Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (37 page)

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

Authors: Laurent Dubois

no reason to join the losing side. Sonthonax’s abolition, furthermore, was a

local decision, and Louverture understood that it would not be secure until

it had been ratified by the government in Paris. Louverture, meanwhile,

enjoyed a great deal of autonomy, commanding—with little Spanish super-

vision—territory stretching from Santo Domingo all the way to the west

coast of the colony. In October, when the British sought to enter the port

town of Gonaïves, they found “a Negroe, who they called the Spanish gen-

eral, commanding the place.” His name was “Tusan.”11

In early 1794 increasing numbers of white émigrés, many returning

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from exile in the United States, were rallying to the Spanish side. They

hoped to return to a Saint-Domingue in which slavery, or at least planta-

tion agriculture, was safe. Tensions between the black auxiliaries and

these white émigrés contributed to growing problems between the auxilia-

ries and the Spanish. Meanwhile, their hold on certain parts of Saint-

Domingue was loosening. When the Spanish attempted to reinstitute the

use of the whip on plantations, slaves in some parts of the northern penin-

sula rose up in revolt. Free-colored auxiliaries of Spain revolted in the

same region, declaring that it was vital to follow the “maxims of the Repub-

lic” in order to “keep the freedom” they had fought for. There were similar

defections in Gonaïves and the mountains of the Artibonite region. The

British, too, found some of their erstwhile allies turning against them. In

March and early April several free-colored commanders in the northern

peninsula joined the French side, leaving the British in control only of the

region around the Môle Saint-Nicolas. The Republic’s fortunes seemed to

be improving.12

Louverture began to chart a course increasingly independent both from

his Spanish commanders and from his superior in the insurgent army,

Biassou, with whom he was in open conflict by late March 1794. In early

April a representative of the French émigrés serving with Spain com-

plained that in the region under Louverture’s control “rebel negroes” were

“assassinating, pillaging, and burning our properties in the name of the ex-

ecrable Republic.” Instead of fighting them, Louverture was “arming all

the slaves and removing them from their plantations,” promising them

“general liberty” and telling them that they would be free if they dared

“to kill the whites.” These accusations had little influence on the treat-

ment of Louverture by the Spanish, who recognized him as one of their

most valuable allies. One commander had written of him earlier that if

God “descended to earth,” he would find no heart “more pure” than that of

Louverture.13

On April 29 a “strange circumstance,” both “extraordinary” and “myste-

rious,” took place in Gonaïves. Spain’s black auxiliaries in the town sud-

denly attacked their erstwhile Spanish comrades, demanding “in the name

of the King of the French” that they surrender. Some Spanish troops were

killed; others, along with several hundred of the town’s inhabitants, fled

into the countryside. On May 5 Louverture wrote to these refugees that

he regretted the “unfortunate” events, and explained that he had “not par-

ticipated at all.” At the same time a Spanish officer wrote to Louverture

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complimenting him for not forgetting the oath he took “before God” to

“serve His Majesty faithfully and die for him.” Louverture rode up into the

nearby mountains, promising the refugees that he would soon return and

advising them to stay out of Gonaïves until he did.14

On the same day Etienne Laveaux dispatched a letter to Louverture,

inviting him to join the French side. Louverture accepted. Within a few

days he had gone into “open revolt” against the Spanish. He raised the tri-

color flag over Gonaïves and put the parishes of Gros-Morne, Ennery,

Marmelade, Plaisance, Dondon, Acul, and Limbé, all under his command,

in the hands of the Republic. Writing to Laveaux on May 18, Louverture

admitted that he had been “led astray by the enemies of the Republic and

of the human race.” After the “avenues of reconciliation” he proposed had

been rejected by the French in mid-1793, “the Spanish offered me their

protection and liberty for all those who would fight for the cause of kings; I accepted their offer, seeing myself abandoned by the French, my brothers.” After many months, however, he had come to understand that the

Spanish aim was to have the blacks “kill one another to decrease our num-

bers” so that they could force the rest “back into their former slavery.” “Let us unite together forever and, forgetting the past, work from now on to

crush our enemies and take vengeance against our perfidious neighbors.”

As an elated Polverel wrote in June, “Toussaint Louverture, one of the

three royalist African chiefs who were fighting with the Spanish,” had

finally understood his “true interests” and those of his “brothers.” He un-

derstood that kings could never support “liberty and equality,” and was

now fighting for the Republic. Along with Louverture came more than

4,000 troops and three veteran officers who would leave a profound mark

on Saint-Domingue: Henri Christophe, who had been free before the rev-

olution; and the former slaves Moïse and Jean-Jacques Dessalines.15

News of the National Convention’s February abolition of slavery had

been sweeping into the Caribbean along unofficial channels, and it had

probably reached Louverture, triggering his defection. In ratifying the

emancipation proclaimed by Sonthonax and Polverel, the French govern-

ment had won his loyalty. Louverture was nevertheless cautious during the

following weeks. He kept in contact with the Spanish, and although he de-

fended his positions he did not attack his former allies. In fact, soon after they gained the territory he brought to them, the French lost Port-au-Prince to the British, who had just received long-awaited reinforcements.

In early July, however, Louverture received the confirmation he needed: a

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printed version of the National Convention’s abolition decree. It was “con-

soling news” for all “friends of humanity,” he wrote to Laveaux in a letter

he signed as “servant of the Republic.” He suddenly went on the offensive

against the Spanish. “I almost captured Jean-François,” he gleefully re-

ported. He had escaped only thanks to the “thickness of the bushes” into

which he had fled, leaving all his effects, including his papers, behind. “He saved only his shirt and pants.”16

The defeated Jean-François took a curious revenge, one that reflected

the unraveling of Spanish designs on Saint-Domingue. In the town of Fort-

Dauphin, while an “immobile” Spanish garrison looked on, he had his

troops slaughter 700 of the French planters who had rallied to the Spanish

side. The brutal act made clear that the alliance the Spanish had tried to

build between exiled white planters and black auxiliaries drawn from slave

insurgents was untenable. On the battlefield, meanwhile, the Spanish suf-

fered new defeats at the hands of Laveaux, who wrote that there was not

a “single day” in the “happy month” of July that was not “marked by

victories.”17

The same boat that had carried the official news of the abolition of

slavery to Saint-Domingue had also, ironically, brought an order for the

commissioners Sonthonax and Polverel to report back to Paris. There they

would have to face charges levied by exiled planters who were set on taking

revenge against them. For Sonthonax, a “more curious mixture of tri-

umph and humiliation could scarcely be imagined.” His actions in Saint-

Domingue had been vindicated by the Convention, but he was being

called back to stand trial in front of the “aristocrats of the skin” whose

power he and Polverel had destroyed by proclaiming emancipation. The

commissioners left the colony in the hands of Etienne Laveaux and of his

new converts to the cause of the Republic. For the next two years, in the

midst of war, the colony received no assistance from France, and no con-

crete directives on policy. Left on their own, Laveaux and Louverture

pushed back the colony’s attackers and built a new order on the smoking

foundations of slavery.18

“They want to disarm you in order to kill you,” Laveaux warned the slaves

of the British-controlled Saint-Marc region in September 1794. How long,

he demanded, would they remain the “passive instruments” of their “for-

mer masters”? And how long would the free-coloreds of Saint-Marc, who

had been given so much by France, continue in their treason? The “citi-

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zens of April 4” should make peace with emancipation. Those who feared

that work on the plantations would cease were wrong: “How blind you are!

Must one be a slave to work?” The “free man” who had “nothing” felt “the

need to work,” and did so with “patience and satisfaction,” knowing he

would take home the “fruits of his labor.” The free-coloreds, Laveaux in-

sisted, would be better off under Republican rule. His entreaties were well

timed: many free-coloreds in the “occupied zone” were beginning “to feel

they were on the wrong side.” Having accepted the British takeover on the

condition that racial equality be maintained, once the occupation was un-

der way they had seen a “regression to old norms” of discrimination among

the French planters. The British, worried about the precedent that might

otherwise be set for their own colonies, decided in mid-1793 to apply dis-

criminatory British law in Saint-Domingue. Men of color were divested of

positions in the police force and administration, and some were threatened

with deportation by British officials suspicious of their loyalties. In case the principles of self-interest were not enough to convince the free-coloreds in

Saint-Marc to support the Republic, Laveaux added another inducement:

if they did not surrender, he warned, would send Louverture to sack the

town, sparing only the “former slaves.”19

For several months Louverture had been advancing on Saint-Marc from

his base in Gonaïves. To take the town, he set in motion a complicated

ruse. In mid-August he announced to the British officer Brisbane that he

intended to surrender, and had two of his loyal officers go over to the other side with their troops. They were in fact infiltrators whose mission was

to “spread disaffection” within the British camp. Having gained the trust

of Brisbane, Louverture’s agents turned on him and nearly managed to as-

sassinate him. As the mayor of Saint-Marc led an uprising in the town,

Louverture’s forces attacked.20

Despite its intricate preparation, the Republican attack on Saint-Marc

failed. Louverture claimed that it all went wrong because he had crushed

his hand moving a cannon. “If I had been able to fight as I usually do at the head of my troops the enemy would not have held an hour, or else I would

have died, one or the other.” He also blamed the “treason” of the many

free-coloreds who had stuck with the British. Still, Louverture had further

weakened the alliance between the British and the local free-coloreds by

sowing distrust between them.21

Indeed, the fortunes of the British in Saint-Domingue were reaching

their “lowest ebb.” They held Port-au-Prince, but the city was besieged by

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Republican insurgents who held the mountains around it and were in a po-

sition to cut off its water supply. British soldiers at Fort Bizoton, an isolated outpost south of the city, were repeatedly attacked by Republican troops.

Sickness decimated the Port-au-Prince garrison; in October 1794 fewer

than half of the British troops in the city were fit to fight. In the south the British suffered a series of defeats at the hands of André Rigaud. In early

October Rigaud took Léogane, a step on the road to Port-au-Prince. A few

months later, on Christmas Eve, he attacked the British-held Tiburon, at

the extreme west of the southern peninsula, routing and decimating the

British garrison along with black troops under the command of Jean Kina

fighting with them.22

The Spanish, too, continued to suffer defeats. In October 1794

Louverture captured the inland towns of Saint-Michel and Saint-Raphael,

slaughtering many of the Spanish defenders with his cavalry, capturing

valuable ammunition and cannon. Lacking troops to set up an adequate

defense, he burnt the town to the ground and retreated. In late December

Louverture set in motion a well-coordinated campaign using several col-

umns—one led by Dessalines and another by Moïse—that succeeded in