Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [251]
Most of the invading blancs were still drawing tight the empty noose they had devised—empty since Toussaint had slipped out of it, after Ravine à Couleuvre. Now the slip knot would close on La Crête à Pierrot, and then let them see if their rope was strong enough to hold what it had snared. Meanwhile, the blancs had left the terrain they’d occupied on their passage south too lightly garrisoned.
Though most of the honor guard cavalry had been detached at Petite Rivière, some horsemen still were following Toussaint, under command of Pourcely. Toussaint had picked Guiaou and Guerrier to bear his standards, riding on his either side. Behind the cavalry, the infantry companies under Gabart were stepping out smartly, and as they passed through the mountains they gathered more men—field hands and even some maroons Toussaint was able to rally to fight the blancs, armed with muskets distributed during the time of Sonthonax, or cached more recently in these hills by Toussaint himself, from his trade with the North American Republic.
They crossed the central plateau with tremendous speed, for now Toussaint’s rear guard reported that General Hardy’s division had been sent to pursue them, while Leclerc took his main force further south. At that news, Toussaint only laughed and with a pressure of his knees moved Bel Argent into a canter; diversion of French troops from the south was just what he wanted, and they would not catch him now, till he was ready to be caught. The tiny garrison Rochambeau had left at Saint Michel bolted at first sight of black horsemen sweeping the tall grass of the high savanna toward the town, abandoning almost all their stores as they ran for Ennery.
The stores unfortunately were scant, though there was a little powder and shot. Toussaint spent most of the night in Saint Michel, rising two hours before dawn to lead his men onward, excepting a small detachment he left to mislead Hardy toward Saint Raphael. By daybreak they had entered the canton of Ennery, where Toussaint’s mood turned very dark, as they rode through the wasted fields of Habitation Sancey and halted before the burnt and collapsed timbers of the grand’case there. Soon Guiaou came riding down from the heights with the word that Descahaux was still intact, but this news did not alter the grim set of Toussaint’s jaw.
Toussaint hardly needed spies as such, for anyone in the roadside cases was eager to tell him that the blanc soldiers from Saint Michel had come stampeding through the night before, to infect the similarly small garrison at the village of Ennery with their panic. Quickly he ordered Gabart to march the infantry southwest of the bourg, while he himself rode straight in with the cavalry. Resistance was token when the horsemen charged—the French garrison was so quickly routed from Ennery that most of them escaped Gabart’s encircling movement, though some were killed by long-range shots as they ran pell-mell down the road toward Gonaives.
In twenty minutes this fight was over, and the only vestige of French authority left in Ennery was Leclerc’s most recent proclamation nailed to trees in the sleepy square. Toussaint leaned out from Bel Argent’s back to rip a copy from its nail. A couple of women and small children peered out curiously from the corners of the houses as he scanned the document, then recoiled as he crushed it in one hand.
“Outlaw—he declares me outlaw! The brigand who has burned my house—it is Leclerc who is the outlaw, and if I wish it I will take back Gonaives from him this very day.”
Toussaint threw the paper over his shoulder and dug his spurs into his horse. The wind blew the wad toward Guiaou’s face; by reflex he caught it in one hand. He unrolled the crumpled paper and smoothed on his saddlebow, squinting painfully at the letters.
Art. 1er—Le général Toussaint et le général Christophe sont mis hors la loi; et il est ordonné à tous les citoyens de leur courir sus, et de les traiter comme rebelles à la République française . . .
“What does it say?” Guerrier had ridden up beside him, with curious eyes—he remembered