Toussaint Louverture (12 page)

The count was a Creole, born in the colony, where his family had been established for nearly a century, and he was heir to several important plantations at Haut du Cap, Plaine du Nord, and Port Margot, in the mountains between Haut du Cap and Borgne. Breda Plantation came to him through the marriage of his father, Louis, to Marie-Anne-Elisabeth de Breda. Louis Panteleon was born in 1728, two years after the marriage; when he was two his father was killed in a duel at Cap Francais. The toddler count was thus left fatherless but very, very rich. In 1786, Louis Panteleon de Noe was nearly sixty when he inherited Breda Plantation from his childless uncle in France.

Bayon de Libertat was a smaller operator; in the middle of the eighteenth century he was just setting a foot on the bottom rung of the ladder which the Noe family had already ascended. While managing the vast holdings of the comte de Noe, de Libertat bought and sold smaller properties of his own, including undeveloped tracts and two one-eighth shares of existing plantations. The jealous Lespinaist estimated him to be worth
“150 mille livres de procurations.”
²³

Freed in 1776, Toussaint Breda put a toe on the bottom of the ladder to prosperity and began to follow Bayon de Libertat, who by then had climbed about halfway to the top. Though he owned several properties by 1791, Toussaint went on living at Breda Plantation, close to his former master. It is possible that Toussaint may have managed some of the Noe properties in de Libertat's stead, for Lespinaist's letter accuses Bayon of absenting himself to one of his own plantations and neglecting the lands he was supposed to be supervising.

Since free blacks were apt to be viewed with suspicion, especially if they lived in comparatively remote areas like Grande Riviere or Borgne, Toussaint's position was much more secure at Breda, under the wing of his white protector. Working as a
commandeur
there would have given Toussaint a salary which he could invest in the properties he was acquiring. As a coachman he was apt to be charged with messages by his employers, and it is likely that he played some supervisory role at Noe properties other than Breda, like Hericourt Plantation, near the town of Plaine du Nord, which he would later adopt as a headquarters.
Traveling on behalf of de Noe and de Libertat would allow him to learn about tracts of land in which he himself might be interested; for example, if he called at de Noes coffee plantation at Port Margot, he didn't have much further to go to reach a small holding of his own at Borgne. Of course, Toussaint could never become a
blanc,
but up until 1791 his economic interests, at least, were closer to those of the
grands blancs
of Saint Domingue than to the great mute body of their slaves.

All evidence suggests that the relationship between Bayon de Libertat and Toussaint Breda was one of friendship, as much as or more than that of master and slave. It's often noted that Toussaint accompanied and assisted Bayon in various escapades and slightly off-color adventures. Some of these were probably amorous; Madame de Libertat went on a long journey to France in 1775, to take the waters at Bagneres, and Toussaint's own youthful prowess with the ladies was proved by the number of his extramarital children. But in 1791, Madame de Libertat was in residence at Breda, Bayon de Libertat was sixty-four years old, and both husband and wife had been sobered and saddened by the death of the younger of their two daughters at her school in France in 1784. “It is most Dolorous for a father and mother who love their children so,” Bayon wrote to Monsieur de Breda that year. “God has struck us in a sensitive spot.”
²⁴
He brought his sole surviving child back to Saint Domingue and swore he would not be parted from her except by death.

Toussaint, by his own reckoning, was over fifty in 1791. Both men had presumably outgrown the excesses of their youth, and settled down into a quieter, calmer level of companionship.

Colonel Cambefort, commander of the Regiment du Cap, was Bayon de Libertat's brother-in-law, and the regiment's second in command, Lieutenant Colonel Louis-Anne de Tousard, was Bayon's close friend and associate. Toussaint must have known both men well; aside from the family connection it is likely that all four were members of the same Masonic lodge; if Toussaint really was a Mason he could have had no more probable sponsor than Bayon de Libertat, who is known to have been a member of the lodge at Le Cap.

According to tenacious legend, a delegation of chafing royalists vis-
ited Breda Plantation sometime in the summer of 1791, with the approval of Governor Blanchelande. The
petit blancs
faction, commonly called Pompons Rouges for the red cockades they wore in support of the French Revolution, now two years under way, had taken over the Colonial Assembly at Le Cap. The
grands blancs,
of a generally royalist disposition and wearing white cockades to show their loyalty to the king, were looking for a strategy to put the
petit bL·nc
canaille back in its place. Their notion, wild though it seems, was that a manufactured and secretly controlled uprising of the slaves on the Northern Plain could frighten the
petit blancs
faction back into submission to the Pompons Blancs, according to the old sociopolitical rules of the ancien regime.

It seems likely that the delegation to Breda included either Cambefort or Tousard, if not both of them. Since both men were very familiar with Toussaint, it is not so incredible that one of them should have, in the words of Haitian historian Celigny Ardouin, “let slip a few words regarding that project for a rising of the slaves; too perspicacious not to recognize right away the opportunity for the future of his class in a general insurrection, Toussaint hazarded a few words in favor of the project; and added that the promise of three free days per week and the abolition of the punishment of the whip would suffice to raise the work gangs; but also, he demanded freedom for the slaves principally in charge of moving the others to action, as the price of their submission to the benevolent will of those who would deign to look after their well-being.”
²⁵

Celigny Ardouin goes on to describe Toussaint as being the chief, though hidden, instigator and organizer of the meeting at Bois Caiman, to which he invited “his most intimate friends, Jean-François Papillon, Georges Biassou, Boukman Dutty and Jeannot Billet,” all of whom were, like Toussaint,
commandeurs
on their respective plantations. Since Toussaint was already well known and well traveled all over the Northern Department, this mission would have been easy for him and would have attracted no unusual attention, though Blanchelande supposedly furnished him a special safe-conduct for these very special errands. “The conspirators met and distributed roles. Slyer than the
others, Jean-François obtained the highest rank, Biassou the second; Boukman and Jeannot, being more audacious, charged themselves with directing the first movements. Toussaint reserved for himself the role of intermediary among the conspirators and secret movers of the insurrection: in any case he did not want to declare himself until he could be sure of the success of the enterprise.”
²⁶

Though all the historians close to the events adopt it, the theory that the great slave uprising of 1791 had its origin in a white royalist plot has been dismissed and discredited by scholars of the late twentieth century, in part because it seems to belittle the achievement of Saint Domingue's revolutionary slaves in winning their own freedom and founding their own nation. However, if the
grands blancs
actually did light the fuse to the bomb that blew up their whole society, that is simply one of history's most magnificent ironies—it takes nothing at all away from the achievement of the black revolutionaries and their leaders, who almost immediately wrested control of the scheme away from the original plotters and took it over for themselves. Toussaint, especially, was always adept at redirecting the energy of others to serve his own ends.

Meanwhile, the strongest argument against the royalist conspiracy theory is its sheer preposterousness. The
grands blancs
had been in terror of a massive slave insurrection for at least a generation. What consequences could they possibly have expected if they started one themselves? What possible advantage could they have seen in the devastation of the plantations of the Northern Plain and the massacre of so many white inhabitants: men, women, and children, all members of their own class? How could they possibly have imagined that they could keep a general insurrection under control once it had begun?

If there are any answers, they lie in the state of extreme desperation among Saint Domingue's
grands blancs
at this time. Most of the upper strata of the colonial military and government consisted of French aristocracy. The world of the ancien regime was swiftly disintegrating in France, whence the nobles were racing into exile. Blanchelande and his cohort envisioned that the colony might become a refuge for the ancien regime—a notion compatible with the fledgling independence move-
ment that existed among Saint Domingue's planter and mercantile classes, as well as with the idea of accepting an English protectorate there. But if any of these schemes were to come to fruition, the expansion of the French Revolution into the colony would absolutely have to be stopped.

From this point of view, the idea of instigating an essentially bogus slave insurrection could be made to resemble an acceptable risk. The conspiracy, if it did exist, was taking its cues from events in France of the previous two years, where what had become known as “the Paris mob” was launched at various royalist targets—the Bastille, Versailles, and so on—by a few manipulating hands well hidden behind the scenes. The royalist conspirators of Saint Domingue knew or supposed that these popular manifestations in Paris were not nearly so spontaneous as they were meant to appear.

So perhaps they really did believe that they could let the genie of mass slave revolt out of the bottle and then, when they chose to, put it back in. If so, they learned within twenty-four hours just how wrong they had been. Tousard, setting out at the head of his regiment to defend Limbe, was obliged to rush back to stop Jeannot from sacking Cap Francais. Clouds of smoke from the burning cane fields on the plain had darkened the sky over the Jewel of the Antilles; before long the bedraggled survivors from the plantations began to drift in. If the black leaders of the slave revolt had ever been taking orders from royalist whites, on August 22, 1791, they definitively stopped doing so.

However, during the weeks and months that followed, vestiges of the royalist conspiracy did persist. Even in October 1791 the insurgent blacks seemed to cling to the idea that a deal was to be struck with their masters involving three free days a week and abolition of the whip. The otherwise mystifying royalist bent of so many of the rebel bands can also be explained in these terms.

Whether it really existed or not, the idea of a royalist conspiracy was adopted by Governor Blanchelande's political enemies—most notably by Leger Felicite Sonthonax, who ordered Blanchelande's deportation on these grounds. Later on, when it had become clear that the increasingly bitter conflict between Toussaint Louverture and Sonthonax would leave only one man standing, Sonthonax leveled the
same accusation at Toussaint: “By the impulsion of the same emigres
*
who surround him today, he organized in 1791 the revolt of the Blacks and the massacre of the White proprietors.”
²⁷

Former governor Blanchelande was shipped to France under suspicion of “having wanted to operate the counter-revolution”
²⁸
—the centerpiece of the desired operation was the slave insurrection of 1791. The same writer, the Marquis de Rouvray, saw Blanchelande as an “imbecile,” the puppet of an “assembly of fools and intriguers.”
²⁹
Blanchelande's accusers could always reiterate the evidence derived from the eyewitnesses who survived the camps around Grande Riviere: “that these rebels had nothing but white flags, white cockades; that their device was Vive Louis XVI, Roi de France et de Navarre; that their war crywas Men of the King; that they told themselves they were under arms to reestablish the king on his throne, the nobility and the clergy in their privileges.”
³⁰

Blanchelande was convicted of treason, and sent to the guillotine on April 11, 1793. A few years later, the French general Kerverseau renewed the accusation against Toussaint Louverture: “Shaped by long slavery to the merry-go-round of flattery and dissimulation, he knew how to mask his feelings and disguise his steps and for that he was only a more terrible tool in the hands of the disorganizers. It was he who presided over the assembly where he had proclaimed as chiefs of the insurrection Jean François, Biassou, and some others whose size, strength and other physical advantages seemed to point toward command. For himself, weak and frail, known to his comrades by the name Fatras-Baton, he found himself too honored by the position of secretary to Biassou. It's from this obscure post, where he had placed himself, that hidden behind the curtain he pulled all the strings of intrigue, organized the revolt and prepared the explosion.”
³¹

A role as a deeply secret co-conspirator would help to explain how Toussaint was able to remain quietly and calmly unmolested at Breda during the first several weeks of the insurrection, when all the sur-
rounding plantations had been burned to ash; the several pell-mell rebel assaults on Cap Francais that occurred during these weeks had to pass directly in front of Breda's gates. Soon after the first outbreak of hostilities, Bayon de Libertat went to join the militia in the besieged Jewel of the Antilles, but he left his wife at Breda, in Toussaint's charge, apparently with perfect confidence that she would be safe there. Later on that fall, Toussaint seems to have had no serious difficulty bringing her to join de Libertat at Le Cap, and he had no more trouble sending Suzanne and their three sons through the war zone of the Northern Plain and the surrounding mountains to a safe haven across the Spanish frontier on the Central Plateau.