Toussaint Louverture - Madison Bell [69]
The people whom he had addressed swore up and down to sin no more, to be good and obedient and peaceful, that they desired nothing more than to have Toussaint restore order among them. Toussaint exhorted them to prove these good intentions by returning to their plantations—and to work. Once they were gone he turned to Datty and pointed out that by no means all the inhabitants of the region had been present for this talking-to. Datty admitted that there were still three camps of rebels on the mountain above Port de Paix. Toussaint loaned Datty a secretary to draft a letter ordering those camps to report to Toussaint at Andro Plantation. That letter sent, Toussaint and Datty shared a supper. At ten thirty that night, Datty took his leave, promising to appear with the remaining rebels the next day. “I had the ration given to my dragoons,” Toussaint wrote, “who had eaten nothing all day but a few bananas which the field hands had brought me, as I said before. I told them to pay good attention to their horses, and passed that night without anything new happening.”55
By the next morning, however, it became clear that Etienne Datty had again slipped his leash. He sent emissaries but avoided appearing in person before Toussaint as he had promised, and the rest of the rebels remained where they were. Toussaint began sending letters once more.
Headquarters, Habitation Andro,
29 Pluviose, year 4 of the French Republic, one and
indivisible.
Toussaint Louverture, Brigadier General, Commander in Chief of the Cordon of the West, to Etienne Datty, Commander of the Africans
Immediately upon the reception of my letter, I order you to present yourself before me at Habitation Andro with all the citizens of the mountain and all those that I saw yesterday. My dear Etienne, I believe you to be too reasonable, not to Know what obedience is; I believe that you will present yourself right away, and spare me the pain of repeating this order.
Salut
(Signed)
Toussaint Louverture56
But Toussaint's belief was disappointed: Datty did not reappear, nor did he send a direct reply. Instead Toussaint received a letter from “the Citizens in arms at Lagon,” explaining that since Datty had so often been entrapped in the past by “Beautiful Propositions” they themselves had restrained him from returning to Toussaint.
This cat-and-mouse game went on all day, with numerous exchanges of letters and circuits of messengers. By this time, Datty's insubordination was unmistakable, and the use of force seemed the inevitable next step. A white French officer might have taken it, but Toussaint had a different turn of mind. “Etienne's refusal made me spend the whole night considering what line I ought to Take. I reflected that if I used force, that might occasion Much more evil than there had so far been. At six in the morning, I decided; I left to go Find Etienne. I took with me Jean Pierre Dumesny, my Secretary,* and four of my dragoons.'57
No wonder it took all night to calculate the risk of entering a rebellious encampment with this merely symbolic escort: in very similar circumstances, Toussaint had taken Brandicourt prisoner. But this gamble paid off: “I arrived at Camp Lagon at six-thirty; seeing me arrive, Etienne came before me; I scolded him and asked him Why he had Disobeyed, and what he could have been thinking of. He apologized and said that it was his troops who had kept him from coming. When I got down from my horse, all the Citizens, armed or not, came to tell me Good Day and to tell me how glad they were to see me.”58 The peaceful approach, however risky, allowed Toussaint to reoccupy his patriarchal role. The men of Datty's command were ready to recognize him as head of a household that included them all.
Toussaint then took Datty aside for another long session of remonstrance and coaxing, and finally “succeeded in making him hear reason.” Then he inquired about Datty's secretary, one Maguenot (most likely a white Frenchman, one of several who served the black officers as scribes), and learned that he was lurking