Napoleon Bonaparte feared few people, but one he did fear: a black Haitian slave named Toussaint Louverture from the Caribbean colony of St. Domingue. Napoleon feared that this homely, 5-foot-2-inch tall military genius would build an empire to challenge his own.
Toussaint, who took on the last name of “Louverture” only later in life, had as his primary goal the freeing of his people. He said of himself, “I was born a slave, but Nature gave me the soul of a free man. Every day I raise up my hands in prayer to implore God to come to the aid of my brethren and to shed the light of His mercy upon them.”
Haiti’s Early History
To answer that question, it’s important to understand a chapter in Haiti’s early history. Despite the prohibition of slavery by Queen Isabella of Spain, many Spanish settlers in the New World enslaved the indigenous people already living there. However, these people tended to die in captivity. The Spanish and Portuguese slave-traders instead began capturing black slaves from Africa and transporting them across the Atlantic, under ruthlessly harsh conditions.Toussaint Louverture’s father came to St. Domingue as a result of this slave trade. Toussaint Louverture was born a slave at the Breda plantation in the north of the French colony of St. Domingue on the island of Hispaniola. He may have been the son of an African king taken in battle and sold as a slave, though accounts differ. Whether it was royal heritage, natural ability, or both, Toussaint achieved a position of status and leadership among the other enslaved people on the plantation.
Toussaint possessed a brilliant intellect and determined, principled temperament. A priest named Father Luxembourg, who was ministering on the island, noticed the young slave’s deep intelligence and taught him to read and write French and Latin. Under Father Luxembourg’s influence, Toussaint converted to Catholicism and remained a devout Catholic throughout his life. He strongly opposed the Voodoo religion, which was commonly practiced among the island’s slave population.
In the late 1780s and early 1790s, news of the French revolution reached the Caribbean colonies and seemed to stir an ever-deepening desire for freedom among the slaves. In August of 1791, this spark of rebellion burst into a major conflagration. Revolution erupted across St. Domingue, and thousands of slaves rose up against their masters. The bloody, ugly revolt was the result of years of suppressed tension.
At first, Toussaint hesitated to commit to a side. In the end, he helped his own master escape, and then joined the revolution—although he condemned the excesses and atrocities of some of his fellow revolutionaries. Toussaint formed and trained an army of his own and soon displayed his brilliant tactical abilities as a military commander.
His second name “Louverture,” which means “opening” in French, may have referred to his military prowess and his propensity to “seize an opening” through which he could gain tactical advantage on the battlefield.
An Ongoing Struggle
The situation on the island of Hispaniola became even more complicated when the French side (St. Domingue) and the Spanish side (San Domingo) went to war with each other in 1793. The black commanders joined the Spanish side, and Toussaint continued to prove himself as a military genius during his time in service of the Spanish cause. He was so successful that he was knighted and promoted to general. He helped drive the French to their knees.But European political developments brought an unexpected turn in the war. In 1794, the French National Convention outlawed slavery and freed its slaves. Because of this, Toussaint switched sides, joining forces with the French. He could no longer work alongside the Spanish, who still maintained slavery in their domains.
The tide of war turned when Toussaint switched sides, and the Spanish were soon defeated. The French governor of St. Domingue named Toussaint his lieutenant governor. Over the course of the next decade, Toussaint—rising through the ranks and craftily subduing all rivals—managed to unite the entire island under his rule, though he remained nominally a representative of the French government.
Back in France, the avalanche of political change and instability continued apace. In a daring move, Napoleon Bonaparte seized control of the French government in the coup of 1799, and as First Consul of France, he turned his attention to the turbulent situation in the French colony of St. Domingue. In early 1800, Napoleon sent a message to the blacks on the island. He promised to never to return them to slavery and named Toussaint as captain-general of the colony and commander-in-chief of the army there.
That same year, Toussaint defeated the mulatto forces that threatened his control in the south of the island. In 1801, he went against Napoleon’s orders and conquered the Spanish side of the island, too.
Toussaint established a constitution in which he was governor-for-life and Catholicism was the state religion. However, despite his near-absolute control of the island, he continued to pay lip service to Napoleon and proclaimed himself a loyal Frenchman.
The duplicitous Napoleon then made a pivotal decision. Former plantation-owners had convinced him to restore slavery in the colonies. Moreover, he was witnessing Toussaint scale the ladder of power, and how high that leader might reach, he did not know. Historians believe Napoleon feared that Toussaint might expand his domains beyond Hispaniola, perhaps even into the American continent. That would interfere with Napoleon’s own imperialistic goals. He decided to rid himself of Toussaint and once again shackle the island’s black population.
Napoleon sent well-trained troops, under the command of Gen. Charles Leclerc, to invade Hispaniola in January of 1802. Toussaint was ready, having stored supplies and built up his own forces.
The French imperial army and the former slaves fought viciously in the dense and muggy jungles. Toussaint’s men held their own against the most fearsome fighting force in the world at that time. Historian Warren Carroll described one key battle in his book “The Revolution Against Christendom”:
“The black men and former slaves of Haiti yielded nothing to Napoleon’s veterans in valor. The fort held out against a siege by 12,000 of Napoleon’s best soldiers. So magnificently did the garrison fight that Gen. Leclerc, dying of yellow fever, said that ‘men who loved liberty as did the Negroes of Saint-Domingue and men as valiant as the French soldiers deserved a better fate than that to which the First Consul doomed them.’”
Leclerc couldn’t defeat Toussaint in a pitched battle. But when Toussaint’s own generals betrayed him, Toussaint agreed to surrender as long as Leclerc promised to not restore slavery. Shortly after his surrender, Toussaint was lured into a trap and captured by the French. He was taken to an impenetrable fortress deep in the snows of the French Jura Mountains and imprisoned until his death in 1803.
A Lasting Legacy
Despite his tragic end, Toussaint’s achievements had far-reaching effects. According to professor of Latin American and Caribbean literature Kedon Willis, “Historians credit [Toussaint’s revolution] with spooking France from further colonial endeavors in the hemisphere and inspiring Napoleon to offload the Louisiana territory to the United States, effectively doubling the young republic in size.” Toussaint’s actions may well have spared the Americas from Napoleonic rule.
After Toussaint’s capture, his lieutenant Jean-Jacques Dessalines continued to fight. He ultimately founded the independent sovereign nation of Haiti in 1804. Thus, Toussaint gave his people an independent nation, just as he had dreamed long before on the Breda plantation, even if he didn’t live to see the full flowering of the tree he had planted.
