William
Wordsworth wrote of Toussaint L'Ouverture:
"There
is not a breathing of the common wind that will forget thee;
thou
hast great allies;
thy
friends are exultation,
agonies
and love,
and
man's unconquerable mind."
(published
in the Morning Post, 2 February 1803)
Pierre
Dominique Toussaint L'Ouverture - his surname possibly deriving from his
bravery in battle where he once made a breach in the ranks of the enemy, was
born a slave on Breda plantation, St. Domingue (Haiti), in 1746. It is said
that he came from noble stock, in that he was the grandson of an African king,
King Goau-Guinou of the Aradas. He was taught to read and write by Pierre
Baptiste, a free black. It would appear that his father was highly regarded by
the master of L'Habitation Breda, the Comte de Noé, who, upon his marriage to a
slave Pauline, granted him 'liberté de savanne', a partial freedom that allowed
the slave, although still the property of his master, freedom within the
confines of the estate to live his own life.
"Toussaint's
father was also granted a parcel of land and five slaves of his own to work for
him," wrote Wenda Parkinson in an account of the life of Toussaint,
entitled "The gilded African". There were five children born to the
marriage, Pierre, the eldest, became a colonel in the army of the king of
Spain; Paul served as a general in the French colonial army, Marie Jean, the
only girl, married a colonel. There was a boy who died young named Goau-Guinou
after his royal grandfather, and then there was Toussaint.
Philip
Sherlock wrote of him:
"Toussaint
had a quick mind, he learnt quickly, learnt from his father the use of healing
herbs; learnt the ancient stories of his people, and above all learnt to hate
the degradation of slavery."
The
Comte de Noé was a man of the enlightenment and recognised in this family a
natural intelligence. Being kindly, he lent the boys books.
St.
Domingue, the futile, prosperous colony that it was, groaned beneath the weight
of slavery. Toussaint saw men and women treated not as human beings, but as
things. As a youth, tall, thin, a trifle frail, he was called 'fatras baton' -
the thrashing stick. He tested his strength swimming the fast-flowing rivers,
climbed to the hilltops alone and crawled up the rocky crags on the mountains
above Breda. He saw the schooners and sloops setting out from Haitian ports for
France, laden with such quantities of sugar, coffee, indigo and cotton that all
of Europe marvelled. He saw the production of sugar grow and then grow even more
to the stage when Haiti in 1789 was producing one third more sugar than all the
British colonies in the Caribbean.
His
father, the coachman to the Comte de Noé, would take him along when the Comte
attended the affairs of the nobility. He saw the wealth that flowed into the
estates, the finery from Paris, the opulence of absolute ownership. He knew
that all this power and wealth rested on the basis of plantation slavery and
was witness to the appalling cruelty so revolting that it would sicken you if
it were to be recalled in detail.
Beneath
this power, this wealth, beneath the crushing heel, there was a rising anger,
swelling like some vast tide. As an explosion it came in 1791 when 100,000
Africans rose in revolt and swept the north of St. Domingue with fire and
sword.
Toussaint
joined the rebels. At first, he was suspect. They had won the hard-fought
battles; they had put the fire, and they had faced the fire. But his
determination was relentless and his skill in war obvious. By sheer power of
his leadership he came to be regarded as their best general.
Regiments
from France arrived and the colonists by and large refused the moderate terms
of peace that were asked by Toussaint and the rebels. The colonists were
contemptuous. "Did Toussaint think that they had brought half a million
African slaves to the New World to make them French citizens?" they asked.
Now
came the heroic moment in Toussaint's life: should he take the easy road and
return to Breda, or the difficult road that meant years of war, perhaps even
defeat? As a learned man, he may have remembered the words of Pericles, spoken
in Athens over the Athenians who had given their lives for their country:
"Life was dear, but they held their honour dearer, and so when the hour
came it brought not terror but glory."
With
that decision, a rebellion without a clear purpose became a war of liberation.
The
hounds of war howled over the island and behind came the horsemen of the
apocalypse, bringing disease, starvation and death. Toussaint first fought the
French, then the Spaniards in the eastern half of the island (now the Dominican
Republic). Then he fought against Maitland and his English army. His tattered
army victorious, he now ruled all the island which Christopher Columbus had
named Hispaniola, both what was once French and what was once Spanish.
In
France, the French Revolution had swept the monarchy from the throne and had
beheaded the aristocracy. Out of that new reality came Napoleon Bonaparte. The
shadow of the Corsican dictator fell over all Europe. In Haiti, Toussaint
strove to create a free African state. Napoleon saw quite clearly the real
meaning of the Haitian revolution. He knew that the successful slave revolt in
that island was a turning point in the history of the New World. He himself told
his minister Talleyrand to inform England that "the freedom of the
Negroes, if recognised in St. Domingue and legalised by France, would at all
times be a rallying point for freedom-seekers of the New World".
Napoleon
sent an armada of 46 ships to Haiti's harbours, carrying an army of 46,000 men
to subdue Toussaint and his people. At first, the Haitian was overwhelmed and
dismayed at the vastness of Napoleon's army. Turning of a strategy of
"burnt earth", he summoned his best general Jean-Jacques Dessalines
and instructed him:
"Remember
that this soil nourished on our blood and sweat must not yield a crumb of food
to our enemies. Keep all roads under constant fire. Throw the bodies of horses
and men into all wells and springs, destroy everything, burn everything."
The
three terrible allies Toussaint, yellow fever and dysentery reduced Napoleon's
army to a shambles. In the end, having lost 60,000 men, Napoleon withdrew from
the New World and gave up his designs on Haiti and Louisiana.
Toussaint
had secured the freedom of Haiti. His actions were of direct benefit to the
infant Federation of the United States, to whom Napoleon sold Louisiana.
Toussaint, however, did not see the end. Betrayed by one of his friends, French
General Brunet, he was kidnapped and taken to France. As the ship sailed into
the rolling Atlantic swells, Haiti hardly more than a memory hovering on the
horizon, Toussaint said:
"In
overthrowing me, you have cut down in Haiti only the trunk of the tree of
liberty. It will spring up again by the roots, for they are numerous and
deep."
Toussaint
L'Ouverture died ten months later in a fortress in the bleak and wintry Jura
mountains, but the roots of the tree sprouted again and in 1804 Haiti was
finally free.
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