Toussaint Louverture - Madison Bell [26]
Tougher resistance came in the mountainous terrain between the lowlands and Dondon, and Laveaux had a couple of very hard battles to fight at Morne Pelee and La Tannerie. Toussaint commanded the insurgent blacks in these two engagements, making himself known to the French for the first time as a significant military leader. He had spent much time and energy on the fortification of La Tannerie, and was not dislodged from it easily. When Laveaux finally won the position in January 1793, he found seventeen cannon there, including a couple of twenty-four-pounders.
By mid-February Sonthonax had begun to suspect that military force would not be sufficient to solve the problem of the slave insurrection, but large areas of the Northern Plain had been secured by Laveaux's campaign, and some colonists felt safe enough to return to the cinders of their plantations. Sonthonax decided to rejoin Polverel in the Western Department. His brother commissioner had been grievously overloaded since Ailhaud's departure, trying to govern the west and the south at the same time, across unmanageable distances.
During the commissioners' joint tour, the petits blancs of Port-au-Prince started an open rebellion against them; the preference the commissioners showed the gens de couleurhad moved this faction toward the counterrevolutionary camp. On April 12, 1793, Sonthonax and Polverel (who had established their base at Saint Marc, the next significant port up the coast) launched a combined assault by land and sea to subdue the revolt. The ship from which they directed the attack was hit several times by cannon on shore; a fire that resulted was finally put out. Since war had been declared between England and France as of February 1, the commissioners also feared that the arrival of a British fleet might interrupt their conquest of the colonial capital, but it did not come.
Following the success of their operation at Port-au-Prince, the commissioners were able to regain control of the Western Department and most of the Southern. On May 15, the town of Jacmel on the southern coast admitted them without much struggle. But counterrevolutionary activity held out at Jeremie, on the tip of the southern peninsula otherwise known as the Grande Anse. An expedition against Jeremie led by Andre Rigaud, a colored goldsmith and experienced militiaman whom the commissioners had promoted to the rank of general, failed to subdue the rebellion there. In fact the counterrevolutionaries on the Grande Anse had now opened communications with sympathizers in Cap Francais. Sonthonax and Polverel rushed back there, arriving on the 10th of June.
For decades, the home government in France had intentionally divided the administration of Saint Domingue against itself. Power was shared, or contested, between a military governor and a civilian intendant. From the point of view of average white colonists, the main activity of the governor was to inconvenience them with militia service requirements, while the only thing the intendant did was burden them with taxes and obnoxious restraints on trade. Therefore both officials were normally detested by the citizens they governed, and since their spheres of authority were apt to collide, they did not like each other much either. Paris fostered animosity between governor and intendant, with the thought that so long as they were at odds, each would prevent the other from nurturing any sort of independence movement of the sort that had recently cost England its American colonies.
The powers