24125: Bell (reply) to Corbett on Toussaint and other Revolution issues

[corbetre@webster.edu]

>From Bob Corbett:

Folks, Madison sent the note below to me as a personal communication, but I 
thought it was so extraordinary and so worthy of both sharing and discussing, 
that I wrote to ask if I might:

1.  Post it to the list (as I'm now doing)
2.  Add this as an appendage to my review -- which I will do soon.

Madison graciously agreed.  

There are just some fascinating things to think about in his thought and 
specualtions below.

Bob Corbett

====================================


>From madison bell <mbell@goucher.edu> 
To corbetre@webster.edu 
Subject Stone review 

Bob? I had meant months ago to respond to your wonderful review and just 
found it again at the bottom of me inbox.

It is a really great close reading of the whole trilogy­ -- mezi anpil.

I will comment on a point or two just because they are interesting.   Also, 
I just completed a draft of a short biography of Toussaint so have been 
over all this ground and this time without the luxury of making stuff up!

  The royalist plot theory: recent scholars seem to be coming back around 
to it.  Jacques de Cauna?s book, TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE ET L?INDEPENDENCE 
D?HAITI reveals some new stuff, new at least to me, about Toussaint?s 
connections with the grand blanc world.  He and Bayon de Libertat were 
really close friends.  Toussaint was free since 1776 and his relationship 
with Bayon was really a collegial one.  They were both Freemasons and 
belonged to the same lodge.  Touzard was related to Bayon by marriage (I 
got some of this now from Gerard Barthelemy and a frequent visitor at Breda 
along with his commander, Cambefort.  Toussaint had a lot of friendly 
contact with these people.  Also one should consider that relations between 
free blacks (a rather small group) and free people of color were cool, 
while relations between free blacks and petit blancs were exceedingly 
hostile­meaning that in quarrel between petit blancs and grand blancs 
Toussaint would be inclined to side with the latter where he already had a 
friendly and supportive circle of acquaintance.

A Royalist plot is implied in Blanchelande?s sentence to the 
guillotine.  Both Kerverseau and Sonthonax state Toussaint?s role in the 
plot as a fact, though both were trying to damage his reputation when they 
made these statements.

Also, the more I study the negotiations and the letters sent by the rebel 
slaves in the fall of 1791 the more it looks like a deal made before the 
first uprising is breaking down.  I think it is plausible that the couple 
of hundred manumissions and concessions in the conditions of slavery which 
the rebels begin by asking for were agreed upon before the first uprising.

True it makes no sense that the grand blanc conspirators would instigate a 
massacre of their own class­but what if they never meant for that to 
happen?  They might have PLANNED to make a deal with a few ateliers to burn 
some cane fields and wave their machetes, scare the petit blancs into 
submission and then collect their reward and go home.  But the uprising 
went way beyond that the very first night and that?s why the a priori deal 
broke down­the grand blancs really couldn?t float the original deal (if 
they wanted to) once so many whites had been slaughtered and the whole 
Northern Plain burned down.

In the course of the fall the rebellion evolves toward a revolution ? this 
is quite plainly seen in the letters from the rebels.  It?s plain that the 
slaves were not fighting for general liberty at the start but by the end of 
1791 they were.

Now, I think Toussaint may well have foreseen all the stages of this 
process.  He may have foreseen that the insurrection would immediately 
burst out of the limits set for it, that the deal with the grand blancs 
would break down, and that a revolution in favor of general liberty would 
develop.  His actions during this period support that idea­he stays home 
till the first spasm of uncontrollable violence has played itself and joins 
the rebels at the point when they are ready to be shaped into a 
revolutionary army with the stamina to go the distance.

On this read, Toussaint?s involvement in the plot would be his first great 
POLITICAL maneuver.  He always like to have his opponents do as much of his 
work for him as possible!  In this situation he realized early that the 
plot could be shaped into something very different from what the original 
schemers intended and that he would be the man to do it.

Yup there?s some speculation here.  It could have happened this way but 
that doesn?t mean for certain that it did.

Fever vs battle casualties in the defeat of the French.

Recent scholarship has revealed that Leclerc and his subordinates 
consistently underreported their battlefield casualties, because they were 
embarrassed (and horrified) by how many men were getting killed.  Toussaint 
and his officers had armies that were formidable in the field.  Still they 
were up against Napoleon?s best veterans.  The two biggest battles of the 
war­Ravine a Couleuvre and La Crete a Pierrot, were incredibly destructive 
for both sides.

Toussaint really didn?t like pointless violence and useless bloodshed.  If 
he could win without a fight, he would.  Also the first weeks of war gave 
him a number of strategic setbacks: the loss of the Spanish part of the 
island and the Grand Anse, the failure to destroy Port au Prince, 
Maurepas?s isolation and ultimate surrender in the Northwest. Toussaint?s 
last plan for a decisive military victory was to capture Leclerc at La 
Crete a Pierrot through a maneuver of double encirclement.  He describes 
this strategy in some detail in the Fort de Joux memoir and it nearly 
worked­the timing was off by a matter of hours.

With that opportunity lost he was down to a war of attrition.  He could 
have won that, but disease is a factor in a war of attrition.  His model 
would have been the fate of the English invasion.  Toussaint never had much 
luck fighting conventional battles with the redcoats at Saint Marc and in 
the open ground the Artibonite.  They finally gave and struck a deal with 
him when their yellow fever epidemic had just proved too costly.  Toussaint 
had every reason to think the same thing would happen with the French.

When Leclerc and Toussaint came to terms it appears to me that neither side 
really understood just how weak the other one was at that point.  The 
Haitians had a military edge but they may not quite have known that they 
had it.  Also, when Christophe surrendered, Toussaint was at immediate risk 
of being captured or routed from his last position of strength in the 
Cordon de l?Ouest­Christophe turned over Dondon which is in easy striking 
distance of his headquarters at Marmelade.  So he thought he could sit out 
a truce until the French were weakened enough by the inevitable fever 
season (he had seen what happened to large numbers of recently arrived 
British soldiers clustered on the coast) to be more easily attacked and 
destroyed­with lower cost to his own side, which was something he always 
considered.  And this strategy played out just as he expected­only without him.

As for the idea that Toussaint intentionally let himself be captured­ -- the 
big argument for that is from Aimé Césiare?s book (still terrific, I just 
reread it) and it is a very ideological argument.  I think it has SOME 
element of truth­ it is clear that Toussaint understood that the whole 
population was so thoroughly revolutionized that the Revolution would 
happen with or without him?. But I think he meant for it to happen with him 
rather than without­there is a lot of evidence that he was surprised and 
outraged by his rest.

I really see him in a contradictory state of mind in those last days before 
his arrest­half-knowing what was likely to happen, half-refusing to admit 
it to himself?.

Now and then Toussaint did made a tragic error­which is why he makes sense 
(to me anyway) as a tragic hero?.

msb


The Stone That the Builder Refused-- third and final volume of the Haitian 
Revolutionary trilogy, is on sale November 9,  2004.   For a preview, visit 
this site: 
<http://faculty.goucher.edu/mbell/Stone%
20files/stone_that_the_builder_refused.htm>http://faculty.goucher.edu/mbell/Sto
ne%20files/stone_that_the_builder_refused.htm