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 ships 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 César 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 César 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 Ogé, 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 Prémord 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 Ogé 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 Prémords crept quietly back to Cap-Français.
In that town the semiuprising of the free-coloreds had exacerbated hatreds. Espivent was vituperative: ‘We must catch that infamous Vincent Ogé 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 Prémord 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 Ogé 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 Prémords, 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 César Vaval happened to be in town delivering a cartload of plantation produce to Château Espivent.
Had Espivent, Prémord and Vaval—these principal 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, gods eager to aid mortals at times of crisis, one could imagine such gods pushing them toward an understanding which would save their homeland, for it could have been saved. But on this day the gods were inattentive: the Prémords 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 Prémords gasped, for in front was the stranger from that night at Meduc, the provocateur with the livid scar, and behind him Vincent Ogé, 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 Ogé he scanned the crowd and saw the Prémords; 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 Ogé’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 Prémords and the slave César carried away that night, and as the former returned to their shop they vowed: ‘After this horror, there can be no retreat,’ and César, when he got back to his plantation, assembled his wife and children: ‘It was brutality for the amusement 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 César 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 César 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-Français a
nd moved like some all-encompassing 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 participated in the orgy of killing said as she passed 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 César Vaval and his family stood guard, fending off the oncoming rioters with quiet words: ‘Not here. He is a good boss,’ and since César 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 embarrassed to seek assistance from the very men whom he had only recently sought to terrify by his brutal execution of their co-patriot Vincent Ogé. When he hurried to their shop to enroll the aid of the Prémords, it never occurred to him to apologize for his past behavior toward them: ‘I’m assigning you to the most important posts. It’s us against the slaves. If they break through, we’re all dead.’ And the Prémords, having no alternative but to obey him, for they knew that the safety of their town depended on the courage and leadership 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 César Vaval protecting Colibri. As the raping and burning began to decline, the black leaders of the rioting were grateful to César 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 César 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?’ César asked, assuming the man to be a slave, and the stranger replied: ‘Bréda,’ 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 César: ‘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 passed 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 document reached Le Cap, Jerome Espivent, conveniently ignoring the gallant role the free-coloreds had played in defending the town, launched a violent assault 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 Prémords, 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 château, 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 Prémords he growled: ‘And what do you want?’
‘Justice,’ Julie snapped, but Espivent, always a proper grand blanc and a minor member of the nobility 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 assistance—to save your château, your clubs, your theater. Do you remember assigning 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 ship at Port-au-Prince to travel overland to rejoin his crew at Cap-Français:
‘I passed 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 fam
ilies slain in the rioting. At the edge of settlements where the whites had been able to assemble 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 ship, 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 God 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 ship out of Boston and as we anchored 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 Prémord 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.’