Toussaint Louverture (37 page)

Some effort had been spent on cementing the young men's loyalty to France. Before the fleet sailed, they had been entertained by Napoleon Bonaparte in person: a grand dinner at the Tuileries, where Colonel Vincent, Captain General Leclerc, and other dignitaries were among the guests. After presenting Isaac and Placide with fancy dress uniforms and richly ornamented swords and pistols, Napoleon charged them with a message: “When you arrive in your country, you will make it known to your father that the French government accords him protection, glory and honor, and that it is not sending an army into the country to battle him, but only to make the French name respected against enemies of the country.”
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Placide, who had not long before been used as a decoy by Napoleon—he had embarked on an Egypt-bound ship to make
observers and spies believe the fleet was sailing for Saint Domingue— seems to have taken these instructions with a grain of salt. At Ennery, it was Isaac who presented Napoleon's argument. “While he spoke, Toussaint kept the most profound silence; his features no longer had the expression of a father who listened; they expressed the withdrawal of an impassive Statesman.”
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Whereupon Coisnon presented the letter which Napoleon had written to Toussaint. This missive, both firm and friendly in tone, announced that Captain General Leclerc was to be appointed as “first magistrate” of the country—a position superior to Toussaint s. It reminded the black leader that Leclerc came with “sufficient forces to make the sovereignty of the French people respected.” It hoped that “you are going to prove to us the sincerity of the sentiments you have constantly expressed in all the letters which you have written to us.” After an equivocal discussion of the Constitution (extremely mild by comparison with Napoleon's real opinion of that document) the letter comes to the point: “What can you desire? The liberty of the blacks? You know that in all the countries we have been, we have given it to the peoples who didn't have it. Consideration, honors and fortune? After all the services you rendered, which you will still render under present circumstances, and with the special feelings we have for you, you should not be uncertain of your consideration, your fortune and the honors that await you.”
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These honeyed phrases were false to the bone. Napoleon was already resolved to reduce Toussaint and other black leaders “to nothingness.” Leclerc had secret orders to arrest and deport the black officers as soon as feasible, and the restoration of slavery in Saint Domingue was part of the hidden agenda.

Toussaint thanked Coisnon for his care of his sons, and told him briefly that he would not treat with Leclerc until the latter had stopped his offensive movements. He spent the rest of the night composing a reply to the captain general, then rode down to Gonaives to attend mass there, on the morning of February 9. On his return to Ennery he sent Coisnon and his sons back to Le Cap with his reply to Leclerc.

Soon after, his wife arrived in Ennery, with a pack train bearing the treasuries of Arcahaie, Saint Marc, Verrettes, Petite Riviere, and Gonaives. Toussaint had a plan to combine all the funds of the various
towns into a single war chest if an invasion did come, but he was on the wrong side of the island at the critical moment when the fleet arrived, and the speed of their operations allowed the French to capture some of this money right away. In the many areas where the local commanders decided for whatever reason to yield to the French without a fight, the local operating funds were lost.

Toussaint's reply reproached Leclerc for opening hostilities before delivering Napoleon's letter to him; he was already thinking in terms of a subsequent legal defense. Otherwise, he temporized, asking for a truce and for time to reflect and to pray that there would be no more unnecessary “effusion of blood.”
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This letter threw Leclerc into a rage. He denounced Toussaint as a rebel in the presence of Isaac, Placide, and his aides-de-camp. When he had calmed down he drafted a reply offering a two-day armistice, stating that if Toussaint acknowledged his authority Leclerc would accept him as his second in command, but if he had not done so in two days' time he would be declared an outlaw and “devoured by the vengeance of the Republic.”
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For the third time in as many days, Isaac and Placide crossed the dizzying peaks of the mountains separating Le Cap from Gonai'ves; this time Coisnon was too exhausted to accompany them. At the Gonai'ves headquarters, Toussaint told his sons what would become the kernel of his defense from the Fort de Joux: “My children, I declare war on General Leclerc but not on France; I want him to respect the Constitution that the people of Saint Domingue have given themselves.” Somewhat more recklessly, he added, “I cannot deal with the First Consul, since he has shredded the act which guarantees our liberties”
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—a statement which shows that Toussaint had plainly detected the attitude Napoleon meant to conceal.

Then he asked his sons to choose a side, promising, “I will use neither ruse nor violence to keep you with me.”
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Isaac, the younger, was the first to reply: “You see in me a faithful servant of France, who could never resolve himself to bear arms against her.” Placide, who may or may not have been Toussaint's blood son, said, “I am with you, my father, I fear the future, I fear slavery, I am ready to fight to oppose myself to it, I know nothing more of France.”
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Placide was promptly incorporated into Toussaint's honor guard. Toussaint announced to that elite group
and its officers, “He is prepared to die for our cause”—the guardsmen had already declared, “We will all die for liberty”
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Isaac did not return to Leclerc, but remained with his mother and his younger brother, Saint-Jean; he observed much of what followed as a noncombatant.

On February 17, Leclerc issued a proclamation outlawing the generals Toussaint and Christophe, but not the other black officers or soldiers of Toussaint's army, who were told that they would be incorporated into the French forces if they chose to change sides. A similar amnesty was offered to the revolting field hands; if they laid down their arms they would be treated as “stray children,”
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and sent back to their plantations. General Leclerc declared that he was entering the campaign in person and that he would not take his boots off until Toussaint had been brought to submission. If he was faithful to this vow, he must have ended—three months later—with a pair of very smelly feet.

Dessalines, whose ability to move men swiftly over difficult terrain was equal to Toussaint's, was at large with his portion of the army in the area surrounding Port-au-Prince. Though he was not able to destroy the capital he kept it in a constant state of alert, while at the same time controlling Saint Marc (where he had built a fine house), threatening Leogane, and terrorizing the plantations in the plain of Cul de Sac. On the Atlantic coast west of Cap Francais, Maurepas had regrouped in the hills above Port de Paix and reinforced himself with several thousand armed field hands. He would have retaken the town if a naval cannonade had not turned back his freshened forces.

On February 19, Leclerc launched a three-pronged attack intended either to surround Toussaint at Ennery or to force him out to the coast at Gonai'ves. With General Hardy, Leclerc began a march south from Cap Francais. Rochambeau was leading a column southwest from Fort Liberte toward Ennery and Gonai'ves via Saint Raphael and the Central Plateau. Boudet marched north from Port-au-Prince.

Leclerc's strategy did not follow Vincent's recommendations in every detail: he had allowed four hundred of Humbert's troops to be killed at Port de Paix, and the remaining eight hundred were tied up in a sideline struggle with Maurepas and the Ninth Regiment. And he had not brought his troops from the Spanish side to occupy Hinche
and other key points along the old border where Toussaints line of retreat could be cut off. Rochambeau's column cut a swath across the Central Plateau, but simply passed over this territory without firmly occupying it.

At this point, however, Toussaint was not contemplating a wholesale retreat to the interior. He was determined to hold Gona'ives, the seaport he felt best able to defend, if at all possible, but at the same time he had to meet the threat from Rochambeau. In these early days of the invasion, Napoleon's crack veterans were living up to their big reputation—moving rapidly, careless of the discouraging terrain, and proving themselves very difficult to stop or slow down. Leclerc's advance put such pressure on Ennery that Toussaint was compelled to send his family to a more secure area south of Gonai'ves; nevertheless, Hardy's vanguard captured his youngest son, Saint-Jean, during the family's retreat. Isaac, Suzanne, and a handful of nieces and cousins found shelter at Lacroix Plantation.

Toussaint had arms depots and entrenchments along the Ravine a Couleuvre, which winds from the heights of Morne Barade down to Lacroix and Perisse plantations, on the dry edge of the Savane Desolee some seven miles south of Gonai'ves. Barade was a dangerous crossroads for Toussaint—his brother Pierre had been killed there during the trouble with Biassou in 1794—and he was determined to reach it before Rochambeau. The race was a close one, for Vincent had told Leclerc of the importance of this position, and Rochambeau had recruited a traitor from Toussaints army to guide him.

The relative strength of the forces that met at Ravine a Couleuvre is hard to ascertain. Rochambeau had probably landed about eighteen hundred men at Fort Liberte, but some had been diverted from his march on Gonai'ves. By some accounts Toussaint was moving with no more than four hundred men of his guard; others say he had as many as three thousand regular troops. By all accounts there was a larger number of armed cultivators already waiting to support him in the ravine.
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Aside from the urgency of the purely military objective, Toussaint was also under pressure to defend his family, thinly sheltered at Lacroix Plantation just to his rear.

Heavy rain on February 20 slowed the French advance; nevertheless Rochambeau managed to occupy the heights of Morne Barade on the night of February 22, hours or minutes before Toussaint arrived there. The battle began in the darkness; by daybreak the French had forced the defenders out the bottom of the ravine onto the flat ground of Perisse Plantation. Here Toussaint was able to rally his honor guard cavalry and organize a desperate charge which scattered the French and drove Rochambeau's men back into the mouth of Ravine a Couleuvre.

That same morning, General Vernet was retreating, inch by inch, before Leclerc and Hardy's advance on Gonai'ves. Toussaint, exhausted and frustrated by the outcome at Ravine a Couleuvre, rode his horse into the town's cathedral and tore down the cross, shouting that he would no longer serve this Jesus who had betrayed him. A more warlike spirit had apparently mounted his head. Gonai'ves could not be held, but Leclerc found the town in ashes, as he had found Le Cap. Toussaint, now collapsing with fever as well as exhaustion, rode south to Pont d'Ester, where his family and army were waiting.

Ravine a Couleuvre was a loss for both sides. Toussaint had not been able to hold key terrain, but he had gotten away with his army more or less intact. According to a report Leclerc filed a couple of days later, six hundred of his men had been killed outright and thirty-five hundred wounded. The French were able to win engagements, but establishing real control over the country was a different and much more difficult matter.

For Toussaint, the worst consequence—the one he most feared—of the drawn battle at Ravine a Couleuvre and the loss of Gonai'ves was being completely cut off from Maurepas and the Ninth Regiment at Port de Paix. Now Leclerc was able to support Humbert and his detachment (which had been taking a beating from Maurepas since their landing) by sending reinforcements toward Port de Paix via Gros Morne (another route which Vincent had explained to him). At around the same time Maurepas received inaccurate but disheartening news that Toussaint had been completely demolished at Ravine a Couleuvre.
Still worse, a rebel commander of the Ninth, Lubin Golart (who had sided with Rigaud during the mulatto-black civil war), attacked him from the direction of Jean Rabel. Surrounded by three hostile forces and out of communication with his commander, Maurepas surrendered to Leclerc on February 25.

La Crete a Pierrot, March 4-24,1802

Dessalines, meanwhile, had been playing cat and mouse with Boudet since the latter's landing at Port-au-Prince two weeks earlier. On February 24 he slaughtered all the whites of Saint Marc and set the town afire, beginning with his own opulent residence, as Christophe had done at Le Cap. Boudet rushed to the rescue but arrived too late, and while the French general stared aghast at the hundreds of scorched
corpses in the ashes of Saint Marc, Dessalines slipped south to his rear. He would have succeeded in destroying Port-au-Prince this time if Pamphile de Lacroix, commanding during Boudet's absence, had not hastily enlisted the aid of two large maroon bands led by Lafortune and Lamour Derance, both disaffected by Toussaint's harsh labor policy and the severe repression of the Moyse rebellion. Lamour Derance, who had been skirmishing with Dessalines before the French invasion, was willing to accept the enemy of his enemy as his friend.