Toussaint Louverture - Madison Bell [139]
During the month of March, these guerrilla leaders, working in coordination, cut French communications between the Northern Department and the rest of the country, raised rebellion at Borgne, Port Francais, and Morne Rouge, burned Limbe, and isolated Cap Francais, leaving the town open to an assault by Sans-Souci from Grande Riviere. Seriously unnerved, Admiral Villaret-Joyeuse reported to Napoleon that San-Souci's attack had carried terribly close to Le Cap; “if they had felt their own strength as well as knowing our weakness, the idea of what could have happened makes one shudder.”84 The battle in which Toussaint and Christophe routed Hardy actually went on for several days and alarmed Villaret-Joyeuse still further. Hardy had lost four or five hundred men in his flight, and the whole Northern Plain had been set afire (one more time), to the effect that “at midnight and in the middle of the harbor one could read by the light of the flames.”85
Hardy's return, which coincided with the arrival at Le Cap of fresh troops from France, moved Sans-Souci to retire. He delivered about a hundred prisoners to Toussaint, who had returned to his headquarters at Marmelade. At this point Toussaint had recovered control over all of his original power base, the Cordon de l'Ouest. Leclerc dared not cross the territory he had supposedly just conquered, but had to rush back to Cap Francais by boat. On April I, he wrote to Napoleon that he had only seven thousand fit men in the field; five thousand of his troops were in the hospital. Another five thousand were already dead, though Leclerc did not mention it.
The French forces of invasion had expected a swift and total victory. As it turned out, that's what they absolutely needed. Though they were able to win many engagements with startling speed, their successes were never complete. Unacclimated European troops could not sustain the rigors of a campaign in this country over the long haul. Well aware of this difficulty, Vincent had urged the use of as many acclimated Spanish Creole troops as possible, but no one heeded this advice.
The terrain was difficult, not to say impossible. In the effort to explain the problem to superiors in France, one young lieutenant flung a crumpled ball of paper on the table, declaring bitterly that Saint Domingue looked like that. To this day one of Haiti's most telling proverbs is Deye mbn gegne mbn (Behind the mountains are more mountains). By day the French troops labored through staggering heat on forced marches, suffocating in their sweat-drenched wool uniforms. At night it was surprisingly cold on the heights and often they'd be drenched by torrential evening rains, so pneumonia joined dysentery and the mosquito-borne fevers which afflicted them. Unreliable supply lines often left them poorly fed. And a great many more than their officers would admit had simply been killed outright in battle.
The men of Toussaint's regular army (not to mention the flocks of field hands who were turning into paramilitary groups to resist the invasion), liked bread and salt meat if they could get it, but if not they got by very well on the cassava and fruit