Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (54 page)

gave us liberty, and the Republic would not accept that it be taken away

from us.” Anyone who opposed Leclerc, however, was a “traitor.” Reaching

for a metaphor he hoped would have a particular local meaning, Bonaparte

added that the “rage of the Republic” would “devour” any such traitors

“as fire devours your dry sugarcane.” In his accompanying proclamation,

Leclerc echoed Bonaparte’s combined promises of protection and threats

of violence. Bonaparte promised to the blacks “the liberty they have fought

so hard for,” as well as assuring the future prosperity of “commerce and ag-

riculture, without which colonies cannot exist.” These promises, Leclerc

insisted, would be fulfilled; to doubt that they would be was “a crime.”28

Before he left France, Leclerc had been encouraged to translate these

proclamations into Creole so that they would be understood by the masses

in the colony. He did so at some point on the Atlantic crossing, presumably

using the expertise of one of the many former residents of Saint-Domingue

who accompanied him. Like any process of translation, this one trans-

formed the document in interesting ways. In explaining that peace had

come, the creole declaration noted that the “nations that were at war” with

France had now “shaken the hand of the Republic.” And in encouraging

the colony’s residents to join in the celebration of peace, it added an interesting phrase: “You are from Saint-Domingue: aren’t you French too?” In

insisting on the equality of all men, the proclamation added a line that

read: “Whites, blacks, are all children of the Republic.” Perhaps under-

standing that, rather than encouraging them to submit, the metaphor of

burning cane might serve instead to remind the residents of Saint-

Domingue of an all-too-effective tactic of resistance, the translator entirely dropped any such reference, noting simply that those who resisted the mission would be “punished.”29

These proclamations were delivered to Le Cap from the French fleet

and distributed in the town by its black mayor. But they did not con-

vince Christophe or other officers in the area of the wisdom of obeying.

Even as Leclerc issued his demands at Le Cap, troops under the command

of General Donatien Marie Joseph de Rochambeau disembarking nearby

were “assailed by black troops who fired on them, saying that they did not

want any whites.” The French troops shouted back to the black soldiers

that they were “brothers” and “friends” and were “bringing them their lib-

erty.” The latter point would have seemed particularly strange to the sol-

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[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

“Christophe, Incendiaire de la ville du Cap.”

Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de

France.

diers, many of whom had been part of the revolution of slaves that had

brought liberty to Saint-Domingue—and to France—a few years before.

The garrison of Fort-Liberté killed sixty of the arriving troops but, sur-

rounded and outnumbered, soon put down their weapons. Rochambeau

decided to make an example of the black troops, slaughtering several hun-

dred of them after they had surrendered.30

In Le Cap, meanwhile, Christophe dispatched the commander of the

town’s port, the officer Sangros, to announce that because of Louverture’s

orders he could not allow the French troops to enter the town. In another

missive he backed up his refusal with a threat: “You will enter the town

of Le Cap only once it has been reduced to ashes, and even on these ashes

I will fight you.” Enraged by Christophe’s refusal, and convinced it was

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simply a delaying tactic, Leclerc decided to take the town by force. He

would have liked to anchor close in and occupy the town immediately, but

Louverture had ordered the beacons that guided ships safely into the har-

bor removed. The French naval officers demanded that Sangros lead them

in, first offering him money, then issuing threats. He refused. The French

killed him and dumped his body overboard.31

Rather than risk the dangers of a blind entry into the port, Leclerc sent

ships to drop off soldiers on either side of Le Cap. They were to encircle

the town and capture it from inland. His hope, he wrote to the colonial

minister, Denis Decrès, in Paris, had been to force Christophe’s troops to

abandon Le Cap before they had a chance to “set it on fire and massacre

the whites” and also to save as much as he could of the northern plain. As

his army marched, cultivators on the plain fled from their plantations.

“They had been told the most absurd stories,” Leclerc wrote. “They were

told it was the Spanish or the English who were coming to conquer the is-

land, and that they would all be killed.” He was able to dispel their fears,

he claimed, by treating them well. But he failed to prevent the burning of

Le Cap. As Leclerc’s troops disembarked to the west at Limbé, two French

ships fired on the Fort Picolet, which guarded the approach to the town.

The gunners in the fort fired back, announcing to the troops in Le Cap that

they were under attack. Christophe made good on his threat and ordered

his soldiers to set the town alight. For the second time in a decade, it was

devoured by flames. It was February 4—eight years to the day since the

abolition of slavery had been decreed in Paris. Despite all the protestations made by Leclerc and Bonaparte, many in Saint-Domingue believed that

liberty itself was at stake. Several months later one of Louverture’s colo-

nels, the African-born Sans-Souci, would describe the officers serving with

him as “defenders of liberty.” As it turned out, they had good reason. As

Leclerc would later admit, a few “negroes” who were arrested soon after

the arrival of the expedition were sold as slaves by French officials.32

Some contemporaries claimed that Louverture was in fact in Le Cap or-

chestrating events at the time of Leclerc’s arrival. One officer went so far

as to claim that the governor had disguised himself as “a Congo negro”

in order to be able to set in motion the burning of Le Cap unnoticed.

Louverture seems, however, to have been in Santo Domingo at the time

the expedition arrived, and to have left for Le Cap only once he was aware

of its presence off the coast. On his way to Le Cap, he later recalled, he received news from Christophe about Leclerc’s demands, and also met with

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Dessalines, who reported that he had seen ships off the western coast of

the colony. When he reached the hills at the edge of the northern plain

he saw Le Cap burning in the distance. He soon found the roads filled

with residents fleeing the city, and Christophe retreating with his army.

When Louverture criticized Christophe for having set fire to the town,

Christophe protested that the actions of Leclerc and Rochambeau’s brutal-

ity at Fort Liberté made clear their hostile intentions.33

Louverture was soon convinced that war—and its faithful companion in

the colony, fire—was the only proper response. He declared that since

France had sent forces to “put us back into slavery,” there was no choice

but to fight back. “They come to take away a freedom they promised to

maintain; let us assemble our forces, and all die, if necessary, to make sure our brothers are free!” “The whites of France and of the colony, united together, want to take our freedom from us,” he wrote to one of his officers in early February. “Beware of the whites; they will betray you if they can,” he

added. He ordered cultivators to be recruited to swell the ranks of those

who would fight against the French. He wrote to Dessalines, commanding

him to send “a few faithful emissaries” into Port-au-Prince—which French

troops had occupied thanks to the support of several local officers—to set

the town aflame. Louverture explained that, as they waited for the “rainy

season that will rid us of our enemies” through disease, their only “re-

source” was “destruction and fire.” It was crucial that “the land bathed in

our sweat” not afford any provisions to the invading army. Dessalines

should destroy the roads, order that “corpses and horses” be thrown into

springs, and “annihilate and burn everything” so that “those who have

come to put us back into slavery will always find in front of them the image

of the hell they deserve.” Dessalines would carry out these orders zeal-

ously, and even surpass them, in the coming weeks.34

After taking Le Cap, Leclerc sent troops to attack the nearby Port-de-

Paix. The commander of the city, Maurepas, after having a conference

with Louverture, fought back furiously against the French troops. When

Maurepas retreated, he made sure they “conquered only ashes.” As they

had hoped, the invaders found partisans in the area, which had long har-

bored rebels against Louverture. But Maurepas continued to fight, retreat-

ing to the nearby hills with 2,000 soldiers and several thousand cultivators, and managed to contain the French troops in the town. This effort gave

Louverture time to send troops under the command of the Kongolese-

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born officer Macaya into the region of Acul, near Le Cap, and to organize a

line of troops in the mountains bordering the northern plain.35

Elsewhere in the colony, however, some of Louverture’s officers surren-

dered to or openly welcomed the arriving French troops. This was the case

of his commander in Port-au-Prince, the Frenchman Pierre Agé, as well as

of his officer Laplume in the south, who went on to serve the French loy-

ally throughout their campaign. In the occupied Spanish portion of the

island, Louverture’s brother Paul was in command. Toussaint sent him a

letter ordering him to resist the French and to capture Kerverseau, the

commander of the convoy sent by Leclerc to take Santo Domingo. He also

gave the messengers a false letter ordering Paul to submit, so that if they

were captured by the French they could show them this letter and prevent

them from knowing Toussaint’s true intentions. The emissaries were cap-

tured, as Toussaint had feared. His ploy, however, failed. The French exe-

cuted the men and, searching their bodies, found both letters. They passed

them on to Kerverseau, who presented Paul Louverture with the false letter

ordering him to submit. He followed what he thought were his brother’s

orders, putting the entire Spanish colony in the hands of Leclerc’s troops.36

With conflict raging in many parts of the colony, Leclerc sent Louverture’s

sons Isaac and Placide to bring their father the letter Bonaparte had writ-

ten him. “You have a great reputation, and you can preserve it intact,”

Leclerc wrote in an accompanying letter to Louverture, asking him to sub-

mit to his authority. He must “no longer have any worries,” he continued,

regarding the “liberty” of the citizens of the colony, for it had been won

and established too firmly for Bonaparte to imagine “taking it away.” But

when Leclerc received no immediate response from the governor, he is-

sued a declaration of war.37

“They want Saint-Domingue for themselves,” Leclerc wrote of the en-

emy “chiefs,” “and if they sometimes speak of France, it is only because

they believe they are not strong enough to reject her openly.” Leclerc,

however, would teach them, and particularly the “rebel” Louverture, about

“the strength of the French government.” “All the good Frenchmen who

live in Saint-Domingue” must recognize the black general as “a mon-

ster who preferred the destruction of his country to the surrender of his

power.” They must also see that for him the word “Liberty,” which he

spoke so often, was only a means of justifying “the most absolute despo-

tism.” Louverture and Christophe were declared outlaws. Those cultiva-

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tors who had been tricked into following them would be treated like “mis-

led children” and forced back to the plantations. Not to be outdone,

Louverture boldly declared Leclerc the outlaw. Within a few days of arriv-

ing in the colony, Leclerc had started an all-out war.38

As he launched his campaign against Louverture, Leclerc was already

aware of several factors that were sapping the strength of his force. Before

he had left France, he had already noted a serious lack of decent sup-

plies for the expedition; “the wine is bad, the biscuit no good,” he had

complained. In Saint-Domingue, on the day he declared war against

Louverture, Leclerc wrote in desperation to the colonial minister in Paris

to “come quickly to his aid” and to send him “thirty thousand pairs of

shoes,” for his troops were “barefoot.” He had been told in Brest that there

were 15,000 pairs of shoes on board, only to find on the other side of the

Atlantic that in fact there were only 4,000 “bad pairs.” In Saint-Domingue

he had difficulty buying appropriate supplies. He complained bitterly

about the American merchants, who dominated the commerce of the col-

ony and who he believed were overcharging him—they were “all the most