All Souls' Rising (64 page)

November 25:
Toussaint proclaims a military dictatorship.

1802

February:
Leclerc’s invasion begins with a strength of approximately seventeen thousand troops. Toussaint, with approximately twenty thousand men under his command, orders the black generals to raze the coast towns and retreat into the interior, but because of either disloyalty or poor communications the order is not universally followed. Black general Christophe burns Le Cap to ashes for the second time in ten years, but the French occupy Port-au-Prince before Dessalines can destroy it.

In late February and March, the French forces pursuing Toussaint fight a number of drawn battles in the interior of the island, with heavy casualties on both sides.

April 1:
Leclerc writes to Bonaparte that he has seven thousand active men and five thousand in hospital—meaning that another five thousand are dead. Leclerc also has seven thousand “colonial troops” of variable reliability, mulattoes but also a lot of black soldiery brought over by turncoat leaders.

April 2:
Leclerc subdues the Northern Plain and enters Le Cap.

Early this month, the black general Christophe goes over to the French with twelve hundred troops, on a promise of retaining his rank in French service. But Toussaint still holds the northern mountains with four thousand regular troops and a great number of irregulars. Leclerc writes to the minister of marine that he needs twenty-five thousand European troops to secure the island—i.e., reinforcements of fourteen thousand.

May 1:
Toussaint and Dessalines surrender on similar terms as Christophe. Leclerc’s position is still too weak for him to obey Bonaparte’s order to deport the black leaders immediately.

While Toussaint retires to Gonaives, with his two thousand life guards converting themselves to cultivators there, Dessalines remains on active duty. Leclerc frets that their submission may be feigned.

May:
A severe yellow fever outbreak begins in Port-au-Prince and Le Cap at the middle of the month, causing many deaths among the French troops.

June:
By the first week of this month, Leclerc has lost three thousand men to fever. Both Le Cap and Port-au-Prince are plague zones, with corpses laid out in the barracks yards to be carried to lime pits outside the town.

June 6:
Leclerc notifies Bonaparte that he has ordered Toussaint’s arrest. Lured away from Gonaives to a meeting with General Brunet, Toussaint is made prisoner.

June 15:
Toussaint, with his family, is deported for France aboard the ship Le
Héros
.

June 11:
Leclerc writes to the minister of marine that he suspects his army will die out from under him—citing his own illness (he had overcome a bout of malaria soon after his arrival), he asks for recall.

This letter also contains the recommendation that Toussaint be imprisoned in the heart of inland France.

In the third week of June, Leclerc begins the tricky project of disarming the cultivators—under authority of the black generals who have submitted to his authority.

June 22:
Toussaint writes a letter of protest to Bonaparte from his ship, which is now docked in Brest.

July 6:
Leclerc writes to the minister of marine that he is losing one hundred sixty men per day. However, this same report states that he is effectively destroying the influence of the black generals.

News of the restoration of slavery in Guadeloupe arrives in Saint Domingue in the last days of the month. The north rises instantly, the west shortly afterward, and black soldiers begin to desert their generals.

August 6:
Leclerc reports the continued prevalence of yellow fever, the failure to complete the disarmament, and the growth of rebellion. The major black generals have stayed in his camp, but the petty officers are deserting in droves and taking their troops with them.

August 22:
En route to the Fort de Joux, Toussaint reaches Besançon.

August 24:
Toussaint is imprisoned at the Fort de Joux in France, near the Swiss border.

August 25:
Leclerc writes: “To have been rid of Toussaint is not enough; there are two thousand more leaders to get rid of as well.”

September 13:
The expected abatement of the yellow fever at the approach of the autumnal equinox fails to occur. The reinforcements arriving die as fast as they are put into the country, and Leclerc has to deploy them as soon as they get off the boat. Leclerc asks for ten thousand men to be immediately sent. He is losing territory in the interior and his black generals are beginning to waver, though he still is confident of his ability to manipulate them.

As of this date, a total of twenty-eight thousand men have been sent from France, and Leclerc estimates that ten thousand five hundred are still alive, but only forty-five hundred are fit for duty. Five thousand sailors have also died, bringing the total loss to twenty-nine thousand.

October 7:
Leclerc: “We must destroy all the mountain Negroes, men and women, sparing only children under twelve years of age. We must destroy half the Negroes of the plains, and not allow in the colony a single man who has ever worn an epaulette. Without these measures the colony will never be at peace…”

October 10:
Mulatto general Clervaux revolts, with all his troops, upon the news of Bonaparte’s restoration of the mulatto discriminations of the ancien régime. Le Cap had been mostly garrisoned by mulattoes.

October 13:
Christophe and the other black generals in the north join Clervaux’s rebellion. On this news, Dessalines raises revolt in the west.

November 2:
Leclerc dies of yellow fever. Command is assumed by Rochambeau.

By the end of the month the fever finally begins to abate, and acclimated survivors, now immune, begin to return to service. In France, Bonaparte has outfitted ten thousand reinforcements.

1803

March:
At the beginning of the month, Rochambeau has eleven thousand troops and only four thousand in hospital, indicating that the worst of the disease threat has passed. He is ready to conduct a war of extermination against the blacks, and brings man-eating dogs from Cuba to replace his lost soldiery. He makes slow headway against Dessalines in March and April, while Napoleon plans to send thirty thousand reinforcements in two instalments in the coming year.

April 7:
Toussaint-Louverture dies a prisoner in the Fort de Joux.

May 12:
New declaration of war between England and France.

June:
By month’s end, Saint Domingue is completely blockaded by the English. With English aid, Dessalines smashes into the coast towns.

October:
Early in the month, Les Cayes falls to the blacks. At month’s end, so does Port-au-Prince.

November 10:
Rochambeau flees Le Cap and surrenders to the English fleet.

November 28:
The French are forced to evacuate their last garrison at Môle. Dessalines promises protection to all whites who choose to remain, following Toussaint’s earlier policy. During the first year of his rule he will continue encouraging white planters to return and manage their property and many who trusted Toussaint will do so.

December 31:
Declaration of Haitian independence.

1804

May:
In France Bonaparte becomes emperor on May 18, 1804.

October:
Dessalines, having overcome all rivals, crowns himself emperor.

1805

January:
Dessalines begins the massacre of all the whites in Haiti.

Another Devil’s Dictionary

abolition du fouet:
abolition of the use of whips on field slaves; a negotiating point before and during the rebellion

acajou:
mahogany

affranchi:
A person of color whose freedom was officially recognized; most
affranchis
were of mixed blood but some were full-blood Africans

agouti:
groundhog-sized animal, edible

ajoupa:
a temporary hut made of sticks and leaves

à la chinois:
in the Chinese manner

allée:
a lane or drive lined with trees

Les Amis des Noirs:
an abolitionist society in France, interested in improving the conditions and ultimately in liberating the slaves of the French colonies

ancien régime:
old order of pre-revolutionary France

aristocrates de la peau:
aristocrats of the skin. Many of Sonthonax’s policies and proclamations were founded on the argument that white supremacy in Saint Domingue was analogous to the tyranny of the hereditary French nobility and must therefore be overthrown in its turn by revolution.

armoire:
medicinal herb for fever

asson:
a rattle made from a gourd, an instrument in vodoun ceremonies, and the
hûngan’s
badge of authority

atelier:
idiomatically used to mean work gangs or the whole body of slaves on a given plantation

au grand seigneur:
in a proprietary manner

bagasse:
remnants of sugarcane whose juice has been extracted in the mill—a dry, fast-burning fuel

baguette:
bread loaf

banza:
African instrument with strings stretched over a skin head; fore-runner of the banjo

Baron Samedi:
vodoun deity closely associated with Ghede and the dead, sometimes considered an aspect of Ghede

bête de cornes:
domestic animal with horns

bienfaisance:
philosophical proposition that all things work together for good

bois bander:
tree whose bark was thought to be an aphrodisiac

bossale:
a newly imported slave, fresh off the boat, ignorant of the plantation ways and of the Creole dialect

boucaniers:
piratical drifters who settled Tortuga and parts of Haiti as Spanish rule there weakened. They derived their name from the word
boucan
—their manner of barbecuing hog meat.

cachot:
dungeon cell

caciques:
Amerindian chieftains of precolonial Haiti

calenda:
a slave celebration distinguished by dancing.
Calendas
frequently had covert vodoun significance, but white masters who permitted them managed to regard them as secular.

canaille:
mob, rabble

carré:
square, unit of measurement for cane fields and city blocks

casques:
feral dogs

les citoyens de quatre Avril:
Denoting persons of color awarded full political rights by the April 4 decree, this phrase was either a legal formalism or a sneering euphemism, depending on the speaker.

clairin:
cane rum

colon:
colonist

commandeur:
overseer or work-gang leader on a plantation, usually himself a slave

congé:
time off work

Congo:
African tribal designation. Thought to adapt well to many functions of slavery and more common than others in Saint Domingue.

cordon de l’est:
eastern cordon, a fortified line in the mountains organized by whites to prevent the northern insurrection from breaking through to other departments of the colony

cordon de l’ouest:
western cordon, as above

corps-cadavre:
in vodoun, the physical body, the flesh

coup poudré:
a vodoun attack requiring a material drug, as opposed to the
coup à l’air
, which needs only spiritual force

coutelas:
broad-bladed cane knife or machete

Creole:
Any person born in the colony whether white, black, or colored, whether slave or free. A dialect combining a primarily French vocabulary with primarily African syntax is also called Creole; this patois was not only the means of communication between whites and blacks but was often the sole common language among Africans of different tribal origins. Creole is still spoken in Haiti today.

crête:
ridge or peak

Damballah:
vodoun deity associated with snakes, one of the great
loa

déshabillé:
a housedress, in colonial Saint Domingue apt to be very revealing. White Creole women were famous for their daring in this regard.

dokté-feuilles:
leaf-doctor, expert in herbal medicine

Erzulie:
one of the great
loa
, a vodoun goddess roughly parallel to Aphrodite. As Erzulie-gé-Rouge she is maddened by suffering and grief.

enceinte:
pregnant

esprit:
spirit; in vodoun it is, so to speak, fungible

faience:
crockery

fatras-baton:
thrashing stick. Toussaint bore this stable name in youth because of his skinniness.

femme de confiance:
a lady’s quasi-professional female companion

femme de couleur:
woman of mixed blood

fleur-de-lis:
stylized rendition of a flower and a royalist emblem in France

gens de couleur:
people of color, a reasonably polite designation for persons of mixed blood in Saint Domingue

gérant:
plantation manager or overseer

Ghede:
one of the great
loa
, the principal vodoun god of the underworld and of the dead

gilet:
waistcoat

giromon:
medicinal herb for cough

gombo:
medicinal herb for cough

gommier:
gum-tree

grand blanc:
member of Saint Domingue’s white landed gentry, who were owners of large plantations and large numbers of slaves. The
grand blancs
were politically conservative and apt to align with royalist counterrevolutionary movements.

Grand Bois:
vodoun deity, aspect of Legba more closely associated with the world of the dead

grand’case:
the “big house,” residence of white owners or overseers on a plantation. These houses were often rather primitive despite the grandiose title.

grand chemin:
the big road or main road. In vodoun the term refers to the pathway opened between the human world and the world of the
loa
.

grenouille:
frog

griffe:
term for a particular combination of African and European blood. A
griffe
would result from the congress of a full-blood black with a mulatto or a
marabou
.

griffone:
female
griffe

gros-bon-ange:
literally, the “big good angel,” an aspect of the vodoun soul. The gros-bon-ange is “the life force that all sentient beings share; it enters the individual at conception and functions only to keep the body alive. At clinical death, it returns immediately to God and becomes part of the great reservoir of energy that supports all life.”
^*13

guérit-trop-vite:
medicinal herb used in plasters to speed healing of wounds

habitation:
plantation

herbe à cornette:
medicinal herb used in mixtures for coughing

herbe à pique:
medicinal herb against fever

homme de couleur:
man of mixed blood; see
gens de couleur

hounsi:
female vodoun acolytes

hûnfor:
vodoun temple, often arranged in open air

hûngan:
vodoun priest

Ibo:
African tribal designation. Ibo slaves were thought to be especially prone to suicide, believing that through death they would return to Africa. Some masters discouraged this practice by lopping the ears and noses of slaves who had killed themselves, since presumably the suicides would not wish to be resurrected with these signs of dishonor.

intendant:
the highest civil authority in colonial Saint Domingue, as opposed to the governor, who was the highest military authority. These conflicting and competing posts were deliberately arranged by the home government to make rebellion against the authority of the metropole less likely.

Island Below Sea:
vodoun belief construes that the souls of the dead inhabit a world beneath the ocean that reflects the living world above. Passage through this realm is the slave’s route of return to Africa.

journal:
newspaper

la-place:
vodoun celebrant with specific ritual functions second to those of the
hûngan
.

lantana:
medicinal herb against colds

Legba:
vodoun god of crossroads and of change, vaguely analogous to Hermes of the Greek pantheon. Because Legba controls the crossroads between the material and spiritual worlds, he must be invoked at the beginning of all ceremonies.

les Invisibles:
members of the world of the dead, roughly synonymous with
les Morts et les Mystères
.

liberté de savane:
freedom, for a slave, to come and go at will within the borders of a plantation or some other defined area, sometimes the privilege of senior
commandeurs
.

loa:
general term for a vodoun deity

loi du quatre Avril:
decree of April 4, 1792, from the French Legislative Assembly, granting full political rights to people of color in Saint Domingue.

loup-garou:
in vodoun, a sinister supernatural entity, something like a werewolf

macandal:
a charm, usually worn round the neck

macoutte:
a straw sack used to carry food or goods

main-d’oeuvre:
workforce

Maît’Carrefour:
vodoun deity closely associated with Ghede and the dead, sometimes considered an aspect of Ghede

maît’tête:
literally, “master of the head,” the particular
loa
to whom the vodoun observer is devoted, by whom he is usually possessed (though the worshiper may sometimes be possessed by other gods as well)

mal de Siam:
yellow fever

malnommée:
medicinal herb used in tea against diarrhea

mambo:
vodoun priestess

manchineel:
jungle tree with an extremely toxic sap

Mandingue:
African tribal designation. Mandingue slaves had a reputation for cruelty and for a strong character difficult to subject to servitude.

manicou:
Caribbean possum

marais:
swamp

maréchal de camp:
field marshal

maréchaussée:
paramilitary groups organized to recapture runaway slaves

maroon:
a runaway slave. There were numerous communities of maroons in the mountains of Saint Domingue, and in some cases they won battles with whites and negotiated treaties that recognized their freedom and their territory.

mauvais sujet:
bad guy, criminal

ménagère:
housekeeper

les Morts et les Mystères:
the aggregate of dead souls in vodoun, running the spectrum from personal ancestors to the great
loa

moulin de bêtes:
mill powered by animals, as opposed to a water mill

mulatto:
person of mixed European and African blood, whether slave or free. Tables existed to define sixty-four different possible such ad-mixtures, with a specific name and social standing assigned to each.

négociant:
businessman or broker involved in the export of plantation goods to France

nègre chasseur:
slave trained as a huntsman

noblesse de l’epée:
French aristocracy deriving its status from the feudal military system, as opposed to newer bureaucratic orders of rank

Ogûn:
one of the great
loa
, the Haitian god of war. Ogûn-Feraille is his most aggressive aspect.