Toussaint Louverture - Madison Bell [13]
Further hints of Toussaint's evolving role among the rebel slaves occur in a series of letters written by Biassou to the Abbe Guillaume Sylvestre Delahaye, parish priest of Dondon, who had been captured when this small mountain town was overrun by Jeannot on August 27, 1791. Jeannot, notorious for torturing and murdering the white prisoners in his hands, was savage enough to shock the other rebel leaders, but the Abbe Delahaye seemed to enjoy special treatment—though confined to the Dondon parish house, he was apparently unmolested, and even promised money for saying masses when Jeannot demanded it (though it does not appear that he was ever actually paid).
Many whites already suspected Delahaye of abolitionist tendencies. Now he came under suspicion of active collaboration with the rebel slaves during the long period he spent in or near their camps. He hotly denied these accusations after he returned to the white-controlled area—at a time when other priests were being executed for the same sort of collaboration of which he was accused. Other white prisoners grouped Delahaye with a handful of priests who were actively encouraging the slave insurrection, and Biassou once wrote to request his help in drafting laws to govern the men in his command (there is no evidence that Delahaye ever responded).
Both Jeannot and Biassou showed Delahaye special consideration, the latter writing to him on October 28, 1792, that “M. le Marechal Toussaint” had put an end to certain unspecified “hostilities” bothersome to Delahaye, and had ordered Delahaye's domestic servants (i.e., his slaves) to return to work at the Dondon parish house. The same letter reports that Toussaint had ordered a Senor Garcia, presumably a white Spaniard, to be put in irons for insolence to Delahaye, which suggests that his authority had grown quite considerable. By the end of October, at least, Toussaint had been promoted from medecin general to marechal; some six weeks later, on December 18, Biassou mentioned in another letter to Delahaye that “Toussaint is recognized to be general of the army”6
By November 1791, the military situation had drifted into a kind of standoff. In the beginning, Boukman had been the principal leader of attacks on the whites and their property that more resembled enormous riots than any sort of organized military campaign. Boukman was himself a houngan, or Vodou priest, as Biassou and many of the other early leaders of the revolt were reputed to be, and according to contemporary white observers, many of the men who followed them into wild charges were probably possessed by their Iwa when they attacked. Some waved bull's tails to fan away bullets; others would simply wrap themselves around cannon mouths so that the men behind them could advance in safety.
At first these jihadlike onslaughts had been very successful. As Muslim soldiers believe that death in battle guarantees them Paradise, so the rebel slave warriors saw death as the fastest road to Ginen anba dlo. The defenses of the whites scattered over the Northern Plain were frail, and the rebel slaves needed just a few days to drive the survivors to refuge in Cap Francais. The first few sorties by the town's defenders were also overwhelmed by the frenzy of the rebel attacks—these were men who seemed to care nothing for death,