Titans of History

TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE

c. 1743–1803

The Spartacus … whose destiny it was to avenge the wrongs committed on his race.

Comte de Lavaux, the French governor-general of Saint-Domingue, describing Toussaint

Toussaint Louverture was the founding father of Haiti. A plantation slave himself, he won his own freedom and went on to help emancipate hundreds of thousands of others and to found the world’s first black state. He was a skillful politician and general who led the Haitian revolution from the early 1790s and drove the mighty European powers of France, Spain and Britain out of Haiti. Though at times his enemies found him harsh and uncompromising, he left behind a nation free from slavery and transformed by his enlightened leadership.

Toussaint once said, “I was born a slave, but nature gave me a soul of a free man.” His early years demonstrated this perfectly. He was born François Dominique Toussaint to a father who had been shipped by French slave traders to Saint-Domingue (the French colony, later called Haiti, occupying the western third of the island of Hispaniola). Toussaint rose swiftly through the ranks of service under his owner, the Comte de Bréda. Naturally intelligent and fortunate enough to acquire a basic education in French and Latin, he rejected the voodoo beliefs of many of his fellow slaves and remained an ardent Catholic all his life. By 1777 he had served as a livestock handler, healer and coachman, finally becoming Bréda’s plantation steward, a post normally reserved for a white man.

Toussaint won his freedom at the age of thirty-four and thereafter farmed a plot of fifteen acres with thirteen slaves of his own. The first uprising of the Haitian revolution broke out under the mulatto reformer Vincent Ogé in 1790, but Toussaint took no part. In August 1791 another revolt erupted as thousands of black slaves across Saint-Domingue rose in rebellion. Toussaint realized that this larger rising could not be ignored. After helping Bréda’s family to escape and sending his own family to safety on the Spanish side of the island, he joined the rebel ranks.

There were more than half a million slaves on Saint-Domingue, compared to just 32,000 European colonists and 24,000 affranchis (freed mulattoes and blacks). Although the black army was a ragtag and ill-equipped bunch, their superior numbers and Toussaint’s brilliant drilling in guerrilla tactics soon told. He gained the surname Louverture in recognition of his brilliant generalship (l’ouverture being “the opening” or, in military terms, “the breakthrough”).

In 1793 war broke out between France and Spain. By this time Toussaint was a major figure in the black Haitian army. His leadership was widely admired and he had attracted talented allies such as Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henry Christophe, both future leaders of Haiti. Toussaint joined the Spanish and served with distinction in a series of engagements.

The following year the pressure told on the French and the revolutionary government in Paris declared an end to slavery. In what has been seen by some as an underhand about-turn against his former allies, Toussaint abandoned the Spanish and declared his new allegiance to France. The French governor of Saint-Domingue, the Comte de Lavaux, appointed him lieutenant-governor and the Spanish were expelled.

By 1795 Toussaint was widely seen as a hero. The freed blacks adored him, while the whites and mulattoes respected his hard but fair line on the economy, in which he allowed the return of émigré planters and used military discipline to force idlers to work. Favoring racial reconciliation between blacks and whites, he held the firm belief that—despite their history of oppression, enslavement and persecution—his country’s blacks could learn valuable lessons from white people. His personal popularity and political shrewdness allowed him to outlast a succession of French governors.

His political cunning was in evidence in 1798–9, when after a series of secret negotiations Toussaint negotiated a British withdrawal from Haiti. The political settlement allowed Toussaint to sell sugar and buy arms and goods. He undertook not to invade British territories such as Jamaica but rejected their offer of conferring on him the title king of Haiti—all his life he maintained that he was a true French citizen.

In 1801 Toussaint invaded the Spanish side of Hispaniola, overrunning the entire island, freeing the Spanish slaves and surprising the defeated nonblacks with his magnanimity in victory. He declared himself governor-general and strove to convince Napoleon of his loyalty.

Napoleon, however, was not to be convinced. He considered Toussaint an obstacle to the profitability of Haiti and an affront to the honor of France. In December 1801 Napoleon sent a powerful invading force under his brother-in-law General Charles Leclerc (accompanied by Napoleon’s nymphomaniacal sister Pauline) to depose Toussaint.

Months of heavy fighting ended in May 1802, when Toussaint agreed to lay down his arms and retire to his farm. But he was not allowed to remain in his beloved country. He and his family were arrested and Toussaint was taken in a warship to France, where he was transferred in August to Fort-de-Joux in the Alps. Heartbroken and alone in a tiny dungeon, he wrote letters begging Napoleon for a fair trial. Napoleon never answered, and Toussaint died of pneumonia in 1803. It was a sad end to a great life, but his legacy—the Free Black Republic of Haiti—lived on.