Toussaint Louverture - Madison Bell [95]
There were still internal problems to confront. As Maitland had anticipated, the evacuation of the British had helped to make Toussaint more powerful than any other leader in Saint Domingue. His armament had become very imposing; not only did the British leave him their forts with cannon intact, they also left sixty thousand muskets in good working order. Though the colored commanders Rigaud and Beauvais still shared the Southern Department between them, no one could challenge Toussaint's dominance in the north and the west. Despite Hedouville's strenuous effort to set them against each other, Rigaud and Toussaint sustained a spirit of cooperation for several months after the agents flight. On February 3,1799, Beauvais, Rigaud, and Laplume traveled to Port-au-Prince to meet Toussaint and Roume for a celebration of the anniversary of the National Conventions abolition of slavery. But a few days later, the entente between Toussaint and Rigaud began to crack when Roume took a couple of military districts out of Rigaud's command and turned them over to Toussaint.
Suspicious that Rigaud was plotting a mulatto takeover in Port-au-Prince, Toussaint delivered a harangue in the capital's largest church, warning Rigaud and all the gens de couleur that he could do away with them all if he only chose to raise his left hand against them; it was just their good fortune that for the moment he chose to use the tools of law instead. This threat had a double resonance: in Vodou, malicious black magic is understood to be the work of the left hand, while the right is in charge of healing, benevolent action.
Toussaint's largely secret negotiations with the British and Americans were still going on. Suspicious of the secrecy, Rigaud accused Toussaint of conspiring with Maitland to restore slavery. Toussaint then revealed one of the secrets he had kept with the British general: he let Rigaud know that Maitland had wanted either Beauvais or Laplume to assume command of Jeremie (near Rigaud's hometown, Les Cayes, on the Grand Anse) when the British evacuated, but that he, Toussaint, had insisted that Rigaud take control of the port. At that point, Toussaint would likely have chosen Rigaud as his successor as general in chief (an early indication that Toussaint had already begun to think that this choice would be his to make), but now, thanks to Rigaud's abuse of his trust, he was beginning to prefer Beauvais. Rigaud, Toussaint charged, had shredded Toussaint's order for thanksgiving masses following the departure of the British, offending “the supreme being, to whom I always give credit for the success of my operations.” The next accusation was distinctly more serious: “I know,” said Toussaint to Rigaud, “that in the design to get rid of me you have posted men sworn to you along the road to Arcahaie”57—that is to say, assassins.
The ink was barely dry on the last secret convention Toussaint had signed with Maitland when Rigaud, exasperated to the point of no return, published the letter in which Hedouville had transferred his authority as agent to him. It was June 15, 1799, and Rigaud was already marching in force toward Petit and Grand Goave, the two posts which Roume had transferred to Toussaint's command not long before. He captured those two towns so swiftly that Laplume was barely able to escape by throwing himself into a boat. At Arcahaie, having eluded whatever assassins Rigaud might have sent to waylay him there, Toussaint met Richter, one of the American consuls, to hurry up his arms shipments. Barrels of gunpowder with British stamps were offloaded at Port-au-Prince. Clearly, the United States and Britain were backing Toussaint in the conflict, while some observers thought that Rigaud had been incited by Anglophile French colonists and remnants of