Read Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution Online
Authors: Laurent Dubois
There they received a joyous greeting from many free-coloreds but an
“icy” response from many whites. The relationship between the commis-
sioners and Galbaud immediately degenerated into open hostility. Accord-
ing to one account, when Galbaud complained to Sonthonax about his
actions against whites in the town, the commissioner responded, “Under-
stand, citizen, that the only thing white about me is my skin.” Galbaud re-
torted that he had heard that Sonthonax had a “black soul” but was sur-
prised that he admitted it so readily. The perhaps apocryphal story of the
exchange played on the two meanings of “black,” suggesting Sonthonax as
both evil and a friend of the slaves and enemy of the whites. Another ac-
count described how the commissioners turned down Galbaud’s invitation
to a banquet, prompting the jilted governor to entertain the guests who did
show up by attacking Sonthonax and Polverel. His wife declared that they
should “flee this land of blood” for Paris, where they would gather forces to return to the colony to punish the commissioners and “avenge the whites
for the atrocities committed against them.” Convinced that Galbaud was
spreading sedition, Sonthonax and Polverel arrested and imprisoned the
governor.9
Imprisoned on a ship in the harbor of Le Cap, Galbaud found himself
surrounded by friends. In addition to prisoners locked up by the commis-
sioners (among them de la Boissière), many of the sailors on the ships were
hostile to the Republican commissioners. Galbaud, with the help of “a few
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av e n g e r s o f t h e n e w w o r l d
eloquent men,” launched an audacious plan: seconded by the sailors, he
would lead an attack on Le Cap and depose the commissioners. Several
thousand strong, Galbaud’s supporters stormed the town on the afternoon
of June 20. Sonthonax and Polverel escaped capture thanks to the protec-
tion of a troop led by the African-born officer Jean-Baptiste Belley, and
many soldiers fought back against Galbaud. After several hours the town’s
assailants were forced to retreat to their ships. But the next morning they
came on again with more success. They captured the arsenal of Le Cap af-
ter the white commander of the detachment guarding it ordered his troops
(most of them free-coloreds) not to fire against his “brothers.” The out-
numbered commissioners fled to the outskirts of the city to a camp on the
Bréda plantation that had been set up to defend Le Cap against slave in-
surgents.10
As Galbaud’s followers spread out through Le Cap there was chaos in
the city. The prisons were opened, releasing hundreds of slaves “captured
in the battles against the insurgents.” Many of these freed prisoners, along
with other slaves in Le Cap, managed to obtain rifles and other weapons—
according to one account, free-coloreds distributed weapons to domestics
from stashes in their houses, while many later accused the commissioners
of having ordered the distribution of guns to the urban slaves—and some
began fighting Galbaud’s troops. Random killing, looting, and fires soon
followed. The question of who started the fires would animate colonial po-
lemics for years to come. Republicans blamed the unruly sailors who made
up Galbaud’s troops, while accounts written by whites who fled Le Cap de-
scribed rampant pillaging and arson by slaves. Some claimed that the de-
struction was part of a sinister plot carried out under the direct orders of
Sonthonax and Polverel.11
As they watched the town burn, Sonthonax and Polverel made a bold
declaration aimed at recapturing it. It was “the will of the French Republic
and of its delegates,” they announced, to grant freedom to all “black war-
riors” who would “fight for the Republic.” Any slave who took up arms in
their defense would become “equal to all free men” and receive “all the
rights belonging to French citizens.” They sent officers out to invite any
slaves who wanted freedom to join them. Enemies of the commissioners
would later declare that beneath the offer of freedom and citizenship was a
more sinister invitation: the new recruits were won over with an offer of
booty from the town. Whether responding to the promise of liberty or loot
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[To view this image, refer to
the print version of this title.]
“Incendie du Cap Français.” This engraving depicts the burning of the town in late June 1793 during the battle between Galbaud and the commissioners
Sonthonax and Polverel.
Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
or both, a band of insurgents several thousand strong under the command
of Pierrot, who had been camped in the hills above Le Cap close to the
Bréda plantation, stormed into the burning town.12
One merchant noted with disgust that the commissioners had rewarded
“men who for two years had been fighting for their Papa King” while
threatening the lives of those whites who had been defending the “inter-
ests of the mother country.” But the commissioners’ invitation won new
and daunting allies for the Republic. In their official account of the event
to the National Convention, they described how groups of insurgents—
some of whom had already abandoned their “royal symbols” for those of
the Republic—had presented themselves and asked to serve “the nation
against kings.” “We promised them liberty in the name of the Republic,
and declared that all those who took up arms for her would become the
equals of their former masters.” Some still carried Spanish flags or the
white banners of the French royalists, but when the commissioners ex-
plained that it was kings who “made people slaves,” they threw them down
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and took up the flag of the Republic. Mixed together with free men of
color and white troops who had remained loyal, they formed a remarkably
integrated army unit: former slaves, free-coloreds, and whites, united in
the service of the Republic.13
The descent of these new recruits into the town turned the tide of the
battle. Outnumbered, Galbaud’s followers retreated to their ships. As the
Republic’s new allies spread through the city, looting and burning contin-
ued. Some whites were stopped in the streets and detained by bands of
free-coloreds and armed slaves. Many fearful residents scrambled aboard
ships, carrying whatever they could. When the ships weighed anchor and
sailed away, heading for the United States, they were carrying thousands of
white refugees, along with many of their slaves. They would settle in towns
like Philadelphia and Charleston, and many would never return to Saint-
Domingue.14
Within a few days Sonthonax and Polverel returned to the smoldering
city. Together with their old allies—including the free-colored officer Jean-
Louis Villatte, who played a crucial role in restoring order to Le Cap—they
had a new army of black Republicans behind them. They named Pierrot a
general. Born in Africa, a survivor of Saint-Domingue’s slavery, the elderly
Pierrot had since 1791 become the trusted and respected leader of a band
of insurgents camped near Le Cap. Now he was no longer fighting the
French for freedom. He and his followers were free men and citizens, and
he was an officer in the army of the Republic.15
“It is the kings who want slaves,” announced Polverel and Sonthonax.
“It is the kings of Guinea who sell them to the white kings.” “The French
nation,” in contrast, was committed to shattering “all chains.” Calling on
all the slave insurgents to follow the example of Pierrot and come to the
Republican side, the commissioners criticized the “unworthy chiefs”
who were still fighting for the Spanish. These leaders, they claimed, were
themselves slave traders, capturing children in Saint-Domingue and sell-
ing them to the Spanish. (Contemporary reports do indeed suggest that
Biassou, as well as Jean-François, sold women, children, and some men de-
scribed as “troublemakers” as slaves for their own profit.) The choice was
clear: the Republic was for freedom, its enemies devoted to tyranny and
slavery.16
The commissioners sent a letter to Biassou promising him and his
band freedom—as well as improvements for plantation slaves—if he would
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change sides. Along with the letter they sent an envoy, one of Pierrot’s
lieutenants, the Kongolese-born Macaya, to convince Biassou and Jean-
François to join the French. The rebel leaders responded with a proud
statement of their loyalty to the king of Spain and to all kings. Kings had
ruled since the “beginning of the world,” and if the king of France had
been “lost,” the king of Spain remained, and had given them his protection.
The authority of the Republican commissioners would mean nothing until
there was again a king on the throne behind them. Jean-François and
Biassou not only rejected the entreaty but also recruited Macaya back to
their side. The next month he himself issued a powerful rejection of the
commissioners’ entreaties: “I am the subject of three kings: of the king of
Congo, master of all the blacks; of the King of France, who represents my
father; of the king of Spain, who represents my mother,” he announced. In-
voking the biblical magi, he wrote: “These three kings are the descendants
of those who, led by a star, came to adore God made man.” If he “went
over to the Republic,” he concluded, he might be “forced to make war
against my brothers, the subjects of these three kings to whom I have
promised loyalty.”17
Jean-François and Biassou launched a new round of attacks and, aided
by other defections among the troops fighting the Republic, made sig-
nificant advances across the northern plain. While Polverel left for Port-au-
Prince to oversee the defense against the Spanish in the Western Province,
Sonthonax stayed in Le Cap and tried to gain more supporters for the Re-
public. It was, he declared in early July, “with the natives of this country, that is, the Africans, that we will save Saint-Domingue for France.” But the
liberty Sonthonax was offering the “Africans” in return for military service
was nothing more than what the Spanish had been offering for several
months, and there were few new converts. On July 11 Sonthonax sought to
make service in the Republic more enticing by declaring that, in addition
to those who joined the Republic, their current—and future—families
would be freed.18
Polverel extended the commissioners’ offer of freedom to the west and
south. Working with André Rigaud, he sent envoys into the mountains of
Les Cayes, where the survivors of the “kingdom of the Platons” were gath-
ered, to invite them to join the Republican army. Those who agreed would,
along with their families, be granted freedom. They would have the re-
sponsibility of overseeing the return of other slaves to their plantations.
This time, most of them accepted the terms. The main insurgent leaders,
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notably Armand and Martial, became captains of companies in the newly
formed Republican legions.19
Many rebels remained aloof, however. The commissioners, desperate
to gain the allegiance of the mass of the insurgents, understood that they
had to offer more. As early as July they had warned a free-colored com-
mander in the north that if the members of his class resisted their gradual
preparation of “an emancipation that is now inevitable,” it would happen
“all at once” through “insurrection and conquest.” They challenged the
free-coloreds to embrace a “pure republicanism,” reminding them that
equality was not “the only principle,” and that liberty preceded it. This letter, according to one contemporary, proved that the commissioners already
saw “the torrent that would carry everything away.” In fact, though, it sug-
gests the opposite. They imagined, as did abolitionists in France, that it
would be possible to oversee a gradual emancipation that would not “hurt
cultivation.” Soon, however, they would be decreeing a very different kind
of emancipation, seeking to channel and contain a torrent they could not
control.20
At the end of August Polverel issued a proclamation acknowledging
the crucial role that “warriors”—slaves turned Republican soldiers—were
playing in defending the colony. “Those who own nothing,” however,
should not have to “sacrifice their lives for the defense of the property of
others.” The “warriors” deserved more than freedom. They deserved land.
Following the policies of the French revolutionary government, Polverel
had already decreed that the property of those who had “abandoned or
betrayed” Saint-Domingue would be confiscated by the state. In his Au-
gust proclamation Polverel announced that he would distribute this state-
owned land “among the good and loyal Republicans”—whether “insurgent
Africans” or Spanish defectors—who fought “for the defense of the col-
ony.” He hoped his call would encourage all to rally around France and go
on the offensive against Santo Domingo, so that the Republic on the island