Caribbean: a novel Part 26

Once when Espivent met the Premords as they emerged from Xavier's shop on the way to the opera, the doyen of Le Cap society explained to white friends standing nearby: 'That saucy fellow's about eighty-eight white, forty black, very presumptuous type. She? I'd say ninety-six white, thirty-two black, and it's a good thing she's already married, because young officers just out from France would grab at her.' And then he gave her high praise: 'She runs her plantation out at Meduc as good as any man.'

Like all the other free-coloreds who owned land, the Premords relied upon some forty slaves to cultivate and press the cane, but Julie had, in her first days of management, differentiated herself from the other owners. They often treated their slaves worse than whites treated theirs. This was caused in part by the visceral fear in which they held their slaves, for they saw them as creatures in the abysmal pit from which they themselves had climbed, and back into which they might someday be pushed by the grands blancs like Espivent. Julie, in contrast, saw her slaves as human beings and tried to treat them as such.

Her husband's basic position, the one to which he constantly returned, was clearly stated one night in August: 'Each year the black population increases. When the slave s.h.i.+ps bring in replacements for those that have died, they drop off a couple of hundred extra new Africans. They must in time overrun us. Our only hope is to ally ourselves-now and strongly-with the whites, to make them see that their only hope of survival is allegiance with us.'

'I used to think that,' Julie said, choosing her next words carefully. 'But recent experiences at the plantation have begun to make me wonder. We have an enormous number of slaves in this colony. They outnumber us fearfully.'

'We've always known that.'

'And I'm quite sure they aren't always going to remain slaves. The disturbances in France will someday filter down to us.'

'They're illiterate. They're savages. They know nothing of France.'

'Our grandfathers were too, but they learned.'

In response, Xavier retreated to one of the great cliches of social a.n.a.lysis: 'That was different.'

'When our slaves start to move the way our grandfathers did, hundreds of thousands of them, we'd better surrender your vain hopes of acceptance by the whites and join the slaves, for they will prevail.' He started to rebut, but Julie forestalled him: 'We must do it quickly and firmly, so they see that we do it of our own free will ... and that we do it to help them gain their liberation.'

'Not in our generation, Julie,' her husband said. 'We coloreds are civilized, they aren't.'

The Premords had as friends two married couples who were also free-coloreds and who also owned plantations out toward Meduc, so that sometimes discussions of these vital matters involved six concerned people, the division being three who wanted to ally with the whites, Julie who advised joining the blacks, and two who counseled: 'Wait and see.' But one of these rather destroyed his own argument by adding: 'I listen in Le Cap. I've been to Port-au-Prince. And I've never felt tensions so high. Events may do the choosing for us.'

'You're contradicting what you've been saying,' Julie cried in exasperation. 'Say it clear and simple, what should we do?' and the man said petulantly: 'That's what I've been trying to say. Do nothing. Go ahead as we are. Don't allow ourselves to be used by either side. And when the smoke clears, because I'm sure there's going to be smoke, we'll be in position to dictate our own terms.' And whenever the discussion reached this point the partic.i.p.ants looked at each other in silence, for they realized that they were debating the chances of life or death.

The Premords were accustomed to tension, for the laws of St.-Domingue, as dictated and enforced by Espivent and his grands blancs, were infuriating in their pettiness toward the free-coloreds. When Xavier talked with others of his caste during chance meetings in the rear of his shop, the men ventilated their fury at the injustices under which they were forced to live. Said one: 'We're forbidden to use the good seats in the theater,' but another complained: 'What irritates me is that I'm the best shot in this colony. Proved it in a score of compet.i.tions, but I'm not allowed to serve in the militia. The French say they can't trust a man like me ... wrong color.'

They were forbidden to copy the dress styles of Paris or play European-type games. But what galled Julie whenever she joined these discussions was the mean spirit of the rules enforced by the white women of the colony: 'I am forbidden to entertain six of my free-colored women friends at lunch lest we conspire, and there cannot even be a group celebration when two of our young people marry. "Free-coloreds may not engage in any activities which might become boisterous," the law says, and if a spy caught us talking together in secret like this, we could all be thrown in jail.'

She and Xavier were delighted, therefore, when on cherished occasions a cadre of gallant free-coloreds in Meduc invited friends from the northern part of the colony to a clandestine dinner-discussion-dance. When Julie whispered: 'Xavier, they're doing it again,' he knew that the courageous Brugnons were once more a.s.sembling the free-coloreds illegally, and so he and Julie quietly joined two other couples at the edge of Le Cap. On horseback, with three slaves attending them on mules to mind the horses and the baggage, they rode west. The air was quite festive, a real vacation from sugar and shopkeeping and daily duties. But Julie grew increasingly apprehensive as they neared Meduc, and warned her husband: 'None of that foolishness at the dance this year,' and when he rea.s.sured her: 'I've no taste for it either,' she made him promise: 'You'll keep an eye on me and grab me for your partner at once.' He said he would, and on those terms they entered the beautiful little seaport, found lodging with their free-colored friends, and spent the rest of the afternoon in deep discussion about events in Paris and the future of St.-Domingue.

A stranger of unknown credentials, with a livid scar across his face, attracted considerable attention by whispering to the men: 'Vincent Oge, one of us and well regarded by the revolutionists in Paris, may be calling upon you for help.'

'For help on what?' Xavier asked, and the man replied evasively: 'Sooner or later, won't you, too, have to strike for freedom, eh? The way we did in Paris?' When Premord ignored the question, the man shrugged and moved along to others, posing the same question.

An orchestra of six slaves played light theater airs during supper, changing to animated dance music when the chairs were pushed back for the real entertainment. It was a vigorous affair, this lively dancing of the free-coloreds, and as movements became increasingly uninhibited, Julie caught her husband's eye, and he nodded, a.s.suring her that he would be staying close.

In those moments before the riot of the night began, he had strongly mixed feelings. As a young man he had found wild delight in these dances of his people, but now, as an older man with a pretty wife and a position of some importance in the colony, he felt that the untrammeled behavior which he knew was about to begin denigrated the free-coloreds and gave the whites justification for some of the ugly things they said about them. So he felt both a sense of increasing excitement, as in the old days, but also a revulsion when he remembered that the stranger from Paris would see how the free-coloreds misbehaved.

At a signal from the men running the dance the orchestra began playing faster and faster, and both men and women started calling to other dancers and even shouting into the air with no message intended. At a sudden cry from the managers, the music stopped, the lights were blown out, and men and women began groping almost blindly one for the other. A particularly attractive young woman, and many were present, might be grabbed at by three or four men, while a handsome fellow like Premord would be certain to have several women fighting for him.

When the random pairs were established, with the less aggressive men and women having to accept what was left over, the couples retired upstairs, or to hiding places on the lawn, or to the stables behind the square, or wherever they could find reasonable privacy, and there the lovemaking and the squealing and the oaths began, to last long into the night as partners switched and fights began.

Premord, as promised, leaped to his wife's side as soon as the music stopped and had her safely under his protection when the pairing began. He led her onto a porch away from the activities, and as she whispered: 'Thank you, Xavier,' the stranger with the scar on his face joined them, and with a shrug of his shoulder toward the now-silent dance floor, said: 'No wonder they say we're not worthy of any higher place in society than we now have.'

'It will change when we gain the respect that all men desire,' Xavier said.

'Why are you here?' Julie asked in the blunt way that her husband knew so well.

'Visiting.'

'And what have you been whispering to our men?'

In the dim light provided by a solitary lamp at the far end of the porch, the visitor looked quizzically at Xavier, who nodded: 'She knows all that I know,' and the man said approvingly: 'Good. My wife, the same. What I'm here for, Madame Premord, is to inform you people that Vincent Oge, a free-colored leader of some talent, may be calling upon you for help ... soon.'

'To accomplish what?' Julie asked evenly, and the stranger said: 'The freedoms that we must have.'

'Is this Oge talking revolution?' Julie asked, and the man said quickly: 'No! No! He knows what you and I know, that your group of gens de couleur is the smallest in the colony. You're nothing, except that you attend to the management that keeps your colony surviving, and if under Oge's leaders.h.i.+p you present our demands in the proper style ...'

'We will be slain,' Julie said quietly, and to her surprise the man said quietly: 'Then we will be slain, but we can wait no longer.' Julie, noticing that in this firm declaration he had switched from the p.r.o.noun you to we, asked: 'Are you then one of us?' and he replied: 'From the day of my birth.'

'Where?' Julie probed, for she feared alien agents provocateurs, and he said: 'Down south. In the port town of Jeremie,' and she asked: 'Who owns the big store in the public square?' and he said without hesitation: 'The Lossiers,' and she said: 'They're my cousins.' Upon her direct questioning he refused to give his own name, but as he left the saturnalia Julie could see the disgust on his face as he watched two men shedding their clothes as they chased after two almost-naked girls.

While Cesar Vaval's parents were still alive they spent much effort in teaching him the things they believed he ought to know: 'No slavery is any good. Danish is worst by far. French is best, maybe. But you live for one thing only, to be free.' His parents had died at about the same time, worked to death by the owner of their plantation, but before they died they told their son: 'Study everything the white man does. Where does he get his power? Where does he hide his guns? How does he sell the sugar we make? And no matter how you do it, learn to read his books. There's where he keeps his secrets, and unless you master them, you'll always be a slave.'

They had spent their last days persuading a knowledgeable slave to teach their son the alphabet, and as a result, Cesar had, through the subsequent years, read accounts of what was happening in France and other parts of the world. He knew, for example, that the American colonies not far to the northwest had won their freedom from Great Britain, which also owned Jamaica, a colony much like St.-Domingue not far to the south. But the news in which he would have been most interested, the fiery rebellions in France, was still kept from him, for Espivent preached constantly in his club: 'Do not allow the slaves to know anything. Madness seems to have taken over in France, and it would be a good idea to keep papers and journals away from the free-coloreds, too.' But from a dozen subtle hints, Cesar deduced that things of moment were happening, either in France or in other areas of St.-Domingue, and he was eager to learn more about them.

At thirty-three Cesar was an intelligent, self-respecting black, but he had one limitation which would diminish him throughout his life: he despised free-coloreds. Because he saw so clearly that the ultimate enemy of the blacks was the white man like Jerome Espivent who controlled all sources of money and power, and because he saw that conflict between the grands blancs and the noirs was inevitable, he resented the intrusion of a formless middle group which interposed itself between the two contestants. 'Who are these free-coloreds?' he asked the wiser slaves who looked to him for guidance. 'They're not white, they're not black. They can't be trusted by anybody. What's worse, they take the good jobs we ought to have if we do good work, like caretaker and work fixing things. That means we always gots to be field hands.' When, on the occasions he was allowed into Le Cap, he viewed free-coloreds like Xavier Premord, with his white-man's clothes and uppity manners, with distaste if not actual animosity, a.s.sessing him accurately as a barrier cutting the slaves off from any chance of a better life.

Julie Premord perplexed him, for she was obviously a most lovely woman, but the fact that she managed a plantation which had many slaves made her a kind of enemy, except that he had been told by other blacks: 'That one, she the best. Her plantation hard rules but you get enough to eat, you get extra clothes.' Once as he was lugging plants to beautify Chteau Espivent he had come face-to-face with her in the street, and for no reason that he could see she had smiled at him, a warm, human gesture that had both pleased and bewildered him. That night he told his wife back at Colibri: 'She seem almost like one of us, more black than white,' but as soon as he said this he realized how preposterous it sounded: 'No, they're far, far from us, all of them, and in the end they'll be worse than the whites.'

Despite these feelings, he and his family did not hate anyone, except for one beastly overseer, but they were all prepared to take whatever steps would be necessary to attain the kind of freedom his father Vavak had spoken of. The word revolution, with its attendant burnings and killings, would have been anathema to them, but in recent months a new force had come into their lives, one which brought the concept of revolution right onto their plantation. It came in the form of a man, a runaway slave no longer attached to any specific plantation, a fiery-tempered man named Boukman, who said: 'Don't ask me where I come from. Ask me only where I'm goin'.'

He was a voodoo priest, a man of powerful insight and oratory, and at night meetings at the various plantations he preached a compelling doctrine, after conducting arcane rituals which reminded the slaves of their African origins. He intoned old chants from the jungle, performed rituals hundreds of years old, and used phrases they had almost forgotten, but mostly he shared with them the pulsating news he had picked up while helping unload cargo s.h.i.+ps newly arrived from France: 'Big fighting in Paris. That a city in France, bigger than Le Cap. People like you, me, we takin' command. All new, all new. Pretty soon, here in Le Cap, too, big change.' When he had the attention of his midnight listeners, he dropped the vernacular and preached in good French: 'There must be liberty for all. There must be a true fraternity between master and slave. And there must be equality. Do you know what equality is?' and he would scream: 'It means "You're as good as the white man," and we all must work together, side by side, to prove that.'

He realized that most of the slaves attended his secret meetings to renew their acquaintance with voodoo; he saw that they eagerly joined in the chants, were awed by the trances and spells, and found joyful liberation in the dance, but mostly they yearned to reestablish contact with an almost forgotten past. He himself never lost sight of his main mission, and under his clever manipulation, voodoo became an antechamber to revolution, for he realized better than any of his followers that one would surely lead to the other.

Literate slaves like the Vavals, and there were a few on each plantation, paid little attention to Boukman's voodoo exhortations, but when they spoke with him, as Cesar did one night after a long session at Colibri, they heard words that were almost identical to those spoken by the scar-faced stranger during the debauch at Meduc: 'The day is coming ... there will be freedom ... justice is at hand ... I will send a message ... we will need you.' How soon the message would arrive, Boukman could not say, but Cesar and his wife became convinced that it would come, and they prepared themselves for the great challenge. A vibrant spirit was in the air in all the plantations, for the heady arguments of Paris had penetrated at last into St.-Domingue.

In February 1791 a quiet call came for free-coloreds from all parts of the colony to rally to the banner of Vincent Oge, one of their number who had been trained in France and who preached that the time had come to demand equality with the whites. Leaving their plantation, Xavier and Julie Premord answered the call, but arrangements were so poor and instructions so inadequate that they wandered far south without making contact with the insurrection. Perhaps this was fortunate, for the affair petered out in confusion, with Oge and his scar-faced lieutenant barely escaping to sanctuary in nearby Spanish Hispaniola.

The putative uprising was successful in one respect-it aroused in the colony's free-coloreds an unquenchable determination to gain freedom within a liberated France, and in that mix of patriotism, confusion and deepening commitment to their caste, the Premords crept quietly back to Cap-Franais.

In that town the semiuprising of the free-coloreds had exacerbated hatreds. Espivent was vituperative: 'We must catch that infamous Vincent Oge and make an example of him. No punishment would be too severe,' and he roamed through the streets and clubs, preaching his doctrine of savage retaliation and making himself the rallying point for all who feared these first signs of a local revolution. 'Can you imagine,' he thundered, his graying long hair tangled by the February breeze, 'what would happen if they got their way? A man of color eating at the same table with your wife and daughters? Can you visualize a poseur like Premord swaggering his way into your club? And what really threatens, can you imagine his kind sullying the pure blood of France?'

He was so obsessed by his hatred of the free-coloreds that after Oge and his leading supporters were extradited from Spanish Hispaniola, he forced his friends in the government to hand down a punishment which alone would have been enough to ignite rebellion throughout the colony. The two Premords, free-coloreds of education, judgment and unquestioned patriotism, left their shop to stand inconspicuously in the crowd on the day the punishment was carried out, and Cesar Vaval happened to be in town delivering a cartload of plantation produce to Chteau Espivent.

Had Espivent, Premord and Vaval-these princ.i.p.al actors in the tragedy about to explode-been able to meet and discourse intelligently, three men of wisdom and impeccable love for their colony, they might have reached understandings which would have permitted St.-Domingue to weather its transformations peacefully. If there are, as the ancient Greeks believed, G.o.ds eager to aid mortals at times of crisis, one could imagine such G.o.ds pus.h.i.+ng them toward an understanding which would save their homeland, for it could have been saved. But on this day the G.o.ds were inattentive: the Premords mingled in silence at the edge of the crowd, Vaval remained with his cart at an opposite edge, and Espivent stood like an avenging fury at the foot of a gallows erected in the center of the plaza, crying 'Bring forth the prisoners!'

When they were led forth, the Premords gasped, for in front was the stranger from that night at Meduc, the provocateur with the livid scar, and behind him Vincent Oge, a handsome man of light color and aristocratic mien that seemed to infuriate his white captors, for two of them knocked him to the ground and kicked at his neat clothes. The stranger remained upright, and in the confusion that followed the fall of Oge he scanned the crowd and saw the Premords; without betraying that they might have been part of the conspiracy, he flashed a clear signal: See, it has come to this.

The two revolutionaries were to be hanged for challenging white rule, that was clear, but not immediately, for Oge's two jailers hauled him to a great wheel from which ropes were attached to his four limbs, and when he was securely lashed down and stretched to the breaking point, a huge man with an iron bar moved about his body, breaking each arm and leg in two places. Then tension on the ropes was increased until the limbs began to tear apart. His cries of anguish were so great they filled the plaza, giving satisfaction to the men whose prerogatives he had threatened, and creating terror in the free-coloreds he had defended and bewilderment in the various slaves who watched. When the ropes were slackened, two big jailers hoisted him, as he was unable to stand on his broken legs, onto the gallows, where he was hanged. Once he ceased twitching, he was dropped to the ground and his head was chopped off. Then the stranger was hauled to the wheel, but as he went to his torture he cried defiantly: 'Freedom for all,' and the tightening of his limbs began while the brute with the iron bar waited.

Those were the images that the free-colored Premords and the slave Cesar carried away that night, and as the former returned to their shop they vowed: 'After this horror, there can be no retreat,' and Cesar, when he got back to his plantation, a.s.sembled his wife and children: 'It was brutality for the amus.e.m.e.nt of watchers. Madness is afoot, and we must study how to use it for our purpose when the great riots begin, for they will.'

He was right in his prediction, for seething resentments were about to explode, but they came from a totally unexpected quarter. On the dark night of 20 August 1791 the wandering voodoo priest Boukman slipped back to harangue the slaves on Colibri with a fury which Vaval and his wife had not heard before. Now there were no obscure religious overtones, no jungle incantations, there was only the throbbing summons to revolution, and for the first time Cesar heard Boukman actually call for the death of all white men: 'They have enslaved us and they must go! They have starved our children and they must be punished!' When Cesar heard this last cry he thought: No one on our plantation ever lacked food. Wrong cry, wrong place to make it. And it was that simple realization that would guide him and his family in the tumultuous days that were at hand: he hated slavery and opposed Espivent, but he did not wish him dead.

On the morning of 22 August, Boukman stopped his preaching and threw lighted brands into the powder kegs of the north. Rallying a thousand slaves, then ten, then fifty thousand, he started in the far environs of Cap-Franais and moved like some all-encompa.s.sing conflagration toward the city. Every plantation encountered was set ablaze, every white man was slain, as were any women or children caught in the chaos. The destruction was total, as when a horde of locusts strips a field in autumn. Trees were chopped down, irrigation ditches destroyed, barns burned, and the great houses laid in ashes-a hundred plantations wiped out in the first rush, then two hundred, and finally nearly a thousand; they would produce no more sugar, no more coffee. The wealth of the north was being devastated to a point from which it could never recover.

But the real horror lay in the loss of life, in the extreme hatred the blacks manifested toward the whites. Hundreds upon hundreds of white lives were lost that first wild day: men killed with clubs, women drowned in their own private lakes, children pierced with sticks and carried aloft as banners of the uprising, and there were other savageries too awful to relate. One black woman who had not partic.i.p.ated in the orgy of killing said as she pa.s.sed the piles of dead bodies: 'This day, even the earth is killed.'

Colibri Plantation, at the very heart of the firestorm, was not destroyed, for Cesar Vaval and his family stood guard, fending off the oncoming rioters with quiet words: 'Not here. He is a good boss,' and since Cesar was a man who had earned respect, the wave parted and rejoined to burn the next plantations in line.

In the meantime, all the whites who could had thronged to Le Cap, where Jerome Espivent was organizing a defense. His first action was representative of the contradictions of this terrible day: because there were not enough white men to defend the town, he had to call upon free-coloreds to help, and he was not embarra.s.sed to seek a.s.sistance from the very men whom he had only recently sought to terrify by his brutal execution of their co-patriot Vincent Oge. When he hurried to their shop to enroll the aid of the Premords, it never occurred to him to apologize for his past behavior toward them: 'I'm a.s.signing you to the most important posts. It's us against the slaves. If they break through, we're all dead.' And the Premords, having no alternative but to obey him, for they knew that the safety of their town depended on the courage and leaders.h.i.+p he would display in the next flaming hours, took positions along the most exposed perimeter where they could kill the most blacks.

Throughout that first terrible night, when word filtered into town of the widespread destruction and loss of life, Espivent went sleepless, marching stiffly from one battle position to the next, encouraging the men and consoling wives whose husbands had been out on their plantations: 'Yes, it's painful. I have good men at Colibri, and I must hope that they'll find a way to stay alive. Your husband will, too, I'm sure.'

For more than a week the fury raged, with Espivent denying the slaves entry to Le Cap, and Cesar Vaval protecting Colibri. As the raping and burning began to decline, the black leaders of the rioting were grateful to Cesar for having maintained the plantation, for it became an oasis of sanity in a fractured world. Blacks came there for food and water and to find rest among the trees. It was an errant irony that the detested Espivent plantation should have been spared.

It was during this savage period that Cesar became a man so well spoken of by his fellow blacks that his reputation spread afar. 'He's a man of stability. He knows what can be done and what can't,' they said, and one day in September, as a result of this good report, he was visited by a tall, imposing black man, who said: 'It was difficult getting through the lines. New troops arriving from France. They've caught Boukman, you know. Going to rack and hang him.'

'What plantation are you from?' Cesar asked, a.s.suming the man to be a slave, and the stranger replied: 'Breda,' a well-regarded plantation almost as fine as Colibri. Then he added: 'I'm the manager there. From what they tell me, you ought to be manager here.'

'Monsieur Espivent would never hear of that,' and the big man said: 'He would if he were wise.'

'But what's your name? And why are you here?'

'Toussaint L'Ouverture. And I'm here to see you. To satisfy myself as to what you're like.'

He remained for two nights, during which he met with all the other slaves of whom he'd heard good reports, and at the close of his visit he told Cesar: 'You'll be hearing from me. Not now. Too much confusion. But hold yourself ready. Remember my name, Toussaint, and when I call, come.'

Terror, murder and betrayal spread to every corner of St.-Domingue. On 15 May 1791 the government in Paris pa.s.sed a law, long overdue, giving the free-coloreds of St.-Domingue the political liberties they had sought, but the edict was so meanly hedged with property and other qualifications that only some one hundred and forty free-coloreds in all of St.-Domingue were eligible. That alone caused an anguished outcry, but when even that truncated doc.u.ment reached Le Cap, Jerome Espivent, conveniently ignoring the gallant role the free-coloreds had played in defending the town, launched a violent a.s.sault on the law, shouting in one gathering after another: 'To admit them with their contaminated blood to the governance of this colony would be to destroy the meaning of the word France!' and he was so persuasive that he convinced the local council to deny rights to even the one hundred and forty who were eligible.

This clearly meant that the free-coloreds had no hope of justice, now or in the future, and upon no one did the disillusionment fall harder than on the Premords, who felt so ostracized and humiliated that Julie cried in despair: 'We must fight this out with Espivent ... now!' She forced her reticent husband to march with her to the chteau, where at first they were denied entrance. But when the owner heard the ruckus at his door, he came out from his study: 'What's going on here?' and when he saw the Premords he growled: 'And what do you want?'

'Justice,' Julie snapped, but Espivent, always a proper grand blanc and a minor member of the n.o.bility to boot, ignored her, indicating he would not discuss any important matter with a woman. But to Xavier he said: 'Come in,' and when they were inside, he pointedly kept the handsome couple standing, refusing them even the courtesy of a chair. 'Now tell me,' he said grudgingly, 'what is the matter?'

'Your refusal to allow the laws of France to operate here,' Julie said with such force that he had to acknowledge her this time, but his answer had a terrible finality about it: 'France is France, and if it runs wild, this colony will pick and choose.'

'And you choose to keep us in bondage forever?' Julie asked, and he said: 'You have greater freedoms than you merit,' and he edged them toward the door, thus informing them that they could expect no improvement of their lot so long as he and his friends remained in control of the island.

Julie could not accept this: 'Monsieur Espivent, in the bad days, when it looked as if the slaves would burn all of Le Cap, you called on us free-coloreds for a.s.sistance-to save your chteau, your clubs, your theater. Do you remember a.s.signing Xavier and me to positions of extreme importance?' Standing straight and tall in his blue dressing gown, Espivent replied: 'In times of crisis a wise general calls upon all the troops he has under his command.' Julie lost control: 'We'll not be under your command forever,' but as he closed his door upon them he said: 'I think you will.'

So, with expanding revolution threatening to destroy metropolitan France, her colonies and indeed her civilization, the people of St.-Domingue remained separated into their three stubborn groups, each unwilling or incapable of leading the colony toward rational behavior. It is difficult to visualize the pitiful condition to which their continued brawling brought the colony, but the American first mate on a trading vessel out of Charleston in South Carolina reported what he saw when he left s.h.i.+p at Port-au-Prince to travel overland to rejoin his crew at Cap-Franais: 'I pa.s.sed eight burned-out plantations a day, a hundred in all, and I was only one man on one road. I saw white bodies stretched on the ground with stakes driven through them. I saw innumerable white and black bodies dangling from trees, and I heard of scores of entire white families slain in the rioting. At the edge of settlements where the whites had been able to a.s.semble and defend themselves I would see heaps of slaves who had attacked guns with only sticks and hoes, and by the time I finished my journey and rejoined my s.h.i.+p, I no longer bothered to look at the latest indecency, but I did wonder whether, in this flaming burst of terror and murder, there was no slave who merely killed his master and let it go at that, or no white who had been satisfied merely to shoot the slave without desecrating the corpse. May G.o.d preserve us from such horrors.'

He concluded with comments which summarized his judgment as an experienced trader in these waters: 'Years ago, when our colonies were still part of England, I was a lad working on a s.h.i.+p out of Boston and as we anch.o.r.ed off St.-Domingue our captain warned: "Treat this colony with respect, for each year it sends home to France more profit than our thirteen combined send to England." After the destruction I have seen, that can never be said again.'

And in that state of chaos St.-Domingue, once the pearl of the Caribbean, envied by all the other islands, plodded along. But new decisions reached in revolutionary France were about to reconstruct the community. Stern orders came: 'Limited equality must be immediately granted to those hundred and forty free-coloreds designated earlier,' and when notice of this was delivered to Xavier Premord in his shop he embraced his wife: 'This day the world begins anew,' but she asked suspiciously: 'For us, yes, but what of the others?' and in his club Jerome Espivent grumbled to his cronies: 'Revolution has at last crossed the Atlantic. This is the end of decency as we knew it.'

But this was merely the start of the upheaval, for shortly thereafter came startling news: 'All free-coloreds to be granted legal, military and social equality,' and then: 'Complete freedom for any slave who has ever served in the French army, and also for their wives and children.'

A bellowing of rage greeted the last decree, and it came not only from an outraged Espivent and his fellow grands blancs, but also from Xavier Premord and his free-coloreds, and it would be difficult to determine which faction detested the new regulations more. Certainly Premord saw it as the first fearful step in a movement that must ultimately alter his life, for once the slaves were free, the free-coloreds would become superfluous, and in rejecting the new law he used almost the same words as Espivent: 'The dam is breaking.' But his wife was more hopeful: 'We cannot change what has happened and we must be prepared to adjust to whatever comes next,' and she let her husband know that in her management of their plantation she would begin to take those steps which would enable them to adjust to freedom for their slaves when it came.

And it did come with startling suddenness, for on 14 June 1794 a packet boat arrived from France with final instructions from the revolutionary government: 'All slaves in St.-Domingue are to be granted complete freedom.' At last it seemed that this glorious island, so filled with human promise, was about to be restored to sanity, with its three groups working together toward the common purpose of equality and productivity. Optimists calculated that within two years the plantations would recover to the point where they would be delivering as much sugar as before, but Julie, who understood her slaves, a.s.sured other owners: 'We'll do even better, because when your slaves are free, they'll work harder than before.'

Despite that chance for sanity, Espivent and his powerful friends declared war against the new decree and threatened to shoot any owner who tried to implement it. Knowing that he would need a united citizenry if the blacks rebelled at being denied what was now legally theirs, he came to Premord's shop dressed in his full military regalia, and asked: 'Could we meet in your kitchen?' and when they sat about the rough, st.u.r.dy table that Julie herself had built, he said persuasively: 'Obviously, we must now work together, for once the blacks get their freedom, they'll move against both of us.' Xavier nodded in agreement, but Julie cried out in protest: 'No! This is wrong! The blacks should be free, and we coloreds should work with them, because you'-and she pointed her finger almost in Espivent's face-'will never grant us acceptance, even if we do help you win this time.'

'Madam,' Espivent said without raising his voice, 'had you uttered those words out in the street, you would have been shot. This is war, war to the death, and you must stand with us or we shall both be swept away in a black hurricane.' So that night the free-coloreds of Cap-Franais placed themselves once more under the leaders.h.i.+p of the grands blancs for the defense of the town.

Why did they submit so pa.s.sively to this repeated humiliation and betrayal? Xavier Premord had known why from the start: 'We have no other option. We're trapped between unyielding whites and vengeful blacks, but since the whites have the guns and the s.h.i.+ps, we must ally with them and trust that sooner or later they'll show us generosity.' Julie, of course, argued differently: 'The blacks are so numerous they'll overcome the guns and s.h.i.+ps. We must ally with them,' but as a woman, her voice in council mattered little.

When the outlines of the great civil war that would destroy even further the wealth of St.-Domingue were drawn, Cesar Vaval, snug in his leaders.h.i.+p of the blacks on Colibri Plantation, told his wife: 'We have no quarrel with Espivent and he has none with us. Keep calm and do nothing to create a new frenzy like the one Boukman started.' And between them they persuaded the Colibri blacks to remain aloof from the rapidly forming battle lines.

But one night that compelling black leader from Breda Plantation returned, loomed ominously in the doorway, and told Vaval: 'I said I'd be coming back one day to summon you. I am here,' and Toussaint L'Ouverture's appearance was so commanding, his dedication to the black revolt so forceful, that Vaval asked but one word: 'Battle?'

'Yes.'

'Against Le Cap again?' When this question was asked so boldly and so quickly, Toussaint became evasive, but Cesar pressed: 'Not Cap? We heading south to Port-au-Prince?' at which the Negro leader blurted out: 'No! We've been offered tremendous promises by the Spaniards to fight on their side ... against the French.'

Vaval was stunned. He had always supposed that the slaves' fight for freedom would be a prolonged affair against reluctant French whites like his own master, Espivent. But now to be asked to join a foreign army, to fight against what he considered his own country, that seemed treacherous and unworthy, and he said: 'I would not feel easy,' and Toussaint reached down and grabbed him by the neck: 'Do you trust me or not?' and Vaval looked up: 'I do.'

'Then come!'

Thus in mid-1793 the great black leader led Vaval and some half-dozen of his other lieutenants across the mountainous border and into camps where the Spaniards were preparing a full-scale attack on St.-Domingue. It was a bold decision, a terrible one, really, but Toussaint, having watched a score of constructive laws pa.s.sed in Paris but ignored in the colony, saw no way to correct such injustice except to join with the Spaniards, drive out the French, and then make the best deal possible with the new victors.

The strategy worked, at least in the beginning, for the reinforced Spanish armies swept across the border and quickly captured the mountainous eastern third of the French colony. With surging joy Toussaint cried to his black troops: 'We'll soon have the whole country!' But cautious Vaval probed when they were alone: 'Then what? Spaniards don't like us any better than the French do,' and Toussaint, finding strength from being back on familiar terrain, said: 'Old friend, you must trust me. I want what you want, but the secret is to keep fluid. If you keep watching, you usually discover what the next step must be.' Now Cesar, who was becoming his general's conscience, warned: 'Don't be too clever.'

He had barely uttered this warning when runners from the seacoast brought frightening information: 'Toussaint! The British have declared war on everybody-the French, the Spanish, even us. They see a chance to steal the entire colony. Their wars.h.i.+ps have captured every port on the Caribbean side.'

'Le Cap, too?'

'No, the French still hold that.'

When subsequent couriers confirmed the news, other self-styled black generals met one afternoon in their camp atop the middle of three small hills-their Spanish allies were occupying the hill to the east, and at a farther distance, the French army waited on the western hill. As the men joined Toussaint they knew that this would be a meeting of crucial importance, but none of them, Vaval least of all, could have guessed what was to be discussed.

Toussaint started by sketching in the earth a rude map of St.-Domingue: 'If the Spaniards, with our help, hold this eastern third of the colony, and the British with their s.h.i.+ps hold the western third, the French can control only this narrow strip down the middle,' and his generals visualized the enormous areas under foreign control. 'But there is an important difference,' Toussaint continued. 'The part the French own is mostly mountains, the part that's easy to defend. The Spaniards and the English have had it too simple up to now. The real battle is yet to begin.'

For three days the black leader, a rugged, finely disciplined man of gigantic courage and imagination, kept his own counsel. He was only two generations out of Africa, where his ancestors had been men of leaders.h.i.+p, and for that reason, he had great respect for fellow blacks like Vaval whose parents had also known Africa. On the third night of his lonely vigil he invited Cesar to walk with him, and they climbed to a small rise from which they could look down on the smaller hill held by the Spanish soldiers: 'What you said, Vaval, it's been nagging at me: "The Spaniards don't like us any more than the French do." What would you do in my place?' The two men spent several hours striving to unravel the future although they were barely able to understand the present. 'Let's sleep now and talk further in the morning,' Toussaint said abruptly, and off he marched to bed. But at half after three that morning an aide awakened Vaval with a curt message: 'General Toussaint's tent, immediately!' and when he and the other generals reported, the black leader unveiled his astonis.h.i.+ng plans: 'This morning ... now ... we rejoin the French. Help them fight off the Spanish on the east and the English on the west.'

'Why?' a grizzled old fighter asked, and Toussaint whirled about to face him. 'Because, old friend, if either Spain or England captures our colony, it's back to slavery for us. But if we help France win, we have a fighting chance. At least they've given freedom to their own people!'

The same old fellow pointed out: 'Yes, they did pa.s.s a fine law in Paris giving us freedom, but when it crossed the ocean to St.-Domingue, there was no more law, no more freedom,' and Toussaint moved a step forward to clap the old man on the back: 'True, you wise old bird, but this time we'll be in charge, and we'll see it's real freedom ... for everyone.'

Then, before the sleeping Spaniards on the other hill became aware of what was happening, Toussaint, Vaval and their complete black army were marching off to unite with the French, and when Vaval whispered to Toussaint: 'i never slept an easy night in a Spanish uniform,' the leader confessed: 'Nor did I ... I'm French.'

Now Toussaint proved that he was just as able a leader of men as he was a strategist, for with a grudging promotion to make-believe general conferred almost comically by the French high command, he launched a series of brilliant thrusts, first to the east against the Spaniards, then boldly to the west to throw the British off balance. In these actions he demonstrated an unusual mastery of not only the spectacular one-time tactical raid on an isolated target but also the long-range strategic operation that moved an entire enemy front back a few precious miles. He had converted himself into a real general and, with reliable lieutenants to execute his orders, he had become a formidable one.

In a series of lightning sorties to the east, he practically liquidated the Spanish, but he still had to come to grips with the British, who had poured a huge number of troops into St.-Domingue in hopes of stealing that weakened colony for their empire. Their success had been spasmodic, now surging forward to wipe out the French, now retreating before Toussaint's inspired blacks. But in 1797 they began a final drive, with a chain of spectacular victories. Toussaint, with remarkable self-discipline, allowed them to rampage among the small targets while keeping them isolated from the big, until it became common in the British mess to refer to their black enemy with grudging praise as 'that d.a.m.ned Hannibal,' for he, like his famous black counterpart from Carthage, utilized mountains with great skill.

By maintaining remorseless pressure over an extended period, Toussaint, with no help from the French, finally forced the British back against the sh.o.r.e from which they had started four years earlier, and toward the end of summer in 1798, Toussaint had recaptured all the major port towns, leaving the British pinched into the northwest corner of the island.

There the British commander, a Scot from a n.o.ble family, offered one of those valiant gestures which make others smile at British gentlemen but also salute their devotion to the honorable act; realizing that the black generals had outsmarted him at every turn, he gathered his staff at a port of debarkation and told them: 'Those stubborn beggars have been a gallant foe. Let's give them a real salute. They've earned it.' And his soldiers decorated the town, built a triumphal arch laden with flowers, conscripted local musicians to augment the military band, and a.s.sembled the local cooks to prepare a feast.