Toussaint Louverture - Madison Bell [83]
Sonthonax sent at once a letter of acquiescence, then stalled for time, and investigated to see if he might find any military support for his staying on among the garrisons of Cap Francais. Toussaint, meanwhile, gathered his own forces at Petite Anse, a few miles outside the town. At four in the morning on the fourth day of Sonthonax's delay, he fired a cannon, then sent the French general Age with a message to Julien Raimond: “If your colleague has not left before sunrise, I will enter Le Cap with my dragoons and embark him by force.”22 On August 24, Sonthonax boarded the ship L'Indien and began his voyage to France.
“He was still in the intoxication of triumph,” wrote General Kerverseau of Toussaint, “when I arrived at Le Cap. I saw the hero of the day, he was radiant; joy sparkling in his glances, his beaming features announced confidence. His conversation was animated; no more suspicions, no more reserve … He spoke of nothing but his love for France and his respect for the government; he presented himself as the avenger and the support of the rights of the metropole, and all the friends of order and peace made their best effort to persuade themselves of his sincerity”23
The sincerity of Toussaint's loyalty became a matter of debate in France as soon as Sonthonax arrived there—as Toussaint had certainly anticipated it would. On September 4, 1796, he sent aversion of his dialogue with Sonthonax (so incriminating to the latter) as a report to the minister of marine in France, who supervised overseas colonies; the gist of this communication was to accuse the commissioner of scheming to make Saint Domingue independent for his own personal profit and to bring about that independence through a series of racial massacres in the style of the worst excesses of the French Terror. The accusation had at least some credibility, for Sonthonax had publicly inveighed against the white slave-owning colonists, denouncing them as “a horde of ferocious tyrants” and “bloody men,” rejoicing that such “slave traders and cannibals are no more.”24 Toussaint reiterated his complaints against Sonthonax in a long letter to Laveaux (whose presence in the French legislature he hoped might counterbalance that of the evicted commissioner) and was seconded by letters sent by Julien Raimond to the minister of marine.
Sonthonax retaliated by accusing Toussaint of pro-independence and counterrevolutionary intentions, starting with the first secret beginnings of the black leader's political and military career in 1791 or before. Toussaint's close association with Catholic priests (the Abbe Delahaye and a couple of others had become part of his entourage since his rise to power) could be made to appear culpable in this context, as could his connections to the grand blancs circle of Haut du Cap, which included not only Bayon de Libertat but also the well-known royalist conspirators Colonel Cambefort and Colonel Tousard. In conclusion, Sonthonax denounced Toussaint as a royalist reactionary to the core: “At the instigation of those same emigres that surround him today, he organized in 1791 the revolt of the Blacks and the massacre of the landowning Whites. In 1793 he commanded the army of brigands at the orders of the catholic king.”25 Thus Sonthonax lent his support to the old rumor of a royalist counterrevolutionary conspiracy behind the original slave revolt in the north. However, it is almost impossible to verify any real fact in this exchange of slanders between Sonthonax and Toussaint.
In France, the spring 1797 elections had brought a royalist majority to power. In the new National Assembly the dispossessed land and slave owners of Saint Domingue found a vigorous