Toussaint Louverture - Madison Bell [124]
These assurances were fundamentally false, though Vincent doubtless wanted to believe them. Most likely Toussaint never received this letter.
News of France's maritime peace with England unnerved Toussaint considerably, since it was certain to rattle his delicate balance among England, the United States, and France. When Bunel returned from Jamaica with news of the peace negotiations between France and England, Toussaint stopped Santo Domingo's press from publishing it, on the grounds that the news had not come through official channels. But the rumor spread all over the colony, particularly within the white planter class.
“Ill-wishers are spreading the noise that France is coming with thousands of men to annihilate the colony and liberty,” Toussaint announced, rebuking those “who lend to the French government liber-ticide intentions, who claim that it doesn't want to send me my children because it wants to hold them as hostages.” Toussaint refused to believe the rumors, or so he claimed, “but in the case that this injustice should be real, it suffices for me to tell you that there is only one thing left to do for a child whose father and mother are so unnatural as to want to destroy him, and that is to place his vengeance in the hands of God. I am a soldier, I don't fear men, I only fear God—if it is necessary to die, I will die as a soldier of honor who has nothing to reproach himself.”48 His mind was deeply divided in those days, between fading hopes for conciliation and the increasing probability of war.
Since putting down the Moyse rebellion, Toussaint had redoubled his measures to enforce internal security. He ordered investigations of all officers who had seemed sluggish in responding to the revolt. In Toussaint's view, idleness was the mother of rebellious tendencies; thus his work regulations became ever more strict. “As soon as a child is able to walk,” he proclaimed, “he should be applied to some useful work proportionate to his strength.” Dissipation, too, might foster rebelliousness, and in the same proclamation Toussaint insisted again that “marriage is the most holy of social institutions”49 and promised to purge the military and civil service of all those who lived with concubines or with more than one woman at the same time. Women were no longer to be permitted in military barracks—a most unpopular edict. In Toussaint's mind, idleness, loose morals, and insubordination were all of a piece. These were the germs of the Moyse rebellion and he was determined to stamp them out.
Despite the catastrophic failure of that rebellion, small revolts continued to crop up among the African-born segment of the nouveaux libres. Lamour Derance, a maroon leader who had never accepted the new national authority Toussaint was constructing, raided the town of Marigot on the south coast, and briefly threatened Jacmel, until Dessalines marched against him from Leogane. Lamour Derance was driven back to the mountains, but Dessalines failed to capture him or destroy his forces.
On December 8, Toussaint ordered the public execution of twenty-three blacks who had been captured in the midst of Vbdou ceremonies; these were always instrumental in stirring up revolutionary sentiment, especially among the African-born. The houngans and mambos who died had names like Saint Jean Pere l'Eternite and Sainte Jesus Maman Bondieu. Dessalines had pushed for the executions, as away of intimidating the cultivators of the Cul de Sac plain, and he was the one to carry them out. The victims were shot, then decapitated, to make doubly sure they were dead. One Jean Pimon died like a soldier who had nothing with which to reproach himself, remarking to Dessalines as he faced the guns: “Blan wete, Mulatre wete, si