On the evening of 1 February 1802, César Vaval, now forty-six, stood on a breakwater at Cap-Français and looked in awe as eleven big French ships dropped anchor in the roadstead while small boats scurried back and forth bearing messages. General Toussaint stood silent beside him, calculating the number of trained French soldiers the ships must carry. Finally he said, with no emotion: ‘Maybe twelve thousand,’ and suddenly springing into action, the wily Toussaint dragged the speechless Vaval back into the town, where he gave him surprising orders.
‘Things look perilous tonight. But we shall drive that crowd waiting out there right back to Paris … if you do your job right.’
‘I’ll try.’
‘Don’t try. Do it. Tomorrow, the next day too, and for as long as possible, fend them off. Don’t let them land. Say there’s a plague … any trick to hold them aboard ship for two days.’
‘Where will you be?’
‘Bringing our troops down from the mountains. And while I do that, you see to it that every white man or free-colored who remains in this town is driven out … out!’ Then, to Vaval’s surprise, Toussaint started running like a hare through the empty streets, shouting: ‘Pile stacks of wood here! Stack dried tree branches here! Bring in hay from the barns! We’re going to light a fire that will be seen in France!’ Showing Vaval which houses to ignite first to ensure a giant conflagration, he said grimly: ‘No matter what general is waiting out there, when he looks ashore I want him to catch a fiery taste of what’s ahead when he puts one toe on our land.’
Toussaint’s guess that the French troops would take some days to deduce that Vaval, the courteous little local manager, was playing them for a fool proved accurate, and those two days of waiting gave Vaval time to carry out orders. He did drive out the remaining whites and coloreds, most of them, and he did pile the street corners with combustibles, but in two of his major assignments he was forestalled by men as brave and resolute as he. The two-storied stone Château Espivent he was unable to capture from a group of grands blancs who had assembled there under the leadership of its owner. They resisted all attacks. Nor could he combat a collection of do-or-die free-coloreds who had fled to the big theater at the summons of Xavier Prémord, and who fired at the blacks with deadly accuracy.
On the second evening, when the rat-a-tat of gunfire ashore echoed through the fleet, Leclerc issued his order: ‘We land at dawn. All forces in small boats to storm the beach.’ But about an hour before dawn Pauline awakened him: ‘Charles! The town’s on fire!’ and with his other generals Leclerc went up on deck, to see wild flames rising above the town that was to have been his capital.
It was a ghastly day, with houses and buildings burning to their foundations. Most of the handsome town was leveled, but the two centers so stoutly defended by Espivent and the free-coloreds still stood defiant when the embers died. From the walls of the château the grands blancs had fired such withering blasts at any blacks who tried to storm the place that the arsonists were kept away, but even so, at one critical moment the defense might have collapsed had not General Vaval himself—as he had once defended Colibri—rushed up with a curt command: ‘Draw back. That one was decent,’ and the château was saved.
The lovely theater also survived, for there Prémord’s free-coloreds maintained a fusillade so resolute that the rioting slaves had to fall back, the fiery brands in their fists useless against guns.
General Leclerc, who could not from his distant point of observation know that anything of the town had been saved, nevertheless put up a brave front. His eyes reddened from the smoke that drifted across his fleet, he cried: ‘Men, prepare to storm the beaches! I shall lead!’ and the little boats were loaded with fighting men. But before Leclerc himself could leave, Pauline gripped his arm and whispered: ‘When you’re the leader, first appearances are everything,’ and she made him dress in one of his finest uniforms, with sash and cockaded hat, so that when he stepped gallantly ashore with Pauline on his arm, she also in her best, they were indeed emissaries of the great Napoleon come to command a capital town from which the reconquest of the colony would be launched. Because they came properly dressed and apparently unafraid, they gave the white survivors of Le Cap a courage that would otherwise have been lacking.
As the handsome couple moved through the desolated town, one local resident left his stone château overlooking the sea and came forward, waving aloft a French flag and shouting: ‘Soldiers of France! Come ashore and save us!’ It was Jerome Espivent, who had an amazing story to tell the Leclercs: ‘The black general who burned the town has kept his men away from my place. He’d been one of my slaves and he respects me for the charity I’d shown him.’
‘A good omen,’ Pauline said graciously, whereupon Espivent flourished his blue cape, bowed low, and kissed her hand: ‘My house is your house,’ and to the general: ‘My town in ashes is your capital, for I’m sure you will rebuild it,’ and on these emotional terms Leclerc took possession of the château and plunged into the maelstrom of the colony he had been sent to subdue and rule. While Pauline remained below directing the four Espivent house slaves how to rearrange what furniture was left, her husband withdrew to a room on the second floor, where, apart from others, he unsealed a secret letter which Napoleon had handed him eight weeks before in Paris.
It was one of the most Machiavellian documents in history, and a treasure for those scholars who would seek to unravel the mystery of how Napoleon’s mind worked. Why the great general allowed a copy to survive is a mystery, but there it rests in the harsh glow of history, revealing the immorality and duplicity of the man.
Napoleon gave Leclerc minutely detailed instructions, not knowing that his orders in many ways duplicated the ones with which King Philip of Spain had saddled Medina-Sidonia, his unfortunate admiral general of the Armada; had Napoleon been aware of the similarity, and the pitiful results King Philip obtained, he might have given his brother-in-law and sister more freedom to make their own decisions.
The recapture of St.-Domingue, Napoleon wrote, would be relatively simple if a rigid schedule was followed: fifteen days to occupy all port towns, perhaps another month to strike at the slave armies from many different directions, then not more than half a year to track down isolated units that would no doubt try to take refuge in the mountains—after which, victory would be proclaimed and the troops could come home.
This military strategy was first class, even though the time allowances would have been more practical for an assault on a settled European principality without mountains, but the subsidiary orders were venal. Leclerc was ordered to conduct himself differently in each of the three stages of occupation:
As soon as you have secured the victory you will disarm only the rebel blacks, you will parley with Toussaint, promise him everything he asks until you gain control of all principal points in the colony. During this period all Toussaint’s chief agents, white or colored, shall be loaded indiscriminately with honors, attentions and assurances that under the new government they will be retained in their posts. And every black man occupying an office of any kind will be flattered, well treated and given whatever promises you think necessary.
At the end of fifteen days, when the second stage was to begin, the screws were to be tightened, and so much pressure was to be applied to Toussaint that he would see the impossibility of relying upon isolated units in the mountains to continue the struggle:
On that very day, without scandal or injury but with honor and consideration, he must be placed on board a frigate and sent immediately to France. And on that same day throughout the colony you will arrest all suspects whatever their color, and also all black generals no matter what their patriotism or past service.
You will allow no variation in these instructions; and any person talking about the rights of those blacks, who have shed so much white blood, shall, using any pretext whatever, be sent to France, regardless of his rank or services.
The infamous fourth instruction was so shameless that it
could not be put into writing, for Napoleon did not want anyone to see the inflammable words a return to slavery, but during the final meeting in Paris between the two men, Napoleon had said: ‘Slavery is a word never to be spoken. But it is a system to be reimposed as soon as conditions permit.’
Governed by these duplicitious rules, Leclerc went downstairs for his first meeting with the leaders of the colony and, as in old times, he found waiting for him a group of only white men, and he assured them that with his troops from the home country, he, with assistance and guidance from them, would quickly restore order to the rebellious colony. At the meager dinner, Jerome Espivent gave the toast: ‘To our saviors from France,’ after which he offered stern counsel: ‘Keep your hands clean of the free-coloreds. They can only stain you. And never trust black troops. They’re as fickle as the wind. The men and women in this room are the only ones you can rely upon. We stand ready to die for France, if only this disgraceful rioting and destruction of our property can be halted.’ These were no idle words; at every convulsion since that first horrible uprising in 1791, Espivent had been willing to lay down his life in defense of the principles by which he had been reared, and now in his sixtieth year he felt the same way.
Now began the historic battle for St.-Domingue. In the coastal regions of the north, General Leclerc and his immense French army controlled everything, and enthusiastically supported by blancs led by Jerome Espivent, laid careful plans to subdue the slave uprising and capture Toussaint and his main aide Vaval. To accomplish this, the French troops would compress the rebellious slaves into ever-smaller enclaves in the center and southern portions of the colony, and when the noose was so tightened that the noirs could no longer obtain arms, supplies or new conscripts, Toussaint and Vaval would have no option but to surrender.
Leclerc handled his task superbly, displaying a talent for military tactics which startled even his own subordinates. He made not a single mistake, and almost on the schedule that Napoleon had dictated, he had Toussaint’s men driven completely out of the northern areas and so hedged about in the mountains that he could confidently report to Napoleon in Paris: ‘We have completely demoralized the slaves, and the surrender of their generals can be expected at any moment.’
Toussaint and Vaval refused even to consider surrender. ‘Trusted friend,’ the powerful black general said whenever prospects looked bleak, ‘we grow stronger with every backward step we take … more compact on our side … more scattered on theirs,’ but at the close of one day in which Leclerc drove his men six miles deeper into the mountain retreats, Vaval leaned against a tree, exhausted, and asked: ‘Does Leclerc never give up?’ and Toussaint replied: ‘He will. Time, and the mountains, and events we cannot foresee will force him to get back aboard his ships and return to France.’
Meanwhile, Jerome Espivent, still in charge of his château, which served as army headquarters, was perplexed by unsavory incidents occurring there. He noticed one French officer after another coming to his château to take tea or wine with Madame Leclerc when her husband was away with his troops, and when such visitors, one by one, were taken to her quarters on the second floor, he began to suspect that this handsome young woman was going to be more difficult for General Leclerc to handle than the black generals. But he always reminded himself that she was Napoleon’s sister, so he kept his counsel. After one scandalous incident he said to himself: After all, she is Italian, and maybe that accounts for it, for as a gentleman of near-noble breeding, he could not believe that the French wife of a commanding general would so conduct herself with junior officers.
Once, when he watched Pauline dallying with a married colonel, he lost his temper and asked a lieutenant: ‘That one, is she never satisfied?’ and the young man replied with a leer: ‘Not too soon, I hope.’ Espivent thought that as a member of one of France’s noble families, he ought to discuss this matter with General Leclerc, but when he saw the fighting little fellow stagger in exhausted from pursuing Toussaint, he had not the effrontery to badger him with Pauline’s behavior: What that man needs is not lecturing, but sleep. And when the two dined together, for Pauline was usually out in the ruined town with someone else, he asked only about Toussaint.
‘We have him worried,’ was all Leclerc would say. ‘I can see it by the moves he makes.’
‘How can you tell a thing like that?’
‘I’ve seen it three times. He’s had a clear run to the south. Might even do us real damage on the way down. But he refuses the escape we’ve left him … and do you know why?’
‘My mind doesn’t work like a noir.’
Leclerc laid down his napkin: ‘He’s not a noir, Espivent, damn him, he’s a full-fledged general. And if I didn’t have three more armies in the field than he does, I’d never catch him.’
In March and April 1802, Toussaint L’Ouverture made military history by conducting a Fabian operation of strategic retreat which lured Leclerc ever farther into the mountains, and won the gasping admiration of not only his French adversaries but also those American ship captains who arrived in Cap-Français with cargoes of powder and ball sent down from arsenals around Boston: ‘Haven’t they caught the nigger yet? No? You better watch out; while he has you trapped in the mountains, he’ll slip around and burn this town again.’ One captain brought a newspaper from Charleston, featuring a story about the evil effect Toussaint’s exploits were having on South Carolina slaves: ‘Napoleon must settle this man’s hash permanently, because his example must not be allowed to infect our docile slaves in the southern states.’
But despite the brilliance and courage of the black generals, Leclerc proved himself such a bulldog, hanging tenaciously onto the heels of his enemy, that the day came when Toussaint had to face the fact that he could not continue the campaign indefinitely. So on a dark night at the end of April, he asked the one man he could trust to walk with him in the darkness: ‘Dear friend of battle, I can’t continue this fight.’
‘Toussaint!’ Vaval cried. ‘We have them on the run.’
‘What nonsense from an old friend.’
‘I mean it.’
‘Leclerc has never let up. He’s trailing us right now, out there.’
‘I don’t mean the troops he has in the field. I mean the ones in their graves.’ And he told Toussaint about the information their spies had brought: ‘That hard fighting unit who saw duty along the Rhine … gave us so much trouble at the start? Why don’t we still face them? A black woman who helps nurse them explains why. Three months ago they started with about thirteen hundred men.’
‘How many now?’
‘Only six hundred alive, and four hundred of them in hospital, that leaves only two hundred able to fight.’
‘But they keep bringing in replacements,’ Toussaint said, and Vaval replied: ‘They do, but always from the north of Europe.’
‘What does that signify?’
‘They aren’t accustomed to the tropics. Watch how many are able to face us at the end of two weeks.’
Toussaint, who felt his life and his efforts drawing to a close, could not afford to wait even the two weeks which would have verified Vaval’s prediction, and next morning he awakened César before dawn: ‘Old friend, I have no escape. You must come with me,’ and together, under a white flag, they approached the French lines to arrange the honorable terms under which Toussaint, Vaval and all others in the vicinity could surrender. French officers, speaking for Leclerc, who was overjoyed to receive the news, offered the black leader the exact terms Napoleon had prepared and on which Leclerc and Touissant shook hands like honorable generals: ‘France awards freedom to all your black troops. Never again slavery. You and your other officers, like Vaval here, induction into the imperial forces of Napoleon with no reduction in rank. And if as you say you would prefer to live on your old plantation in retirement, do so, and France will give you an honor guard of four of your staff for life.’
This was more generous than the black revolutionaries could have hoped for, and Vaval
saw it as a testimony to the integrity of Toussaint, who had rarely killed civilians and who had resolutely clung to one abiding principle: ‘The slaves must be free.’ In the entire world since the first efforts of Spartacus, he was the first slave general, and a black one at that, to have attained his goal.
On 6 May 1802, exactly three months after the arrival of General Leclerc, the French army units stationed in Le Cap were given a late and generous breakfast at eight, ordered into their dress uniforms at ten, and mustered at eleven to give the salute to Generals Toussaint L’Ouverture and César Vaval as they surrendered their swords to the superior power of First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte and his able brother-in-law Leclerc. Pauline, watching the ceremony from a small thronelike affair in the square, thought: What a handsome man that Toussaint is. Sixty, they say, and he carries himself like a young stallion.
On 5 June 1802, after a month of idleness at his plantation, Toussaint was invited to a gala dinner at the neighboring headquarters of the local French commandant, a General Brunet, and he looked forward so avidly to an afternoon of relaxed military recollections that he asked his aide, General Vaval, to join him: ‘Give the French a bottle of wine, they talk better than anyone, and I’d enjoy that,’ but as they neared the plantation where Brunet waited, Vaval had a blinding apocalyptic vision. Reining in his horse, he ordered the black troops accompanying the two generals to move ahead, and said, with panic in his voice: ‘Toussaint! Death awaits if you go in there. For God’s sake, turn back. For God’s sake, don’t go!’
‘What’s the matter, old friend?’
‘Terror! I’m shaking with terror,’ and he held out his trembling hands.
‘Fool! Grab your reins and let’s get on with our little celebration.’
‘I cannot! The angel of death hovers above that house,’ and with that, Vaval turned back and galloped away as if the fiends of hell were at his heels, never to see his hero again.