Toussaint Louverture - Madison Bell [149]
“These new hostilities brought me new reflections,” he wrote from the Fort de Joux. “I thought that the conduct of General Leclerc was very much contrary to the intentions of the government, since the First Consul, in his letter, promised peace, while he, Leclerc, made war. I saw that instead of trying to stop the evil, he did nothing but augment it. ‘Does he not fear,’ I said to myself, ‘in persisting in such conduct, to be blamed by his government? Can he possibly hope to win the approval of the First Consul, of that great man whose equity and impartiality are so well known, while I myself shall be condemned?’ So I took the course of defending myself in case of attack, and in spite of the fact that I had few troops, I made my dispositions accordingly.”17
Toussaint next mentions, rather casually, “I ordered the town of Gona'ives to be burned, and marched at the head of the column directed toward Pont-de-1'Ester.”18 What follows is a brief but essentially accurate report of what had turned into an all-out war which lasted three months and which ended only when both sides were depleted and exhausted, whereupon negotiations were opened by Leclercs and Toussaint's subordinates.
“General Christophe, upon his return, brought me back a letter from General Leclerc, which said that it would be a beautiful day for him if he could convince me to cooperate with him and to submit myself to the orders of the Republic. I replied right away that I had always been obedient to the French government, since I had constantly borne arms for it; that if, according to principle, they had comported themselves with me as they should have done, there would never have been a single shot fired; that peace would never even have been troubled in the island, and that the intentions of the government would have been fulfilled.”19 This passage is the closing argument of the least plausible phase of Toussaint's defense: the idea that in battling the French expedition tooth and nail, until he had exhausted every resource in his reach, he actually believed himself to be enacting the intentions of the French government.
Thereafter he is on much firmer ground, for the peace settlement he reached with Leclerc included a complete amnesty for all events of the bloody conflict that had just ended. In his Fort de Joux cell, Toussaint quotes Leclercs proffer from memory, which proves that his memory was a good one, for though he does not recall the original document verbatim, all the essential points are preserved: “Never fear, you nor the generals under your orders, and the inhabitants who are with you, that I will pursue anyone for his past conduct; I shall draw the veil of oblivion over the events which have taken place in Saint Domingue. In that I imi-tate the example ‘which the First Consul gave to France on 18 Brumaire.* In the future, I desire to see nothing but good citizens on this island. You ask for repose; ‘when one has commanded as you have, and supported for so long the burden of government, repose is your due. But I hope that during your retirement, you will, in your moments of leisure, share your enlightenment with me, for the prosperity of Saint Domingue.”20
By the terms of this arrangement, all hostilities officially ceased. Toussaint retired to his plantations at Ennery; his officers retained their rank and were incorporated, along ‘with their men, into Leclerc's force. Leclerc needed them desperately by then, for more than half the soldiers he'd brought from France were dead, and his officer corps had been decimated. There was more fighting to be done, for all hostilities had not in fact ceased. Guerrilla bands ‘who'd never been ‘wholly under Toussaint's control were still resisting in the mountains, and the French suspected that Toussaint might secretly be controlling some of them.
However, there was no proof at all of those suspicions, and so the complaints in Toussaint's memoir about the manner of his arrest seem extremely well justified. The fact of the matter is that, from the start, Leclerc carried