Toussaint Louverture - Madison Bell [50]
Though the Spanish commanders thought well of Toussaints character and of his abilities in the field, his route to higher rank in their service was blocked by the presence of Biassou and Jean-François. Biassou, who had nominally been Toussaints direct superior in 1791, and who still outranked him in the Spanish service, camped on La Riviere Plantation in the canton of Ennery and began to lay claim to positions Toussaint had taken in that area of the Cordon de l'Ouest— which Toussaint certainly meant to retain as part of his own strategic power base. Quarreling between the black leaders broke down into skirmishing.
Meanwhile, it was becoming reasonably clear from the actions of the Spanish, as opposed to lukewarm declarations they had made to the contrary, that they meant to reestablish slavery in French Saint Domingue, in concert with the French emigres they had invited to return. Most of the latter (whom Laplace represented) were holed up in Fort Dauphin, the nearest port to the Spanish border on the north Atlantic coast. Their properties were peppered all over the interior, as Laplace described them, but for the moment the Spanish military would not support their return to their lands. About eight hundred of these French colonists eventually accumulated at Fort Dauphin, many of them returning from their flight to the United States with Galbaud's fleet. They were both useless and virtually helpless there, as the black leaders would not allow their former masters to be armed.
However, both Jean-François and Biassou had begun actively engaging in the slave trade themselves. They were rounding up women and children, as well as some insubordinate men—mauvais sujets— from their own ranks and selling them off to Spanish slave traders. A letter from Jean-François to a Spanish agent named Tabert craves permission to sell off some “very bad characters” in these terms: “not having the heart to destroy them, we have recourse to your good heart to ask you to transport them out of the country. We prefer to sell them for the profit of the king.”10 As Toussaint's own fighting force grew from hundreds into thousands, threatening the status of Jean-François and Biassou more and more, these two began kidnapping the families of men who joined Toussaint to sell them as slaves, and Toussaint's men themselves if they could catch them. No doubt this practice influenced Toussaint in proclaiming his own commitment to general liberty and in actually fighting for it more vigorously than before.
Toussaint's immediate Spanish superior, the Marquis d'Hermona, admired him to the point of declaring, “If God were to descend to earth, he could inhabit no purer heart than that of Toussaint Louverture.”11 D'Hermona was undoubtedly taken with the apparent fervor of Toussaint's Catholic devotions (though some more cynical observers claimed that Toussaint was actually plotting and scheming when he appeared to be praying). Jean-François and Biassou, as well as the French colonists represented by Laplace, were constantly trying to damage Toussaint's reputation with the Spanish governor, Don Garcia y Moreno. When d'Hermona was replaced by Juan de Lleonhart, Toussaint's fortunes among the Spanish took a turn for the worse. Moyse, his adoptive nephew and already one of his most important lieutenants, was arrested. His wife and three sons were briefly held as hostages—Toussaint could no longer be confident that they would be safe in the Spanish camp.
In late March 1794, an ambush organized by either Jean-François or Biassou or both of them took the life of Toussaint's younger brother, Pierre, who was shot from his horse at Camp Barade, at the head of the Ravine a Couleuvre a few miles southeast of Gonai'ves. Toussaint, who was present, had a narrow escape. According to Isaac's memoir, Toussaint immediately pressed on from Barade to Saint Raphael, arriving there with four hundred horsemen and in such a thunder that Don Lleonhart thought the town was being taken by the enemy. However, Toussaint did no more that day than register a bitter