Toussaint Louverture - Madison Bell [63]
Between 1794 and 1796, Toussaint began to display unmistakably the same acumen (and sometimes the same ruthlessness) in politics as on the field of battle. His admirers as well as his detractors cannot help but notice that his potential competitors tended to come to harm during these years—not only enemy warriors like Brisbane but also several of his republican brothers in arms. Since the summer of 1793, the mulatto commander Blanc Cassenave had voluntarily reported to Toussaint; popular with his mostly black troops, Cassenave had been successful in engagements with the British outside Saint Marc and had been an important partner in Toussaint's assaults on the town. He had captured the half-built British fort at La Crete a Pierrot above Petite Riviere— a point of importance to Toussaint's strategy in the region—and armed it with a couple of pieces of cannon. But relations between him and Toussaint broke down to the point that Toussaint had Cassenave arrested in January 1795. A long letter to Laveaux describes Blanc Cassenave as “an extremely abandoned, violent man,” accuses him of plotting against both Toussaint and Laveaux, and of stealing eighty pounds of ever-scarce gunpowder.
Toussaint went on to accuse Blanc Cassenave of plotting to set up his own “arrondissement” in the Cahos mountains (where Toussaint had just recently extended his own reach), of keeping spoils captured from the enemy for himself instead of using them for the benefit of the troops, and of generally fomenting discord and rebellion, not only among the field workers of the area but also among the officer corps. (Cassenave briefly won over a couple of officers important to Toussaint: Guy and Christophe Mornet.) One of the differences between Cassenave and Louverture had to do with plantation work in the area: Toussaint had ordered that ground be prepared for planting; Cassenave persuaded the field hands that this labor was tantamount to the restoration of slavery.
Cassenave was imprisoned at Gonai'ves. Before any trial could take place, Toussaint informed Laveaux, most silkily: “During his detention Blanc Cassenave was struck with a bilious choler which had all appearance of an unrestrainable rage; he was suffocated by it. Requiescat in pace. He is out of this world, we owe our thanksgiving to God on his behalf. As for myself, General, in having him arrested I did nothing but my duty; zealously I always seize the occasion to serve the fatherland. I will fight ceaselessly against enemies within and without. This death of Blanc Cassenave demolishes all procedures against him, as his crime had no accomplices.”41
With a similarly honeyed tongue, Toussaint addressed himself to Dieudonne, leader of what had been Halaou's band of maroons and nouveaux libres outside Leogane, who was suspected by both Toussaint and General Andre Rigaud of contemplating a shift of loyalty to the English in that region. Although Sonthonax had invested Dieudonne with his commissioner's medal and, in theory, his commissioner's powers as well, apparently the impression this gesture had made was fading. Rigaud, ‘who commanded for the French republic in the southern peninsula, ‘was trying diplomatic means to win the maroon leader to his side ‘when Toussaint's missive reached Dieudonne's camp.
“Is it possible, my dear friend,” wrote Toussaint on February 12, 1796, “that at the moment ‘when France has triumphed