Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [411]
1798
MARCH 27: General Hédouville arrives from France as agent of the French Directoire to Saint Domingue. His orders include the deportation of Rigaud. He lands in Spanish Santo Domingo, to confer with Roume, a survivor of the Third Commission stationed in the Spanish town.
APRIL 23: British General Maitland begins to negotiate with Toussaint the terms for a British withdrawal.
MAY 2: A treaty is signed by Toussaint and Maitland. British will evacuate Port au Prince and their other western posts, in return for which Toussaint promises amnesty to all their partisans, a condition which violates French laws against the émigrés.
MAY 8: Hédouville arrives at Le Cap and summons both Toussaint and Rigaud to appear before him there.
MAY 15: Following the British evacuation, Toussaint and his army make a triumphal entry into Port-au-Prince.
JUNE: Following his first encounter with Hédouville, Toussaint indignantly refuses to obey the order to arrest Rigaud.
JULY: During interviews with Toussaint and Rigaud at Le Cap, Hédouville seeks to weaken the power of both generals by turning them against each other.
JULY 24: Hédouville proclaims that plantation workers must contract themselves for three-year periods, arousing suspicion that he plans to restore slavery.
AUGUST 31: Toussaint signs a secret agreement with Maitland, stipulating among other points that the British navy will leave the ports of Saint Domingue open to commercial shipping of all nations.
OCTOBER 1: Môle Saint Nicolas, the port of the northwest peninsula, is formally surrendered by Maitland to Toussaint. Following the transfer, Toussaint dismisses a number of his troops from the army and returns them to plantation work.
OCTOBER 16: Instigated by Moyse and Toussaint, the plantation workers of the north rise against Hédouville’s supposed intention to restore slavery.
OCTOBER 23: Under pressure from the rising in the north, Hédouville departs from Saint Domingue, leaving final instructions which release Rigaud from Toussaint’s authority. Commissioner Raimond, previously elected to the French legislature, accompanies Hédouville to France.
OCTOBER 31: Toussaint invites Roume to return from Spanish Santo Domingo to assume the duties of French agent in the colony.
NOVEMBER 15: Toussaint announces that plantation work will hence-forward be enforced by the military.
1799
FEBRUARY 4: Roume brings Toussaint and Rigaud together at Port-au-Prince for a celebration of the abolition of slavery, hoping for a reconciliation between them. But Rigaud leaves the meeting in anger when asked to cede to Toussaint control of the posts he’d won from the British in the Western Department (Grand et Petit Goâve, Léogane).
FEBRUARY 21: In an address at the Port-au-Prince cathedral, Toussaint protests the insubordination of Rigaud and warns the mulatto community against rebellion.
JUNE 15: Rigaud makes public Hédouville’s letter releasing him from obedience to Toussaint.
JUNE 18: Rigaud opens rebellion against Toussaint; his troops seize Petit and Grand Goâve, driving Laplume back from this area.
In the following days, the mulatto commanders at Léogane, Pétion and Boyer defect to Rigaud’s party. Mulatto rebellions break out at Le Cap, Le Môle, and in the Artibonite. Toussaint rides rapidly from point to point to suppress them, placing Moyse and Dessalines in command at Léogane and Christophe in charge of Le Cap. At Pont d’Ester, members of his entourage are killed in a night ambush.
JULY 8: Toussaint dispatches an army of forty-five thousand men to the south to combat Rigaud and his supporters.
JULY 25: Toussaint breaks the siege of Port-de-Paix, where his officer Maurepas was under attack from the Rigaudins.
AUGUST 4: Fifty conspirators at Le Cap are executed after a failure to take over the town for the Rigaudins.
AUGUST 31: In the midst of suppressing rebellion on the northwest peninsula, Toussaint narrowly escapes assassination