Toussaint Louverture - Madison Bell [138]
The French Army's Siege of La Crête-à-Pierrot
By some accounts, Toussaint also sent a letter to Napoleon for Boudet to transmit. Though this document has never been definitively identified, a version which circulated at the time fits well enough with the rest of Toussaint's correspondence to be credible. “The high post I occupy is not my own choice, imperious circumstances placed me there against my will … I saw this unfortunate isle a prey to the fury of factions. My reputation and my color gave me a certain influence on the people who live here; and I was called to authority with almost a unanimous voice.”80
“Adulation has ruined Toussaint,” Colonel Vincent had written to a friend just before the expedition sailed.81 If authentic, Toussaint's words do suggest that he was at least a little intoxicated by the power which he had obtained by a considerably more circuitous route than what he describes. His next claims, though, are hard to dispute: “I stifled sedition, calmed revolt, established tranquility; I replaced anarchy with good order; finally I gave the people both peace and a constitution. Citizen Consul, are your own pretensions founded on any more legitimate titles?”82
This question, if audacious, was a fair one.
“You offer liberty to the blacks,” Toussaint goes on, “saying that wherever you have been you have given it to those who did not have it. I have only an imperfect knowledge of events which have recently taken place in Europe, but the reports that have reached me do not agree with that assertion. The liberty which one may enjoy in France, in Belgium, in Switzerland, or in the Batavian, Ligurian and Cisalpine republics would never satisfy the people of Saint Domingue. We are a long way from aspiring to an independence like that.”83
The statement is so startling as to throw the authenticity of the entire letter into doubt. Never before had Toussaint openly raised the issue of independence—but circumstances had changed drastically since the French invasion began. To say that what the French called lib-erty was not good enough for the people of Saint Domingue was a slap in Napoleon's face. Why would Toussaint risk such a provocation?
Maybe Napoleon, who would not receive the letter for two months at least (supposing he ever received it at all), was not the intended audience. Toussaint knew something about propaganda, and he had reason to hope that such a message would feed doubt among the French officers and even their troops. Most of the French soldiers had begun their careers during the revolution. They did see themselves as liberators, and some already wondered exactly why they had been sent to suppress a revolution that claimed the same ideas—liberty, fraternity, equality—as their own. During the siege of La Crete a Pierrot, the white soldiers heard the black soldiers inside the walls singing their own revolutionary anthem, “The Marseillaise.” Doubt crept in. Later in the struggle, a good number of soldiers from Polish regiments actually did change sides. If Toussaint really did write the letter, he meant for his critique of Napoleon to play on the French officers' suspicions of the first consul's imperial ambitions.
Whether this letter to Napoleon was authentic or not, Toussaint was definitely trying to establish a new diplomatic channel with Boudet—a loop that excluded Captain General Leclerc. However, Sabes and Gimont had barely departed on their mission to Boudet when word came to Toussaint's camp that General Hardy had swept across Toussaint's property at La Coupe a l'lnde, taking numerous prisoners and, most importantly, Toussaint's favorite horse, the white stallion Bel Argent. Furious, Toussaint set off in pursuit. On March 29, Hardy was caught between Toussaint's men and Christophe's at Don-don and forced to beat a hasty retreat to Cap Francais. Though Bel Argent was not recovered, this victory was a terrific boost to the morale of the black resistance.
Immediately following the evacuation of La Crete a Pierrot, Toussaint had sent word north that Leclerc's forces had been