Toussaint Louverture - Madison Bell [132]
On February 17, Leclerc issued a proclamation outlawing the generals Toussaint and Christophe, but not the other black officers or soldiers of Toussaint's army, who were told that they would be incorporated into the French forces if they chose to change sides. A similar amnesty was offered to the revolting field hands; if they laid down their arms they would be treated as “stray children,”69 and sent back to their plantations. General Leclerc declared that he was entering the campaign in person and that he would not take his boots off until Toussaint had been brought to submission. If he was faithful to this vow, he must have ended—three months later—with a pair of very smelly feet.
Dessalines, whose ability to move men swiftly over difficult terrain was equal to Toussaint's, was at large with his portion of the army in the area surrounding Port-au-Prince. Though he was not able to destroy the capital he kept it in a constant state of alert, while at the same time controlling Saint Marc (where he had built a fine house), threatening Leogane, and terrorizing the plantations in the plain of Cul de Sac. On the Atlantic coast west of Cap Francais, Maurepas had regrouped in the hills above Port de Paix and reinforced himself with several thousand armed field hands. He would have retaken the town if a naval cannonade had not turned back his freshened forces.
On February 19, Leclerc launched a three-pronged attack intended either to surround Toussaint at Ennery or to force him out to the coast at Gonai'ves. With General Hardy, Leclerc began a march south from Cap Francais. Rochambeau was leading a column southwest from Fort Liberte toward Ennery and Gonai'ves via Saint Raphael and the Central Plateau. Boudet marched north from Port-au-Prince.
Leclerc's strategy did not follow Vincent's recommendations in every detail: he had allowed four hundred of Humbert's troops to be killed at Port de Paix, and the remaining eight hundred were tied up in a sideline struggle with Maurepas and the Ninth Regiment. And he had not brought his troops from the Spanish side to occupy Hinche and other key points along the old border where Toussaints line of retreat could be cut off. Rochambeau's column cut a swath across the Central Plateau, but simply passed over this territory without firmly occupying it.
At this point, however, Toussaint was not contemplating a wholesale retreat to the interior. He was determined to hold Gona'ives, the seaport he felt best able to defend, if at all possible, but at the same time he had to meet the threat from Rochambeau. In these early days of the invasion, Napoleon's crack veterans were living up to their big reputation—moving rapidly, careless of the discouraging terrain, and proving themselves very difficult to stop or slow down. Leclerc's advance put such pressure on Ennery that Toussaint was compelled to send his family to a more secure area south of Gonai'ves; nevertheless, Hardy's vanguard captured his youngest son, Saint-Jean, during the family's retreat. Isaac, Suzanne, and a handful of nieces and cousins found shelter at Lacroix Plantation.
Toussaint had arms depots and entrenchments along the Ravine a Couleuvre, which winds from the heights of Morne Barade down to Lacroix and Perisse plantations, on the dry edge of the Savane Desolee some seven miles south of Gonai'ves. Barade was a dangerous crossroads for Toussaint—his brother Pierre had been killed there during the trouble with Biassou in 1794—and he was determined to reach it before Rochambeau. The race was a close one, for Vincent had told Leclerc of the importance of this position, and Rochambeau had recruited a traitor from Toussaints army to guide him.
The relative strength of the forces that met at Ravine a Couleuvre is hard to ascertain. Rochambeau had probably landed about eighteen hundred men at Fort Liberte, but some had been diverted from his march on