Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [262]
“Governor-General, one might say,” the doctor murmured, “in all but name. And there’s the difficulty.”
Maillart glanced at him in the moonlight. “I don’t follow.”
“Listen,” said the doctor. “When Sonthonax was recalled to France in ninety-four, General Laveaux was the supreme French authority here—supreme over one starving fort at Port-de-Paix, I know, for it was you who told me that tale. Toussaint appeared and gave better than half the colony into his control again—then Laveaux made him Lieutenant-Governor. Now that Laveaux has gone, who succeeds him?”
“Ah,” said the captain. “But Toussaint is General-in-Chief, not Governor.”
“So Sonthonax would have it, certainly. But what does Toussaint think?”
“That,” said the captain, “no one has ever been able to say.”
“Yes, but you and I have both seen how closely he studies what has gone before. I’ll wager he remembers Galbaud as well we do, even if he was up on the Spanish border when the whole fiasco took place. Galbaud was Governor-General when he went to war with Sonthonax and the Commission. It’s hardly three years since they burned this very town to the paving stones.”
The captain stopped in his tracks. “What do you mean?” They stood on the corner of the Rue Espagnole, with a wind blowing up toward them from the city gate.
“It is the posts themselves, as much as the men who occupy them,” the doctor said. “In the old system, before the insurrection in ninety-one, it was the same. The civil authority set against the military. Intendant against Governor-General. In Paris they designed it so, to inhibit conspiracies for independence and the like. No one wanted to see another American Revolution break out in Saint Domingue.”
“So . . .” the captain let out a whistling breath. “But surely in this case the particulars are different.”
“But suppose they were not. Suppose Toussaint to be no different than any other French brigadier. Perhaps he really does see himself that way—he carries himself in the role. No different from the Generals Rochambeau and Desfourneaux, save for his African complection.”
“Save that Desfourneaux is now in the guardhouse at Port de Paix, and Rochambeau has been shipped back to France to answer charges.”
“Exactly,” the doctor said. The captain offered the flask again, but he declined—the cognac seemed to mix poorly with the rum he had taken earlier. “Because they gainsaid Sonthonax. Perhaps also for lack of success in the field—or in diplomacy.”
“Why, everyone knows he arrested them for protesting his favor of the blacks in the army.”
“In other words, they gainsaid Sonthonax,” the doctor said. “As much as to rebel against the civil authority here, do you see?”
“But with Toussaint? In confidence, of course, Antoine, but I know you carry their dispatches.”
“Well.” The doctor glanced over his shoulder. He nudged the captain; they both began walking again, toward the casernes. “You know most of their differences, great or small. Toussaint is eager to take over the Spanish side of the island, in accord with the Treaty of Basel, while Sonthonax prefers to delay. The whole business of the émigrés and the old landowners has been bitter—if it looks as if it’s all about Bayon de Libertat, you know well enough there are many more like him. Toussaint would have them all come back to manage their properties with free labor.”
“Which is sensible, for that would raise revenue.”
“And that revenue would furnish the army. Yes,” said the doctor, “but Sonthonax, never mind his courtesies this evening, is obliged to regard those returning colons as traitors, enemies of the Republic. Strange as it may seem, our friend Isabelle and her family and her properties would likely fare better according to Toussaint’s idea of things.”
“You are right,” said Maillart. “I have often thought so.”
Their boots clopped on the empty street; the doctor’s pace quickened as his thoughts ran more swiftly. “As for the rest of it, Toussaint has complained that Sonthonax is fomenting