Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [90]
How would he, himself, respond, supposing their situation to be reversed? In Saint Domingue, certain men had died, ignored, in prison, such as Blanc Cassenave and Dieudonné—but he, Toussaint, had not killed these men! Such reproaches were inaccurate, and injust. Dieudonné, for example, had died as the captive of General Rigaud, at Les Cayes, while Toussaint was at the opposite end of the country, in the Department of the North. It was said that Dieudonné had been loaded with so many chains that at last he suffocated under their weight . . .
Now in his cell at the Fort de Joux, Toussaint felt the cold cut through to him again, and he was sweating, but his sweat was cold, and there seemed insufficient air in the cell for him to breathe. When Baille presented himself with the day’s rations, Toussaint declared that after all there was something more. Something different. After all, he would not send the document he had composed, or would not send it now. In its place, he would send a letter to Napoleon, no more than a line or two—five minutes of Monsieur Jeannin’s time. Toward nightfall, as the diamonds of weak daylight died on the cell floor, he dictated to the secretary the briefest of notes, which merely said that after all certain matters had been too delicate for commitment to a written memoir—matters it would be best to communicate in person.
When Jeannin had left with this last letter, Toussaint’s agitation drained from him. He sat for a while longer in the waning light of the fire, suffused with a sense of renewed calm, a patience too deep even to be aware of itself. The gongs of the fort’s bell no longer impressed him. He lay down on his cot and slept, free of dreams.
Part Two
BLACK SPARTACUS 1794–1796
Let righteousness cover the earth like the water cover the sea . . .
—Bob Marley, “Revolution”
In the spring of 1794, the military map of Saint Domingue was signifi-cantly redrawn by Toussaint Louverture’s abrupt shift of allegiance from the Spanish monarchy to the French Republic. While in Spanish service, Toussaint had taken pains to reinforce the line of military posts known as the Cordon de l’Ouest, which ran from the seaport of Gonaives through the mountains to the border of Spanish Saint Domingue in the interior. The Cordon de l’Ouest effectively cut off the Northern Department of Saint Domingue, with its important town of Cap Français, from the rest of the colony, whose coast from Saint Marc (the port immediately south of Gonaives) to Port-au-Prince was now occupied by the English invaders or their allies. To control this line improved the French Republican position immeasurably.
Governor-General Etienne Laveaux had technically become the highest French authority in Saint Domingue upon the departure of Sonthonax. The scope of his authority was greatly enlarged by Toussaint’s volte-face, which made it possible for Laveaux to return from his hemmed-in position at Port-de-Paix to the seat of government at Cap Français, the northern capital. During Laveaux’s protracted absence, Le Cap had become a mulatto stronghold, under the command of the colored officer Villatte, and members of the colored land- and slave-owning class had substantially rebuilt the town, from which most whites had fled when it was sacked and burned in June of 1793.
The arrival of Toussaint Louverture in their camp was not necessarily welcomed by this mulatto class. Toussaint did have colored officers in his own force, and he cooperated with Villatte and other colored officers of the Le Cap region, under the command of Laveaux. Nevertheless, the mulatto faction of the north regarded Toussaint’s sudden ascendancy, and Laveaux’s rapidly increasing dependence on him and his