Toussaint Louverture (17 page)

The two commissioners wrote a batch of letters to their subordinates, including Generals Laveaux and Rigaud, then embarked on
LEsperance as
deportees. No replacements for the commission had been sent from France. Before departing, Sonthonax gave the symbols of his authority—a medal and ceremonial sash—to Dieudonne, a black who had taken over Halaou's band after the latter was killed in a contretemps with a mulatto faction. Though his authority to do so was doubtful at this point, Sonthonax formally invested Dieudonne with all the powers he was surrendering as representative of France.

Upon the departure of the commissioners, General Laveaux became the senior French official in the colony. Perhaps Toussaint preferred it that way—he had early marked Sonthonax as a rival. His relationship with Laveaux waxed from the guarded respect of their first correspondence to a genuinely affectionate friendship and partnership. Between 1794 and 1798 Toussaint sent a ream of letters to Laveaux. He spoke standard French as well as Creole, but his spelling was purely phonetic, so he dictated his correspondence to several different secretaries, always
reviewing the drafts with great care to make sure that his thoughts were exactly expressed. The letters to Laveaux amount to the largest body of Toussaint's writing that survives.

From the moment that he announced his shift to the republican side, Toussaint was exposed to attack on two fronts—or at least from two directions, as coherent fronts were hard to identify on Saint Domingue's difficult, mountainous terrain—from the English to the west at Saint Marc and from the Spanish and their remaining auxiliaries in the eastern mountains and the valley of Grande Riviere. By some accounts (unlikely as it sounds), Toussaint kept up some sort of diplomatic contact with the Spanish command for about a month after declaring his allegiance to Laveaux and the republic—the Spanish may have hoped he'd have another change of heart and mind—but that did not prevent hostilities from Jean-François and Biassou. On June 15 Toussaint reported to Laveaux an attack by Jean-François which actually succeeded in taking Dondon, an attack on La Tannerie by Biassou the next day, followed on June 11 by a British assault on his post at Pont d'Ester, the next town north of Saint Marc and at that moment the southern frontier of Toussaint's “considerable arrondissement.”

“You see, Citizen General, how I am surrounded by enemies,” he wrote, “on all sides, the right and the left.”
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In the same letter, Toussaint nevertheless proposes an attack on the Spanish force at Borgne, albeit in very coy terms: “I pray you, should it be an effect of your goodness to send out your army around Thursday or Friday, to appear before Borgne to threaten it as if you would attack it, I am sure that, by God's permission, we will have Borgne and Camp Bertin both together, by the maneuvers I will be there to combine.”
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This first joint operation between Toussaint and Laveaux, supported by a movement of Villatte's men from Le Cap, was a smashing success, and had the strategic importance of reestablishing republican control between Le Cap and Port de Paix, and further securing the Northern Plain.

On July 7, Toussaint reports his recapture of Dondon and decisive routing of Jean-François: “he owed his salvation only to the thickness of the brush into which he desperately hurled his body, abandoning all his effects … He saved nothing but his shirt and his britches.”
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Retreating to Fort Dauphin, Jean-François exercised his rage and disap-
pointment by slaughtering the eight hundred unarmed refugee
grand blancs
planters who had been waiting there for a chance to fight for the Spanish royalists and the recovery of their lands. The Spanish garrison colluded in the atrocity, or perhaps felt it was too weak to prevent it; whatever their motive, the Spanish troops shut themselves into the fort during the massacre and refused entry to the helpless French victims, practically all of whom were slain, along with their families. This horrendous and almost inexplicable event, together with Toussaint's reoc-cupation of Dondon, crippled the Spanish project in French Saint Domingue, though Toussaint waited several weeks to deliver the coup de grace.

In the same letter, Toussaint told Laveaux that he had just received word of Sonthonax and Polverel's departure and of the convention's abolition of slavery: “It is very consoling news to all friends of humanity,” he wrote, “and I hope that in the future all will find themselves the better for it.”
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The definitive news of abolition inspired him to take much more vigorous action against the Spanish than he had done previously. The routing of Jean-François from Dondon meant that Toussaint was no longer hedging his bets: all pretense that he might still serve Spain was abandoned. Concerning the massacre at Fort Dauphin, Toussaint wrote to Laveaux on July 19 with an elegant simplicity: “General, you may count on my humane sentiments; I have always had a horror of those chiefs who love to spill blood; my religion forbids me to do it, and I follow its principles.”
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This line has a much stronger ring of sincerity than the rococo phrasing of the letters Toussaint sent to the survivors of his attack on Gonai'ves.

Both Laveaux and Toussaint wanted very much to capture the town of Saint Marc, the strategic key to control of the Artibonite Plain, immediately south of Toussaint's forward post at Pont d'Ester. Since his days in the Spanish service, Toussaint had recognized the British commander there, Lieutenant Colonel Brisbane, as an extremely dangerous adversary. To dispose of him, he tried a combination of force and guile. Brisbane, who had observed Toussaint's activities with the same acute interest with which Toussaint watched his, believed that the black leader was mainly out for himself and perhaps could be purchased for the
British cause. Toussaint, hoping to lure Brisbane to Gonai'ves where he could be captured, showed himself receptive to these overtures. The negotiations also gave him a chance to secretly court the mulattoes of Saint Marc and surrounding areas, who since the National Convention's abolition of slavery were cultivating a greater sympathy for the republic.

Brisbane would not put his head in the trap, but in the first week of September Toussaint did manage to lure him in the direction of Petite Riviere, with a feigned offer by the chiefs of that town to turn it over to the British. One purpose of this ruse was to facilitate the defection of Morin, Brisbane's colored aide-de-camp, who led three hundred men out of Saint Marc to join Toussaint's subordinate Christophe Mornet on September 3. The next day, with Brisbane still absent, Toussaint launched a lightning strike on Saint Marc, which then was not well fortified. He overran an exterior camp, whose officer, mysteriously, believed that Toussaint had come to negotiate a switch to the British side. Morin had conspired with colored men still inside Saint Marc to open the gates to Toussaint's army, which briefly took control of the town. But a British frigate sailed down from Mole to bombard Toussaint's men from the harbor, and Brisbane rushed back in the nick of time to recapture the place by land.

Toussaint eluded Brisbane's column and with forty dragoons rode full-tilt up the Artibonite River to capture Verrettes, a key post in the region whence Brisbane had just been hastily recalled. In this maneuver he was aided by Blanc Cassenave, mulatto commander of a unit in the Artibonite area called the Bare-Naked Congos, who had offered his allegiance to Toussaint at Gonai'ves in 1793. With camps at Verrettes, and north of the Artibonite River at Marchand and Petite Riviere (where the British had begun building a fort on a hill called La Crete a Pierrot), Toussaint could control the passes into the Cahos mountains, an area as important to his strategy as the Cordon de l'Ouest. He could also threaten to isolate Saint Marc, where Brisbane was now hastily erecting more serious fortifications and launching an abortive sea attack on Gonai'ves.

Laveaux believed Saint Marc was tottering and might easily fall. Before he sent Toussaint to attack the town again, he tried to soften the target by sending a proclamation to Saint Marc's citizens on Septem-
ber 12, 1794, urging upon the
gens de couleur
this point: “If you have had the courage to fight for those rights which alone distinguish man from the animals, then do have the generosity to recognize the beneficent decree which delivers your brothers from the irons that held them in slavery'
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Although there was at this time a significant movement of
anciens libres
away from their alliances with the
grands blancs
and the British, Laveaux's missive had no apparent effect in Saint Marc. Toussaint proceeded to attack, deprived of any advantage of surprise, since Laveaux's proclamation had announced the planned assault—but he did succeed in capturing two forts on the heights above the town. Brisbane was shaken, but held out until he received reinforcements from Lapointe, a mulatto who commanded Arcahaye for the British, on September 18. Three days later, Toussaint gave up his attack on Saint Marc, after fifteen days of continuous fighting.

At the same time, Jean-François was gathering men for a fresh attempt on the eastern end of the Cordon de l'Ouest. On October 4 Toussaint reported his loss of several posts along the Artibonite River east of Saint Marc, which he attributed to “the perfidy of the colored men of that area.'
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“Saint Marc would now be ours,” he went on, “if I had not had the misfortune to hurt my hand while mounting a cannon on a carriage. If I had been able to fight at the head of my troops according to my custom, Saint Marc would not have held out an hour, or I would have fallen, one or the other.'
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Instead Toussaint, nursing a painfully crushed hand, had to send his lieutenants Morin, Guy, and Blanc Cassenave into the fray in his place. The failure of the attack was assured by “the terrible treachery of the
hommes de couleur
who abandoned me to join our enemies.'
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In fact, three hundred mulattoes had been executed by the British in the wake of Toussaint's September 4 attack, and the survivors were doubtless discouraged from further collaboration with the French republic, at least for the time being. On top of that, Toussaint had run out of ammunition; such shortages would become one of his most chronic complaints to Laveaux. “The first time I attacked Saint Marc it was scarcely fortified at all,” he concluded, somewhat bitterly. “At present it is very well bulwarked; its own ruins serve as its ramparts.
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Toussaint consoled himself for the failure at Saint Marc by whip-
ping around 180 degrees to attack the Spanish and Jean-François. By October 21 Toussaint could send the much more cheerful report that he had driven the Spanish out of Saint Michel and Saint Raphael, capturing two officers and about fifty soldiers in the process. The towns were surrounded by horse and cattle ranches; Toussaint sent all the livestock into French Saint Domingue. “That operation accomplished,” he wrote, “I razed the two towns, so that the enemy could not make any attempt on them and so he will keep his distance from us.” In a very casual postscript he adds, “With the sabers of my cavalry I slew about ninety Spaniards—all those who in the end didn't want to surrender.”
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This victory was a huge one, and hugely increased Toussaint's status with the French republicans. A white French general, Desfourneaux, had earlier failed in a campaign for the same objective. If there had been any lingering doubt, Toussaint's success decisively proved his value. As a Spanish officer, he had worn a crest of white feathers in his bicorne hat—an indication of royalist leanings. After this victory, Laveaux gave him a red plume, which Toussaint wore above the white ones ever after; his crest thus took on the colors of the revolution.

Now it was safe for Laveaux to leave Port de Paix and tour the Cordon de l'Ouest; he and Toussaint met face-to-face at Dondon. En route the French general was deeply impressed by what Toussaint had done to restore security and even tranquillity to the region: “Many whites had returned to their plantations … Many white women, whose properties had been invaded by the English, expressed to us how much attention and help they had received from this astonishing man … The parish of Petite Riviere offers the satisfying picture of more than fifteen thousand cultivators returned, full of gratitude, to the Republic: whites, blacks, mulattoes, soldiers, field hands, landowners—all blessing the virtuous chief whose cares maintain order and peace among them.”
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Following this encounter, Laveaux installed his headquarters at Le Cap; Toussaint returned to the campaign against the British.

Saint Marc remained a difficult thorn to pull from French republican flesh, and Brisbane was still a serious threat. Though his troops by now had more than a little training in the European style of warfare,
Toussaint was too wary to risk them against the redcoats in the open country of the Artibonite plain. He returned to a guerrilla program of ambush and temporary retreat. Brisbane's offensive, according to the British observer Brian Edwards, was “like a vessel traversing the ocean—the waves yielded indeed for the moment but united again as the vessel passed.'
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Toussaint's various European opponents would make the same complaint through the end of the decade. In February 1795, Brisbane himself was slain in one of these ambushes.

The fight for control of the posts on the south bank of the Artibonite gave Toussaint opportunity for some satisfying victories over
grand blanc
commanders in league with the British. He must have been practically cackling when, on August 31,1795, he reported the humiliating defeat of one of these, Dessources, who “jumped down from his horse and, with the debris of his army, buried himself in the brush, shouting ‘Sauve qui peut!’ … I scattered bodies over the road for a distance of more than a mile; my victory was most complete, and if the famous Dessources has the luck to make it back to Saint Marc it will be without cannon, without baggage, and finally as they say with neither drum nor trumpet.”
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