Toussaint Louverture - Madison Bell [141]
Toussaint had taken care to open a separate line of communication with Boudet a month earlier, so the idea of coming to terms with the French must have been on his mind for some time. On the heels of Christophe's submission, when his own security at Marmelade was imminently threatened from Dondon, he wrote to Leclerc a generally conciliatory letter, which ended with a caution: “whatever the resources of the French army might be, he would always be strong and powerful enough to burn, ravage, and sell dearly a life which had also sometimes been useful to the mother country.”88 Pamphile de Lacroix seconded this opinion: “however feeble he might have become, he would not cease to be redoubtable, entrenched in the heart of the colony, in the middle of inaccessible mountains, whence he could come out to carry ravage and sedition all around him.”89
The French estimated that Toussaint still had some four thousand troops at his disposal, as well as the larger numbers of armed cultivators he might raise. Leclerc wrote to the minister of marine on April 21 that “it will be impossible for me to enter into campaign again before having received the twelve thousand men for which I have asked you.”90 The surrender of Christophe a few days later must have encouraged the captain general, who hoped in the same letter to exploit “dissensions” rumored among the black chiefs. However, Leclerc was already becom-ing dangerously dependent on “colonial troops”—that is to say, black rebel units that had quite recently changed sides with their officers.
During the last week of April, Toussaint (whose own communications had been much interrupted) learned of his brother Paul Louverture's submission at Ciudad Santo Domingo. The fact that so many black generals—Paul Louverture, Maurepas, Clervaux, and now Christophe—had been maintained in their French military ranks after capitulation lent credence to the Napoleonic propaganda that the French army was committed to the defense of general liberty. The fact that, even at this point, Toussaint was unwilling to pronounce the magic word that would have rallied more of the population to his cause suggested that independence from France had never been his goal. At the moment that he began to treat with Leclerc, he must have felt both isolated and surrounded—and under immediate threat of an assault on Marmelade from Dondon which, if it failed to capture him, would have put him desperately on the run.
Dessalines was difficult to persuade, and probably was never entirely persuaded. “Listen well,” he told his men. “If Dessalines surrenders to them a hundred times, he will betray them a hundred times.”91 More than likely Toussaint felt the same; characteristically he betrayed nothing of the thought.
“He never showed anything,” wrote the daughter of one of Toussaint's numerous white secretaries. “My father often told us the impression he had from these private meetings. By the doubtful light of a little lamp, the somber face was still more black. When he scrutinized you, he was like a lynx. But when he was observed, he withdrew into himself, masked his regard. Raising his eyes to heaven, he hid his pupil beneath his thick eyelid, letting nothing show but the white. So, he became hideous. My father, as young and brave as he was, could not face this demonic visage.”92
Filter out the antique racism and a rather disconcerting picture of Toussaint still remains. In hypnosis, such eye movement is a symptom of trance. In Vodou it is a sign of possession. To most people the alien is frightening; no wonder the young Frenchman read a “demonic visage” into Toussaint's entranced expression. No doubt Toussaint really was communing with his spirits when in these late-night meditations he struggled to choose the right word, or phrase, or action. In the close of his supposed letter to Napoleon, Toussaint turned again to the Christian God: “Let him decide between me and my enemies, between those who have violated