Toussaint Louverture - Madison Bell [113]
Toussaint had made Moyse commander of all the Northern Department—previously and potentially the most productive region of the colony—but Moyse was not willing to take the extreme and violent measures Dessalines had used to make the south and the west produce. Contrary to Toussaint's program for reestablishing the plantation economy, Moyse was inclined to allow the plantations of the north to be parceled out into small holdings. The new Canton Louverture cut a slice out of Moyse's territory in the north, and Moyse suspected that Toussaint would give this command to Dessalines, rather than to him. Moreover, Moyse felt that the constitution which Toussaint had devised for the colony contained dangerous infringements on general liberty. Julien Raimond's son-in-law Pascal, who had become one of Toussaint's aides after the collapse of the Third Commission, warned his general in chief that Moyse seemed implausibly unconscious of trouble brewing all over the north.
On the night of October 29, a revolt broke out on the Northern Plain in the style of the first rising of 1791—whites were massacred from Fort Liberte to the gates of Cap Francais. The new insurrection swept all over the Northern Department within two days, carrying the towns of Dondon, Acul, Plaisance, Port Margot, and Limbe. The war cry of the rebels was “General Moyse is with us—death to all the whites!” Joseph Flaville, the ever-insubordinate commandant of Limbe, slaughtered the last refugees on the waterfront there as they were trying to find boats to escape. Bayon de Libertat, Toussaint's former master and old friend, was counted among the dead. Moyse might have made a point of that. “Whatever my old uncle does,” he had said, “I cannot resign myself to be the executioner of my race; he is always chewing me out for the interests of the metropole; but those are the interests of the Whites, and I won't love the Whites until they give me back the eye they made me lose in battle.”24
The revolt was well and carefully timed, and caught much of the black military leadership off guard, or almost. Dessalines was celebrating his marriage to Marie Claire Heureuse, &femme de couleur he had met during the siege of Jacmel, when she persuaded him to allow her to bring medical supplies through his lines to nurse the sick and wounded in the surrounded town. The wedding festivities, which cost 100,000 livres and went on for three days, took place at Petite Riviere, in the Artibonite region. Toussaint joined the celebration, though he had to tear himself away from La Dame Fissour to do so. Moyse, who had other plans, did not attend.
Unfortunately for Moyse's intentions, Henry Christophe also skipped Dessalines's wedding, and was in position to shut down the revolt inside the gates of Cap Francais before it was well begun. He arrested a ringleader named Trois Balles and soon extracted enough other names from him to make thirty arrests. Within twenty-four hours, he was able to reassure the American merchants and agents who had fled to their ships at the first signs of trouble that Le Cap had returned to good order.
Next, Christophe subdued Limbe, Port Margot, and Acul, captur-ing Joseph Flaville in the process. General Vernet soon regained Plaisance. Dessalines, once recovered from his wedding night, was not far behind. On the plantations where white owners had been slain, he simply massacred the entire work gang.
Toussaint himself was so enraged that when he passed through the rebel zone he ordered the mutineer regiments on parade and summoned certain men to step out of the ranks and blow their own brains out. None refused to obey this order. Christophe had brought Joseph Flaville as a prisoner to Le Cap; Toussaint ordered him and several other conspirators to be blown