Toussaint Louverture (8 page)

Tougher resistance came in the mountainous terrain between the lowlands and Dondon, and Laveaux had a couple of very hard battles to fight at Morne Pelee and La Tannerie. Toussaint commanded the insurgent blacks in these two engagements, making himself known to the French for the first time as a significant military leader. He had spent much time and energy on the fortification of La Tannerie, and was not dislodged from it easily. When Laveaux finally won the position in January 1793, he found seventeen cannon there, including a couple of twenty-four-pounders.

By mid-February Sonthonax had begun to suspect that military force would not be sufficient to solve the problem of the slave insurrection, but large areas of the Northern Plain had been secured by Laveaux's campaign, and some colonists felt safe enough to return to the cinders of their plantations. Sonthonax decided to rejoin Polverel in the Western Department. His brother commissioner had been grievously overloaded since Ailhaud's departure, trying to govern the west and the south at the same time, across unmanageable distances.

During the commissioners' joint tour, the
petits blancs
of Port-au-Prince started an open rebellion against them; the preference the commissioners showed the
gens de couleurhad
moved this faction toward the counterrevolutionary camp. On April 12, 1793, Sonthonax and Polverel (who had established their base at Saint Marc, the next significant port up the coast) launched a combined assault by land and sea to subdue the revolt. The ship from which they directed the attack was hit several times by cannon on shore; a fire that resulted was finally put out. Since war had been declared between England and France as of February 1, the commissioners also feared that the arrival of a British fleet might interrupt their conquest of the colonial capital, but it did not come.

Following the success of their operation at Port-au-Prince, the
commissioners were able to regain control of the Western Department and most of the Southern. On May 15, the town of Jacmel on the southern coast admitted them without much struggle. But counterrevolutionary activity held out at Jeremie, on the tip of the southern peninsula otherwise known as the Grande Anse. An expedition against Jeremie led by Andre Rigaud, a colored goldsmith and experienced militiaman whom the commissioners had promoted to the rank of general, failed to subdue the rebellion there. In fact the counterrevolutionaries on the Grande Anse had now opened communications with sympathizers in Cap Francais. Sonthonax and Polverel rushed back there, arriving on the 10th of June.

For decades, the home government in France had intentionally divided the administration of Saint Domingue against itself. Power was shared, or contested, between a military governor and a civilian intendant. From the point of view of average white colonists, the main activity of the governor was to inconvenience them with militia service requirements, while the only thing the intendant did was burden them with taxes and obnoxious restraints on trade. Therefore both officials were normally detested by the citizens they governed, and since their spheres of authority were apt to collide, they did not like each other much either. Paris fostered animosity between governor and intendant, with the thought that so long as they were at odds, each would prevent the other from nurturing any sort of independence movement of the sort that had recently cost England its American colonies.

The powers of the Second Commission superseded those of the intendant, and soon after his arrival Sonthonax had deported Governor Blanchelande. But on May 7, while the commissioners were frantically trying to restore their authority in the west and the south, a new governor landed at Cap Francais: Thomas François Galbaud. Sent out from France to replace Blanchelande, Galbaud was himself a Creole, born in Port-au-Prince, and he owned property in the colony. He had achieved the rank of general in the regular French army, and he was thought to be loyal to the revolution; however, counterrevolutionary colonists in Paris believed that he would take their part in Saint Domingue, and had lobbied for his appointment to the governor's post. Though Galbaud's
orders subordinated him to the authority of the commissioners, his status as the colony's military commander in chief allowed the owners of plantations and slaves to hope that he would become a rallying point for their interests.
²³
In the volatile situation of Saint Domingue in 1793, the tension which the home government had long nurtured between the civil and military powers in the colony proved a recipe for disaster.

Galbaud found the city government of Le Cap in the hands of the
gens de couleur
Sonthonax had appointed, and he was not pleased. The governor's presence and the commissioners' absence brought white counterrevolutionaries flocking to the town. By the time Sonthonax and Polverel arrived on June 10, tension between mulattoes and whites was close to a flash point. Between the commissioners and the new governor, whatever diplomacy was attempted failed. On June 13, Polverel and Sonthonax ordered Galbaud and his party aboard the
Normandy
for deportation to France.

The move turned out to be a rash one. The many deportations already ordered by Sonthonax had roused resentment of the commission at all levels of white society. The ships in Le Cap harbor were packed with deportees who had not yet set sail, and crewed by sailors who sympathized with the
petit blancs
class that had so recently been in rebellion. Confined on board the anchored ships were some five hundred planters who in the words of one observer “had done no wrong except to be white and above all to be landowners.” To add injury to insult, the commissioners had just confiscated their harvests of sugar and coffee to pay for foodstuffs imported from the United States and England. The sailors in the fleet, meanwhile, were irked by the commissioners' order that none of them could be on shore after nightfall. Sometime during the evening of June 19, a delegation from these two groups approached Galbaud and suggested he do something about it.

On the morning of June 20, Galbaud led two thousand of these men in a landing by force. Colored troops defended the commissioners with real fervor, but on the second day of fighting, Sonthonax and Polverel were forced to flee to Haut du Cap; by coincidence they established a headquarters at Breda Plantation, where Toussaint Louverture had been a slave.

That same day, as a last resort, the commissioners released a proclamation which read, in part: “We declare that the will of the French Republic and of its delegates is to give freedom to all the Negro warriors who will fight for the Republic under the orders of the civil commissioners, against Spain or other enemies, whether internal or external … All the slaves declared free by the delegates of the Republic will be equal to all free men—they will enjoy all the rights belonging to French citizens.”
²⁴

This message was carried to the rebel slaves camped outside Le Cap by the mulatto officer Antoine Chanlatte, accompanied by Ginioux and Galineux Degusy “two white adventurers still more frenzied than he.”
²⁵
The first to receive it were Pierrot and Macaya, whose bands of insurgents occupied the territory beyond Haut du Cap and also had encampments on the heights of Morne du Cap, the steep mountain which dominated Cap Francais. Toussaint himself was camped near Pierrots band, at Port Francais on the far side of the mountain from the town; it is likely he received the same proffer as the other two leaders but if so he took no overt action.

It was the bands of Pierrot and Macaya, ten thousand strong, who stormed Le Cap late in the day of June 21. Galbaud and his faction fled to their ships. When they sailed they brought with them most of the whites who had taken their part—the remnants of the
grand blancs
landowners and the
petit blancs
counterrevolutionaries (including Procurator Gros); this huge flotilla of refugees eventually landed in Baltimore. Though ready enough to sack the town, the rebel slaves did not seem particularly responsive to the orders of the civil commissioners or anyone else. Some fires had apparently already started while Galbaud was nominally in charge of the town. During the huge onslaught of the insurgent slaves, the fires spread uncontrollably. By the time the ten thousand blacks had carried their loot back into the hills, and Sonthonax and Polverel reoccupied Cap Francais, five-sixths of the Jewel of the Antilles had been destroyed.

The commissioners were back in control of the colony, but at a crippling cost. Again they separated, Polverel returning to Port-au-Prince. Olivier Delpech, who'd been sent to replace Ailhaud, took up the reins
of administration in the south. Both Polverel and Sonthonax continued to circulate their proclamation of June 21, hoping to win over the black insurgents with the promise of freedom in return for military service. But, frustratingly, Jean-François and Biassou, when approached on behalf of the commissioners by the Abbe Delahaye, kept protesting their fealty to the idea of royalty in general and (now that the king of France had been executed) to the king of Spain in particular. Macaya, who'd helped the commissioners repel Galbaud, now returned to the rebel camp, declaring: “I am the subject of three kings; of the king of the Congo, master of all the blacks; of the King of France, who represents my father; of the king of Spain, who represents my father. These three kings are the descendants of those who, led by a star, came to adore God made Man.”
²⁶

Toussaint, whose importance as a commander had been recognized by the French since his engagements with Laveaux, replied that “the blacks wanted to serve under a king and the Spanish king offered him his protection.”
²⁷
In the course of this negotiation, Toussaint persuaded the French commander Allemand (who was supposed to win him over to the commission and the republic) to surrender to him the camp of LaTannerie with all its weapons and ammunition. This turn of events, deeply disconcerting to the French as it once again cut off Dondon from Le Cap, is one of the first examples of Toussaint's remarkable skill in winning bloodless victories.

During the months of internal struggle between the
gens de couleur
and the various white factions, Spain's black auxiliaries had had time to recover and regroup. Again they posed a serious threat to the French republic, especially in the north. The commissioners' limited proffer of freedom for military service had not proved effective. More and more it seemed that universal emancipation of Saint Domingue's slaves might be the only solution—although at this point it would be no more than formal recognition of the fact that the slaves had succeeded in freeing themselves. Many of the whites remaining in Le Cap now backed the idea of emancipation; on August 15, fifteen thousand people voted in its favor, and on August 29, Sonthonax proclaimed it. Whether the French home government would endorse the abolition of slavery (which went far beyond the powers the commissioners had been granted) remained
to be seen. For the moment, there was no one nearby to tell Sonthonax he couldn't do it.

Toussaint had probably been as busy as Sonthonax and Polverel during the summer of 1793, though he left fewer traces in the white man's record books. But the battles he fought at Morne Pelee and LaTannerie proved what a redoubtable combatant he could be. At Morne Pelee, Toussaint had a vigorous sword fight with the Chevalier d'Assas, finally retreating, with a sword cut on his arm, to his second and most important line of defense at La Tannerie. Though Laveaux finally drove him out of that position too, Toussaint, with a force of just six hundred men, was able to cover the retreat of Jean-François's and Biassou's much larger groups into the mountains beyond Dondon. The small unit under his direct command now included men who would be important members of his officer cadre in the future: Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the teenaged Charles Belair, and another of Toussaint's adoptive nephews, known only as Moyse.

Soon Toussaint would become notorious for his rapid movements: no one could ever be certain just where he was, and often he seemed to be in several different places at the same time. Morne Pelee and La Tannerie are a considerable distance, over very difficult terrain, from the western end of the Cordon de l'Ouest, an area in which Toussaint was extremely active. A French colonist complained in a letter to the Spanish authorities about “several useless little posts that Toussaint Louverture has established, supposedly to protect travelers, while his agents who occupy them commit robberies and assassinations every day—thus the complaints and murmurs of all the inhabitants and plantation owners. Toussaint profits from the outcry of the inhabitants to denounce them as suspects, he kidnaps and arms all the slaves from their plantations; he announces to these wretches that they will be free if they are willing to assassinate the whites.”
²⁸

By the time this letter was written Toussaint had already issued his own proclamation from Camp Turel. He who eighteen months before would have put the slaves back into harness in exchange for fifty liberties was now and henceforward completely, fervently committed to liberty for all the blacks of Saint Domingue.

As if to cast off his former self, Toussaint a Breda, he had chosen and announced his new name. The origin of the appellation “Louverture”— or “the opening”—has been much discussed. Some suggest that it comes from a small gap Toussaint is supposed to have had between his two front teeth. Others claim it derives from Polverel's reaction to Toussaint's string of lightning attacks in 1793 and 1794—”That man makes an opening everywhere.”

Yet it is clear enough from the record that Toussaint selected the name Louverture for himself, and with particular purposes. Like many Haitian rhetoricians who would follow him, he was a master manipulator of layers of meaning. The name Louverture has a Vodouisant resonance: a reference to Legba, the spirit of gates and of crossroads, a rough equivalent of Hermes in the Greek pantheon. In the conflation of Vodou with the Catholic cult of the saints, Legba is identified with images of Saint Peter, holding his key to Heaven's gate. Practically all Vodou ceremonies begin with a version of this song: “Attibon Legba, open the way for me.” It is Legba's special power and special role to open the gateway between the world of the living and the world of
Les Invisibles, Les Morts, et Les Mysteres.