Authors: William Dietrich
I was heartened. Jubal was the best ally I could imagine, as sensible as I was sly. I feared what Martel was doing to my wife and son and needed all the help I could get.
“Our companions believe in you, too,” he added.
I’d need them all to win through on a French-governed island.
By the time we cautiously crept back to the overlook, we were behind the lines of Dessalines’s triumphant army. Thousands of rebels were digging new precautionary trenches in front of the inner line of French defenses, while hundreds were turning captured cannons around and bringing up field guns of their own. The blacks had the high ground, and Rochambeau’s strategic position had become hopeless.
I looked out to sea and realized it was filled with new ships. Since I’d fled the city with Jubal, a fleet had arrived. If the vessels were French, my enemies (my ability to stumble from side to side surprises even me) might hold for a time. If English, it was over.
“Let’s get down to Dessalines,” I said. “I need a spyglass.”
We descended to the usual butchery of a battlefield, blood staining the mud puddles left by the downpour. Wounded crawled and groaned. Spouses and partners who followed the army and came to look for loved ones discovered and wept. Soldiers deafened by muzzle blasts bled from their ears. It’s corruption I’ve grown familiar with, made tolerable only by victory.
We skirted the French dead. One, I saw with sadness, was Colonel Gabriel Aucoin, shot through the breast and trampled in the charge. His last expression was sardonic. My betrayals had not saved him.
Corpses from both sides were being dragged for quick mass burial before becoming bloated in the heat. Operations for the badly wounded were performed by bloody machete in the same brutal way as Lovington’s sugar mill: a swift chop that was perhaps, in its speed, more merciful than the surgeon’s saw. However, some crawled off to die rather than face the steel.
Despite our diversion, the charging blacks had suffered several hundred dead and wounded. The heap of chopped-off arms and legs was a more powerful testament to their courage than the later medals would be, the dark flesh stacked like a cord of wood.
I watched Rochambeau’s man-hunting dogs being executed in their cages, the rebels firing muskets into the yelping animals with glee. Then the doors were opened so wild pigs could gnaw at the remains.
Dessalines himself was at the highest point of captured Vertières, dressed in martial splendor. He was soaked from the tropical shower, but with his bicorn hat with black plume, gold-braided uniform, and French cavalry boots, he looked as magnificent and ruthless as the Mameluke warriors I recalled from Egypt. He gave crisp orders to a legion honed by a dozen years of war. I was about to witness a historical first, the complete triumph of a slave revolt. L’Ouverture was being avenged. Spartacus would be envious.
I waited for a moment between messengers, and then pushed my way. “Congratulations,
Commandant
.”
“Monsieur Gage,” he said. “You waited until the very last moment to spring your surprise, and I confess I feared you’d deserted us. But finally the flood came, as the Christian God promised Noah.”
“We had to wait for God to get the sun high enough to light our tinder. He took his own sweet time, I’m afraid.”
“We almost had no sun at all.”
“Providence gave us just enough.” I decided to omit my lack of more reliable ignition methods, but he guessed my character anyway.
“You gamble, monsieur.”
“I improvise. It’s a fault I’m working on.”
“Well, victory is ours. British ships are offshore. Rochambeau is as trapped as Cornwallis was at Yorktown. My new nation will be born much as yours was. We’ll pay back the French. They have centuries of crime to answer for.”
I’d expected this response. The problem with being mean, as the French overseers had been, is that sooner or later your victims learn that same meanness and give turnabout. What terrified the French was that they were about to experience all the tortures they’d invented first. Our Savior hoped forgiveness would prove contagious, but so far I’ve seen little sign of it. People return the worst, not the best, and the habit makes me gloomy. The likelihood that I’d helped enable a massacre didn’t appeal to me, either.
“Maybe you can let bygones be bygones,” I tried.
The general looked scornful. “When did they ever offer that to us?”
“Yellow fever has taken all the collar out of them, you know that. It’s not like the French army hasn’t suffered. Cornwallis was allowed to surrender with honor.”
“If all white men are as meek as you, it’s no wonder they are losing. Perhaps I will not stop with Haiti. Maybe I’ll take my army and conquer the world.”
“You wouldn’t like most of it. Europe is cold and drafty. America, too. L’Ouverture could tell you, if he was still around.”
He scowled, and I decided the sooner I left Haiti, the better, given the color of my skin. “If those are British ships, let the English do your work for you,” I argued. “You can no doubt take Cap-François, but if thousands of whites are faced with extinction, they’ll fight to the death and take many of your soldiers with them. If they’re allowed to flee to English ships, you’ve won your cause without more bloodshed. Saint-Domingue becomes free without stain on its honor. Foreign nations will recognize your nation more quickly.”
He considered. Vengeance is so tempting.
“You become not just a liberator, but merciful,” I continued. “A hero in the salons of Paris, an example to the English Parliament, a partner to the United States. Dessalines the Just! Men will salute you. Women admire you.”
“I suppose temperance is the mark of great men.” He said it with considerable doubt.
“Benjamin Franklin thought so. He was my mentor, you know. Something of a nag, but sharp as a razor.”
“But this negotiation must be my idea, not yours.”
“Of course.”
“It must resound to me, not you.”
“I am utterly obscure.”
“It must be negotiated by someone the whites would trust and yet is entirely expendable, since I don’t trust Rochambeau not to seize any messenger and disembowel him in full view of my army. He is rash, venomous, and wicked.”
Villains recognize each other the way dogs do a scent. “I don’t care for the fellow, either.”
“Yes.” He’d come to a decision. “The man to negotiate the French evacuation, Monsieur Gage, is you.”
T
he trouble with offering advice is that there’s a danger people will actually accept it. So I found myself in the broiling noontime sun, planter’s hat off, marching with white flag between two embittered armies. I estimated that at least ten thousand muskets were aimed in my direction from all points of the compass. I thought the disemboweling idea was a real possibility, since the last time I’d seen General Rochambeau I’d interrupted him in midcoitus, throwing a meat cleaver at his head while he fired a ball at me. Best to keep to myself that the diversionary flood was my idea. And that I’d been tangled up in voodoo, Haitian goddesses, and the severing of French heads for display on a makeshift dam. Diplomacy, like romance, is simpler when the other side doesn’t know everything that is going on.
I hoped that the last few days of excitement might have caused the French general even to forget who I was, but he recognized me with that baleful expression typically reserved for tax collectors, naval press gangs, or mothers-in-law. I gave back as good as I got, still smarting from being a potential cuckold even if Rochambeau hadn’t, apparently, actually lain with my wife. He’d certainly wanted to, and had misplaced her in the process.
We met at the base of his last redoubts. Our conversation was blunt.
“The traitor and assassin Ethan Gage dares return?” he began.
“To save your lecherous hide.”
“How could you desert to the blacks and participate in their butchery?”
“How could you stalk my wife and pack her off to a ship with your pimp Leon Martel?” I gave back. “Having failed to rape her, are you prostituting her instead?”
“How
dare
you insult my honor, monsieur!”
“And how dare
you
, General.” I realized this kind of acrimony could go on for some time, so I tried to move things along. “It’s plain enough to all your soldiers how God has rewarded your crimes. And if you don’t listen to me, they, as well as you, will pay horrifyingly.”
A cluster of colonels drew nearer at these words.
Rochambeau looked volcanic, but he was also trapped and knew it. If Ethan Gage was his only chance of escape, it wouldn’t do to spit me on his sword. He swallowed rage with difficulty and stood taller. “Is Dessalines asking for terms?”
“His guns command the city. His troops are poised to initiate a massacre, not only against your men but against the city’s women and children, with all the cruelties you’ve taught him. Black Africa is at the gates, General, waiting to take revenge.” I let this work a moment on his officers’ imaginations.
“Why are you here then?” Rochambeau asked grudgingly.
“To prevent further bloodshed, Dessalines is offering you the opportunity to evacuate by British ship if you promise that France will leave Saint-Domingue forever.”
“We are at war with Britain as well!”
“But I am not. As an American, I’m the only negotiator fit to shuttle between the three sides. You may despise me as much as I despise you, but if you confirm the location of my wife and son, I’ll talk the British into taking you all off and saving your miserable life. Better captivity with the English than revenge from Dessalines, am I not correct?”
There was an audible rustle and sigh from the officers around us. They heard reprieve and looked at their general with expectation.
Rochambeau squinted at the sea. If he acquiesced to sailing with the British, he’d almost certainly become a prisoner of war. But he could save ten thousand lives by doing so, the first decent thing he’d done in some time. He still hesitated, as if weighing which was the better path to honor.
Finally he scowled. “Very well.”
“Very well what? Where are Astiza and Horus, a tiny child that your monster of a criminal has kidnapped?”
Now there were some gasps from the assembled officers, who knew nothing of this. Rochambeau’s face darkened with fresh embarrassment, but he also decided to try to turn it to advantage.
“Fort-de-France in Martinique,” he said shortly, an admission that he did know about my wife’s abduction. “Sent there for their own safety, you imbecile. To protect your wife from her sorry excuse of a husband.” He turned to his men. “This idiot wanted to drag her into the jungle with the blacks, and we all know what the result would have been. I, however, saw she wore a medal of trust from Bonaparte and was determined to save her. French chivalry protected her from American recklessness.”
Now they all looked with rebuke at me. The truth was, I
had
rather fumbled the governing of my family. I decided we’d both said enough and returned a contemptuous silence, which was enough to make the assembly wonder which version of events was correct.
When I didn’t reply, Rochambeau plunged on. “Yes, you can thank me for safeguarding your family. Meanwhile, we’ll row you out to the British to end this bloodshed. Bonaparte will hear of your treacheries, and I will go down in history as the savior of the good people of Cap-François.” He turned to his officers. “I will be recorded as a hero, you’ll see.”
I nodded. “Agreed. And I want a letter of introduction to the governor of Martinique.”
I
’ll admit that once I was a few yards offshore I had an overwhelming desire to cut and run, finding passage to Martinique with the British and leaving Dessalines and Rochambeau to their own devices. I desperately missed Astiza and Harry. Saint-Domingue would have a troubled future after the apocalyptic war, and I knew the final evacuation would be chaotic and heartbreaking. The French Creoles who’d been born on the island and invested their lives in Saint-Domingue would finally have to give up on what would become Haiti, exiles from all they’d known. I’d be delayed waiting for the surrender and transition to play out.
But I also knew that as a go-between I might save a few lives. Besides, if I earned Dessalines’s satisfaction (I don’t think I could ever count on his approval or friendship; he hated my race too much), I’d have the help of Jubal and his men in fetching my family, and give a little payback to Martel. So I boarded the British flagship and informed its commander that without firing a shot, he could offer refugees the transit that would finally rob France of what had once been its richest colony.
“The French have lost to the slaves?” He seemed dumbfounded.
“Not just lost, but are in peril of their lives.”
Accordingly, a combination of British warships and French merchantmen closed with the harbor to take on the defeated. The evacuation began in good order, demonstrating only the absurdity of what people try to save. They came to the quay lugging oil portraits of ugly ancestors, tarnished tureens, a pet goat, a trunk of theatrical costumes, cases of spirits, antique dueling pistols, hat boxes, silverware, fresh-baked loaves more than two feet long, voodoo carvings, silver crucifixes, and an ornamental saddle. Little ones clutched dolls and toy soldiers. Mothers peered into their own cleavage to double-check the safety of jewelry temporarily deposited there, and men patted jackets to confirm the presence of coin or currency. Rochambeau’s officers and English ensigns organized them into lines, weeding out the most ridiculous heirlooms (one family trundled a harpsichord down to water’s edge) and for a while the mood was of shared hardship and goodwill.
But as dusk fell and wine cellars were liberated, both French troops and civilians got drunk, and looting began in abandoned corners of the city. As the waiting rebel army saw disorder, black soldiers began filtering into Cap-François to join the pillage. Fires started and ignited panic. A queue quickly became a mob, some longboats swamped and had to be righted, and the last crammed French ship set sail so anxiously that it hit a reef and began to sink. Its occupants had to be offloaded to another English vessel.