Toussaint Louverture - Madison Bell [144]
It is argued by some, most notably the Caribbean commentator Aime Cesaire, that Toussaint's apparently blind cooperation in his own arrest was an intentional sacrifice, meant to separate the momentum of the Haitian Revolution from depending on himself as an individual, or on any other particular person. In this interpretation, Toussaint's decision to accept Brunet's invitation to Georges Plantation amounts to a deliberate choice of martyrdom. The last letters Toussaint wrote from prison do suggest that some such idea may have entered his mind, but however fervent his Catholicism, it seems doubtful that he would have wanted to push the imitation of Christ quite so far. And although he was certainly able to put the welfare of his people ahead of his own, it was rare for him to lose sight of his personal interests so completely. It's more likely that, under the extreme pressure of his situation, he gambled and lost.
And yet his arrest did prove that the Haitian Revolution could now get along very well without him. At the moment of his deportation, Toussaint understood that perfectly. “In overthrowing me,” he said as he boarded L'Heros, “you have only cut down the trunk of the tree of liberty of the Blacks in Saint Domingue: it will spring back from the roots, for they are numerous and deep.”104
Not very long afterward, Leclerc was forced to agree, writing first, “It is not everything to have removed Toussaint, there are two thousand other chiefs here to have taken away,” and then, still more hopelessly, “Here is my opinion of this country. It is necessary to destroy all the negroes of the mountains, men and women, sparing only children under the age of twelve, and destroy half of those of the plain, without leaving a single colored man in the colony who has ever worn an epaulette. Without that, the colony will never be at peace.”105 As much as to admit outright that by Toussaint's agency the spirit of revolution had been so thoroughly diffused among the blacks of Saint Domingue that his own or anyone's personal leadership no longer mattered.
*Meaning those who were operating the plantations of French colonists who had fled Saint Domingue.
*These numbers were probably exaggerated for effect. Much of Leclerc's army had not yet completed the Atlantic crossing. Rochambeau's force at Fort Liberte, for example, was probably nearer two thousand than four thousand.
*”The government sends you the Captain General Leclerc; he brings with him great forces to protect you against your enemies and the enemies of the Republic. If anyone tells you: these forces are destined to ravish away your liberty reply the Republic will not suffer that it should be taken from us, etc.” (Madiou II, p. 173).
*In the Fort de Joux memoir Toussaint claims to have made this march with just three hundred grenadiers and sixty cavalrymen, and to have learned from prisoners that Rochambeau's force was four thousand strong. Both sides, however, were inclined to exaggerate enemy strength and minimize their own in their reporting.
SIX
Toussaint in Chains
During the ten years of his ascendancy, Toussaint preserved Breda Plantation and its white managers from the bloody slave rebellion that broke out all over the Northern Plain in the summer of 1791, then joined the rebel slaves in the fall of that year. Next, along with many of the rebel slaves of the region, he became part of the Spanish colonial army and began to do