Toussaint Louverture - Madison Bell [91]
In sum, Hedouville had come to introduce strife where Toussaint had carefully constructed peace. “According to his reputation as Pacificator of the Vendee,” Toussaint wrote to Laveaux, “that is to say, as a benefactor of humanity, I should have thought that General Hedouville would have at least preserved the good harmony which he found among us; well, either General Hedouville was carrying a different spirit during his mission to pacify the Vendee,* or his character changed enormously as soon as he set foot in the colony. For he showed himself every day to be suspicious, brusque, and carried away against everyone.” 47 Increasingly inclined to offer the honor of his victories to divine powers of one kind or another, Toussaint gave credit for the preservation of public order against the threat represented by Hedouville to the colony's “Tutelary Genie.” “Whatever may be the injustices of the agents of the government,” he assured Laveaux, “I shall be no less constant in my principles and no less obedient to the authorities of the Motherland, because I am a long way from dumping the blame for the misconduct of her agents on her. I only want to express my wish that the Directory, instructed by experience, shall henceforward send no more men to govern the most beautiful colony of the Antilles who, so far from advancing it toward prosperity, do nothing but slow it down—partisans who follow only their passions and for whom the destruction of the country is nothing, so long as they reach their goal.”48
With Hedouville gone (and so long as no other vicious partisans like him should arrive), Toussaints peace would be just as fastidiously restored—all with the object of retaining the colony, and restoring its vast economic potential, for France. The credibility of this presentation was undercut by a couple of circumstances: Toussaint had made independent agreements with England, otherwise an enemy of France. Also, at the end of the 1790s, he began extremely discreet explorations (abet-ted by his new British allies) of the possibility of rescuing his older sons, Placide and Isaac, from the College de la Marche, where he had sent them as proof of his own loyalty and commitment to a future under the French republic. Soon after Hedouville's departure, Maitland reappeared in Jamaica and sent Colonel Harcourt to confer with Toussaint, a move that made some think that Maitland had influenced Toussaint to expel Hedouville. There were rumors that Saint Domingue would be turned over to the English and their emigre allies, but (though emigre refugees were returning in force from the United States) Toussaint did his best to quiet the whispering, and proclaimed his loyalty to the French republic as loudly at home as he did in his letters to Laveaux and the Directory.
On November 15, 1798, Toussaint issued a proclamation requiring all the able-bodied blacks in the colony who were not attached to the army to return to work for wages on the plantations (generally the same plantations where they had formerly been slaves). The grand blancs planters were elated, and Toussaint had to struggle to stop them from exulting too loudly and telling the nouveaux libres, “You say that you are free, but here is a letter from the General in Chief that forces you to come back to work for me!”49
Such remarks did nothing to sustain the idea that Toussaint still stood for general liberty first, last, and always. What troubled him now was the cost of freedom. As he saw it, the former slaves had no choice but to work productively, for the defense of the freedom they had won. Toussaint did his best to defuse the renewed hostility between former masters and former slaves by having the work policy enforced by the black military officers,