Toussaint Louverture - Madison Bell [85]
Hedouville, whose successes in the Vendee had relied on diplomacy as much as battle, arrived in Saint Domingue better supplied with gentleness than with force: the home government had allowed him scarcely any fresh European troops. Kerverseau, having sized up his situation, advised him to display confidence, though he had very little material strength: “I must tell you then, that despite your character as Agent of the Directory, Toussaint will be more powerful than you. An order signed by him will have more force than all your proclamations, than those of the Directory, than all the decrees of this Legislative Corps. But all his power will be yours, once he is certain of your principles.”33
Hedouville installed himself in Cap Francais on April 20, 1798. Toussaint, wary of the newcomer, was not there to meet him; in a series of letters, he excused himself by citing his campaigns against the English invaders on the west coast and the distance over difficult terrain. In view of his notoriously rapid movement all over the colony, the latter explanation was not very convincing. In fact, Toussaint was busy conducting his own negotiations for a British withdrawal with General Thomas Maitland, who had arrived to take over the British operations in Saint Domingue just three weeks before Hedouville's landing.
The adventure in Saint Domingue had not turned out as the British hoped. They had not been able to make the area of the colony they occupied anywhere near as profitable as it had formerly been for France. They earned something better than £500,000 from exports during the occupation, which, on the other hand, cost them more than £7 million in money, as well as about 20,000 casualties. At Maitland's arrival, the British had only 2,500 European soldiers under arms, plus a few thousand black and colored troops of doubtful reliability, while Toussaint was reputed to have 20,000 men to bring against them.
Having driven the British from Mirebalais and the interior, Toussaint was now able to put pressure on the cordon of forts which protected Arcahaie. In March 1798, he broke through it. Though the formidable Lapointe was still holding out for the British in Arcahaie itself, Toussaint's advance allowed him to seriously threaten the British positions to the north, at Saint Marc, and to the south at Port-au-Prince. The British situation in the Western Department looked less and less tenable.
Maitland had studied the rivalry between Rigaud and Toussaint and concluded that the two generals were unlikely ever to cooperate. He believed that Laplume, who since the overthrow of Dieudonne had commanded a large force for the French republic just to the south of British-held Port-au-Prince, was a quasi-independent third factor; for Laplume's loyalty to Toussaint was never certain. The British general knew that possession of Port-au-Prince would greatly empower whichever leader it was yielded to. If Toussaint got the prize, the British would still have both Laplume and Rigaud in a buffer zone between Port-au-Prince and the British post at the port of Jeremie toward the western tip of the Grande Anse. Furthermore, by dealing with Toussaint, Maitland might drive a wedge between him and Hedouville, whose arrival made an easy exit for the British less likely.
On April 23, Maitland offered to withdraw all British forces