Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual History of the French Revolution From the Rights of Man to Robespierre (78 page)

Developing in stages, the Caribbean Revolution reached a crucial turning point with the Paris Assembly’s edict of 4 April 1792, a law partly ensuing from the free black (and slave) insurrection of August 1791 in northern Saint-Domingue, and partly from the Brissot circle’s ideological campaign.
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Introduced by Brissot amid a fresh flurry of antislavery rhetoric, the measure simultaneously formed part of the parti de philosophie’s struggle against the Feuillants and Brissot’s war strategy in Europe. The aim of this legislation was to end the white colonists’ previously extensive autonomy so as to overcome French white Caribbean conservatism and monarchism. Charging the colonists with violating basic human rights, this crucial decree dissolved the old colonial assemblies. Full equality of persons among the free population, white and black, was proclaimed. Brissot’s strategy was to reassert France’s grip over her colonies by ending the racial hierarchy sanctioned by the ancien régime and comprehensively emancipating the free blacks. Shelving the slavery question temporarily, the Brissotins sought to win over the French Caribbean free blacks, converting them into supporters of the democratic republican Revolution.
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The decree reached the outraged and deeply disconcerted colonial assemblies of Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Saint-Domingue during May and June 1792.

The Brissotin republican tendency in Paris opted for a high-risk strategy and thereby became the principal agent of the Caribbean revolution. Following the downfall of monarchy and the Feuillants in August 1792—and closure of the principal colonial lobby in Paris, the Club Massiac, and seizure of its papers—the Caribbean revolution proper began with the dispatch to Saint-Domingue of 6,000 troops (bringing 30,000 rifles), to assert the now fully republican Assembly’s authority. With the troops arrived a civil commission chosen by the new republican
ministry, on Brissot’s recommendation, headed by Léger-Felicité Sonthonax (1763–1813) and Étienne Polverel (d. 1796), the historian of the Navarrese constitution. A hard-core republican ideologue of only twenty-nine, supporter of universal education and vehement foe of the Catholic Church (and indeed all churchmen), Sonthonax was closely allied to the Brissot faction and firmly presided over this powerful commission mandated to transform France’s entire posture in the Caribbean (where he had never set foot before). Sonthonax fully shared Brissot’s enthusiasm for emancipating the mulattoes of the French Caribbean and recruiting them as allies of the democratic Revolution. Writing in the
Révolutions de Paris
in September 1790, he had predicted the European reactionary powers would not long be able to resist the “cries of philosophy and principles of universal liberty” spreading among the nations.
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Disgusted with the hypocrisy and reactionary views of the colony’s whites during the first months of his ascendancy on Saint-Domingue, Sonthonax antagonized them in every way. Lacking specific orders regarding slavery, he vigorously implemented his instructions concerning “free blacks,” and especially the April law, reconstituting the colony’s assembly on a new and democratic basis so as to equitably represent both free blacks and poor whites.
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The wealthy whites on the island opposed him in every way they could, some conspiring with exiled monarchist Malouet, who was now in London (and all of whose fortune was in the form of property and slaves on the island) to bring Saint-Domingue under British control.
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The achievement of Sonthonax and Polverel in establishing a functioning revolutionary government in Saint-Domingue, and enlisting the previously mostly royalist “free blacks” to their cause, was no mean feat given the isolated, embattled circumstances in which they operated. They failed to end the slave revolt in the northern hills. But in a way this helped, as Saint-Domingue’s whites remained too alarmed by the continuing insurgency to effectively fight the democratic revolutionary regime. For the moment, the commissaires kept the larger part of France’s most productive colony firmly under French control. By contrast, a smaller force of three thousand revolutionary troops dispatched to Martinique was repulsed by the white colonists, now unambiguously aligned with royalisme, counterrevolution, and Britain. Beside the white planters and wealthier free blacks, Sonthonax and Polverel faced stubborn resistance from the substantial body of white sailors in Saint-Domingue’s ports. Subject to harsh discipline on both naval
and commercial vessels, and largely illiterate, this disgruntled element proved peculiarly receptive to the fiercely reactionary monarchism and racial superiority complex rife among white colonists. Simultaneously managing their recalcitrance and black insurgency, while confronting Britain and Spain, now at war with France, was no easy task. To complicate matters further, before long the commissioners also came under fire in France from the Montagne as well as the monarchists. Robespierriste Montagnard authoritarian populism (like Rousseau himself) invariably showed less concern for ending slavery and for black emancipation (and noticeably more sympathy for the white planters) than the Left republicans proclaiming the Revolution’s democratic principles.

With the Brissotin-Montagnard struggle intensifying in France, Sonthonax and Polverel pressed on with their Caribbean revolution. Dissolving the colonial assembly in October 1792, they replaced it initially with an interim commission of twelve, comprising six whites and six blacks selected by them and headed by Pierre Pinchinat and Charles Guillaume Castaing. Castaing, among Cap-Français’s leading propertied men of color, aligned especially closely with Sonthonax. The commissioners also established a local mixed-race political club at Cap-Français affiliated to the (pre-1793 Brissotin) Jacobins. Several white royalist officers were purged. White resentment intensified. A dangerous turning point was reached on 2 December 1792 when Sonthonax summoned a force of several hundred mulatto and free black National Guards to face down a white militia unit encamped on the Champ de Mars outside the town, who refused officers of mixed race. Confrontation between blacks and “foes of equality and the law of 4 April,” as the
Patriote français
put it, produced an armed clash that only narrowly avoided becoming a pitched battle. No slaves were involved, but the outbreak of shooting appalled the whites of nearby Cap-Français. According to a letter to Raimond from his brother, the shooting resulted in the deaths of thirty whites and six free blacks.
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Worse bloodshed was prevented owing to the intervention of Pinchinat, a mulatto resented by whites as a leading advocate of black pride and ambition. He was eloquent, literate, and able to write. Pinchinat swayed the free black militia sufficiently to secure a general disengagement.

A less satisfactory outcome followed the next outbreak, the journée of 20 June 1793. Despite the commission’s readiness to improve the lot of Saint-Domingue’s free blacks, numerous grounds for friction remained, not just white opposition but also the prevailing lack of understanding for revolutionary principles among both free blacks and slaves.
Blacks were mostly puzzled or alienated by republican discourse and intensely disliked the white democrats’ overt irreligion. Priests remained influential in the insurgent districts. Most blacks showed a clear preference for old-fashioned royalism and traditional Catholicism, repugning republican ideas, which to Sonthonax only confirmed that without la philosophie humans are blind to their own real interests. Blacks found difficulty in grasping the abstract principles of republican liberty and equality, he reported to Paris, preferring to assume it was “their king” who wanted to free them but that his royal will was being frustrated by evil councillors and the slave-owners.
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The slaves seemed even more fervent for monarchy and religion than the free blacks.

During early 1793, an uneasy calm prevailed and the previously sporadic killing of whites in black-held interior areas subsided as Sonthomax and his free black allies widened the sphere of revolutionary control. If Sonthonax showed considerable sympathy for both free blacks and slaves, he displayed none whatsoever for the tenacious insurgency against the Revolution, which to him was utter madness fed by religion and royalism. Meanwhile, the white oligarchy of the colony’s other main town, Port-au-Prince, openly defied the revolutionary regime and, in April 1793, had to be blockaded with the aid of local free blacks and finally bombarded into submission. As the town fell, hundreds of royalist, counterrevolutionary whites fled into the interior; others were caught and imprisoned. Jacmel was similarly reduced with black help. But with the commissioners and their troops operating in the northern interior and then the south, the situation in Cap-Français too began to deteriorate. The chief agents of subversion there, as at Port-au-Prince and Jacmel, were neither free blacks nor slaves but recalcitrant whites defending the colonists’ supremacy and the old colonial assembly. The mood among Sonthomax’s Cap-Français opponents, often white refugees from the black insurgency in the interior, or monarchist seamen and merchants whose activities were now heavily disrupted by the maritime war with Britain, became increasingly aggressive. A deteriorating situation exploded into a full-scale crisis on 20 June, when the Cap-Français sailors mutinied and set siege to the commission’s headquarters, the governor’s house. Units of free black militia rallied to the commission’s defense. Serious fighting erupted, plunging the entire town into chaos.

At the height of the fighting, and entirely on their own initiative, initially solely as a local emergency measure, Sonthonax and Polverel offered local slaves their freedom if they would fight for the Revolution.
This was the origin of the famous printed edict of 21 June 1793 releasing Cap-Français’s slaves from bondage in exchange for their supporting the embattled Brissotin regime. Many slaves responded with alacrity, rushing armed into the streets. The shooting and killing spread. Fires started. Numerous houses were pillaged. Finally, like Port-au-Prince earlier, the entire town was consumed by flames and reduced to ashes. While many mulattoes and blacks assisted fleeing or wounded whites, others cut their throats. Besides several thousand blacks, well over a thousand whites were butchered in this horrific episode. Whites who escaped did so mostly by reaching the vessels in the harbor, often bringing (usually) female slaves with them. The survivors were evacuated to New York and other North American ports.

The outcome of a sudden emergency, the 21 June emancipation decree nevertheless constitutes a veritable landmark in human history. Over the next four months, the emancipation process dramatically broadened under pressure especially from the blacks, the northern province receiving its own local decree, citing the Declaration of Rights, on 29 August.
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By October 1793, all former slaves in Saint-Domingue were legally free. Officially, the colony had been transformed into a different world. However, of itself this failed to rally the black insurgency in the interior to the Revolution. Toussaint-Louverture (1743–1803), a former slave taught to read, who during the summer of 1793 emerged as the foremost black insurgent leader in the hills, rather than allying with the republicans construed “liberty” to mean independence from French control and playing the Spaniards, who occupied the larger eastern part of the island, against the French.
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Toussaint-Louverture assured the Spanish authorities that in exchange for their support, and allowing black rebel commanders to operate on their own, they would faithfully align with religion and monarchy against the Revolution. Failing to persuade most blacks, the revolutionaries had to simultaneously fight Spain and Britain, both powers being determined to overwhelm the Caribbean revolution. Both invaded different parts of Saint-Domingue and other French colonies. On 18 February 1793, the British captured Tobago from the French. The British also recruited hundreds of French émigrés for action in the Caribbean as well as France.
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Sensational rumors circulated in the Caribbean (and the United States) that the new masters in Paris, the Montagne, repudiated Sonthonax and Polverel, their actions, policies, and authority. With the Brissotin overthrow in France, in June 1793, the victorious Jacobins did not hesitate to cancel the Brissotin commissioners’ edicts and counteract
their policies. As Robespierre’s dictatorship was consolidated in France, the white antiemancipationist camp began recovering lost ground.
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As with the social status of women, populist authoritarians, unlike the Brissotin leadership, showed little interest in black emancipation. Their ideological concerns not only contrasted dramatically with those of their Brissotin foes but, we have seen, from an Enlightenment and democratic viewpoint, were less sweeping, radical, and universal. Momoro’s press had recently published a pamphlet concerning slavery by an author who readily conceded that it was the philosophes that had changed people’s perceptions of the black race but also accused Brissot, Condorcet, and the Amis des Noirs of moving too far, too fast toward abolition. When representatives of Bordeaux’s commerce point out the disadvantages to France of abolishing the slave trade and slavery, complained this tract, entitled
Coup-d’oeil sur la question de la traite et de l’esclavage des Noirs
, the Amis des Noirs simply answered, “froidement que la traite et la servitude sont une violation des droits de l’homme.”
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Under “natural law,” argued Montagnards, abolition of black slavery was not really a “patriotic” goal.
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“Le pacte social” is with the nation, not with humanity in general. To “prove” its argument that nation and patriotism matter more than universal human rights, the tract chiefly appeals to “nature,” following Rousseau and Robespierre. Genuine, unqualified patriotisme cannot flourish “except by abandoning a part of the affection that attaches us to the entire human race.”
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Besides disliking Brissotin universalism, it suited the Montagne to blame the turmoil in Saint-Domingue and Martinique on Brissot and his allies. Thus, some leading authoritarian populists close to Robespierre, most notably the lawyer Jean-Pierre-André Amar (1755–1816), the official compiling the Convention’s indictment against Brissot, vigorously sided with the white colonist lobby against the emancipationists. In a speech at the Convention on 18 November, Robespierre himself accused the Brissotins of being in league with Britain and deliberately arming Saint-Domingue’s slaves to destroy France’s colonies; Robespierre, too, like Collot d’Herbois (but also Camille Desmoulins), was at best ambiguous with regard to emancipating the slaves.
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