Toussaint Louverture by Madison Smartt Bell Read Free Book Online Page A

went after Jean-François, who had quickly retreated to the midst of his men, and persuaded him to swallow the insult and return to the conversation. Tradition has it that Jean-François was so impressed with Saint-Leger's approach that he knelt at the white man's feet.
    On the strength of this parlay, the white prisoners finally were released. This time they were gathered at the camp of LaTannerie; from there Toussaint himself would escort them safely into Le Cap. By the end of December Toussaint had dug himself in deep at La Tannerie, which Gros describes as one of the two most seriously fortified camps under rebel control, equipped with cannon and surrounded by ditches and pitfall traps ‘which could wound a lot of our people.” 13
    “What was our surprise,” Gros goes on, ‘when once we arrived at La Tannerie, we saw the blacks gather and fall upon us with saber in hand, threatening to send only our heads to Le Cap, and cursing the peace and their generals.” 14 Again it was only thanks to Toussaint's intervention that a wholesale slaughter of the prisoners was prevented.
    Toussaint's more cynical observers find this episode suspicious. How likely was it that he could be attacked in this way by his own men in his own best stronghold without any inkling it was going to happen?In the future, Toussaint would become notorious for secretly instigating violent popular uprisings which only his authority could subdue. And perhaps he wanted to make sure that the white prisoners would remember that he, Toussaint, had been their savior on the very day of their release. However, it is at least as likely that the attack at La Tannerie was a spontaneous response to the discovery, on the part of the mass of insurgent slaves, that their leaders meant to send them all back to the fields for the pittance of fifty liberties. That would have given them good enough reason to curse both the peace and their own generals.
    Whatever had sparked it, the attack was deflected, and Toussaint led the prisoners out of the mountains, “across the countryside hostile to the whites,” reports Roger Dorsinville, “and the streets of Le Cap, hostile to himself, all the way to the seat of the Assembly. He was seen, apparently tranquil behind his mask, traversing these stormy double lines.” 15 He rode at the head of 150 cavalry dragoons—a show of organized force which must have been startlingly impressive to the whites of Le Cap, and more than sufficient to guarantee Toussaint's safe passage in and out of town. Once the prisoners had been returned, Toussaint had hoped to negotiate a complete peace settlement, but the assembly refused even to receive him, sending out a note instead: “Continue to give proofs of your repentance … Address yourself to the commissioners.” 16
    The last fillip must have been derisory, since the assembly had undercut the commission at every turn and derailed every settlement the commissioners could arrange. Whether Toussaint had tears of frustration in his eyes when he left Le Cap that day has not been recorded; more likely he remained impassive, as Dorsinville described him on the way in. Certainly he understood very well that the whites' inability to agree among themselves had ruined their last chance to reach a peaceful settlement with the blacks.
    During the weeks of talks with the whites, the rebel slaves had maintained a sort of cease-fire. By Gross account, Biassou meted out serious punishments to any of his men who went raiding in white-controlled territory during that period. But once the assembly's contemptuousattitude derailed the negotiations, the Northern Department was back at war. By mid-January 1792, Jean-François and his men were on the offensive, capturing the district of Ouanaminthe on the Spanish frontier, while Biassou made a daring night raid on l'Hopital des Peres de la Charite on the edge of Cap Francais itself, rescuing his mother, who was a slave there, and slaughtering the patients on his