Toussaint Louverture - Madison Bell [17]
Impervious to the diplomatic efforts of Mirbeck, Roume, and Saint-Leger, the Colonial Assembly rejected this proposal in such contemptuous terms that Biassou, when he got the message, flew into a rage and wanted to kill all the white prisoners without delay. According to Gros, only Toussaint's quick and eloquent intercession saved him and the rest from an ugly death; “braving all dangers, he tried to save us, were himself to be the victim of the monster's rage.”11 Another white captive, M. la Roque, saw Toussaint report the breakdown of the deal to Jean-François: “Toussaint a Breda … told him, with tears in his eyes, that all was lost, that the twenty-some prisoners that had come from the different camps would no longer be going to Le Cap, and that war had again been decided.”12
The rebel leaders had not only sent emissaries to the Colonial Assembly but had also directly approached military leaders like Tousard, and had begun to make direct contact with the commissioners recently arrived from France. As the commissioners were much more conciliatory than the Colonial Assembly, the rebel leaders preferred to deal with them—despite the fact that the assembly had formally forbidden the commissioners to treat with the rebel slaves.
Soon after the collapse of the original deal to exchange the white prisoners for a limited number of liberties, a new meeting with the commissioners was arranged for December 21 on Saint Michel Plantation. Again, the discord on the white side took its toll: as the two parties approached each other, M. Bullet, who had been master of Jean-François, rushed out and struck him in the face. But Commissioner Saint-Leger went after Jean-François, who had quickly retreated to the midst of his men, and persuaded him to swallow the insult and return to the conversation. Tradition has it that Jean-François was so impressed with Saint-Leger's approach that he knelt at the white man's feet.
On the strength of this parlay, the white prisoners finally were released. This time they were gathered at the camp of LaTannerie; from there Toussaint himself would escort them safely into Le Cap. By the end of December Toussaint had dug himself in deep at La Tannerie, which Gros describes as one of the two most seriously fortified camps under rebel control, equipped with cannon and surrounded by ditches and pitfall traps ‘which could wound a lot of our people.”13
“What was our surprise,” Gros goes on, ‘when once we arrived at La Tannerie, we saw the blacks gather and fall upon us with saber in hand, threatening to send only our heads to Le Cap, and cursing the peace and their generals.”14 Again it was only thanks to Toussaint's intervention that a wholesale slaughter of the prisoners was prevented.
Toussaint's more cynical observers find this episode suspicious. How likely was it that he could be attacked in this way by his own men in his own best stronghold without any inkling it was going to happen? In the future, Toussaint would become notorious for secretly instigating violent popular uprisings which only his authority could subdue. And perhaps he wanted to make sure that the white prisoners would remember that he, Toussaint, had been their savior on the very day of their release. However, it is at least as likely that the attack at La Tannerie was a spontaneous response to the discovery, on the part of the mass of insurgent slaves, that their leaders meant to send them all back to the fields for the pittance of fifty liberties. That would have given them good enough reason to curse both the peace and their own generals.
Whatever had sparked it, the attack was deflected, and Toussaint led the prisoners out of the mountains, “across the countryside