Toussaint Louverture - Madison Bell [60]
In the same letter, Toussaint told Laveaux that he had just received word of Sonthonax and Polverel's departure and of the convention's abolition of slavery: “It is very consoling news to all friends of humanity,” he wrote, “and I hope that in the future all will find themselves the better for it.”28 The definitive news of abolition inspired him to take much more vigorous action against the Spanish than he had done previously. The routing of Jean-François from Dondon meant that Toussaint was no longer hedging his bets: all pretense that he might still serve Spain was abandoned. Concerning the massacre at Fort Dauphin, Toussaint wrote to Laveaux on July 19 with an elegant simplicity: “General, you may count on my humane sentiments; I have always had a horror of those chiefs who love to spill blood; my religion forbids me to do it, and I follow its principles.”29 This line has a much stronger ring of sincerity than the rococo phrasing of the letters Toussaint sent to the survivors of his attack on Gonai'ves.
Both Laveaux and Toussaint wanted very much to capture the town of Saint Marc, the strategic key to control of the Artibonite Plain, immediately south of Toussaint's forward post at Pont d'Ester. Since his days in the Spanish service, Toussaint had recognized the British commander there, Lieutenant Colonel Brisbane, as an extremely dangerous adversary. To dispose of him, he tried a combination of force and guile. Brisbane, who had observed Toussaint's activities with the same acute interest with which Toussaint watched his, believed that the black leader was mainly out for himself and perhaps could be purchased for the British cause. Toussaint, hoping to lure Brisbane to Gonai'ves where he could be captured, showed himself receptive to these overtures. The negotiations also gave him a chance to secretly court the mulattoes of Saint Marc and surrounding areas, who since the National Convention's abolition of slavery were cultivating a greater sympathy for the republic.
Brisbane would not put his head in the trap, but in the first week of September Toussaint did manage to lure him in the direction of Petite Riviere, with a feigned offer by the chiefs of that town to turn it over to the British. One purpose of this ruse was to facilitate the defection of Morin, Brisbane's colored aide-de-camp, who led three hundred men out of Saint Marc to join Toussaint's subordinate Christophe Mornet on September 3. The next day, with Brisbane still absent, Toussaint launched a lightning strike on Saint Marc, which then was not well fortified. He overran an exterior camp, whose officer, mysteriously, believed that Toussaint had come to negotiate a switch to the British side. Morin had conspired with colored men still inside Saint Marc to open the gates to Toussaint's army, which briefly took control of the town. But a British frigate sailed down from Mole to bombard Toussaint's men from the harbor, and Brisbane rushed back in the nick of time to recapture the place by land.
Toussaint eluded Brisbane's column and with forty dragoons rode full-tilt up the Artibonite River to capture Verrettes, a key post in the region whence Brisbane had just been hastily recalled. In this maneuver he was aided by Blanc Cassenave, mulatto commander of a unit in the Artibonite area called the Bare-Naked Congos, who had offered his allegiance to Toussaint at Gonai'ves in 1793. With camps at Verrettes, and north of the Artibonite River at Marchand and Petite Riviere (where the British had begun building a fort on a hill called La Crete a Pierrot), Toussaint could control the passes into the Cahos mountains, an area as important to his strategy as the Cordon de l'Ouest. He could also threaten to isolate Saint Marc, where Brisbane was now hastily erecting more serious fortifications and launching an abortive sea attack on Gonai'ves.
Laveaux believed Saint Marc was tottering and might easily fall. Before he sent Toussaint to attack the town again, he tried to soften the target by