Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (53 page)

less, he argued, there was still a fundamental difference between past and

present. In the new regime, industry was “considered a duty to be incul-

cated by persuasion, or enforced by the sanctions of municipal law aided

by a military police, and not a mere physical effect to be excited by the ap-

plication of the lash.” Punishment was meted out by agents of the state,

and work was not exacted only by the threats of whip-wielding drivers

working for their masters. Though Stephen underestimated the troubling

continuities between the old and new regimes, he was right to insist that

the former slaves in the colonies knew the difference between what they

had and what they would be returned to if they were enslaved once again.

The “distinctions of political freedom or restraint known in Europe,” he

noted “shrink to nothing, when compared with the unspeakable difference

between the terms ‘slave and free,’ in the colonies.” It would be as impossi-

ble to submit the people of Saint-Domingue to slavery as it was “to re-

new in a philosopher the superstitions of the nursery.” There had been not

only a “revolution” in their habits, but a dramatic transformation in their

“ideas.” The French general Pamphile de Lacroix would write in a similar

vein that the great failure of Bonaparte and his advisers, most of them for-

mer planters, had been failing to see that the blacks were not “as they had

left them,” and underestimating the profound political consequences of

“ten years of revolution” in Saint-Domingue.17

“What energies are not likely to be called forth, what desperate strug-

gles to be made, in defending not only private property, but the very capac-

ity of possessing it,” Stephen wondered, and “in defending man’s title to

his own muscles and sinews; in maintaining the common privileges not

merely of social, but of rational nature!!” The population of ex-slaves was “a large community of negroes inured by a ten years experience to the habits

of freedom,” and would embark on a war of resistance whose legitimacy

would outshine that of any other war. Drawing on the experience of the

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British military occupation in Saint-Domingue, Stephen argued that the

black rebels, used to the climate and inured to the diseases of the Carib-

bean, had an unparalleled “constitutional superiority over their invaders,”

and would have the clear upper hand in the conflict, which he compared to

that between a “seaman and a shark.” Once the war had begun, it was clear

who would ultimately emerge victorious: not the French, but those they

would try to reenslave.18

It is difficult to know whether Bonaparte intended to reestablish slavery

in Saint-Domingue when he dispatched the Leclerc expedition. He was

clearly intent on demolishing Louverture’s power and severely restricting

the access of the former slaves to political power. Anyone who “discussed

the rights of the blacks, who have spilled so much white blood,” he wrote

in his instructions to Leclerc, was to be “sent to France.” Still, he sought a pragmatic approach to the colonies. “The question,” he explained in May

1800, was not whether it was a good idea to “abolish slavery,” but rather

whether it would be reasonable to “abolish liberty” in Saint-Domingue.

“My policy is to govern men the way most of them wish to be governed,” as

this was the best way to “recognize the sovereignty of a people.” “It was by

making myself Catholic that I ended the war in the Vendée, in making my-

self a Muslim that I established myself in Egypt,” he explained. “If I were

governing a Jewish people,” he continued, “I would rebuild the temple of

Solomon.” “And so I will speak of liberty in the free portion of Saint-

Domingue [i.e., the French part]; I will confirm slavery in the Ile de

France [the Indian Ocean colony where planters had successfully pre-

vented the application of the 1794 emancipation decree], and even in the

enslaved portion of Saint-Domingue [i.e., the Spanish portion], and I will

reserve the right to soften and limit slavery, where I maintain it, and to reestablish order and introduce discipline, where I maintain liberty.” Such a

policy, he added, would have advantages that would outweigh its disadvan-

tages. “They may make less sugar than when they were slaves, but they

provide us, and serve us as we need them, as soldiers. If we have one less

sugar mill, we will have one more citadel occupied by friendly soldiers.”19

Perhaps even in late 1801 Bonaparte sincerely intended to craft a com-

promise colonial regime in Saint-Domingue. His public decision to re-

establish slavery there did not come until late 1802, after news of

Louverture’s open resistance to Leclerc had arrived in France. Still, it

seems likely that, as Stephen argued, Bonaparte had made his decision

about the final goal of his mission before he sent Leclerc across the Atlan-

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tic—that the two men had discussed the question of reestablishing slavery

in conversations that “left no direct written traces”—and kept it secret only because they knew they had to in order to succeed. The declarations “in favor of the liberty of the blacks of Saint-Domingue,” then, were perhaps in

the end “nothing but pure diplomacy, trickery, shrewdness, production,

technique, and pretense” whose aim was to gain from Louverture through

“peaceful means” what the French government “feared having to take

from him by force.”20

Bonaparte did, however, briefly consider another alternative. In mid-

November 1801 the British had not yet announced to the French that they

would accept the departure of a large expeditionary force to the Carib-

bean. Bonaparte and his strategists had concluded that in order to be suc-

cessful his troops must occupy Saint-Domingue before April, because later

in the year “the climate of the colonies becomes very dangerous for Euro-

pean troops who are not acclimated to it.” If the troops were unable to

leave early enough, Bonaparte would have to delay his expedition, and he

might well end up having to “recognize Toussaint” and accept the existence

of “black Frenchmen” in Saint-Domingue. Although this would mean the

loss of income for France—free labor, he was convinced, would be less

profitable than slavery, and more black soldiers would mean fewer agricul-

tural workers—it would be to its military advantage. Talleyrand passed on

these reflections to the French ambassador in Britain, noting that “Saint-

Domingue reconquered by the whites” would “for many years” be a weak

power, one that would survive only through “a long peace and support

from the mother country.” “The government of the blacks recognized in

Saint-Domingue and legitimized by France,” in contrast, would be a “for-

midable base for the Republic in the New World.” France could collabo-

rate with Louverture, using Saint-Domingue as a military base and deploy-

ing its black army against the colonies of its enemies. The Republic could,

as it had in the mid-1790s, use emancipation as a potent weapon of impe-

rial war. If a “new power” were “constituted and recognized” in Saint-

Domingue, Talleyrand asserted, “the scepter of the New World” would

“sooner or later” fall into France’s hands. The consequences for Britain

would be “incalculable.”21

James Stephen argued that this possibility was indeed quite danger-

ous for Britain. France, he argued, could conclude: “Since the negroes

will not resume their hoes, let us avail ourselves of their muskets. By means of these African auxiliaries, we shall wound Carthage [i.e., Britain] in

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its most vulnerable side, clip the wings of her commerce, and enrich our-

selves with her spoils!” France would “stand in need of no armies from Eu-

rope” to carry out these conquests. In British slave colonies like Jamaica,

the “attractions” of emancipation and “the very complexion” of the French

troops would “ensure her in every slave Colony she invades, numerous and

irresistible allies, ready not only to facilitate, but to perpetuate her con-

quests.”22

It is difficult to know how seriously this alternative—certainly articu-

lated in part to threaten the British—was considered by Bonaparte. One

contemporary reported that, as Bonaparte’s plans unraveled in Saint-

Domingue, he angrily declared: “I am for the whites because I am white; I

have no other reason, and that one is good.” “How is it possible that liberty was given to Africans, to men who had no civilization, who didn’t even

know what the colony was, what France was? It is perfectly clear that

those who wanted the freedom of the blacks wanted the slavery of the

whites.” But years later Bonaparte would look back with regret on the deci-

sions he had made regarding Saint-Domingue. On his deathbed he ex-

plained that he should have “recognized Toussaint” and governed the col-

ony through him, rather than sending his forces against him. But these

were the mutterings of a dying man, haunted perhaps by the specters of

the tens of thousands of French troops who had gone to their deaths in

Saint-Domingue, or else by that of one general who died in a cold and

dank prison high in the mountains of France.23

In late December 1801 Louverture issued a decree condemning people

who, having heard of the imminent peace between France and Britain, had

circulated rumors that “France will come with thousands of men to annihi-

late the colony and liberty.” Some claimed that the government planned

to gather all the “men of color” and “blacks” in France and make them

march at the head of the army that was to come, while others asserted

that Louverture’s children were being kept as hostages to use as leverage

against him. How could these individuals, demanded Louverture, believe

that France would, “for no reason,” wish to destroy those who had “spilled

their blood for the triumph of liberty and the prosperity of the island,” who had “conserved” the colony and made it flourish? Such rumors, he insisted,

must be baseless. Nevertheless, he warned cryptically: “I am a soldier, I am

not afraid of men, I fear only God. If I must die, I will die as an honorable soldier who has nothing to be ashamed of.”24

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261

Louverture was receiving fragments of information about the Leclerc

expedition, and even as he publicly expressed disbelief that France would

attack him, he began preparing for war. He increased the size of his army,

doing so according to one report by pressing individuals who had recently

arrived in the colony—including many creole whites returning from Eu-

rope—into service on the pretext that they did not have their required “se-

curity cards.” With the addition of these new recruits, he had 23,000, and

perhaps up to 30,000, regular troops under his command by early 1802. He

also had at his disposal local militias numbering 10,000.25

Louverture sought to make sure he could depend on his officers in case

war broke out. After his execution of Moïse he deported several officers

whose loyalties he suspected, replacing them with “military leaders whose

devotion and fidelity” to his regime were “indisputable.” Among them

were Dessalines, who commanded in the west and the south, Maurepas at

Port-de-Paix, Christophe at Le Cap, and Sans-Souci at Grande-Rivière on

the northern plain. He ordered commanders in coastal towns not to allow

any warships, of whatever nation, to enter the ports without his permission.

These orders were, he later claimed, simply a way of protecting the colony

from “enemies of the Republic.” But they certainly put him in a position to

respond to such enemies, even if they came from France. Louverture also

prepared, however, for the possibility of negotiation, ordering the planta-

tions, squares, government buildings, barracks, and roads to be cleaned up

to highlight the good order that was reigning in the colony.26

In late January 1802 the ships that had left France weeks before gath-

ered off the eastern coast of Spanish Santo Domingo. Leclerc’s plan was to

send troops ashore in the island’s major port towns—Le Cap, Port-au-

Prince (then called Port Républicain), Les Cayes, and Santo Domingo—

and then occupy the surrounding territory. He took command of the ships

heading for Le Cap, and, hovering off the coast in sight of the town on

February 3, sent a message to Christophe. Having made peace with Brit-

ain, it announced, the government of France had sent troops to Saint-

Domingue to defeat any “rebels” in the colony. He hoped that Christophe

would not be among such rebels, but warned him that if he resisted he

would be held responsible for the violence that was unleashed.27

Accompanying Leclerc’s message to Christophe was a letter from

Bonaparte to the people of Saint-Domingue, assuring them that the sol-

diers’ sole purpose was to protect them from “enemies of the Republic.”

Bonaparte had predicted that many would have heard rumors of a more

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threatening mission, and sought to dispel such fears. “If you are told: these forces are meant to take away your liberty, you must respond: the Republic