Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (58 page)

dreds of rifles. According to Descourtilz, Dessalines took advantage of his

control of the disarmament process to undermine it, secretly returning to

their owners the very weapons he confiscated publicly, and stocking up on

ammunition in preparation for the time he rebelled again. The process of

taking weapons away, however, confirmed the suspicions many had about

the intentions of the French: both Sonthonax and Louverture had warned

that the rifle was the guarantor of liberty in Saint-Domingue.6

The disarmament process, meant to destroy the population’s capacity to

defend itself, backfired. It incited uprisings in several parts of the colony, including Port-de-Paix and the island of Tortuga, and helped to propel a

series of defections among the colonial troops in the north. Colonel Sans-

Souci reemerged as one of the revolt’s major leaders. During the month of

June he had submitted to the French. In early July, however, Leclerc, sus-

pecting that Sans-Souci was preparing a “new rebellion,” ordered his ar-

rest. Before the French could get their hands on him he defected with

many of his troops and attacked a French camp. Along with leaders such as

Va-Malheureux and Macaya, he soon controlled much of the mountainous

territory of the Northern Province, brilliantly repulsing French attacks

sent against him. “The insurrection seems to be gaining more and more so-

lidity,” wrote one French officer in late July. “The areas that used to be

quiet are now in insurrection.” The “brigands” were burning plantations,

mounting ambushes, and barricading the roads, and when confronted by

French forces they “retreat as they burn.” Many lower-ranking officers

from the colonial army were seen heading with their weapons to areas con-

trolled by rebel leaders.7

French officers sought to terrorize the rebels into submission. Giving

the order to execute “five negroes” who had been stopped by a patrol with

weapons and bayonets, one officer announced: “It is only through terrible

examples that we will succeed in disarming the country and give this im-

portant colony back its splendor and its prosperity.” “I give you permission

to hang any rebel or malcontent.” He recommended that such examples be

made of officers suspected of being sympathetic to the rebels, as well as

managers and drivers on the plantations. “They are the ones who are be-

hind the rebellions and who encourage the negroes to revolt,” he insisted.

The French should show “no mercy today” and should punish crimes, in-

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cluding those committed earlier during the war, with “the rope,” “the form

of torture that frightens the negroes.” Over time the French increasingly

practiced such summary justice against black troops, often distinguishing

little between soldiers who had remained loyal to them and those who had

risen in revolt. Naturally, French brutality ultimately made the decision to

change sides easier for those who had remained loyal. Fearing the worst,

the French helped bring it about by acting the part of an army bent on

destruction.8

James Stephen had predicted that once the “true design” of the French

mission was unmasked there would be no stopping the resistance against it.

The disarmament alarmed many in Saint-Domingue, and news arriving in

the colony from across the Atlantic and from other parts of the Caribbean

soon confirmed their fears about Leclerc’s ultimate mission. In May 1802

Bonaparte signed a decree that publicly declared what had been decided

the year before: in colonies such as Martinique that had been returned to

France by the Treaty of Amiens, slavery would be “maintained in confor-

mity with the laws and regulations anterior to 1789.” The transatlantic

slave trade would once again be open to French ships. An explanation at-

tached to the law made clear that the proslavery planters of Paris had suc-

ceeded in winning over Bonaparte. “We know how the illusions of liberty

and equality were propagated in these far-off countries, where the remark-

able difference between men who are civilized and those who are not, and

the difference in climates, colors, and habits, and, most important, the se-

curity of European families, inevitably require great differences in the civil and political state of people.” “Those innovations so ardently desired by

zealots”—that is, emancipation—had had “disastrous effects”; “in search-

ing to indiscriminately make all the men of the colonies equal in their

rights,” they had “only made them all equally miserable.” The application

of “philanthropy” had “produced in our colonies the effect of the siren’s

song: with them came miseries of all kinds, despair, and death.”9

Soon afterward all “black” or “mulatto” soldiers were outlawed from vis-

iting Paris or the French port cities without official permission from the

government. (Black sailors, presumably, were expected to remain on board

when their ships were in port.) Two months later, more restrictions were

put in place: “blacks,” “mulattoes,” and other “people of color” were not to

enter the “continental territory of the Republic” without explicit authoriza-

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tion from officials. All those who entered the territory illegally would be arrested, imprisoned, and deported.10

The racial egalitarianism of 1794 had been replaced by a reinvigorated

racist regime. The extent to which times had changed was made clear by

the fate of the three men who had come from Saint-Domingue bringing

news of Sonthonax’s emancipation in 1794, and who had been showered

with applause in the National Convention as living symbols of the end of

the “aristocracy of the skin.” In March 1802 the African-born Jean-Baptiste

Belley was arrested by Leclerc and deported to France. Belley had long

been an enemy of Louverture, and Leclerc’s action against him seems to

have been motivated by no political consideration other than the fact that

he was a black man who had once occupied a high political office in

France. Belley spent the next years in prison and died alone and forgotten

in France in 1805. His onetime colleague Jean-Baptiste Mills, who was

of mixed African and European descent, was arrested and deported to

Corsica, where he was joined by hundreds of other deportees from the

Caribbean who were condemned to forced labor on the island. The white

member of the three-man group, Louis Dufay, who had given the speech

celebrating the emancipation Sonthonax had proclaimed in Saint-

Domingue, was left free and given permission to return to Saint-Domingue.11

Official racism had returned to the French empire with a vengeance.

But the fate of those who had been freed in 1794 was left unclear. The May

1802 law on the colonies ended with a vague reference to Guadeloupe and

Saint-Domingue, which stated that “a healing system” must be substituted

for the “seductive theories” of the revolution. If slavery was not mentioned

outright, however, there was less and less doubt about the kind of “healing”

Bonaparte’s regime intended. His colonial minister, Decrès, wrote: “I want

slaves in our colonies. Liberty is a food for which the stomachs of the ne-

groes are not yet prepared. We must seize any occasion to give them back

their natural food, except for the seasonings required by justice and hu-

manity.”12

In Guadeloupe a military expedition sent from France a few months

after the Leclerc expedition, led by General Antoine Richepance, had

started a war that paralleled the conflict taking place in Saint-Domingue.

In May, however, the French defeated the major rebel group, who blew

themselves up on a plantation at a site called Matouba rather than surren-

der. Mass executions and deportations followed, targeting not only the re-

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285

bels but also officers of African descent who had fought with the French.

Richepance received orders from Paris to reestablish slavery but put off

the action for fear of inciting new revolt. His secrecy, however, could not

hide France’s ultimate intentions. Deportees from Guadeloupe impris-

oned in ships harbored off the coast of Saint-Domingue escaped and

spread news of what had happened on their island. Rumors spread in

Saint-Domingue that slavery had been reestablished in Guadeloupe, and

were so pervasive that even Leclerc believed them.13

The news from Guadeloupe converged with other information flooding

into the colony. As news of the reopening of the slave trade arrived, so

did letters from France’s former slaving companies offering to bring

slaves from Africa into Saint-Domingue. “I had asked you, citizen consul,”

Leclerc lamented to Bonaparte, “not to do anything” that would make the

people of Saint-Domingue “fear for their liberty.” Now Bonaparte’s “plans

for the colonies” were “perfectly known.” Seeking to hide the truth as long

as possible, in late August Leclerc wrote Decrès a letter in a secret numeri-

cal code. “Do not consider reestablishing slavery here for some time,” he

pleaded. He would make it possible for his successor to do so, but given

“the innumerable proclamations” he had made “to assure the blacks of

their liberty,” Leclerc did not want to be in “contradiction with himself.”14

But it was too late for dissimulation to work as a weapon in Saint-

Domingue. Too many now understood that this was a war between slavery

and freedom. In October 1802 Leclerc would make this fact unmistakably

clear with a proclamation offering liberty to all those individuals freed in

the colony by the emancipation decrees of 1793 who joined the French in

fighting the insurgents. Planters promised to draw up notary acts assuring

freedom to any of their former slaves who volunteered. These declarations

made it undeniable that slavery was on the horizon, since otherwise no one

in the colony would have any use for the individual freedoms that were be-

ing promised.15

Already in August Leclerc noted the “true fanaticism” among the rebels,

who would rather die than surrender, and lamented that he no longer

had any “moral power” in the colony. He had “nothing left but terror”

to use against the insurgents, and he deployed this weapon with despera-

tion, hanging sixty insurgents in one day in Le Cap. Still, as he wrote a few days later, the rebels—both men and women—seemed uncowed, and even

“laughed at death.” Furthermore, as he reminded Decrès, to inflict terror

effectively he would need more “money and troops.”16

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Throughout August the French battled against insurgent bands across

the colony. The still-loyal troops under Dessalines and Christophe brought

them some successes. But insurgent leaders such as Macaya and Sans-

Souci fought back, and even when they retreated they were never cap-

tured. Each time an insurgent encampment was “destroyed or dispersed”

it was “replaced by another, led by the same leaders, striking the same

blows against the enemy, nourishing the same hopes.” Sans-Souci was par-

ticularly successful, using tried-and-true techniques to stave off French ad-

vances, fighting a war without clear fronts, in which small groups set up in

advance posts would sometimes hold, and sometimes retreat and draw the

soldiers into “murderous ambushes.” The French lost 400 soldiers in one

September attack against Sans-Souci. He managed to hold vast stretches of

territory, nearly surrounding Le Cap on one side, while troops under the

command of Macaya held the region of Limbé. In the south, too, there

were bands made up of defectors from the colonial army, who used artil-

lery effectively against the French, backed up by many plantation laborers.

One group, led by officers including Cangé and Gilles Bambara (who were

probably African-born), besieged the town of Jacmel and set up ambushes

that for a time prevented French reinforcements from breaking through.

Such successes were to be expected. Many bands were led by “fighting

units of an army of liberation” composed of hardened veterans. Mean-

while there were hundreds of smaller bands who continually harassed the

French. Leclerc wrote in late August of “2,000 leaders” he needed to re-

move from the colony, including plantation managers, who could easily in-

cite their plantation laborers to revolt.17

In the middle of August the officer Charles Belair—who in 1793 had

signed his name alongside those of Jean-François and Biassou to a plan

demanding freedom—launched an audacious plot aimed at drawing colo-

nial troops fighting against the French into the opposition. The powerful

Dessalines, however, refused to join, and indeed helped the French crush

the uprising and capture and execute Belair. But although Dessalines,

Christophe, and Alexandre Pétion—who had played a key role at the siege

of Crête-à-Pierrot and had since been serving the French loyally—re-

mained loyal to the French, increasing numbers of soldiers and officers

from their units were defecting to join the revolutionaries. Reporting on

his September attack against Sans-Souci, Leclerc noted that one column