king of France had

been “lost,” the king of Spain remained, and had given them his protection.

The authority of the Republican commissioners would mean nothing until

there was again a king on the throne behind them. Jean-François and

Biassou not only rejected the entreaty but also recruited Macaya back to

their side. The next month he himself issued a powerful rejection of the

commissioners’ entreaties: “I am the subject of three kings: of the king of

Congo, master of all the blacks; of the King of France, who represents my

father; of the king of Spain, who represents my mother,” he announced. In-

voking the biblical magi, he wrote: “These three kings are the descendants

of those who, led by a star, came to adore God made man.” If he “went

over to the Republic,” he concluded, he might be “forced to make war

against my brothers, the subjects of these three kings to whom I have

promised loyalty.”17

Jean-François and Biassou launched a new round of attacks and, aided

by other defections among the troops fighting the Republic, made sig-

nificant advances across the northern plain. While Polverel left for Port-au-

Prince to oversee the defense against the Spanish in the Western Province,

Sonthonax stayed in Le Cap and tried to gain more supporters for the Re-

public. It was, he declared in early July, “with the natives of this country, that is, the Africans, that we will save Saint-Domingue for France.” But the

liberty Sonthonax was offering the “Africans” in return for military service

was nothing more than what the Spanish had been offering for several

months, and there were few new converts. On July 11 Sonthonax sought to

make service in the Republic more enticing by declaring that, in addition

to those who joined the Republic, their current—and future—families

would be freed.18

Polverel extended the commissioners’ offer of freedom to the west and

south. Working with André Rigaud, he sent envoys into the mountains of

Les Cayes, where the survivors of the “kingdom of the Platons” were gath-

ered, to invite them to join the Republican army. Those who agreed would,

along with their families, be granted freedom. They would have the re-

sponsibility of overseeing the return of other slaves to their plantations.

This time, most of them accepted the terms. The main insurgent leaders,

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av e n g e r s o f t h e n e w w o r l d

notably Armand and Martial, became captains of companies in the newly

formed Republican legions.19

Many rebels remained aloof, however. The commissioners, desperate

to gain the allegiance of the mass of the insurgents, understood that they

had to offer more. As early as July they had warned a free-colored com-

mander in the north that if the members of his class resisted their gradual

preparation of “an emancipation that is now inevitable,” it would happen

“all at once” through “insurrection and conquest.” They challenged the

free-coloreds to embrace a “pure republicanism,” reminding them that

equality was not “the only principle,” and that liberty preceded it. This letter, according to one contemporary, proved that the commissioners already

saw “the torrent that would carry everything away.” In fact, though, it sug-

gests the opposite. They imagined, as did abolitionists in France, that it

would be possible to oversee a gradual emancipation that would not “hurt

cultivation.” Soon, however, they would be decreeing a very different kind

of emancipation, seeking to channel and contain a torrent they could not

control.20

At the end of August Polverel issued a proclamation acknowledging

the crucial role that “warriors”—slaves turned Republican soldiers—were

playing in defending the colony. “Those who own nothing,” however,

should not have to “sacrifice their lives for the defense of the property of

others.” The “warriors” deserved more than freedom. They deserved land.

Following the policies of the French revolutionary government, Polverel