Toussaint Louverture - Madison Bell [153]
“I saw him show spirit,” Caffarelli concluded, “on just two occasions.
“The one, when they brought him the clothing and underwear which they had prepared for him.” According to the program of small deprivations and humiliations designed by Napoleon for his prisoner, Toussaint was divested of his uniform and given clothing such as an ordinary peasant would wear; he was not insensible to the insult.
“The second, when they asked him to give up his razor. He said that the men who took that instrument from him must be very small-minded, since they suspected he lacked the necessary courage to bear his misfortune, that he had a family and that moreover his religion forbade him any attempt on his own life.”29
There for once, however briefly Toussaint did show a flash of his true colors, those which Caffarelli had tried unsuccessfully to expose. Caffarelli, though frustrated as ever, was also grudgingly impressed. “He seemed to me, in his prison, patient, resigned, and expecting from the First Consul all the justice which he believes he deserves.” It's not far to the very last line of Caffarelli's report: “His prison is cold, sound, and very secure. He communicates with no one.”30
Caffarelli's report does not go into Toussaint's “political views” in very general terms, though some specifics of his political dealings with the English are covered, and Toussaint gave the interrogator a fairly detailed report on the capacities and sentiments of many men in his officer corps who were still in Saint Domingue. So his overall political attitude must be deduced from what he said, and what he wrote, and from his actions. These show that he believed in the Rights of Man and of Citizen, as the French Revolution had proclaimed them not so very long before. And that he himself, regardless of race, was entitled to the rights and prerogatives of a French citizen and to those of a high-ranking officer in the French army. Therefore he believed with his whole being that he was entitled to his day in court. He could not have been fool enough to be certain that a trial would vindicate him, but he believed that a trial would give him a fair chance. He had composed the best defense he could, and he believed that he had an absolute right to present it, whatever the outcome might be.
In the silence following Caffarelli's departure, winter settled over the Fort de Joux. Naturally, Toussaints health began to worsen, in that extreme cold and at that unaccustomed altitude; no one could have expected any different. No word came of any trial; no reply to Toussaints memoir arrived from the first consul. In the last weeks and months of 1802, Toussaint must have begun to suspect that Napoleon did intend to bury him alive.
*November 9, 1799, by the French Revolutionary calendar, the date of the bloodless coup that elevated Napoleon to the consulate.
SEVEN
Scattering the Bones
Written without benefit of a secretary, and thus in a roughly phonetic French, Toussaints last letters to Napoleon strike a note of pathos: “I beg you in the name of God in the name of humanity to cast a favorable glance upon my claim, on my position and my family … I have worked for a long time to acquire honor and glory from my government and to attract the esteem of my fellow citizens, and I am today crowned with thorns and with the most marked ingratitude for recompense.”1
As for his position in his prison, he had described it earlier in his official memoir: “Is it not to cut off someone's legs and order him to walk? Is it not to cut out his tongue and tell him to talk? Is it not to bury a man alive?”2 A draft of these poignant lines, written in Toussaints phonetic French, was found after his death in the folds of the head cloth he always wore as a talisman of the spirits that walked with him. The last document