Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (59 page)

of colonial troops had not returned; he suspected that they had “deserted

after having killed their chief.” “This is now a war of colors,” he noted, add-t h o s e w h o d i e

287

ing that the columns made up of “white troops” had suffered heavier

casualties “than those composed of blacks,” presumably both because of

desertions and because some seemingly loyal black troops had fired on

their white comrades during the fighting. This was precisely what hap-

pened a month later when, during another attack south of Le Cap, two co-

lonial battalions “suddenly turned their fire” against French and Polish

units accompanying them, killing many and forcing the rest to retreat.18

In early October Leclerc ordered the arrest of a few hundred black sol-

diers stationed in Jacmel. During the previous weeks these soldiers had

demonstrated their loyalty to the French, staying behind as many of their

comrades defected to the rebel side, but Leclerc nevertheless suspected

them of treason. As they were being transported to Port-au-Prince in the

hold of a ship, the prisoners, led by their commanding officer, carried out

their final act of war. As Leclerc reported, all but three “strangled them-

selves,” choosing suicide rather than imprisonment by the French. “These

are the kind of men we have to fight,” Leclerc lamented. In Le Cap, mean-

while, part of another colonial brigade deserted, and the 500 who re-

mained were arrested. Leclerc believed that Dessalines and Maurepas

were behind the defections, and issued orders for the arrest of the two

officers.19

For colonial soldiers throughout the colony, time was running out. They

knew they might fall prey at any moment to the increasingly indiscriminate

violence exercised by the French against colonial troops whose loyalty they

suspected. Even if they survived these reprisals, they might end up dead at

the hands of the victorious insurgents. Rumors were spread among the co-

lonial troops that the French troops were preparing to leave the colony. It

was time, such rumors suggested, to make a choice between joining the in-

surgents or dying at their hands.20

The way into Le Cap was defended by colonial units loyal to France un-

der the command of Alexandre Pétion and Augustin Clerveaux—both men

of color—stationed on the outskirts of Le Cap. On October 13 Pétion and

Clerveaux suddenly changed sides, leading their troops to join the rebels

under the command of Macaya occupying the plain nearby. They attacked

the following night, taking several forts on the edges of Le Cap and forcing

the French troops to retreat into the town. The defection of Pétion and

Clerveaux was part of a larger coordinated uprising among the colonial

troops still allied with Leclerc. Christophe led his troops into the rebel

camp, marched on the lightly defended town of Port-de-Paix, and was

288

av e n g e r s o f t h e n e w w o r l d

greeted by a “naked man with epaulettes suspended on his neck” leading a

troop who shouted: “Vive le Général Christophe!” The town’s commander,

Maurepas, had, despite Leclerc’s suspicions, in fact remained loyal to the

French, but most of his troops had not followed when he retreated from

the town. In the Artibonite, meanwhile, Paul Louverture defected to the

rebel side with his troops. Dessalines attacked the garrison at Gonaïves,

sending the French soldiers into retreat to their ships in the harbor. He

wrote to the French officer commanding in nearby Saint-Marc, explaining

that the people of Saint-Domingue had come to see clearly the “inten-

tions” of the Leclerc mission, which were “openly manifested” by officers

serving under him who “fiercely massacre all the blacks and mulattoes.” “I

am French, a friend of my country and of liberty,” Dessalines continued. “I

cannot watch such atrocities with a serene eye.” He announced his inten-

tion to take Saint-Marc, demanding that the French officers retreat and

“return to Europe.”21

With the battle lines clearly drawn, many soldiers, both white and black,

found themselves on the wrong side. In Port-de-Paix, Christophe captured

a group of Polish soldiers and took them hostage. He offered Leclerc a

deal: he would send the Polish troops to Le Cap in return for the release of

his beloved orchestra, which was trapped in the town. When the French

general refused, Christophe executed the Poles. In Le Cap, meanwhile,

more extensive reprisals were under way. Leclerc ordered the immediate

arrest of all the remaining colonial troops in Le Cap and had 1,000 of them

loaded on ships in the harbor. Weighted down with sacks of flour tied to

their necks, they were all pushed overboard. During the next few days

their bodies were washed ashore along the beaches of the town, where “to

the disgust and horror of the town’s inhabitants” they rotted, untouched, in

the equatorial sun. The cycle of revenge continued: insurgents “executed a

number of white hostages within view of the city gates.”22

Orders were sent to officers throughout the colony to arrest and im-

prison all the black troops still serving with the French. Despite his continuing loyalty, Maurepas was not spared: in early November he and his fam-

ily were drowned in the harbor of Le Cap on Leclerc’s orders. The wife

and children of Paul Louverture, who were in Le Cap, suffered the same

fate. The French commanders deported whites who were tainted by their

affiliation with black generals, including one known as the “black white.” In early November one officer fed up with the executions noted that within

the past month the French had “drowned” nearly 4,000 colonial troops.

t h o s e w h o d i e

289

[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

“The Mode of exterminating the Black Army as practised by the French.” From

Marcus Rainsford,
A Historical Account of the Black Empire of Hayti
(1805).

Courtesy of the William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan.

“This is how we are fighting our war,” he lamented, and concluded: “The

French will never be masters of this country.”23

Weeks before the major defections began, Leclerc had written to

Decrès advocating a “war of extermination” in the colony. In order to “con-

tain the mountains,” he explained, he would have to destroy “a large part”

of the cultivators who lived there. “Accustomed” during the past ten years

290

av e n g e r s o f t h e n e w w o r l d

[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

“Revenge taken by the Black Army for the Cruelties practised on them by the

French.” From Marcus Rainsford,
A Historical Account of the Black Empire of
Hayti
(1805).
Courtesy of the William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan.

to “banditry,” he wrote, they could never be subjected to work. In early Oc-

tober, when it was clear that he was facing a general insurrection, he put

forth an even more forceful and brutal plan. “Here is my opinion on this

country,” he wrote to Bonaparte. “We must destroy all the blacks of the

mountains—men and women—and spare only children under twelve years

of age. We must destroy half of those in the plains and must not leave a sin-

t h o s e w h o d i e

291

gle colored person in the colony who has worn an epaulette.” The only

hope, the French commanders had concluded, was to start again in Saint-

Domingue with men and women imported from Africa who had never, as

one historian writes, known “what it was to have broken the chains and

won their freedom in the New World.” Otherwise the colony would never

be “peaceful,” and every year there would be a new “civil war.” Leclerc was

increasingly desperate. “Since I have been here, I have seen only the spec-

tacle of fires, insurrections, murders, of the dead and the dying,” he la-

mented to Bonaparte. “My soul is withered, and no joyful thought can ever

make me forget these hideous scenes.”24

His body followed his soul speedily. Within a few weeks Leclerc suc-

cumbed to the fever that had taken so many of his troops. He was survived

by his wife, Pauline, who soon returned to Europe. She would soon marry

an Italian nobleman, and one day be immortalized by the sculptor Antonio

Canova, to live on in stone, a mute witness to the débacle she had survived

in Saint-Domingue.

Late in 1802, crowds in Le Cap lined the streets and covered them with

flowers to greet a series of new arrivals in the colony. They were carried

into the town in cages: dogs purchased in Cuba, accompanied by trainers

who nourished them with blood and had them attack wicker figures—ap-

parently made to resemble “a negro”—stuffed with “animal entrails and

blood.” Leclerc’s replacement, Rochambeau, had ordered this new

weapon to help in the floundering campaign against the insurgents. He was

following in a venerable tradition: three centuries before, dogs had been

introduced on the island by Columbus in order to terrorize the indigenous

population. Aiming to “lift white morale,” he set up a public demonstration

of the dogs’ abilities, establishing a “circus” in the courtyard of Le Cap’s

Government House, the old home of the Jesuits. (Fond of euphemisms for

the horrors he was inflicting, Rochambeau referenced the practices of an-

cient Rome in calling the punishment of being eaten alive by dogs “de-

scending into the arena.”) Although some principled individuals refused

to attend the event, a huge crowd gathered to watch as a black prisoner—

the domestic of a French officer—was placed at the mercy of the dogs.

To the dismay of the crowd, the dogs showed little interest in attacking

the servant until his master intervened, slicing open the domestic’s stom-

ach to draw them into devouring him. Having provided entertainment to

whites in Le Cap, the dogs were then let loose on the battlefield. They

292

av e n g e r s o f t h e n e w w o r l d

sometimes proved a liability to their masters, however. Deployed to sup-

port one French column sent against the insurgents from Port-au-Prince in

March 1803, they contributed to a disastrous defeat. “Ignorant of color

prejudice,” they attacked those who were fleeing, who “in this circum-

stance happened to be white.” Many of the dogs would end up “eaten by

starving French soldiers.”25

An expert in atrocity, Rochambeau “ordered his victims (both military

and civilian) burned alive, drowned in sacks, hung, crucified, asphyxiated

by sulphur fumes in ships’ holds,” and “shot (after digging their shallow

graves).” His brutality, like Leclerc’s terror, proved counterproductive: it

helped expand and cement the alliance that proved crucial for the final

victory of the revolutionary army in Saint-Domingue. Just as French kill-

ings of colonial troops had united Alexandre Pétion and Jean-Jacques

Dessalines—who just a few years before had faced off against each other

during the brutal war between Louverture and Rigaud—Rochambeau’s ac-

tions alienated the most steadfast supporters of the French: portions of

the communities of color in the west and south who powerfully resented

Louverture and who initially viewed the French as saviors. Witnessing and

suffering from the racial violence of Rochambeau, most of these support-

ers realized that their only hope for survival was to join the revolution. Racist delirium shattered the last fragments of moral authority the French had

in Saint-Domingue.26

Now calling themselves the “indigenous army,” the revolutionaries were

by early 1803 jointly led by a solid coalition of ex-slave and colored officers.

In March an article published in Port-au-Prince noted that the rebels

were still fighting under the French tricolor and that this was a sign that

they wished “to remain French” and had no intention of “making the coun-

try independent from the metropole.” Pétion forwarded the article to

Dessalines, who decided it was time to disabuse their enemies of such no-

tions. He and his officers tore the white out of their French tricolor and

sewed the blue and the red back together again. In 1793 the tricolor had

been a symbol of the unity among whites, people of color, and blacks, all

joined in defense of the Republic. The message of the new flag was clear:

through their brutality, the French whites had forfeited their right to be included in the new political community being forged in the colony. Black

and colored residents were united in opposition to the whites.27

The unity of the indigenous army was, however, strained by other divi-

sions. Having defected from the French side, Dessalines and Christophe

t h o s e w h o d i e

293

planned to incorporate the troops that had preceded them in rebellion

into their former ranks in the army. This plan did not sit well with Sans-

Souci, who—leading preponderantly African-born troops known as the

“Congos”—had for months repelled attacks led on behalf of the French by

Christophe, and was unwilling to start taking orders from his former en-

emy. Both Pétion and Dessalines sought to paper over the differences be-