Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [337]
“Now who’s to be credited with that ambush?” Maillart said, grunting as the rough trail jostled his injury. “I suppose it’s obvious enough. The Rigaudins have small hope of victory on the battlefield here.”
“So they naturally turn to assassination.” The doctor completed his thought.
“Naturally,” Maillart agreed, and after a moment, “I suppose that won’t be last of them either.”
Toussaint, perhaps moved by similar reasoning, had changed the direction of his march. That day they set up a discreet command post in a cleft of the Cahos Mountains. He had divided his army in two. Moyse had gone to the relief of Maurepas at Port-de-Paix, while Clervaux, a mulatto officer still loyal to Toussaint, was taking the direct route to Môle Saint Nicolas. Both divisions were supported by throngs of field hands that Toussaint had hastily rearmed and brought along in his train.
Moyse, in a vigorous assault, relieved the siege of Port-de-Paix, and drove the Rigaudins back to Jean Rabel. In the aftermath of this engagement, Maurepas bound his prisoners across cannon mouths and blew them out to sea with grapeshot volleys; though the style of execution might seem savage, it had been introduced to the colony, a couple of years earlier, by the eminently civilized British General Maitland. Clervaux’s advance, meanwhile, was delayed by the resistance of Bombarde, but artillery and assault reduced the post. Moyse broke the last Rigaudin bands at Jean Rabel, and their remnants went into hiding in the mountains. Moyse advanced westward along the Côtes de Fer, meeting little opposition now, meaning to converge with Clervaux at Le Môle.
Riau had been sent with Moyse, but after Port-de-Paix was retaken, he returned to Toussaint’s headquarters in the Cahos. He had nothing to say about the battles he’d just fought, but he was leading the doctor’s mare behind his own horse. The mare had the same trappings she’d worn when she bolted, and even the long gun was still in the scabbard, though its pouch of cartridges was empty. The rifle had been left out in the rain, so that its lock was stiff with rust, but the doctor took it apart and cleaned and oiled it until it moved smoothly once again. It seemed unlikely that in the present situation he would face attack, so long as Toussaint chose to direct the campaign from the Cahos, but still he felt more secure when the long gun was near at hand.
The Rigaudins at Le Môle held out for a week’s time under a steady barrage from Moyse’s cannon, but there was no hope for them against the reunited forces of Moyse and Clervaux—ten thousand regularly trained troops, plus an indeterminate number of freshly armed cultivators, completely surrounding the town (by land). Le Môle was also blockaded by a few French ships at sea, but the two chief officers loaded a canoe with as much of the local treasury as it would float, and on a night when clouds hid the moon they discreetly paddled out through the blockade and eventually made their way to the south. The day after their escape, Moyse and Clervaux took over Le Môle, putting to the sword all those who had obviously taken Rigaud’s part. Toussaint’s partisans, including the aged Monsieur Monot (who’d survived a month of very rough treatment), were set free from the prison.
On September twenty-fifth, Toussaint came to Le Môle in person, and published a proclamation which denounced Rigaud for raising armed rebellion in the south and for sending his agents everywhere else to spread sedition. Rigaud’s principle (according to Toussaint) was that the mulattoes were the only true natives of Saint Domingue (since France belonged to the whites and Africa to the blacks)—yet the blacks still ought to support Rigaud rather than Toussaint, for Toussaint had always favored the white masters who had