Toussaint Louverture - Madison Bell [105]
If a kindly paternalism was evident in Toussaint's way of ruling, the signs of raw authoritarianism were certainly there too. Wherever it might spring up, rebellion would be crushed. The labor policy was strict and severe, and its enforcement meant increasing intrusion of the military into all areas of civil administration and civil life. Toussaint's Saint Domingue was on a defense footing, and would maintain that stance by whatever means necessary.
The thing to be defended, above all, was the freedom of the former slaves. Thus far, at least, Toussaint's purpose was clear and unwavering. At whatever cost, the flag of universal liberty flew—and would continue to fly—from one end of the island to the other.
*In Vodou, drastic changes in behavior and/or personality are explained by an individual's being possessed by different spirits at different times; metaphorically the individual is seen as a horse that carries different spirit-riders.
*Toussaint is reminding his audience of the black regiment bizarrely known as the “Swiss,” who were recruited in the same region and promised freedom for fighting for the mulatto—grand blancs Confederation of Croix des Bouquets. When the fighting was finished, the Swiss were betrayed, shipped first to the Mosquito Coast, then stranded in Jamaica, then returned to Saint Domingue by the British. Most of them were slain on board ship in a Saint Domingue harbor. Toussaint had always been outraged by this episode and knew how to share his outrage with his listeners.
FIVE
The Last Campaign
“From the first troubles in Saint Domingue,” Toussaint Louverture liked to say to his guests in 1801,
I felt that I was destined for great things. When I received this divine portent, I was fifty-four years old; I did not know how to read or write; I had a few portugaises; I gave them to a junior officer of the Regiment du Cap; and, thanks to him, in a few months I knew how to sign my name and read correctly.
The revolution of Saint Domingue was going its way; I saw that the Whites could not hold out, because they were divided among themselves and crushed by superior numbers; I congratulated myself on being Black.
It was necessary to begin my career; I crossed into the Spanish region, where they had given asylum and protection to the first troops of my color. This asylum and protection ended up nowhere; I was delighted to see Jean-François turn himself into a Spaniard at the moment when the powerful French Republic proclaimed the general freedom of the Blacks. A secret voice said to me: “Since the Blacks are free, they need a chief,” and it is I who must be the chief predicted by the Abbe Raynal. I returned, transported by this sentiment, to the service of France; France and the voice of God have not deceived me.1
This self-portrait is touched up here and there, as political self-portraits tend to be. Certainly there are misrepresentations: Toussaint learned how to read and write in childhood, and at the outbreak of the revolution he was worth far more than “a few portugaises.” Finessing the point that in 1791 he was a free, prosperous owner of land and slaves, this description implicitly identifies him with the class of nouveaux libres, to whose leadership a force larger than himself had pushed him. In its picture of how Toussaint read and reacted to the situation of the early 1790s, this discourse leaves out more than a little, but is probably accurate as far as it goes.
He refers three times to prophecy and supernatural inspiration, whether “divine portent” or “secret voice.” Phrased in the elaborate French reported by General Pamphile de Lacroix, these references have a Catholic tone to them.