Master of the Crossroads (97 page)

FEBRUARY 12: Toussaint sends a delegation to Dieudonné with a letter meant to persuade him to join the French Republican forces. Dieudonné is overthrown by his subordinate Laplume, who turns him over to Rigaud as a prisoner. Laplume brings Dieudonné’s men to join Toussaint.

MARCH 20: Villatte attempts a coup against Laveaux, who is imprisoned at Le Cap. Officers loyal to Toussaint engineer his release.

MARCH 27: Toussaint enters Le Cap with ten thousand men. Villatte and his remaining supporters flee the town.

MARCH 31: Laveaux, describing Toussaint as the “Black Spartacus” predicted by Raynal, installs him as Lieutenant-Governor of Saint Domingue. On the same day, Dieudonné dies a prisoner in Saint Louis du Sud, suffocated by a weight of chains.

MAY 11: Emissaries of the French Directoire arrive in Le Cap: the Third Commission, led by a politically rehabilitated Sonthonax and including the colored commissioner Raimond and whites Roume, Giraud and Leblanc. The new Commission brings thirty thousand muskets to arm the colonial troops, but only nine hundred European soldiers, under command of Generals Rochambeau and Desfourneaux.

MAY 19: The Third Commission proclaims that colonists absent from Saint Domingue and residing elsewhere than France itself are to be considered
émigrés
disloyal to the French Republic, their property subject to sequestration.

JUNE 30: Sonthonax proclaims it a crime to publicly state that the freedom of the blacks is not irrevocable or that one man can own another.

JULY 5: Toussaint’s elder sons, Placide and Isaac Louverture, embark for France on the French warship
Wattigny.

JULY 18: Unable for want of European troops to take possession of the Spanish part of the island, Rochambeau is stripped of his rank and deported to France.

AUGUST 17: Toussaint writes to Laveaux concerning his wish that the latter stand for election as a delegate to the French legislature, representing the colony.

AUGUST 27: Emissaries sent by Sonthonax to Rigaud and other mulatto leaders of the south create such ill will that a riot breaks out in Les Cayes, in which many whites are killed. Rigaud parades Sonthonax’s proclamations through the streets of the town, tied to the tail of a donkey.

SEPTEMBER: Sonthonax and Laveaux are elected, among others, as representatives from Saint Domingue to the French legislature.

OCTOBER 6: Members of the Third Commission write to the Directoire about their concern over the single-minded personal loyalty shown by the black troops toward particular leaders, especially Toussaint.

OCTOBER 14: With further encouragement from Toussaint, Laveaux departs from Saint Domingue to assume his position in the French legislature.

1797

MARCH: In France, royalists, reactionaries, and proslavery colonists make significant gains in new elections.

APRIL: Toussaint successfully recaptures Mirebalais and the surrounding area and uses the region as the base of an offensive against the British in Port-au-Prince. British General Simcoe defends the coast town successfully and attacks Mirebalais in force. Toussaint burns Mirebalais and makes a rapid drive toward Saint Marc, forcing Simcoe to retreat to defend the latter town. This campaign is the last British challenge to Toussaint’s control of the interior.

MAY 1: Sonthonax arrests General Desfourneaux, leaving Toussaint as the highest-ranking officer in the colony.

MAY 8: Sonthonax names Toussaint commander-in-chief of the French republican army in Saint Domingue.

MAY 20: The newly elected French legislature convenes, with the proslavery colonial point of view energetically represented by Vaublanc. AUGUST 20: Toussaint writes to Sonthonax, urging him to assume his elected post in the French legislature.

AUGUST 23: Sonthonax consents to depart, in his words “to avoid bloodshed.”

SEPTEMBER 4: In France, royalist and colonial elements are purged from the government; the Vaublanc faction loses its influence.

OCTOBER 21: Toussaint informs the French Directoire that, after successful negotiation with Rigaud, the Southern Department has been reunited with the rest of the colony.

1798

MARCH 27: General Hédouville arrives from France as agent of the French Directoire to Saint Domingue. His orders include the deportation of Rigaud. He lands in Spanish Santo Domingo, to confer with Roume, a survivor of the Third Commission stationed in the Spanish town.

APRIL 23: British General Maitland begins to negotiate with Toussaint the terms for a British withdrawal.

MAY 2: A treaty is signed by Toussaint and Maitland. British will evacuate Port au Prince and their other western posts, in return for which Toussaint promises amnesty to all their partisans, a condition which violates French laws against the
émigrés.

MAY 8: Hédouville arrives at Le Cap and summons both Toussaint and Rigaud to appear before him there.

MAY 15: Following the British evacuation, Toussaint and his army make a triumphal entry into Port-au-Prince.

JUNE: Following his first encounter with Hédouville, Toussaint indignantly refuses to obey the order to arrest Rigaud.

JULY: During interviews with Toussaint and Rigaud at Le Cap, Hédouville seeks to weaken the power of both generals by turning them against each other.

JULY 24: Hédouville proclaims that plantation workers must contract themselves for three-year periods, arousing suspicion that he plans to restore slavery.

AUGUST 31: Toussaint signs a secret agreement with Maitland, stipulating among other points that the British navy will leave the ports of Saint Domingue open to commercial shipping of all nations.

OCTOBER 1: Môle Saint Nicolas, the port of the northwest peninsula, is formally surrendered by Maitland to Toussaint. Following the transfer, Toussaint dismisses a number of his troops from the army and returns them to plantation work.

OCTOBER 16: Instigated by Moyse and Toussaint, the plantation workers of the north rise against Hédouville’s supposed intention to restore slavery.

OCTOBER 23: Under pressure from the rising in the north, Hédouville departs from Saint Domingue, leaving final instructions which release Rigaud from Toussaint’s authority. Commissioner Raimond, previously elected to the French legislature, accompanies Hédouville to France.

OCTOBER 31: Toussaint invites Roume to return from Spanish Santo Domingo to assume the duties of French agent in the colony.

NOVEMBER 15: Toussaint announces that plantation work will hence-forward be enforced by the military.

1799

FEBRUARY 4: Roume brings Toussaint and Rigaud together at Port-au-Prince for a celebration of the abolition of slavery, hoping for a reconciliation between them. But Rigaud leaves the meeting in anger when asked to cede to Toussaint control of the posts he’d won from the British in the Western Department (Grand et Petit Goâve, Léogane).

FEBRUARY 21: In an address at the Port-au-Prince cathedral, Toussaint protests the insubordination of Rigaud and warns the mulatto community against rebellion.

JUNE 15: Rigaud makes public Hédouville’s letter releasing him from obedience to Toussaint.

JUNE 18: Rigaud opens rebellion against Toussaint; his troops seize Petit and Grand Goâve, driving Laplume back from this area.

In the following days, the mulatto commanders at Léogane, Pétion and Boyer defect to Rigaud’s party. Mulatto rebellions break out at Le Cap, Le Môle, and in the Artibonite. Toussaint rides rapidly from point to point to suppress them, placing Moyse and Dessalines in command at Léogane and Christophe in charge of Le Cap. At Pont d’Ester, members of his entourage are killed in a night ambush.

JULY 8: Toussaint dispatches an army of forty-five thousand men to the south to combat Rigaud and his supporters.

JULY 25: Toussaint breaks the siege of Port-de-Paix, where his officer Maurepas was under attack from the Rigaudins.

AUGUST 4: Fifty conspirators at Le Cap are executed after a failure to take over the town for the Rigaudins.

AUGUST 31: In the midst of suppressing rebellion on the northwest peninsula, Toussaint narrowly escapes assassination near Jean Rabel. Returning in the direction of Port-au-Prince, he is ambushed, again unsuccessfully, at Sources Puantes.

SEPTEMBER 23: Beauvais, mulatto commander of Jacmel, who had attempted to maintain neutrality in the Toussaint-Rigaud conflict, sails for Saint Thomas with his family.

NOVEMBER: Dessalines’s offensive retakes Petit and Grand Goâve from Rigaud.

NOVEMBER 9: In France, Napoleon Bonaparte assumes power as First Consul of the French Republic.

NOVEMBER 22: Jacmel, key to the defense of the southern peninsula, is besieged by Toussaint’s troops.

DECEMBER 13: In France, the new Constitution establishing the French Consulate states that the colonies will be governed by “special laws.”

1800

JANUARY 18: Toussaint requests Roume’s permission to occupy Spanish Santo Domingo according to the terms of the Treaty of Basel, citing the urgency of stopping the slave trade which continued to some extent on Spanish territory. Roume denies the request.

JANUARY 19: Pétion assumes command of Jacmel, entering the besieged town by stealth.

MARCH 1: Pétion evacuates the women of Jacmel.

MARCH 11: Pétion leads the survivors of the siege on a desperate sortie from Jacmel and manages to rejoin Rigaud with the shreds of his force, abandoning Jacmel to Toussaint. Rigaud retreats onto the Grand Anse, leaving scorched earth behind him.

APRIL 27: Under pressure from Toussaint, Roume signs an order to take possession of the Spanish side of the island.

MAY 22: Agé, a white general loyal to Toussaint, arrives in Santo Domingo with a symbolic force and is resisted by the population.

JUNE: A new group of emissaries from the French Consulate debarks in Spanish Santo Domingo, including General Michel, Raimond, and Colonel Vincent (the latter a white officer close to Toussaint). Their instructions are to keep the two halves of the island separate and to bring the black/mulatto war to a close—while at the same time conciliating Toussaint. Both Michel and Vincent are arrested briefly by Toussaint’s troops, on their way into the French part of the island.

JUNE 16: Roume rescinds his order of April 27, 1800, in the face of Agé’s failure.

JUNE 24: Colonel Vincent meets with Toussaint for the first time since his arrival, and informs him of the Consulate’s intention to maintain him as General-in-Chief.

JULY 7: Rigaud is decisively defeated by Dessalines at Aquin—last of a series of lost battles.

AUGUST 1: Toussaint enters Les Cayes, Rigaud’s hometown and the last center of mulatto resistance. Rigaud flees to France by way of Guadeloupe. Toussaint proclaims a general amnesty for the mulatto combatants. But Dessalines, left in charge of the south, conducts extremely severe reprisals.

OCTOBER 12: Toussaint proclaims forced labor on the plantations, to be enforced by two captain-generals: Dessalines in the south and west and Moyse in the north.

NOVEMBER 4: French Minister of Marine Forfait instructs Toussaint not to take possession of the Spanish portion of the island.

NOVEMBER 26: Roume, blamed by Toussaint for Agé’s failed expedition to Santo Domingo, is arrested by Moyse and imprisoned at Dondon.

1801

JANUARY: Toussaint sends two columns into Spanish Santo Domingo, one from Ouanaminthe under command of Moyse and the other from Mirebalais under his own command.

JANUARY 28: Toussaint enters Santo Domingo City, accepts the Spanish capitulation from Don García, and proclaims the abolition of slavery.

FEBRUARY 4: Toussaint organizes an assembly to create a constitution for Saint Domingue.

JULY 3: Toussaint proclaims the new constitution, whose terms make him governor for life.

JULY 16: Toussaint dispatches a reluctant Vincent to present his constitution to Napoleon Bonaparte and the Consulate in France.

OCTOBER 1: The Peace of Amiens ends the war between England and France. Napoleon begins to prepare an expedition, led by his brother-in-law General Leclerc, to restore white power in Saint Domingue.

OCTOBER 16: An insurrection against Toussaint’s forced labor policy begins on the northern plain and, in the coming weeks, is suppressed with extreme severity by Toussaint and Dessalines.

NOVEMBER 24: Moyse is executed at Port-de-Paix.

NOVEMBER 25: Toussaint proclaims a military dictatorship.

1802

FEBRUARY: Leclerc’s invasion begins with a strength of approximately seventeen thousand troops. Toussaint, with approximately twenty thousand men under his command, orders the black generals to raze the coast towns and retreat into the interior, but because of either disloyalty or poor communications the order is not universally followed. Black General Christophe burns Le Cap to ashes for the second time in ten years, but the French occupy Port-au-Prince before Dessalines can destroy it.

In late February and March, the French forces pursuing Toussaint fight a number of drawn battles in the interior of the island, with heavy casualties on both sides.