• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 775 0

practice; the English were gone from the south by August 23. This agreement, as well as the one for the evacuation of Mole concluded on August 30, contained favorable terms for emigre colonists which were irritating to Hedouville—not to mention that Maitland had promised earlier that he would surrender Mole to no one but Hedouville himself. But to complete the undermining of the agents authority, Toussaint and Maitland signed a secret agreement at Point Bourgeoise on August 31: a nonaggression pact and trade deal which lifted the British blockade from Toussaint's Saint Domingue, and gave him a free hand within its borders so long as he honored a promise not to export the black revolution to the British Caribbean colonies. (Toussaint kept his end of the bargain a year later by betraying a conspiracy to raise a slave revolt in Jamaica.) The arrangement concluded, Maitland and Toussaint repaired to the last British base at Mole, where the white general treated the black one to a festive dinner, and afterward gave Toussaint the elaborate silver service used at the meal, with the compliments of the king of England.

Toussaint and Maitland shared amiable feelings toward members of the grand blanc group in exile, and Toussaint let Maitland know that he would welcome the return of such refugees not only from the United States but also from Jamaica—meaning that the French collaborators who had fled the Western Department with the English would be allowed to come back almost right away. Hedouville, for his part, was expelling grands blancs pardoned by Toussaint as emigres, though not so fast as Toussaint was admitting them.

Toussaint's policy gave him a burst of popularity among the whites of the Western Department. The ladies of Port-au-Prince, who had caught on to his taste for elaborate religious ceremonies, took up a collection for a thanksgiving mass. Toussaint, far less reserved than when he had first taken possession of the town, mounted the pulpit to declaim: “I am going to imitate Jesus Christ, whom we adore in this temple—he forgave in the name of his Father; I will forgive in the name of the Republic.”37

Rumors of the secret treaty with Maitland soon leaked, further damaging Toussaint's shaky relationship with Hedouville. He had called on the agent at Le Cap for the first time soon after he'd taken possession of Port-au-Prince and the west from the English, but had not stayed long, preferring to retire to the security of his own base at Gonai'ves. In July, he visited Hedouville again, this time in the company of General Andre Rigaud. The latter was technically still under order of arrest since his rebellion against Sonthonax and the Third Commission in 1796, and as wary of the new agent as Toussaint was, it seemed. A volatile character, Rigaud was irked that the British had yielded the towns of the Western Department to Toussaint rather than to him, but when the two generals met in Port-au-Prince, they manage to smooth over that difference. United by a common mistrust of Hedouville, they traveled from Port-au-Prince to Le Cap together.

But once he met Hedouville in person, Rigaud dropped his reserve, so that the agent found him a warmer and more congenial figure than the suspicious, aloof Toussaint. This development reactivated Toussaint's mistrust of Rigaud, and Hedouville, who felt that he would have better luck managing these two generals if they were at odds with each other, encouraged the breach between them by favoring Rigaud. Before he left the south, however, Rigaud had been worried that Hedouville might have him deported to France to face charges related to his 1796 rebellion against the Third Commission, so he had arranged for an insurrection to break out at Anse a Veau during his absence— one that only his return to the south could subdue. As there was no time to call it off, the insurrection began on schedule and Rigaud, now trapped by his own artifice, had to rush home to settle it, leaving Toussaint to sort out his problems with Hedouville alone.

So far as labor policy went, Toussaint's and Hedouville's