Toussaint Louverture - Madison Bell [48]
They knew that the camp at La Tannerie had recently (and in their view treacherously) been surrendered to Toussaint. This development cut off their direct line of retreat to Le Cap, and also severed their lines of supply. Anticipating that the rebel slaves would soon make an attempt on Dondon, now that La Tannerie was in their hands, the French decided to try to escape by another route. Furnished with three and a half pounds of bread and a bottle of raw cane alcohol for each man, they set out in the direction of Marmelade, unaware that it too was occupied byToussaint. Perhaps the ratio of alcohol to food in their supplies was poorly calculated, j udging by how they fared along the way.
The way from Dondon to Marmelade goes over dizzying mountain peaks which in those days were covered with jungle. Toussaint, well aware of his enemy's movement, occupied Dondon as soon as the French had left it and laid an ambush for the French troops between Dondon and Camp Perly. Soon the French column encountered another group of rebel blacks ahead and was forced to a halt. The French commander, Monsieur de Brandicourt, ordered a cannon brought to the fore and was making ready to fire on the enemy when several voices cried out from the bush, urging him to come and parley with General Toussaint, to assure proper treatment for several sick men which the French soldiers, in the haste of their retreat, had left behind in Dondon.
With two companions, Brandicourt set out for the meeting, guided by “an officer of the brigands,” and leaving the column in charge of a subordinate, Pacot. One of the men with Brandicourt grew mistrustful, and said that Toussaint ought to meet them halfway. But their guide pointed to a large gathering of blacks not far ahead, saying, “It's there that Toussaint is waiting for you.”
“That's no more than a step away,” Brandicourt said, shrugging off the warning. A misstep as it proved: when the three men reached the appointed spot they were seized, bound, and mocked by members of their own camp who had deserted to join Toussaint the previous night. Presently Toussaint himself appeared and asked that Brandicourt write an order for Pacot to surrender his surrounded troops. Brandicourt, seething with indignation, wrote that Pacot should follow “the most prudent course.” At that, Toussaint grew annoyed and insisted that Brandicourt write a direct order for surrender. As one of his two fellow prisoners reported, Brandicourt, “believing that Pacot would take no step on an order dictated by violence, had the pusillanimity to do it.”5
So runs the eyewitness account set down by the soldier captured with Brandicourt. Isaac Louvertures version (written many years later and at second hand) casts Toussaint in a more heroic light: rather than being taken by deceit, Brandicourt is captured fair and square by Toussaint's lieutenant and adopted nephew Charles Belair. Toussaint addresses Brandicourt in almost lyrical terms: “I admire your courage all too much … but I admire your humanity still more; as all retreat for your troops is cut off, you will give the order to avoid the effusion of blood.”6
Regardless of their difference in flavor, the two accounts agree on the result. Pacot surrendered without a shot. When Toussaint marched the French column into his camp, his own six hundred men had to steel themselves to stand their ground, for the captured force was more than twice the size of theirs: some fifteen hundred strong.
This bloodless victory put Toussaint back in control of the eastern end of the Cordon de l'Ouest, restoring the line from Marmelade to Dondon and isolating the Northern Plain from the rest of the colony. It increased Toussaint's value in the eyes of his Spanish superior, Mafias, Marquis d'Hermona, who