Authors: James A. Michener
In 1793, Guadeloupe was shaken by a series of disasters arriving from two different quarters. From France came the hideous news that a reign of uncontrolled terror had swept the country, with thousands
being executed by a new beheading device called the guillotine after the imaginative physician who had sponsored it. From the German border came word that many nations had combined to destroy France’s revolution and place a new king on the throne. Finally came the saddest news of all, Queen Marie Antoinette, a frivolous but gracious lady, had also been executed.
This shameful act intensified the emotions of the island Royalists, who held meetings at which they orated … while spies listed new names. Paul Lanzerac, already a man of substance although only twenty-three, led the fiery orations, calling upon memories of France’s greatness under her distinguished kings, but what really animated him was the arrival in the French islands of a decree announcing that any worship of God or Jesus or the Virgin Mary had been abolished in favor of what was called the Cult of Reason. There was also to be an entirely new calendar, with months named for natural phenomena like Germinal (seed month) and Thermidor (heat month) and Fructidor (fruit/harvest month). A subsidiary note reported that priests and nuns were being exterminated at a lively rate, with a suggestion that patriots in the colonies might like to conduct a similar cleansing.
When Paul heard these revolting stories his anger flared to such a pitch that he led a huge mass meeting in the plaza opposite his father’s shop, at which he railed for some minutes against the assassins who had killed the king and queen and now sought to kill Jesus and the Virgin Mother, and it was in the soaring emotions of that afternoon that at least the eastern half of Guadeloupe declared itself unequivocally in support of the old system of government and religion as opposed to the new. And when Paul finished, Solange leaped to the improvised stage and declared that the women of the island felt their own devotion to the dead queen and the church.
Then, in late 1793, the few mulattoes and the many blacks out in Guadeloupe’s country areas united for the first time in island history to redress the grievances under which they had long suffered—mulattoes from ostracisms, slaves from physical abuses—and they mounted such a furious attack on white citizens in the town that Paul Lanzerac cried to his cohorts: “It’s the madness of Paris come to the New World!” and he organized a tiny defense force to hold off the attackers, who, having heard what the lower classes of Paris had achieved in their rebellion, started to burn plantations and assault their white owners. From his defense group Paul selected a cadre of
horsemen, whom he molded into a cavalry unit which launched forays far into the countryside to save the sugar growers.
The dash of these volunteers, plus Lanzerac’s excellent leadership, established a perimeter of safety inside which plantation owners could survive the attacks of the dark-skinned rebels, but during one sortie far to the eastern shore of the island where plantations bordered on the Atlantic, a fellow rider asked Paul: “Did you know that Solange Vauclain has gone out to her plantation to help her father save it from burning?” When he asked his troop: “Shall we ride back by way of the Vauclain place to rescue Solange if she’s still there?” they demurred: “No concern of ours. She’s mulatto and no doubt fighting on their side.”
So the detour to help Solange was aborted, but late that night when Paul told his wife: “I’m really frightened. She’s out there and she’s got to be brought in,” she replied without hesitation: “Of course,” and she kissed him goodbye as he left to round up three volunteers to aid him on his starlit gallop eastward.
It was not a long ride, just to the safe perimeter and three miles beyond, but the last portion could prove extremely dangerous if the rebels were alert, so at the point where the riders had to leave the protection of the French guns, he cried: “We’re heading over there. Any who wish to remain, do so,” but none stayed, so with his three men behind him he made a dash for the Vauclain plantation.
It was a sharp ride over rough terrain, but they did avoid the rebels and at dawn approached the Vauclain plantation, but one of the men, knowing of Paul’s affection for Solange, galloped ahead and immediately returned, right hand in the air to stop the riders: “Don’t go. It’s terrible.” Brushing past him, Paul sped on to see the fearful desolation that had been wreaked upon one of Guadeloupe’s finest sugar settlements. The big house had been leveled; its fine mahogany furnishings were smoldering. The owner, a just man and a fine manager, hung by his neck from a tree that he had planted.
When Paul, near fainting, started to poke among the embers to see what had happened to Solange and her mother, the others tried again to stop him, but when he heard a whimper from a chicken coop, he found the girl and her mother huddled inside, terrified lest the horsemen might be a second round of rebels come to finish the destruction.
When Paul saw the pitiful condition of his beautiful friend, he took her in his arms, and said that she and her mother must mount
behind two of the horsemen for a speedy ride back to the safety of the town. He was astonished that Mme. Vauclain refused to accompany him, and when he wanted Solange to plead with her mother, the old woman snarled: “I’m black. The Frenchmen have never wanted me. I’m with the slaves. And one day we’ll drive you from the island.” She stood erect, told her daughter: “Do as you please, but they won’t want you either,” and off she strode toward the camps of the very men who had burned her plantation and killed her husband.
For a moment Solange, the daughter of a murdered father and a rebellious mother who had deserted her, looked in confusion at the man she had always loved, and felt near to collapsing. But with the same strength that her African mother had shown, she calmly shook the dust from her skirt, and then cried: “We go!” And after Paul helped her mount and himself eased back into the saddle, she clasped him about the waist and they headed back for Point-à-Pitre.
Eugénie Lanzerac was not surprised when she saw her husband ride up with their dear friend mounted behind, nor was she shaken by the burning of the Vauclain plantation, the murder of its owner and the decision of the widow to join the rebels. “These are dreadful times,” she told Solange consolingly, and in succeeding days each helped the other during shortages of provisions or attacks by the enemy. The town was in a state of siege, and on days when Paul led a detachment of his cavalry out to forage for extra food, the two women, each twenty-one and mature, stood at the doorway to their house and bade him farewell and Godspeed. When he returned safely, it would have been impossible to detect which woman greeted him with greater affection or uttered the more sincere prayers.
But when one of Paul’s three companions was wounded during a sortie, both Paul and Eugénie were in for a surprise when the next excursion set forth, because on the wounded man’s horse rode Solange, ready for the chase east. No one, not Eugénie or Paul or the other two horsemen, made comment; she was a creole woman, a daughter of the island, and her people needed sustenance. When she rode back with the men in late afternoon, Eugénie helped her down from her horse and embraced her.
In the difficult days that followed, Solange rode regularly with the three men, and once as they came over a slight rise and saw a hedgerow composed of the glorious flowers of Guadeloupe, she cried: “Paul, this is an island worth saving!” and they swore to do just that. During such forays, one of the riders, son of a sugar factor, fell obviously
in love with this gallant young woman; he could not take his eyes off her golden-brown face and he spoke admiringly of her daring horsemanship. She knew well what was happening on their long rides, for he rode near her to protect her and lent her his horse when hers tired, but she could not find it in her heart to reciprocate his affection. Her attention was now, as it had ever been, on Paul Lanzerac, and after the other horseman had been rebuffed half a dozen times, he said to her one day: “You’re in love with him. Aren’t you?” but she made no reply. However, on subsequent days the would-be suitor rode with the other men, and they watched as Solange and Paul galloped across the countryside, taking great risks and escaping danger primarily because they were superb riders.
One afternoon when they came home exhausted, drooping in their saddles, the waning sun on their faces, Eugénie met them at the gate and thought: They are so handsome. As if they had been made for each other. But this obvious fact did not disturb the friendship, because when Eugénie appeared that night at supper with her baby son, Jean-Baptiste, tucked in motherly fashion under her left arm while she ladled up soup with her right, Solange thought: She is so much the mistress of a home, so much the mother. And Solange’s own participation in this curious arrangement remained on an even keel.
Then in early 1794, when distant Paris was caught in a vortex of terror, when one after another of the bloody leaders was executed—Hébert, Chaumette, Cloots, Danton, Desmoulins, each dead with a hundred crimes on his hands, a thousand corpses—a minor terror of its own kind was about to strike Guadeloupe, but it appeared first in the guise of salvation from a most unexpected quarter.
When it seemed that the rebellious slaves and their mulatto leaders were about to overwhelm the beleaguered town, a small flotilla of ships appeared in the harbor, and a watchman shouted: “My God! They’re British!” Paul Lanzerac and two other daring men leaped into a rowboat, and ignoring the danger that they might be fired upon by the sailors, pulled right under the bow of the lead ship, and cried: “We’re Royalists! The slaves are besieging us!”
The admiral in charge of the invasion force was a man from Barbados, a Hector Oldmixon whose great-grandfather had been a Royalist in his day, though in the English cause, and he was not a man to tolerate foolishness from slaves. When Lanzerac was hauled on deck, he listened to the Frenchman’s story and growled: “There’s nothing more infamous on this earth than the doctrine that niggers have
souls. Equality, sir, will be the destruction of great nations. Now, how can we best get ashore on your island?”
Since Paul loved the daughter of a slave and appreciated the qualities mulattoes could have, he was antagonized by Oldmixon’s crude dismissal of anyone with color, but could not forget that in the recent rioting, mulattoes had sided with slaves against the whites. Maybe the English rule as exemplified in nearby Barbados was correct—“White with black, a forbidden mix”—while the French willingness to accept if not encourage such liaisons might be a mistaken policy. But he could not abide Oldmixon; the man was insufferable, seeming to take delight in lording it over the French, whom he apparently despised, but he was the potential savior of the island and therefore had to be accepted.
For these tangled reasons, Paul Lanzerac, a Frenchman of such devotion to his native land that he wept when he heard of the disasters overtaking it, was constrained to help a British naval force capture both wings of the Guadeloupe butterfly. The occupation was made without much loss of life, since at Point-à-Pitre, Paul and his associates welcomed the British sailors, while at Basse-Terre the opposition was minimal. Within two weeks the island was secure.
A curious event happened when the British army units that came ashore early in the battle marched inland from Point-à-Pitre to subdue the last of the slaves; when they thought they had the rebels penned into their final redoubt, they found to their astonishment that it was commanded by a ferocious woman whom spies identified as the widow of the murdered French planter Philippe Vauclain. Hearing of this preposterous affair, Admiral Oldmixon rode up on a horse provided him by Paul Lanzerac and demanded of his men: “What in hell goes on here?” and they explained: “There’s an old black woman in there, every time we arrange a truce because they don’t have a chance … you can see that … she starts the fight again.”
Oldmixon was outraged. A blustery type to whom everything not authentically English was anathema, even his fortuitous French allies here on the island, he was not about to allow a slave woman, and an elderly one at that, to hold up his occupation of Guadeloupe, so he bellowed at his men: “Storm that plantation and shoot the old bitch,” but at this moment young Lanzerac, having heard of the impasse, galloped up, shouting: “No! No!” and when he dismounted before the irate Englishmen he said: “You can’t. She’s the widow of a white man and the mother of a trusted friend.”
“Whatcha sayin’, Frenchie?” Oldmixon snapped, and Paul assured him that this was true. “I’ll go in and bring her out,” and laying aside all arms and extending his two hands, palms open, before him, he walked slowly toward the plantation house, saying in a pleading voice: “I’m Solange’s friend. She sent me. I’m your daughter’s friend. She sent me,” and as he came nearer he thought: She’s Grandmère Lanzerac come back to life … same thing … same courage against the English. And when at last he entered the house and saw her and the few remaining slaves ranged against the wall, their guns lowered, he repeated: “I’m your daughter’s friend. The one who rescued Solange that day.” From the window where she still stood erect, holding her own gun, she said in a low voice, speaking perfect French: “Then you’re Lanzerac? Why didn’t you marry her?” He said nothing as he led her to where Admiral Oldmixon waited.
“Throw her into jail,” the Barbadian said, and despite the most fervent pleas from Paul and Eugénie and Solange when they had Oldmixon to supper that night, he persisted, because, as he said: “She was once a slave, and she’ll never forget it. Can’t beat the urge for freedom out of ’em. Rebel once, rebel always.” But as the night waned, Paul noticed that Oldmixon kept his eye always on Solange, and when the Englishman left the house to return to his ship he said at the gate: “That girl, if only she was white, what a beauty!”
During the occupation the Lanzeracs repeatedly invited Oldmixon, as leader of the superior force on the island, to dine with them. He rightly suspected that they did this mainly because he could bring rations of scarce meat for their meals, but even so, he enjoyed the companionship of intelligent people and an opportunity to refresh his considerable mastery of French. “My goodness, you do handle the language beautifully,” he told Solange one night, and she replied: “Small wonder, seeing that my father was from Calais.”