The Hour and the Man Part 75

The wars of Saint Domingo were conducted in a most barbarous spirit before the time of Toussaint's acquisition of power, and after his abduction. During the interval, the whole weight of his influence was given to curb the ferocity of both parties. He pardoned his personal enemies (as in the instance of the mulattoes in the church), and he punished in his followers, as the most unpardonable offence they could commit, any infringement of his rule of "No Retaliation."

When it is considered that the cruelties perpetrated in the rising of 1791, and renewed after the fall of Toussaint, were invented by the whites, and copied by the negroes (who were wont to imitate their masters in all they did), it is no small evidence of L'Ouverture's magnanimity that he conceived, ill.u.s.trated, and enforced, in such times, such a principle as that of No Retaliation.

All the accounts of him agree that, from his earliest childhood, he was distinguished by a tenderness of nature which would not let him hurt a fly. He attached to himself the cattle and horses which were under his charge when a boy, to a degree which made him famous in a region where cruelty to animals at the hands of slaves was almost universal. A man who lived till fifty, remarkable for a singular gentleness and placability, ought not to be believed sanguinary from that time forward, on the strength of the unsupported charges of his disappointed enemies.

Piety was also his undisputed early characteristic. A slave bringing to the subject of religion the apt.i.tude of the negro nature, early treated with kindness by a priest, evincing the spirit of piety from his infant years, finding in it the consolations required by a life of slavery, and guided by it in a course of the strictest domestic morality, while surrounded by licentiousness, _may_ well be supposed sincere in his religion, under a change of circ.u.mstances occurring after he was fifty years of age. The imputation of hypocrisy is not, however, much to be wondered at when it is considered that, at the time when the first notices of Toussaint were written at Paris, it was the fas.h.i.+on there to believe that no wise man could be sincerely religions.

As for the charge of general and habitual dissimulation, it can only be said that while no proof of the a.s.sertion is offered, there is evidence, in all the anecdotes preserved of him, of absolute frankness and simplicity. I rather think that it was the incredible extent of his simplicity which gave rise to the belief that it was a.s.sumed, in order to hide cunning. The _Quarterly Review_ quotes an anecdote thoroughly characteristic of the man, which is not introduced into my story, because, in the abundance of my materials, I found it necessary to avoid altogether the history of the English transactions in Saint Domingo. It was only by confining my narrative to the relations between Toussaint and France that I could keep my tale within limits, and preserve the clearness of the representation. There are circ.u.mstances, however, in his intercourse with the British, as honourable to Toussaint's character as any that I have related; and among them is the following, which I quote from the _Quarterly Review_.

"General Maitland, previous to the disembarkation of the troops, returned the visit at Toussaint's camp; and such was his confidence in the integrity of his character, that he proceeded through a considerable extent of country, full of armed negroes, with only three attendants.

Roume, the French Commissary, wrote a letter to Toussaint, on this occasion, advising him to seize his guest, as an act of duty to the republic: on the route, General Maitland was secretly informed of Bourne's treachery; but, in full reliance on the honour of Toussaint, he determined to proceed. On arriving at head-quarters, he was desired to wait. It was some time before Toussaint made his appearance; at length, however, he entered the room with two open letters in his hand. 'There, General,' said he, 'before we talk together, read these. One is a letter from the French Commissary--the other is my answer. I could not see you till I had written my reply, that you might be satisfied how safe you were with me, and how incapable I am of baseness.'"--_Quarterly Review_, volume twenty-one, page 442.

The charge of personal ambition is, above all, contradicted by facts.

If anything is clear in Toussaint's history, it is that his ruin was owing to his loyalty to France, his misplaced trust in Napoleon, and his want of personal ambition. He did not, as he might have done, make himself a sovereign when France was wholly occupied with European warfare. He did not, as he might have done, prepare his people to resist the power of the mother-country, when she should at length be at liberty to reclaim the colony. He sent away the French commissaries only when, by their ignorance and incompetency, they imperilled the peace and safety of the colony. He cherished the love of the mother-country in the hearts of the negroes, to the very last moment-- till the armament which came to re-establish slavery appeared on the sh.o.r.es--till it was too late to offer that resistance which would have made him a king. Christophe's view of this part of his conduct is given in a manifesto, dated in the eleventh year of the Independence of Hayti:--

"Toussaint L'Ouverture, under his paternal administration, had reinstated, in full force, law, morals, religion, education, and industry. Agriculture and commerce were flouris.h.i.+ng. He favoured the white colonists, particularly the planters. Indeed, his attentions and partialities had been carried to such a length, that he was loudly blamed for entertaining more affection for them than for those of his own colour. Nor was this reproach without foundation; for, a few months before the arrival of the French, he sacrificed his own nephew, General Moyse, who had disregarded the orders he had given for the protection of the colonists. That act of the Governor, added to the great confidence he had placed in the French authorities, was the princ.i.p.al cause of the feeble resistance the French encountered in Hayti. Indeed, his confidence in these authorities was such, that he had discharged the greater part of the regular troops, and sent them back to the tillage of the soil."--_Haytian papers_, page 158.

Such conduct is a sufficient answer to the allegation that Toussaint was actuated by a selfish ambition, cunning in its aims, and cruel in its use of means.

Some light is thrown upon the character of his mind by the record of the books he studied while yet a slave. Rainsford gives a list, which does not pretend to be complete, but which is valuable as far as it goes. It appears that in his years of comparative leisure he was completely engrossed by one book at a time, reading it at all spare moments, meditating its contents while in the field, and quoting it in conversation for weeks together. One of the first authors whose works thus entirely possessed him was Raynal: afterwards, Epictetus, in a French translation; then others, as follows:--

Scriptores de Re Militari.

Caesar's Commentaries. French translation, by De Crisse.

Des Claison's History of Alexander and Caesar.

D'Orleans' History of Revolutions in England and Spain.

Marshal Saxe's Military Reveries.

Guischard's Military Memoirs of the Greeks and Romans.

Herodotus.

Le Bean's Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres.

Lloyd's Military and Political Memoirs.

English Socrates, Plutarch, Cornelius Nepos, etcetera, etcetera.

Great mystery hangs over the tale of Toussaint's imprisonment and death.

It appears that he was confined in the Temple only as long as Napoleon had hopes of extorting from him information about the treasures, absurdly reported to have been buried by him in the mornes [Note 1], under circ.u.mstances of atrocious cruelty. It has been suggested that torture was employed by Bonaparte's aide, Caffarelli, to procure the desired confession; but I do not know that the conjecture is founded on any evidence.

As to the precise mode of L'Ouverture's death, there is no certainty.

The only point on which all authorities agree is, that he was deliberately murdered; but whether by mere confinement in a cell whose floor was covered with water, and the walls with ice (a confinement necessarily fatal to a negro), or by poison, or by starvation in conjunction with disease, may perhaps never be known. The report which is, I believe, the most generally believed in France is that which I have adopted--that the Commandant, when his prisoner was extremely ill, left the fortress for two or three days, with the key of Toussaint's cell in his pocket; that, on his return, he found his prisoner dead; and that he summoned physicians from Pontarlier, who examined the body, and p.r.o.nounced a serious apoplexy to be the cause of death. It so happened that I was able, in the spring of last year, to make some inquiry upon the spot; the result of which I will relate.

I was travelling in Switzerland with a party of friends, with whom I had one day discussed the fortunes and character of Toussaint. I had then no settled purpose of writing about him, but was strongly urged to it by my companions. On the morning of the 15th of May, when we were drawing near Payerne from Freyburg, on our way to Lausanne, I remembered and mentioned that we were not very far from the fortress of Joux, where Toussaint's bones lay. My party were all eager that I should visit it.

There were difficulties in the way of the scheme--the chief of which was that our pa.s.sports were not so signed as to enable us to enter France; and the nearest place where the necessary signature could be obtained was Berne, which we had left behind us the preceding day. I had, however, very fortunately a Secretary of State's pa.s.sport, besides the Prussian Consul's; and this second pa.s.sport, made out for myself and a _femme-de-chambre_, had been signed by the French Minister in London.

One of my kind companions offered to cross the frontier with me, as my _femme-de-chambre_, and to help me in obtaining access to the prison of Toussaint; an offer I was very thankful to accept. At Payerne, we separated ourselves and a very small portion of luggage from our party, whom we promised to overtake at Lausanne in two or three days. We engaged for the trip a double _char-a-banc_, with two stout little horses, and a _brave homme_ of a driver, as our courteous landlady at Payerne a.s.sured us. Pa.s.sing through Yverdun, we reached Orbe by five in the afternoon, and took up our quarters at the "Guillaume Tell," full of expectation for the morrow.

On the 16th, we had breakfasted, and were beginning the ascent of the Jura before seven o'clock. The weather was fine, and we enjoyed a succession of interesting objects, till we reached that which was the motive of our excursion. First we had that view of the Alps which, if it were possible, it would be equally useless to describe to any who have and any who have not stood on the eastern slope of the Jura, on a clear day. Then we wound among the singular defiles of this mountain range, till we reached the valley which is commanded by Jougne. Here we alighted, climbing the slope to the gate of the town, while the carriage was slowly dragged up the steep winding road. Our appearance obviously perplexed the two custom-house officers, who questioned us, and peeped into our one bag and our one book (the Handbook of Switzerland) with an amusing air of suspicion. My companion told them that the aim of our journey was the fortress of Joux; and that we expected to pa.s.s the frontier again in the afternoon, on our return to Orbe. Whether they believed us, or, believing, thought us very foolish, is best known to themselves; but I suspect the latter, by their compliments on our cleverness, on our return. At Jougne we supplied ourselves with provisions, and then proceeded through valleys, each narrower than the last, more dismal with pines, and more chequered with snow. The air of desolation, here and there rendered move striking by the dreary settlements of the charcoal-burners, would have been impressive enough, if our minds had not been full of the great negro, and therefore disposed to view everything with his eyes.

The scene was exactly what I have described in my story, except that a good road, made since Toussaint's time, now pa.s.ses round and up the opposite side of the rock from that by which he mounted. The old road, narrow and steep, remains; and we descended by it.

We reached the courtyard without difficulty, pa.s.sing the two drawbridges and portcullis described. The Commandant was absent; and his lieutenant declared against our seeing anything more than the great wheel, and a small section of the battlements. But for great perseverance, we should have seen nothing more; but we obtained, at last, all we wanted. We pa.s.sed through the vault and pa.s.sages I have described, and thoroughly examined the cell. No words can convey a sense of its dreariness. I have exaggerated nothing--the dim light, the rotten floor, s.h.i.+ning like a pond, the drip of water, the falling flakes of ice, were all there.

The stove was removed; but we were shown where it stood.

There were only three persons who pretended to possess any information concerning the negro prisoner. The soldier who was our princ.i.p.al guide appeared never to have heard of him. A very old man in the village, to whom we were referred, could tell us nothing but one fact, which I knew before--that Toussaint was deprived of his servant, some time before his death. A woman in the sutler's department of the fortress pretended to know all about him; but she had never seen him, and had no further t.i.tle to authority than that her first husband had died in the Saint Domingo invasion. She did us the good service of pointing out the grave, however. The brickwork which surrounds the coffin now forms part of a new wall; but it was till lately within the church.

This woman's story was that which was probably given out on the spot, to be told to inquirers; so inconsistent is it in itself, and with known facts. Her account was, that Toussaint was carried off from Saint Domingo by the s.h.i.+p in which he was banqueted by Leclerc (the last of a line of two hundred), weighing anchor without his perceiving it, while he was at dinner. The absurdity of this beginning shows how much reliance is to be placed upon the rest of her story. She declared that the Commandant Rubaut had orders from the Government to treat the prisoner well; that his servant remained with him to the last; that he was well supplied with books, allowed the range of the fortress, and accustomed to pa.s.s his days in the house of the Commandant, playing cards in the evenings: that on the last night of his life he excused himself from the card-table, on the plea of being unwell; that he refused to have his servant with him, though urged not to pa.s.s the night alone; that he was left with fire, fauteuil, flambeaux, and a book, and found dead in his chair in the morning; and that the physicians who examined the body declared his death to have been caused by the rupture of a blood-vessel in the heart. This last particular is known to be as incorrect as the first. As for the rest, this informant differs from all others in saying that Mars Plaisir remained with his master to the last day of his life; and we may ask why Toussaint's nights were to be pa.s.sed in his horrible cell, if his days were so favoured; and how it was that no research availed to discover to the eager curiosity of all Europe and the West Indies the retreat of L'Ouverture, if he, a negro, was daily present to the eyes of the garrison of the fortress, and to those of all the inhabitants of the village, and of all the travellers on that road who chose to raise their eyes to the walls.

Our third informant was a boy, shrewd and communicative, who could tell us the traditions of the place; and, of course, young as he was, nothing more. It was he who showed us where the additional stove was placed when winter came on. He pointed to a spot beside the fireplace, where he said the straw was spread on which Toussaint lay. He declared that Toussaint lived and died in solitude; and that he was found dead and cold, lying on that straw--his wood-fire, however, not being wholly extinguished.

The dreary impressions of the place saddened our minds for long after we had left it; and, glad as we were, on rejoining our party at Lausanne, to report the complete success of our enterprise, we cannot recur to it, to this day, without painful feelings.

How the lot of Toussaint was regarded by the generous spirits of the time is shown in a sonnet of Wordsworth's, written during the disappearance of L'Ouverture. Every one knows this sonnet; but it may be read by others, as by me, with a fresh emotion of delight, after having dwelt on the particulars of the foregoing history.

"Toussaint, the most unhappy Man of Men!

Whether the whistling rustic tend his plough Within thy hearing, or thy head be now Pillow'd in some deep dungeon's earless den:-- O miserable Chieftain! where and when Wilt thou find patience? Yet die not: do thou Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow: Though fallen thyself, never to rise again, Live, and take comfort. Thou hast left behind Powers that will work for thee: air, earth, and skies There's not a breathing of the common wind That will forget thee: thou hast great allies; Thy friends are exultations, agonies, And love, and Man's unconquerable mind."

The family of Toussaint were first sent to Bayonne, and afterwards to Agen, where one of the sons died of a decline. The two elder ones, endeavouring to escape from the surveillance under which they lived, were embarked for Belle Isle, and imprisoned in the citadel, where they were seen in 1803. On the restoration of the Bourbons, not only were they released, but a pension was settled on the family. Madame L'Ouverture died, I believe, in the South of France, in 1816, in the arms of Placide and Isaac.

What Napoleon afterwards thought of the dungeon of Toussaint, is known through an anecdote which I have received from high authority.

The next occupant of Toussaint's cell was the Duc de Riviere, afterwards the first French amba.s.sador to Constantinople. The Duc (then Marquis) was a young man, on the point of marriage with Mademoiselle de la Ferte, when, for some unknown offence, he was thrown into prison at Joux, and apparently forgotten. There he wasted three of the best years of his life. Mademoiselle de la Ferte never relaxed in her efforts to obtain his liberation; but she was told, at length, that Napoleon was weary of her solicitations, and that further efforts on her part would have no better result than increasing the displeasure of the Emperor. In the hour of her despair, the kind-heartedness of Josephine came to her aid.

The ladies caused a model of the cell at Joux to be prepared--bearing the most exact resemblance to the horrible abode; and this model Josephine placed, with her own hands, on the bureau of the Emperor.

"Ah! fi donc! Quel est ce lieu abominable?" said the Emperor.

The Empress informed him that it was one of his Majesty's state prisons; to which he replied that it was impossible; that no man could live four-and-twenty hours in such a den. This brought out the information that the Marquis de Riviere had lived three years in it, and was still lying there, by his Majesty's commands.

"Otez-moi ca!" cried the Emperor, tartly. "Cette vue me fait fremir."

The model was removed. The Marquis was presently afterwards liberated.

He retired to Germany, where he was met by Mademoiselle de la Ferte, whom he there married. In after-years he was fond of relating the anecdote which I have given, as nearly as possible, in his method and language.

For some years I have read whatever came within my reach on the subject of my present work: so that it would not now be easy to a.s.sign my authority for every view and every statement it contains. The authorities which I have princ.i.p.ally consulted while actually writing, I will, however, give. They are--Rainsford's "Historical Account of the Black Empire of Hayti;" the above-mentioned article in the _Quarterly Review_; Bryan Edwards's "Saint Domingo"; the article "Toussaint L'Ouverture," in the "Biographie Universelle;" and the "Haytian Papers,"

edited by Prince Sanders.

Of these, Bryan Edwards, who did not live to complete his history, barely names my hero; and the reports he gives of the Revolution of Saint Domingo are useful chiefly as representing the prejudices, as well as the interests, of the planters. The article in the _Quarterly_ is valuable, as being an able and liberal digest of various narratives; some derived from Hayti itself. Rainsford's book is nearly unreadable, from the absurdity of its style; but it is truly respectable in my eyes, notwithstanding, from its high appreciation of L'Ouverture's character.

It contains more information concerning Toussaint than can be found, I believe, anywhere else, except in the Biographie; and it has the advantage of detailing what fell under the writer's own observation.

The Biographie furnishes many valuable facts; but appears, from the inconsistency of various parts, and the confused impression which it conveys as a whole, to be a compilation in which the workman has been more careful to record dates and other facts correctly, than to understand the personage whose portrait he professes to give. The "Haytian Papers" are the most valuable of all authorities, as far as they go.