Stella: A Novel of the Haitian Revolution 9781479827763

Citation preview

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Stella

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America and the Long 19th Century General Editors: David Kazanjian, Elizabeth McHenry, and Priscilla Wald

Black Frankenstein: The Making of Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in an American Metaphor the 19th Century Elizabeth Young Kyla Wazana Tompkins Neither Fugitive nor Free: Atlantic Slavery, Freedom Suits, and the Legal Culture of Travel Edlie L. Wong

Idle Threats: Men and the Limits of Productivity in 19th-Century America Andrew Lyndon Knighton

Shadowing the White Man’s Burden: U.S. Imperialism and the Problem of the Color Line Gretchen Murphy

The Traumatic Colonel: The Founding Fathers, Slavery, and the Phantasmatic Aaron Burr Michael J. Drexler and Ed White

Bodies of Reform: The Rhetoric of Character in Gilded Age America James B. Salazar

Unsettled States: NineteenthCentury American Literary Studies Edited by Dana Luciano and Ivy G. Wilson

Empire’s Proxy: American Literature and U.S. Imperialism in the Philippines Meg Wesling Sites Unseen: Architecture, Race, and American Literature William A. Gleason Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights Robin Bernstein

Sitting in Darkness: Mark Twain, Asia, and Comparative Racialization Hsuan L. Hsu Picture Freedom: Remaking Black Visuality in the Early Nineteenth Century Jasmine Nichole Cobb

Stella Émeric Bergeaud American Arabesque: Arabs, Islam, Translated and Edited by Lesley S. Curtis and and the 19th-Century Imaginary Christen Mucher Jacob Rama Berman

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ST E L L A Émeric Bergeaud Translated and Edited by Lesley S. Curtis and Christen Mucher

A Novel of the Haitian Revolu tion •

NEW YORK UNIVERSIT Y PRESS New York and London •

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NEW YORK U NIVERSIT Y PRES S New York and London www.nyupress.org © 2015 by New York University All rights reserved References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bergeaud, Emeric, 1818–1857, author. [Stella. English] Stella / Émeric Bergeaud ; translated and edited by Lesley S. Curtis and Christen Mucher. pages cm. — (America and the long 19th century) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4798-6684-7 (cl : acid-free paper) ISBN 978-1-4798-9240-2 (pb : acid-free paper) I. Curtis, Lesley S., editor, translator. II. Mucher, Christen, editor, translator. III. Title. PQ3949.B43S7413 2015 843’.8—dc23 2015009275 New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books. Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Also available as an ebook

Contents

Editors’ Acknowled gments vii Editors’ Introduction Lesley S. Curtis and Christen Mucher ix

Au thor’s Note 1 To the Reader B. Ardouin

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STELLA 5 Glossary of Foreign Words and Expressions 185 Original Expl anatory Notes 187 Editors’ Notes 191 Ab ou t the Editors 195

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Editors’ Acknowledgments

We wish to thank the many people who helped make this project possible, especially our series editors David Kazanjian, Elizabeth McHenry, and Priscilla Wald, as well as Eric Zinner, Ciara McLaughlin, Alicia Nadkarni, and the editorial team at NYU Press. We would also like to extend our thanks to Deborah Jenson and the members of Duke University’s Haiti Lab, who gave us the opportunity to discuss early Haitian literature with an incredible group of scholars. Thanks go, too, to Laurent Dubois, Jacques Pierre, Floyd Cheung, Larry Rosenwald, and Sean Moore. The publication of this book would not have been possible without the subvention support generously provided by Smith College. For this, we are very grateful. We must also thank Cybelle McFadden, who orchestrated the serendipitous meeting at the Atlantic World Research Network in Greensboro, North Carolina, that gave life to this project. Finally, this work would certainly not exist without the faithful and loving support of our friends and family, including Colleen Woods and the extended Mucher and Struewing families, Nancy Wilson, Elizabeth Wilson, Brian McDonald, Cord Whitaker, and our brand new stella maris, London Olivia Grace.

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Editors’ Introduction

Émeric Bergeaud (1818–1858), Haitian politician and man of letters, explained in the prefatory note to Stella that he had taken pains not to “disfigure history” in the writing of his only novel. Although Stella’s main characters—Romulus, Remus, the Colonist, Marie the African, and Stella—are fictional, Bergeaud assured his readers that there was truth in the book he wrote to honor his country. He wanted the “attraction of the novel” to “capture” readers “who do not subject themselves to indepth study of our annals.” Like other Haitian writers of the nineteenth century, Bergeaud believed it was crucial to retell the Haitian Revolution from a positive perspective so as to counter the hostile representations of his country that were so common at the time. For this reason, the novelist wanted his story of Haiti’s transformation from French colony to independent nation to alter the perception of his native country both at home and afar. Stella, the nation’s first novel, seeks to enshrine the Haitian Revolution and the Haitian people as the true inheritors of liberty, and Haiti as the realization of the French Revolution’s republican ideals of freedom, equality, and brotherhood. Stella tells of the devastation of colonialism and slavery in the colony of Saint-Domingue, as Haiti was known before independence, and it chronicles the events of the Haitian Revolution, which is portrayed as a bloody yet just fight for emancipation and a period of sacrifice that all future Haitians are charged to honor and remember. While Stella provides a captivating and admirable origin story for Haiti and Haitians, the fact that it was out of print for more than one hundred years means that the novel has struggled to fulfill its author’s wish of attracting a wider readership to his nation’s history. [ ix ]

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When Bergeaud wrote Stella in the late 1840s and into the 1850s, he was living in exile on the small Caribbean island of Saint Thomas (now part of the U.S. Virgin Islands). When the novel was finally published in 1859, it appeared in Édouard Dentu’s busy Parisian bookshop rather than on the bookshelves of Charlotte Amalie or Port-au-Prince.1 Bergeaud had given the manuscript to his friend and relative, the historian and politician Beaubrun Ardouin (1796–1865), also in exile, when the two were together in Paris in 1857. After Bergeaud’s death the next year, Ardouin had his friend’s novel published in the City of Lights. It was never printed in Haiti. That Stella appeared in Haiti’s former colonial capital was due as much to Bergeaud’s personal circumstances and Haitian politics as it was to the cachet of the nineteenth-century Parisian literary scene. The legacy of the novel’s publication history, Bergeaud’s particular blending of history and fiction, as well as an unfortunate general hostility toward early Haitian literature continue to influence how Stella has been received over the last century and a half. Despite Stella’s strong message against slavery, colonialism, and the racism intrinsic to these systems, the novel has been understudied. The few studies of Stella that exist—and in this sense, Bergeaud’s novel is representative of a wider trend in the reception of early Haitian literature—have tended to view the novel as derivative of French literary models and therefore imperfect or unworthy of study. The bases for these dismissals, and the novel itself, deserve to be reexamined.2 The goal of this introduction is to contextualize Stella’s political and literary world for an English-speaking audience. Here, we provide a brief overview of the history that Stella relates, for while the novel certainly provides insight into the political and social conflicts of Bergeaud’s world, a reader unfamiliar with the intricate details of Haitian history may find following the novel’s allegorical account of the nation’s founding challenging.3 In making Stella and the story of Haitian history that it recounts available to Anglophone readers and thereby introducing the novel to a new generation of scholars, it is our hope that Haiti’s first novel will find its place within a revitalized study of early Haitian literature.

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E a rly Ha i tia n P ol i ti cs From Émeric Bergeaud’s birth just over a decade after Haiti’s independence to his death in exile forty years later, the life of Stella’s author was deeply connected to the fortune of his country. Jean-Pierre Boyer (1776– 1850) became the second president of Haiti the year that Bergeaud was born. Boyer went on to rule Haiti, and later the entire island of Hispaniola, for most of the novelist’s life. Boyer, who fought in the Revolution, was born part of a small but powerful group of free Euro-African people known as gens de couleur (free people of color).4 Before independence in 1804, some gens de couleur played a role in French politics; after 1804, many members of this population and their descendants were active in Haiti’s early governments. Throughout much of the nineteenth century, this group maintained political and economic control of the country; known for their support of Boyer and then later the maintenance of his status quo, members of this group were often referred to as “Boyerists.” Bergeaud was born into this wealthy, well-educated, Boyerist class of early Haitians in the southwestern city of Les Cayes. This city had been the home of another important gens de couleur military leader of the Revolution, André Rigaud (1761–1811), who designated it the capital of his secessionist Department of the South, which Bergeaud’s uncle, General Jérôme-Maximilien Borgella (1773–1844), led from 1811 to 1812.5 Between 1807 and 1819, another autonomous region existed in the neighboring area of Grand’Anse, which was comprised of slaves-turnedfarmers and led by the former maroon Goman. As part of Boyer’s centralizing plan, Borgella helped to reabsorb Goman’s region into the Republic in 1820, although the area continued to remain out of direct political control from Port-au-Prince.6 In Bergeaud’s youth, he worked as Borgella’s personal secretary, thus learning about Haitian regional and national politics—and about the factions that split his country—at an early age. Many gens de couleur had both French and African ancestry, and before the Revolution some had completed their schooling or military training in France. This sector of the population often included people free before the 1793 decree abolishing slavery in Saint-Domingue, and many of them had themselves owned slaves. Even after independence, descendants of the gens de couleur continued to look to France [ xi ]

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as a source of education and culture. For this reason, Haitian elites were often accused of “francophilia,” preferring French or “Frenchified” culture over African and creole traditions, and of holding power in such a way as to exclude and denigrate—both politically and culturally— the African-descended majority in Haiti. For example, the 1835 Penal Code criminalized the practice of Vodou, which was seen as including acts of “spell-making” (sortilège), along with the creation of various kinds of potions and amulets.7 Stella’s editor, Beaubrun Ardouin, who was elected to the Haitian Senate in 1832, helped to pass these anti-Vodou laws. Elite Haitians also distanced themselves from the African-descended majority—often inhabitants of rural areas who had only enjoyed freedom after 1793 and their offspring—in the realm of language as well: for while most people in colonial Saint-Domingue and nineteenth-century Haiti spoke a language that combined French with African languages—an earlier, noncodified version of currentday Haitian Kreyòl—only some of the population spoke both Kreyòl and French. In the colonial period, French was the language of power; after independence, access to spoken—and especially written—French marked the wealthy and educated apart from the rest of Haitian society. Thus, literacy in French ensured access to the avenues of political power and influence, and guaranteed that political and cultural power would remain with a small group of Francophone Haitians.8 These regulations and exclusive practices were designed not just to maintain power within one group, or to denigrate the black majority; they were also about presenting a certain image of Haiti to the international community in the face of persistent anti-Haitianism in France and the United States. These anti-Haitian attitudes stemmed from prejudice against a nation whose foundation rested upon the complete opposition to the economically powerful institution of slavery. When the Republic of Haiti was proclaimed on January 1, 1804, the new country became the second postcolonial nation in the Americas and the first to be built from a successful revolution against slavery. From 1791 to the Revolution’s end in 1804, Haitians saw countless acts of violence, and they suffered years of terror, famine, and hardship. Yet, by 1804, Haiti’s people—most of whom had been slaves under French rule—emerged as citizens. From that moment, they swore to “live independent or die.”9 Yet, as is often the case for new countries, Haiti [ xii ]

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struggled in its early years. As a result, Haiti was often called upon by members of the international community, especially France, to justify its freedom. Soon after independence, Haiti’s governor-for-life, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, a former slave and hero of the Revolution, declared himself emperor of the first Haitian Empire. Dessalines drew much opposition as a ruler; two years later he was assassinated. In 1810, after his death and a subsequent civil war, Dessalines’s assistants-turned-rivals Henri Christophe (1767–1820) and Alexandre Sabès Pétion (1770–1818) split the country into two. Christophe, a former slave who fought against the British at the 1779 Battle of Savannah, headed the State—later the Kingdom—of Haiti in the North (including Artibonite) from Cap-Haïtien. There, he maintained a system of forced labor which Bergeaud highly criticizes in Stella, one that was instituted by Dessalines and Toussaint Louverture before him; it centered on the cultivation of sugar and coffee for export. In the South and West regions, Pétion, a man of Euro-African descent who had trained at a military school in Paris, led the Republic of Haiti from its capital, Port-au-Prince. Pétion embarked on a program of distributing the land of the former sugar and coffee plantations to the local peasants and soldiers; this created a system of subsistence smallholdings, the products of which Pétion taxed heavily.10 In both territories, the gap between the wealthier, city-dwelling Euro-African elite and the poorer African-descended peasants widened. Opposition groups emerged in both areas, and each country established a strong military presence to maintain a tense peace. Within a few years, an additional two regions proclaimed independence. By the time of Bergeaud’s birth in 1818, Haiti had effectively shattered into four separate countries. Early in the century, the future of the new nation was unclear, and both France and the United States—and to a lesser extent, Great Britain—were ready to capitalize on any real or perceived weaknesses.11 Furthermore, not one of these countries recognized Haiti as officially independent from France. When Pétion died from yellow fever in 1818, his protégé Boyer became president. During his first few years in office, Boyer worked to reunite the fractured nation and to bring its separate regions under centralized control, both physically and legislatively. When Christophe died in 1820, Boyer rejoined the Kingdom of Haiti to the Republic, extending [ xiii ]

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Pétion’s practice of land redistribution to the North. Just as it had in the South and West, this policy—later enshrined in law in the 1826 Rural Code—ensured that, while able to survive, the peasant classes would have little chance of amassing sustained political power. In 1822, Boyer’s forces invaded the eastern half of Hispaniola (the current-day Dominican Republic), and Haitian forces occupied this part of the island until 1844. Despite Boyer’s policies of land distribution and centralization, the abolition of slavery during his occupation of Spanish Haiti, and his support for African-American migration, his longest-lasting legacy remains the 1825 agreement he negotiated with France for its official recognition of the independent Republic.12 Until this time, the former colonial power had not only refused to recognize Haiti’s independence, it had also constantly threatened to launch campaigns to take back its “property” (Haiti and Haitians). Although important to guaranteeing Haiti’s continued sovereignty, official recognition came at an enormous price: Boyer agreed that Haiti would pay a large indemnity to compensate the former slaveholders. The new country continued to send payments to France, with interest, for over a century.13 This was a debt that, incurred so early in Haiti’s history, weakened its economy from the start.14 Furthermore, delayed international recognition undermined Haiti’s membership among the world’s nations.15 Despite the indemnity agreement and France’s official recognition, most countries did not formally recognize Haiti until the second half of the nineteenth century; the U.S. did not grant Haiti diplomatic recognition until 1862. Boyer was deposed in 1843, the result of a struggle both within and without the ruling class. In 1842, an opposition party called the Society for the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which was based near Les Cayes and composed of elite members such as Hérard Dumesle (1784–1858) and his cousin Charles Rivière-Hérard (1789–1850), began to agitate for economic and democratic reforms. This led to what is now known as the Liberal Revolution of 1843, which succeeded in unseating Boyer.16 Rivière-Hérard became the head of a provisional government with a new constitution, and he officially took the presidency in 1844. With Boyer gone and Haiti’s leadership in question, the Dominican Republic took the opportunity to declare its independence. Soon afterward, Louis Jean-Jacques Acaau (d. 1846) led a revolution comprised of black peas[ xiv ]

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ant farmers known as the “Piquets” who decried the elite class’s control of the government and called for new land reforms.17 The Piquets continued their campaign until 1848, but an immediate result of their movement was the overthrow of Rivière-Hérard and his replacement, over the next three years, by a succession of black presidents: Philippe Guerrier (1757–1845), Jean-Louis Pierrot (1761–1867), Jean-Baptiste Riché (1780– 1847), and Faustin Soulouque (1782–1867). While these men were intended as figureheads to be controlled by the Boyerist establishment, the ruling class soon discovered that they had misjudged Soulouque, who proved to be a strong leader in his own right.18 When Soulouque became president of Haiti in 1847, Bergeaud, Ardouin, and their peers expected him to maintain the status quo. Instead, Soulouque consolidated his power and had several of his political enemies, many of whom were descendants of the gens de couleur, killed.19 Bergeaud, Beaubrun, and his brother Céligny Ardouin (1806–1849) found themselves on the wrong side of politics; yet while Bergeaud and Beaubrun Ardouin were able to flee Haiti, Céligny was not as fortunate. Céligny Ardouin was executed in 1849, the same year that Soulouque declared himself Emperor Faustin I. The political tumult of Bergeaud’s early adulthood clearly influenced his life and his writing. The turmoil that affected him, furthermore, was not only domestic; it included political developments in the greater Caribbean as well as in France. The same year that he fled Haiti, slavery was abolished in both the Danish and French colonies. This meant that Bergeaud and his compatriots did not have to fear enslavement when traveling in much of the Caribbean, for slavery had already been abolished on the British-held islands in 1833. However, chattel slavery and plantation-based forced labor were still legal in the U.S., Spain (in Cuba and Puerto Rico), and Brazil.20 At this time, writing to oppose the system of slavery, as Bergeaud did, ran contrary to the existing economic and political systems of these influential nations. Bergeaud, however, was not unique as an exile. The 1840s and 1850s saw many politicians, reformers, agitators, and revolutionaries exiled in the Caribbean, on mainland America, and in Europe. Paris, in particular, was a popular destination for Caribbean writers of African and Euro-African descent, and pockets of anticolonial and antiracist activism flourished in Haiti’s former colonial capital, led by figures such [ xv ]

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as Cuban journalist Andrés Avelino de Orihuela (1818–1873), Haitian American writer Victor Séjour (1817–1874), and Martinican politician Cyrille Bissette (1795–1858).21 In 1857, Bergeaud left Saint Thomas for Paris to meet Beaubrun Ardouin, who had been in France negotiating the opening of Haitian embassies.22 Suffering from ill health, Bergeaud soon returned to his island exile, but, before leaving Paris, he consigned his manuscript to Ardouin, who set about editing and arranging it for publication. On February 23, 1858, Bergeaud died on Saint Thomas; he never returned to Haiti after his 1848 departure. Soulouque continued to rule the Empire of Haiti until he was deposed in January 1859. Stella was published in Paris eight months later.

Story and History Stella begins with the story of two brothers, Romulus and Remus; one is born of an African father, the other is the son of a French colonist. Both enslaved in Saint-Domingue and toiling on the Colonist’s plantation, the brothers are motivated to revolt by the violent death of their mother, Marie the African. Much of Stella follows the two sons, who represent multiple historical figures, through the events of the Haitian Revolution. The novel’s dedication to history means that its storyline recounts, usually in symbolic or allegorical form, nearly all the complex details of Haiti’s founding. Stella dates the crime of Marie’s death to the year 1789, amid a period of great political upheaval in France. Debate over the question of slavery in particular intensified in France in 1788 with the formation of the first French abolitionist society: the Société des Amis des Noirs. Influenced by British abolitionists such as Thomas Clarkson, Granville Sharp, and William Wilberforce, the Société sought the amelioration of the conditions of enslaved people.23 Indeed, few antislavery thinkers in the 1780s were arguing for an immediate end to slavery; in 1781, the Marquis de Condorcet, for example, had argued for a process of gradual emancipation.24 For many revolutionaries, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen that was written in 1789 placed the principles of chattel slavery in question.25 Heated arguments over the extent to which the rights to freedom and equality applied to all people were heard throughout

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France and in the French colonies. Saint-Domingue, a colony fueled by enslaved labor, featured heavily in these debates.26 Stella highlights the connection between France and Saint-Domingue at this time. Initially, many gens de couleur residents of the colony who were not represented in the newly formed National Assembly in Paris protested their exclusion. In 1790, frustrated by the slow expansion of republican rights to free people of color, Vincent Ogé (1755–1791), an influential SaintDomingue planter, traveled to Paris and, with fellow gens de couleur planter Julien Raimond (1744–1801), argued for their rights in the French National Assembly.27 Upon his return to Saint-Domingue, a frustrated Ogé and an accomplice, Jean-Baptiste Chavannes (1748–1791), led a revolt that was quickly put down by the colonial government. Ogé and Chavannes were brutally executed. Although they were fighting for the rights of the gens de couleur rather than for all of the colony’s people, Bergeaud depicts Ogé and Chavannes as early martyrs to Haiti’s cause of independence. Though Stella lauds these men’s sacrifice, the sons’ attack on the Colonist’s plantation, where they find the divine incarnation of Liberty, can be understood to coincide with what is often considered the beginning of the Haitian Revolution: August 21, 1791, when enslaved people initiated a full-scale uprising. Though it is believed that the seed of revolution was planted during a religious service known as the Bois Caïman (Bwa Kayiman) ceremony, led by houngan Dutty Boukman (d. 1791) and mambo Cécile Fatiman in August 1791, this event does not feature in Stella.28 Instead, the divine figure of Stella encourages and guides the brothers in their revolt. The sons’ attempt to avenge their mother’s death begins with setting fire to the Colonist’s mansion. During this attack, the brothers come across a young woman whom they initially take to be the Colonist’s daughter. An unknown force prevents them from killing her, and Romulus and Remus find that they have rescued a fellow sufferer. The woman—Stella—had been in Paris during the revolutionary period of 1789, but fled to Saint-Domingue at the beginning of the Terror. Stella originally met the Colonist in Paris, but rejected his advances; when she landed in Saint-Domingue they met again, and emboldened there, he took her to his mansion as his prisoner. Stella pledges to aid the brothers in their mission to free Saint-Domingue and avenge their mother’s death in return for their help in liberating her from the Colonist.

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As the Haitian Revolution progressed, fighting between European powers and among the diverse population of late Saint-Domingue contributed to a complex story of multiple power struggles, which Bergeaud attempts to outline in his novel. In 1793, republican France declared war on Britain; on the island, Spain sided with Britain against France. At this time, many former slaves—including Toussaint Louverture (1743– 1803), Jean François (d. 1805), Jeannot (d. 1791), and Georges Biassou (1741–1801)—joined the Spanish forces in fighting against republican France, believing that the Crown, not the Republic, had their best interests at heart. In order to convince these fighters otherwise, in August 1793 French civil commissioners Léger-Félicité Sonthonax (1763–1813) and Étienne Polverel (1740–1795) decreed general emancipation in Saint-Domingue. Polverel and Sonthonax, who appear as heroic characters in Stella, had hoped that emancipating the enslaved population would bring them to side with France against invading British forces. On February 4, 1794, the republican National Assembly abolished slavery in France and its colonies, making the previous decree by Polverel and Sonthonax official, and securing republican France’s commitment to universal equality. Nevertheless, intermittent fighting continued between formerly enslaved, gens de couleur, French, British, and Spanish forces on the island. Sonthonax was recalled to France in 1796, a specific historical moment detailed and lamented in Stella. In 1797, Toussaint Louverture took charge of the French forces in Saint-Domingue. In order to control the population of former slaves and to stimulate the country’s agricultural output, he instituted the dreaded Rural Code in 1800. According to this legislation, the military forced former slaves to work on plantations—not as slaves but as cultivateurs (sharecroppers)—or face severe penalties. Bergeaud harshly criticizes this law in Stella, referring to it as “slavery in all but name.”29 In 1801, Louverture created a constitution for the colony in which he named himself governor-for-life. Bergeaud criticizes this move in his novel as a “direct attack on the sovereignty of France.” Displeased with the growing power of Louverture and the other “black generals” in 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) sent a French military expedition to Saint-Domingue led by his brother-in-law, General Charles Leclerc (1772–1802), to restore a white colonial government to the island. In the meantime, Napoleon had overturned the abolition of slavery and, as [ xviii ]

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Bergeaud laments, succeeded in reestablishing the institution in Guadeloupe. Leclerc was in charge of over forty thousand men; the expedition that bore his name was the largest French military mission sent such a distance from Europe.30 In Stella, Bergeaud describes the attack of the expeditionary forces against Saint-Domingue as that of “an unnatural mother who desires the destruction of her child.” In May 1802, French troops captured Louverture, and he and his family were sent to France. There the famous general died in a dungeon near the Swiss border, a secret prisoner of the state. Stella’s account of this period of the Revolution involves describing divisions between the brothers initiated by the machinations of the evil Colonist. Eventually Stella and a figure known as the “Spirit of the Nation” convince Romulus and Remus that they can succeed in their mission only once they are reunited. After a long struggle, the brothers and their united force of Indigènes are victorious over the French, and they proclaim the birth of an independent Republic of Haiti. Indeed, after Louverture’s ouster, the black and gens de couleur forces—led by Dessalines and Christophe on the one hand, and Rigaud and Pétion on the other—combined to form the Army of the Indigènes, or the Indigenous Army.31 Dessalines and Rigaud led this united force against the invading troops from France, and, at the Battle of Vertières on November 18, 1803, the Indigènes prevailed against the French. Dessalines proclaimed independence on January 1, 1804.

Under the Old Regime Although Stella’s story of the two founders of Haiti ends with the establishment of their new nation on January 1, 1804, its final chapter refers to the long history of colonization in the area and thereby places the novel and its subject within the wider context of Atlantic exploration, expropriation, and exploitation. The novel thus locates Haiti’s origins at a much earlier moment. As a consequence of Europeans’ arrival on Ayiti in 1492, many of the island’s Arawak-speaking Taíno inhabitants perished from disease, warfare, or the rigors of forced labor. Although the entire island, now called Hispaniola, was nominally claimed by Spain, a small colony of European pirates and adventurers (called boucaniers) who had settled in northern parts of Hispaniola and on the [ xix ]

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coastal island of Tortuga provided France with the grounds to make a claim to part of Hispaniola in 1665. The French called their new colony “Saint-Domingue,” a version of the name given the Spanish settlement at the eastern end of the island, “Santo Domingo” (now the Dominican Republic). At times, both designations have been used to refer to the island in its entirety. Thus by 1665, the French laid claim to five colonies in the Caribbean—Saint Christopher (now St. Kitts), Guadeloupe, Saint Lucia, Martinique, and Saint-Domingue—in addition to French settlements on the Atlantic coast of South America and the North American mainland.32 France’s participation in the transatlantic slave trade, which led to the conditions that incited the Haitian Revolution, was well underway by the end of the seventeenth century. In 1685, King Louis XIV signed le Code noir (the Black Code), which stipulated restrictions on the rights of the African population in the French colonies, and effectively legalized the institution of slavery in the French-speaking world.33 It was one of the first sets of laws concerning slavery established by a European colonial power, even though its stipulations were infrequently implemented.34 When France officially assumed control of the western half of Hispaniola in 1697 as a condition of the Treaty of Ryswick that ended the Nine Years’ War (1688–1697) between France, England, Spain, and the United Provinces, the population of French settlers on the island multiplied. With the influx of settlers and the organization of large-scale sugar plantations also came a demand for labor that was fulfilled by the importation of more and more enslaved Africans. Le Code noir outlined the social differences that would increase as the colony of SaintDomingue became France’s most profitable in the years to come. Thus, by the turn of the eighteenth century, the foundation for the country that would later become Haiti was already established. In eighteenth-century Saint-Domingue, wealthy French planters were known as grands blancs; they, along with a group of colonists consisting of artisans, laborers, and former indentured servants known as petits blancs, made up the colony’s population of European and Europeandescended colonists. Communities of escaped slaves or maroons, known as nèg mawon, and small pockets of indigenous people—both of whom often lived together in the mountainous areas—made up another part of colonial society.35 Under the Old Regime, the African and African[ xx ]

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descended communities in the French Antilles were categorized according to place of origin and cultural affinities; proof of these divisions and the way that they were used to designate individual members of communities can be found in records of advertisements for runaway slaves.36 This population was also divided according to who had—or had not— endured the Middle Passage. The most recently arrived Africans were called bossales, while those who were born in the colony were referred to as nègres créoles. Due to the incredibly harsh conditions of the slave system, the créole community stayed much smaller than the population who had been forced to traverse—and had survived—the Middle Passage from Africa.37 A small number of Africans were able to purchase or otherwise obtain their freedom; these free black people were known as affranchis (although this term was sometimes used to refer to all free people of color). The African and Euro-African partners and children of French colonists comprised the majority of the free population of gens de couleur in eighteenth-century Saint-Domingue, but colonists did not always recognize or free their offspring of African heritage. In some instances, however, gens de couleur children were sent to France to receive an education or to live with their extended French family.38 At the end of the century, gens de couleur became known as anciens libres, distinguishing this group from the rest of the population that became free in 1793. The population of late Saint-Domingue was thus complex and multifaceted, and its diversity continued to influence the world in which Bergeaud wrote. Divisions based on longstanding colonial-era ethnic categorizations factored in his exile; countering these separations became a central focus of Stella’s promotion of a sense of national unity. Bergeaud’s notorious antagonist, the Colonist, is a member of the grands blancs of late Saint-Domingue. These white colonists, most of whom were absentee planters living off of their riches in Europe, owned large plantations on which grew sugar, coffee, cacao, indigo, and cotton. These owners formed the most powerful group—and the group most dependent on maintaining the exploitative system of plantation slavery—as they controlled the distribution and reinvestment of the colony’s wealth. Their dependence on economic exploitation trumped their national allegiance to France, a trait that Bergeaud sternly criticizes in his novel. Colonial goods, meanwhile, had become important commodities. [ xxi ]

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This was especially true of sugar, the export of which reached its height in the late eighteenth century. Stella occasionally insists on separating its criticism of the Colonist from its criticism of France in general, but a significant portion of the French population benefited from the economic profits of slave labor by the time of the Haitian Revolution. This overseas demand drove the plantation industry in SaintDomingue, which absorbed the energies of most of the people on the island; while sugarcane was grown and processed into sugar by enslaved African workers, petits blancs often worked as plantation managers or slave drivers. In some instances, the plantations themselves (as well as slaves) were owned by wealthy gens de couleur or even affranchis. Much of the capital generated from the colonial trade was used by the planters to construct lavish mansions on the island as well as to build up the elaborate port cities of Cap-Français in Saint-Domingue, and Nantes and Bordeaux in France. By the end of the eighteenth century, one out of eight French people lived—in some manner or another—on the products of Saint-Domingue.39 Just before the Revolution began, the population of gens de couleur almost equaled that of the white population in Saint-Domingue. At that same time, the African population was nearly ten times as large.40 In the 1780s, this population imbalance, along with the existence of a strong maroon community—which had played a part in previous insurrections—and the colony’s deplorable working conditions, caused French colonists to fear that Saint-Domingue was a powder keg just waiting for a match.

Ste ll a i n C o n t e xt While Stella has the honor of being Haiti’s first novel, Haitians were active producers of literature—including long works of fiction—before 1859. Hérard Dumesle’s Voyage dans le nord d’Hayti, ou Révélations des lieux et des monuments historiques (1824), for example, recounts a story of travel that is, at least somewhat, fictionalized. La Mulâtre comme il y a beaucoup de blanches (1803), an epistolary novel written by an anonymous woman from Saint-Domingue, could also merit the title of Haiti’s first novel, although it was published before independence.41 Stella emerged from a rich literary context in which public discussions [ xxii ]

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of politics and history, and the relationship between story and history, were inextricable.42 The unusual mixture of history, politics, and literature that defines the writings of early Haitians also stems from the fact that many authors were both politicians and writers. Félix Boisrond-Tonnerre (1776– 1806), for example, who attended school in France and was Dessalines’s personal secretary, both drafted the Declaration and penned his own history of the Revolution, Mémoires pour server à l’histoire d’Haïti.43 Pompée Valentin de Vastey (1781–1820), apologist for and secretary to King Henri Christophe, wrote to audiences in France and Britain decrying the colonial system and demanding that Europeans recognize the humanity of African and African-descended people. Others, including Juste Chanlatte (1766–1828), Jules-Solime Milscent (1778–1842), and Jean-Baptiste Romane (1807–1858), circulated their writings in the era’s literary and news magazines, such as L’Abeille Haytienne, L’Eclaireur haïtien, and L’Union. These periodicals reported political events alongside poems and short stories that also often had political aims. Dumesle, whose 1824 travel narrative recounts a story of the Bwa Kayiman ceremony in French and Kreyòl, was also a politician and leader of the movement to oust Boyer in the 1840s.44 Though influenced by the same tradition of intertwining history and politics, Bergeaud belongs to a slightly later generation of authors known as the “School of 1836.” Other journalists, poets, and historians of the school include Émile and Ignace Nau (1812–1860; 1808–1845), Beaubrun, Céligny, and Coriolan Ardouin (1812–1836), and Beauvais Lespinasse (1811–1863).45 Debates over language and nationalism shaped the writings of the School of 1836, as it had those of their predecessors. Members of the group aimed to follow its motto—“Be ourselves”—and to cast off previous literary and linguistic models in a search for Haitian styles. For example, the movement’s founder, Émile Nau, advised his followers to “naturalize” their adopted language by lending it Caribbean cadences and a “warmth” it never had in France.46 Ardouin argued similarly for the importance of his French’s Caribbean difference.47 Stella’s inclusion of a creole story and proverb attest to a similar approach by Bergeaud. Much of the search for a Haitian identity in literature, history, as well as politics was marked by the challenges the country faced in its first half century. In 1814, Vastey predicted that the printing press would be a [ xxiii ]

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tool for exposing the crimes of colonists and for responding to the false accusations of prejudiced historians of the Haitian Revolution.48 Members of the School of 1836 continued to use the written word as a means to defend Haiti and its independence. To refute calumnies made against their country—usually claims that Haiti’s continuing problems were due to the circumstances of its founding—many early Haitian authors wrote histories. Bergeaud’s Stella follows Dumesle’s Voyage and Thomas Madiou’s (1814–1884) Histoire d’Haïti (1847) in this vein; moreover, Ardouin, the historian who published the novel, certainly contributed to its blurring of the lines between history and fiction. Stella’s distinctiveness comes from the fact that it is a fictionalized account of the Haitian Revolution that places Haiti’s history in an explicitly positive context. This perspective ran contrary to that of much literature on similar topics produced at the time. Not only is Stella one of the few positive representations of the Haitian Revolution written in the nineteenth century, it is, along with Pierre Faubert’s play, Ogé, ou le préjugé de couleur (1856), one of the first fictionalizations of the Haitian Revolution to be written by a Haitian. Other early fictional accounts of the Revolution—such as Jean-Baptiste Berthier’s Félix et Éléonore, ou les colons malheureux (1801), Réné Périn’s L’Incendie du Cap, ou le règne de Toussaint-Louverture (1802), Leonora Sansay/Mary Hassal’s Secret History; or, the Horrors of St. Domingo (1808), Mlle de Palaiseau’s L’Histoire de Mesdemoiselles de Saint-Janvier, les deux seules blanches conservées à Saint-Domingue (1812), E. V. Laisné de Tours’s L’Insurrection du Cap ou la perfidie d’un noir (1822), Victor Hugo’s Bug-Jargal (1826), and Fanny Reybaud’s Sydonie (1846)—all present Haiti’s history from the viewpoint of Europeans. Bergeaud was, no doubt, familiar with some, if not all, of this literature. Indeed, the first section of Stella reads much like the sentimentalist antislavery literature that was part of a slowly reemerging French abolitionist movement beginning in the 1820s.49 Stella thus might have seemed somewhat familiar to French readers at the time of its publication in Paris, despite its pro-Haitian message; Bergeaud sought to capitalize on this familiarity in order to reach a population that did not, he admits, often concern itself with an “in-depth study of our annals.” The novel’s publication, during a time when other Haitians were writing and publishing in Paris, however, also encouraged a new French approach to remembering its former colony. Fighting back [ xxiv ]

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against a French tendency to denigrate Haiti was a project with admittedly limited impact. The end of slavery in its overseas colonies in 1848 in fact allowed France to return to the troubled subject of Haiti in a way that ignored the reasons for the country’s 1804 loss of its prized colony, contributing to a general amnesia surrounding the Saint-Domingue expedition’s goal to reestablish slavery. Typically, when the French read or wrote about Haiti, their nostalgia for the former colony of SaintDomingue mixed with anxieties about what Haiti meant for France’s international standing; this combination made Haiti into a literary subject consistent with nineteenth-century themes of melancholy and loss.50 The French often approached the topic with questions about what went wrong or what might have been. The second abolition of 1848, however, meant that metropolitan French and outre-mer readers alike were able to celebrate a newly authorized diversity permitted by the end of slavery. In the years following, Paris saw a wave of works about Haiti written by Haitians. These include Beaubrun Ardouin’s Études sur l’histoire d’Haïti (1853–1865); Céligny Ardouin’s posthumously published Essais sur l’histoire d’Haïti (1865); Pierre Faubert’s aforementioned Ogé, ou le préjugé de couleur (1856); and Joseph Saint-Rémy’s Vie de Toussaint Louverture (1850), Mémoires du Général Toussaint-L’Ouverture écrits par lui-même (1853), and Pétion et Haïti (1853–1857). In contrast to the literature written by their French counterparts—who often understood colonialism and slavery as separate institutions—the works of these authors sought to defend Haiti’s sovereignty by explaining that independence had been the only way to guarantee Haitians’ freedom from slavery. At a time when the abolition of 1848 overshadowed memories of slavery’s 1794 abolition and its 1802 reestablishment, this insistence on the necessity of independence often went unheard. Nevertheless, Stella takes a similar approach. This attempt to appeal to a French audience, along with Bergeaud’s French heritage and erudition, have contributed to modern-day criticism of Stella.51 Bergeaud fits the profile of an elite Haitian “francophile” of the mid-nineteenth century: someone who spoke French, practiced Catholicism, and followed French literary and artistic fashions. In his novel, Bergeaud is clear about his appreciation for France’s language, religion, and culture. More than one critic has noticed that, although he was presumably writing for a Haitian audience, Bergeaud consistently [ xxv ]

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employs European and classical imagery, such as figs, the Alps, and Apollo.52 The few instances of native plants or materials—ironwood or makoute, for example—that do appear in Stella are usually explained for the reader. Yet the very fact that he wrote Stella with an eye toward France helps us to place Bergeaud, as well as his novel and his history, in the context of his social class and political milieu. His literary choices hint at the contemporary life of a particular class of Haitians in the nineteenth century, and they highlight the importance attached to their presentation of national history. It is via his particular expression of “francophilia” that Bergeaud is able to suggest that the ideals of republican equality were truly realized in Haiti, not France, and thereby argue for Haiti’s right to be recognized among the world’s nations. Nevertheless, Bergeaud does combine Haitian and French literary traditions in his writing, perhaps in response to Émile Nau’s call for new literary forms. In 1837, Nau suggested that young Haitian writers should study all schools of literary thought but “belong to none.”53 Stella responds to this call through its own attempt to blend history and literature, but Bergeaud’s novel is also very clearly written in the style of the historical romance, that is to say, the form made famous by Sir Walter Scott, Victor Hugo, and James Fenimore Cooper. Like the historical texts written by these giants of the nineteenth-century Atlantic literary world, Stella takes the general outline of a historical event and recasts its details through the lives of invented, even abstracted characters, not unlike Edward Waverley, Jean Valjean, or Natty Bumppo. As in the genre popularized by Scott, much of the action in Stella, especially the military accounts, is taken from published historical sources. Indeed, much of the novel’s historical detail comes from Ardouin’s Études sur l’histoire d’Haïti, possibly inserted by the editor himself; but Bergeaud also draws on information from Pamphile de Lacroix’s La Révolution d’Haïti (1819), Antoine Métral’s Histoire de l’Expédition des Français à Saint-Domingue sous le consulat de Napoléon Bonaparte (1825), and Madiou’s Histoire d’Haïti. However, unlike historical work at the time, Stella unites the threads of different historians—particularly Madiou and Ardouin—by portraying the Revolution as both a successful slave uprising and a national independence movement.54 Furthermore, Bergeaud weaves aspects of allegory—both in terms of rhetorical device as well as generic form— together with abstraction and symbolism so that the novel is not explic[ xxvi ]

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itly controlled by any one device or formal approach. While Bergeaud builds upon previous models, ultimately Stella takes a form of its own. Bergeaud’s narrator explains that the presentation of a fictional, rather than a historical, account allows for an exploration of the hidden human motives behind the struggle for freedom: History is a river of truth that follows its majestic course through the ages. The Novel is a lake of lies, the expanse of which is concealed underwater; calm and pure on the surface, it sometimes hides the secret of the destiny of peoples and societies in its depths . . .

For Bergeaud, history’s sight is “limited to the horizon of natural things,” and thus cannot always know that which is beyond the horizon: “History leaves the field of mystery to the Novel. [. . .] The Novel tells the secret story.” It was Bergeaud’s design to develop interest in the history of Haitian independence through the popularity of the genre of the novel, and it therefore makes sense that he would choose as his model a literary form that overtly combines both fiction and history. For although Bergeaud insists that Stella is more of a novel than a history, the exact genre to which it belongs might be said to exist somewhere in between. In fact, its distinctiveness has led to confusion as to how to classify Stella, which has also led to difficulties in judging its literary value; these problems have contributed, in part, to the novel’s obscurity up to this point.55 In particular, Stella’s deviation from Scott’s genre involves Bergeaud’s connection to epic and oral storytelling traditions, evidenced through the author’s consistent use of “we,” and illustrated in, for example, the family scene in the ajoupa. If one of the aims of the School of 1836 was to distill familiar, oral renditions of history into a new written genre, Stella follows those indications well. In this way, his novel has more in common with Nau’s “contes historiques” or “contes créoles” and Dumesle’s travel writing than with Scott’s romances.56 Bergeaud’s goal of reaching both French and Haitian readers mirrors his novel’s combination of Haitian and European literary traditions.

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Reading Ste ll a At the time of Stella’s publication, the population of Haiti was categorized and hierarchized according to color and class based on divisions inherited from the colonial era. After independence, some categorizations changed shape and the country further split along the lines of region, religion, and language. Haiti’s population differed most considerably from that of Saint-Domingue in that much of the white population had either fled the island or perished during the final days of the Revolution, a moment described in Stella with regret. In the early years of the country, the peasant or cultivateur class also expanded, which resulted in the development of a social distinction based on whether one lived in one of the wealthy cities (gens de la ville) or the rural outskirts (moun an deyò).57 Although skin color continued to be a defining characteristic in nineteenth-century Haiti, some political distinctions that seemed to be based on color—such as the constant conflicts between what have been called the “mulatto” or Boyerist and the “noiriste” or black populist factions—were often the result of intersecting differences in heritage, class, region, religion, and language; assumptions that a given person acted solely on the basis of skin color are frequently inaccurate.58 While the racialist distinctions that shaped the political world in which Bergeaud wrote had their bases in the colonial era, when they were specifically tied to issues of wealth, culture, language, and degrees of freedom, the social divisions of the early national period were not simply based on race or color prejudice. Stella both illustrates and responds to early Haiti’s cultural divides, and locates the origins of the history of difference and disunion in the machinations of the greedy Colonist. Bergeaud’s insistence on the connection between his main characters, the fraternal founders of Haiti, has much to do with his decision to name them after the mythical twin founders of Rome. As does the figure of the Colonist, the brothers represent, however, multiple historical characters. They embody the actions and spirit of most of the revolutionary leaders: Romulus represents, at times, Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and Henri Christophe, while Remus is André Rigaud, Alexandre Pétion, and Charles Boyer. The brothers are the allegorical representations of the division—and eventual reunion—of the two dominant classes of Haitians at the time: the formerly enslaved black population [ xxviii ]

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and the Euro-African population. Bergeaud avoids discussing the division between those freed before 1793 and those freed after by making the experience of slavery common to both brothers who also share the same connection to Marie l’Africaine, Mother Africa. The other characters in the novel—Stella, Marie the African, and the Spirit of the Nation—are allegorical representations that portray archetypes rather than specific people from Haiti’s past. Stella is structured by its dedication to history, and its allegorical elements emphasize that Haiti’s transformation is significant not just to Haitians but to all humanity.

This Transl ation Stella appeared in print over 150 years ago, but until recently it has not been available to English-speaking audiences. It appeared twice in the nineteenth century, originally in 1859, and a second time in 1887, apparently at the request of Bergeaud’s widow. Physical copies of either edition, which were printed in the small decimo-octavo (18mo) and duodecimo (12mo) formats, are exceedingly rare. Our edition is based on a microfilmed copy of the 1859 version held by the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris that belongs to Duke University. The University of Florida has digitized its copy of the 1887 edition, and made it available at the Digital Library of the Caribbean, http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00089373/00001. A modern French version was published in 2009 by Éditions Zoé in Geneva, Switzerland. We have taken every effort to preserve the feeling of the 1859 text, including retaining much of the text’s italicization and punctuation— especially when used for emphasis—as well as the two original sets of notes with which the book was published. Bergeaud, for example, uses italicized print to emphasize the word “property” in the first chapter: the people described are the property of another person, just like the fruit tree outside their abode is the property of the Colonist. Our translation keeps these kinds of words italicized for emphasis whenever possible, and we have also provided a glossary for certain terms, such as ajoupa, boucan, and indigènes. When we did make changes from the original, these usually involved the separation of longer sentences or the combination of shorter paragraphs. Only rarely did we reorder sentences or paragraphs in order to make the meaning clearer. A few times, [ xxix ]

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we corrected minor errors or inconsistencies in the original; these we have documented in our notes. So as to retain the original format of the authorial and editorial annotations, we have located our notes after the original endnotes. In practice, this means that there are three sets of notes running through the text: footnotes by Bergeaud (lowercase Roman numerals), endnotes by Ardouin (uppercase Roman numerals), and our own endnotes (Arabic numerals). Although potentially confusing, we believe that this arrangement is the best way to balance our desire to respect the integrity of the original while providing modern readers with necessary, and ideally unobtrusive, guidance. In his own prefatory note, Bergeaud reports that Stella was a long time in completion, and that the work had been often interrupted through the years. While meant as a conventional apology, his words also give clues to the condition of Stella’s composition and hint that it was—at least preliminarily—finished when he handed it to Ardouin in Paris. While it has been suggested that Ardouin’s editorial efforts were confined to the preface and editorial notes, our translation and collation work reveal the mark of Ardouin’s editorial hand elsewhere as well. This is particularly apparent in Stella’s citation of previously published historical material. In the original version of the novel, italicized print, in addition to being used for emphasis, also often indicates direct quotations from other sources; closer attention to these italicized passages reveals that Stella contains numerous quotations from Ardouin’s eleven-volume Études sur l’histoire d’Haïti. For example, in the thirty-third chapter, entitled “Rochambeau,” the words “the leader needed in Saint-Domingue and required for the public good” are italicized in the original. This is an actual quotation from the colonists who were recommending Rochambeau to Napoleon in 1802. It is cited in volume five of Ardouin’s work, on page 343. These insertions suggest that Ardouin altered the text—perhaps significantly—after Bergeaud’s return to Saint Thomas and before its publication. Ardouin’s influence certainly heightens the novel’s unusual dedication to history. For each of these quotations, we have removed the italics and footnoted the original source. In our translation, we sought to retain a vocabulary, language, and style that was as authentic as possible to the period of the novel’s first publication. We used, for example, the word “colonist” to translate the French term “colon.” Although the word “colonizer,” which is more closely [ xxx ]

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related to the verb “to colonize,” might have emphasized the political nature of Bergeaud’s message, “colonizer” was less common in English at the time. Based on a nineteenth-century translation of Vastey’s work that used “colonist” over “colonizer,” we decided to use this word as well.59 We translated this text with the historical, political, and literary conditions of its production in mind, and hope that this edition will contribute to a newfound appreciation for Bergeaud’s novel and a renewal of interest in early Haitian literature in general. Stella’s challenge to generic expectations, Bergeaud’s alleged “francophilia,” the novel’s place of publication, and a general tendency to undervalue Haitian literature— especially early texts written in French by members of a certain class— have all contributed to the text’s relative obscurity. In the nineteenth century, regrettably, the literary merit of Haitian authors such as Bergeaud—or earlier writers like Juste Chanlatte, Jules Solime Milscent, and Antoine Dupré—was often judged according to French literary standards and based on their works’ similarity to those of French authors. Frustratingly, any signs of resemblance were also identified as evidence of a lack of innovation.60 This accusation of mimicry was repeated by later generations of Haitian writers who sought a return to and appreciation for Haitians’ African heritage.61 Unfortunately, this attitude perpetuated powerful nineteenth-century dismissals of the first nation formed from a successful slave revolt, and it continues to influence studies of Haitian literature today. The goal of this edition is to offer a new population of readers the opportunity to fully engage with this unique text, its historical context, and its political aims—which are, perhaps, still in the process of realization. LSC and CM

N ote s 1 An announcement for Stella first appeared in the September 10, 1859, edition of the weekly Bibliographie de la France: Journal général de l’imprimerie et de la librairie. Dentu was known for publishing travel writing and histories, such as those by Jules Michelet and Beaubrun Ardouin, as well as the works of socialist politicians and intellectuals including Louis Blanc and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. 2 Léon-François Hoffmann, “En marge du premier roman haïtien: Stella, d’Emeric Bergeaud,” in Haïti: Lettres et l’être (Toronto: GREF, 1992): 147–165.

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3 While the main events of the novel center on the years 1802–1803, its timeline covers the period from 1788 to 1804; the final chapter provides an even deeper history for the nation, one that begins before 1492. 4 The term “mulatto” does not accurately describe this diverse population, but rather reinforces a racialized system of categorization carried over from the French colonial era. We have chosen instead to use the term gens de couleur, “free people of color,” or people of Euro-African ancestry. 5 The first five volumes of Beaubrun Ardouin’s Études sur l’histoire d’Haïti, 11 vols. (Paris: Dézobry et E. Magdeleine, 1853–1865), are subtitled “Followed by the Life of General J.-M. Borgella,” and include a substantial amount of information about the general, the biography of whom Ardouin claims was the genesis of his seminal work on Haitian history (Études I: 1). 6 For more on the separatist peasants’ region, see Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776–1848 (New York: Verso, 1988). For one of the many mentions of Bergeaud as Borgella’s secretary, see Ghislaine Rey, Anthologie du roman haïtien de 1859 à 1946 (Sherbrooke, Québec: Editions Naaman, 1982): 18. 7 For more information on laws against Vodou, see Kate Ramsey, The Spirits and the Law: Vodou and Power in Haiti (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). Ramsey notes that the 1835 Code differs from the 1826 Penal Code, which had outlawed only the selling of macandal rather than “spell-making” (and thereby religious practices increasingly grouped under the term “Vodou”) more generally, in that the 1835 Penal Code “criminalize[d] an entire field of ritual practices” (59–60). Ramsey also notes that the 1835 prohibitions were, compared to similar laws in the colonial Caribbean, relatively mild (59). 8 It was, however, the Americans who established French as the official language of Haiti during their 1915–1934 occupation. French was the sole official language of Haiti from the time of the American occupation until 1987. 9 The phrase “live independent or die” is written in the Declaration of Independence, drafted by Boisrond-Tonnere and announced by Dessalines on January 1, 1804. Significantly, the original motto of the French Republic was “liberté, égalité, fraternité, ou la mort.” 10 Philippe Girard, Haiti: The Tumultuous History—From Pearl of the Caribbean to Broken Nation (New York: Macmillan, 2010): 65–68; Laurent Dubois, Haiti: The Aftershocks of History (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2012): 4–7. In the words of Philippe Girard, “Northerners were made happy against their will. Southerners were free and poor” (Haiti: 67). 11 France sent envoys to negotiate with Pétion and Christophe. French agents suggested to Pétion that Haiti be put back under the control of France (Dubois, Aftershocks: 79). Former French colonists argued for some kind of return to French rule as late as 1825, the year of France’s recognition of Haitian independence. See, for example, the anonymous text De Saint-Domingue. Moyen facile d’augmenter l’indemnité due aux colons de Saint-Domingue expropriés (Paris: Imprimerie de Goetschy, 1825). [ xxxii ]

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12 Under Boyer, the Haitian government encouraged African American emigration; in the mid-1820s, the government subsidized the travel of six thousand African Americans to Haiti (Dubois, Aftershocks: 93–94). 13 The writings of the man charged with negotiating the indemnity were republished in 2006. See Gaspard Théodore Mollien, Haïti ou Saint-Domingue (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2006) and Mœurs d’Haïti (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2006). 14 After the 2010 earthquake, several French intellectuals called for France to reimburse Haiti. See, for example, “Un appel pour que la France rembourse à Haïti la dette de son indépendance,” Le Monde (August 16, 2010). 15 In fact, Haiti was originally ordered to pay 150 million francs in gold, although that figure was reduced to 60 million in 1838, when French recognition became official. Furthermore, as a condition of recognition in 1825, the import and export fees levied on French ships and goods in Haiti were ordered at half of all other nations’ fees. While it is difficult to estimate how much money this would equate to in the twenty-first century, the figures run into the billions of dollars. See Joseph Saint-Rémy, Mémoires du général Toussaint L’Ouverture (Paris: Pagnerre, 1853): 138–139; Jean-François Brière, Haïti et la France: le rêve brisé (Paris: Karthala, 2008); and François Blancpain, Un siècle de relations financières entre Haïti et la France (1825–1922) (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001). 16 Dumesle was related to Rivière-Hérard, who eventually succeeded Boyer as president of the Republic. Both Dumesle and Rivière-Hérard ended their lives in exile in Jamaica. See Dubois, Aftershocks: 122–133, as well as Matthew J. Smith, Liberty, Fraternity, Exile: Haiti and Jamaica after Emancipation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014). 17 From 1844 to 1848, the separate state that had been led by Goman earlier in the century was reestablished by the Piquets. See Michel Hector, “Les deux grandes rebellions paysannes de la première moitié du XIXe siècle haïtien,” in Rétablissement de l’esclavage dans les colonies françaises 1802: Ruptures et continuités de la politique coloniale française, ed. Yves Bénot and Marcel Dorigny (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 2003): 179–199, and David Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race, Colour, and National Independence in Haiti, revised ed. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996): passim. 18 Guerrier and Riché were both over eighty years old when they became president. Beaubrun Ardouin served on the powerful Council of Secretaries of State, which was established in 1843 after the presidential term was set at four years, during the Guerrier administration, while his brother Céligny Ardouin served on it under Riché. For more on the complicated “politique de doublure” in Haiti, see Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier. 19 See Justin Bouzon, Etudes historiques sur la présidence de Faustin Soulouque (Port-au-Prince: Bibilothèque haïtienne, 1894). 20 Slavery was officially abolished in the U.S. in 1865, in the Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico and Cuba in 1873 and 1886, and in the Empire of Brazil in 1888. [ xxxiii ]

Editors’ Introduction

21 See David Luis-Brown, “Slave Rebellion and the Conundrum of Cosmopolitanism: Plácido and La Escalera in a Neglected Cuban Antislavery Novel by Orihuela,” Atlantic Studies 9, no. 2 (2012): 209–230; Werner Sollors, Neither Black nor White yet Both (Cambridge, UK: Harvard University Press, 1999); Michele Reid-Vazquez, The Year of the Lash: Free People of Color in Cuba and the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001). 22 Hénock Trouillot, Beaubrun Ardouin, l’homme politique et l’historien (Port-auPrince: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia, Comisión de Historia, 1950): 29–31. 23 However, many of their members were executed before news of abolition reached Paris in the winter of 1793–1794. Jacques-Pierre Brissot laments in his letters from prison, written in late 1793, that “all our efforts” could not break free the “unfortunate” slaves (excerpt from Brissot’s Papiers inédits: Archives Nationales, 446 AP 15). 24 Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Condorcet published Réflexions sur l’esclavage des nègres with the Société Typographique in Neufchâtel under the pseudonym M. Schwarz in 1781. 25 In 1790, the colonist Jean-Baptiste Mosneron, heavily invested in the slave trade, warned against allowing these new revolutionary laws to extend beyond French borders in his Discours sur les colonies et la traite des noirs, prononcé le 26 février 1790 par M. Mosneron de l’Aunay, député du Commerce de Nantes près de l’Assemblée Nationale, à la Société des Amis de la Constitution (s.l.n.d.): 9–10. 26 See Laurent Dubois, “An Enslaved Enlightenment: Rethinking the Intellectual History of the French Atlantic,” Social History 31, no. 1 (February 2006): 1–14. 27 The proslavery Club Massiac, whose members included some of Saint-Domingue’s absentee planters, formed an influential political block that tried to halt any laws extending universal rights to people of African descent. Nonetheless, in 1791, the National Assembly officially stated that gens de couleur were entitled to the same rights as all French citizens. However, this was not an easy law to implement in a time of such upheaval and in a colony so far from Paris. 28 See Joan Dayan, Haiti, History, and the Gods (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998): 29, and Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New Word: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005): 102. There is some mystery surrounding the exact dates of and participants in this ceremony. Both Dayan and Dubois highlight the importance of the symbolic power of the Bois Caïman story. 29 Indications of Bergeaud’s political views, such as his support for Ogé and Chavannes and his dislike of Louverture’s policies have, over the years, contributed to the controversial reception of his novel. Ghislain Gouraige cited political reasons when he wrote, for example, that the novel “merited little interest” in his Historie de la littérature haïtienne de l’indépendance à nos jours (Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie Théodire, 1960): 29. 30 Brière, Haïti et la France: 6. [ xxxiv ]

Editors’ Introduction

31 The use of the term “indigenous” connected early Haitians to the native Taíno Arawak population of the island, as did the choice of the name “Ayiti.” In our translation, we have kept the French term “Indigène” for this reason. 32 France was rapidly expanding its colonial empire during the second half of the seventeenth century. By 1665, it had also established a colony on the Île Bourbon (La Réunion); others followed on Chandernagore and Pondichéry in 1673–1674, and modern-day Senegal in 1677. France’s colonial expansion increased dramatically in the following two centuries. 33 For more information on French legal code involving slavery, see Sue Peabody, There Are No Slaves in France: The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien Régime (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). 34 Many colonists admitted that the law was hard to implement, including Jean-Philippe Garran-Coulon in his Rapport sur les troubles de Saint-Domingue (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1798–1799), IV: 26, which was published during the Haitian Revolution. 35 The eighteenth-century colonist Médéric-Louis-Élie Moreau de Saint-Méry provides extensive details about the diversity of the population of late SaintDomingue and describes a complex system of categorization based on color and status. See Saint-Méry, Description topographique, physique, civile, politique et historique de la partie Française de l’isle Saint-Domingue (Philadelphia, 1797–1798). 36 See the database of marronage history at the University of Sherbrooke: http:// marronnage.info/en/index.html. 37 Dubois, Avengers: 39. The number of enslaved African workers brought to Saint-Domingue reached its peak in 1790, with the arrival of forty-eight thousand people in one year. 38 As we have mentioned, many leading Haitian politicians, including the sons of Toussaint Louverture, received education in France. 39 Léon-François Hoffmann, Littérature d’Haïti (Vanves: EDICEF, 1995): 12. The majority of French ships destined for the Atlantic slave trade left France from the port city of Nantes, although for a few years before the Revolution this ignominious honor went to Bordeaux. See Éric Saugera, Bordeaux, Port Négrier: XVIIe–XIXe siècles (Paris: Karthala, 1995). 40 Dubois, Avengers: 30. 41 See Marlene Daut, Tropics of Haiti: A Literary History of Race and Revolution in the Atlantic World, 1789–1865 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2015). These examples all counter the idea that the genre of the novel did not develop in Haiti until the late nineteenth century. 42 For more on early Haitian literature, see Hénock Trouillot, Les Origines sociales de la littérature haïtienne (Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie N. A. Théodore, 1962): 15. For an excellent reading of the Haitian constitutions as literature, see Maximilien Laroche, “Histoire d’Haïti et Histoire du roman haïtien. La Littérature et l’Histoire comme contrats sociaux,” Cahiers des Anneaux de la Mémoire 7 (2004): 233–251. See also Deborah Jenson, Beyond the Slave Narrative (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011). [ xxxv ]

Editors’ Introduction

43 Boisrond-Tonnerre’s memoir, which has been criticized for its too partisan (pro-Dessalines) account, was published by Joseph Saint-Rémy in 1851. 44 The first account of the ceremony was written by a Frenchman, Antoine Dalmas, in his Histoire de la Révolution de Saint-Domingue (Paris: chez Mame frères, 1814). The story has become legendary, even as its specifics are hard to verify. It is not known how many details Dumesle acquired from oral histories gathered among residents of northern Haiti and how much he borrowed from Dalmas’s account. 45 Louis-Phillipe Dalembert and Lyonet Trouillot, Haïti, une traverse littéraire (Paris: Éditions Phillipe Rey/Culturesfrance, 2010): 14. 46 Émile Nau, “Littérature,” L’Union: Recueil commercial et littéraire 14 (November 16, 1837): 4. 47 See Ardouin, Études I: 9. 48 Pompée-Valentin Baron de Vastey, Le système colonial dévoilé (Cap-Henry: Chez P. Roux, 1814): 94. 49 Léon-François Hoffmann mentions this connection in his Essays on Haitian Literature (Washington, DC: Three Continents Press, 1984): 111. Many of these abolitionist stories appear in the 1820s, after Britain’s 1807 abolition of the slave trade, the tenuous Congress of Vienna’s 1815 condemnation of the slave trade, and the 1821 formation of the pro-abolition group Société de la Morale chrétienne. The novel’s one-word title, the name of its main character, equally reflects a literary trend of its time, but in Bergeaud’s novel, Stella names more than just one individual: she is the earthly incarnation of divinely inspired Liberty, the “Star of Nations.” 50 In The French Atlantic Triangle (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), Christopher Miller identifies France’s approach as a “calculated plan for forgetting” Haiti (246). 51 In Haiti, History, and the Gods, Dayan points to Ardouin as exemplary of an elite Haitian population who wished to “progress away from the dark continent” (16). This criticism of “francophilia” became a common way of reading French influence on Haitian literature, especially after Jean Price-Mars’s theory of “bovarysme,” which was developed during the American occupation of the early twentieth century. While Price-Mars meant to encourage his compatriots to embrace African culture, the concept of bovarysme has often been used to denigrate Haitian artists as derivative or lacking in innovation. 52 Hoffmann, Essays: 121. In current-day Haiti, the Ficus carica is called a “French fig” to distinguish it from a Haitian fig, which is a type of banana. 53 Émile Nau, “Littérature”: 4. 54 According to Hoffmann, Jules Michelet, the great French historian of the day, knew and corresponded with both Madiou and Ardouin (Haïti: lettres et l’être, 1992): 234. In the early twentieth century, some Haitian readers tired of reading Bergeaud’s style of “great men” history and, as with the examples of Frédéric Marcelin, Jacques Roumain, and Jacques-Stéphan Alexis, began to focus their literature on the lives of middle-class, peasant, and working-class Haitians. See Marcelin, Autour de deux romans (Paris: Kugelman, 1903): 27. [ xxxvi ]

Editors’ Introduction

55 Pradel Pompilus explains the confusion surrounding the text’s generic uniqueness when he writes: “We are forced to count Stella as a novel because of the author’s considerable use of fiction, but in the end, it is really just a story of our battles for independence livened up by ingenious inventions of imagination” (Manuel illustré d’histoire de la littérature haïtienne, Port-au-Prince: Deschamps, 1961): 201. Our translation. 56 See Duraciné Vaval, Histoire de la littérature haïtienne: ou, “L’âme noire” (Port-auPrince: Imprimerie Aug A. Héraux, 1933): 137. Nau’s periodical L’Union was filled with these types of history-stories. 57 See Jean Casimir, “Prologue: From Saint-Domingue to Haiti: To Live Again or to Live at Last!” in The World of the Haitian Revolution, ed. David Patrick Geggus and Norman Fiering (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2009): xvii. 58 Pompée-Valentin, baron de Vastey, for example, insisted on solidarity between Haitians of different hues. He remarked on the fact that he was of an extremely fair complexion and politically sided with Henri Christophe, a man of dark complexion in his Le Système colonial dévoilé (Cap-Henry: Chez P. Roux, 1814). 59 Vastey, An Essay on the Causes of Revolution and Civil Wars of Hayti, Being a Sequel to the Political Remarks Upon Certain French Publications and Journals Concerning Hayti By the Baron de Vastey, trans. W.H. M.B. (Exeter: Printed at the Western Luminary Office, 1823). 60 On this subject, see Marlene L. Daut, “The ‘Alpha and Omega’ of Haitian Literature: Baron de Vastey and the U.S. Audience of Haitian Political Writing,” Comparative Literature 64, no. 1 (Winter 2012): 49-72. Christiane Ndiaye has long lamented what she terms the “impasse of literary criticism in the nineteenth century.” See Christiane Ndiaye, “Quelques impasses du discours de la critique littéraire du XIXe siècle,” in Relire l’histoire littéraire et le littéraire haïtiens (Port-au-Prince: Les Presses Nationales d’Haïti, 2007): 261–275. 61 Jean Price-Mars, in reaction to the American occupation of Haiti, sought to encourage a return to African heritage and a move away from French culture. His work presages that of other negritude authors like Aimé Césaire, Léopold Senghor, and Antoine Dalmas. For more information on the influence of bovarysme on Haitian literature, see J. Michael Dash, “True Dechoukaj: Uprooting Bovarysme in Post-Duvalier Haiti,” in Politics and Power in Haiti, ed. Kate Quinn and Paul Sutton (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013): 27–42.

Re commended Reading Dash, J. Michael. Literature and Ideology in Haiti 1915–1961 (London: Macmillan, 1981). Daut, Marlene. Tropics of Haiti: A Literary History of Race and Revolution in the Atlantic World, 1789–1865 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2015). Dayan, Joan. Haiti, History, and the Gods (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).

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Dubois, Laurent. Avengers of the New Word: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). ———. Haiti: The Aftershocks of History (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2012). Fisher, Sybille. Modernity Disavowed: Haiti and the Cultures of Slavery in the Age of Revolution (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004). Garraway, Doris. The Libertine Colony: Creolization in the Early French Caribbean (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005). Geggus, David Patrick, and Norman Fiering, eds. The World of the Haitian Revolution (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2009). Ghachem, Malick Walid. The Old Regime and the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Hoffmann, Léon-François. “The First Haitian Novel: Émeric Bergeaud’s ‘Stella,’” in Essays on Haitian Literature (Washington, DC: Three Continents Press, 1984): 111–122. Jenson, Deborah. Beyond the Slave Narrative: Politics, Sex, and Manuscripts in the Haitian Revolution (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011). Nicholls, David. From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race, Colour, and National Independence in Haiti, revised ed. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996). Popkin, Jeremy. You Are All Free: The Haitian Revolution and the Abolition of Slavery (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Prasad, Pratima. Colonialism, Race, and the French Romantic Imagination (New York: Routledge, 2009). Ramsey, Kate. The Spirits and the Law: Vodou and Power in Haiti (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). Sepinwall, Alyssa, ed. Haitian History: New Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2012). Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995).

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ST E L L A Émeric Bergeaud

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Author’s Note

Several years of work, often interrupted, have brought me to the conclusion of a piece that owes most of its creation to imagination. In it, I have tried to emphasize some of the most beautiful features of our national history. By wrapping these events in the vestments of fiction, my intention was to add nothing: that which is beautiful needs no embellishment. I simply wanted to capture, through the attraction of the novel, the minds of those who do not subject themselves to in-depth study of our annals. A novel, without possessing the strict seriousness of history, can be a useful book: this is what I thought in embarking on this enterprise that long occupied my hours of leisure. May it answer the goodness of my designs! Yet to produce some good, this book was to be a novel only in form. The truth had to be found in it. This is why I have taken pains not to disfigure history. The Revolution in Saint-Domingue, a laborious birthing of a new society, gave rise to four men who personify its excesses and its glories: Rigaud, Toussaint, Dessalines, Pétion. I have borrowed from the lives of these men details necessary to complete the story of the two brothers who, properly speaking, have no individuality. Romulus, Remus, and the Colonist are collective beings. The African is an ideal, and Stella an abstraction. That being said, I have but to confess my pious devotion, which inspired in me the idea to write this book, with which I pay homage to my country.

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To the Reader

Émeric Bergeaud dedicated the sad hours of a long exile to the writing of this book. It was in working for his fellow countrymen that he hoped to ease the severities of his position and the ennui of being so far from his native land, from the nation that his venerated father helped to found for an entire race of men oppressed for centuries! In 1857, feeling the approach of a disease that put his life in danger, he came to Paris to seek the aid of science. It was, alas, unhelpful. In the certain hope that he would be healed, Bergeaud brought along his manuscript to be printed, but when his condition did not improve, he gave the manuscript to me. Once he returned to the country where he resided, Bergeaud welcomed his final hour with the calm of an irreproachable spirit, with the resignation of a Christian who submits to the will of the Almighty, yet he hoped that the goodness of God would provide happier times for Haiti. I dare say that, after he expressed these premonitions to me, a new order of things came into being, thanks to the pious devotion of a courageous general who recently satisfied the wishes of the nation. Today I fulfill the promise that I made to my dear departed friend to publish his book when I judged the moment right. I dare hope that our country will welcome with sympathy this work whose patriotism reveals itself on every page, and that it will know how to do justice to the feelings of a virtuous citizen who, lost on foreign soil, deserved his country’s esteem. Haiti will, without a doubt, see in this literary composition that exile nevertheless held charms for this elite soul, because there a constant desire for the happiness and prosperity of the nation was planted and grew. [ 3 ]

To the Reader

This happiness and prosperity can be achieved but through the sincere unity of all its children. May the respectable widow and the family of my friend find in the reception of this patriotic work gentle consolation for the unhappiness that they have experienced! B. Ardouin Paris, the 10th of May 1859

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Stella

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Saint- Domingue Know ye the land of the cedar and vine, Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine; Where the light wings of Zephyr, oppress’d with perfume, Wax faint o’er the gardens of Gul in her bloom; Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit, And the voice of the nightingale never is mute: Where the tints of the earth, and the hues of the sky, In colour though varied, in beauty may vie, And the purple of ocean is deepest in dye . . . Lord Byron, The Bride of Abydos

In a favored land, toward the end of the last century, there lived, or better grew, rampantly and humbly in the bosom of a seductive and bounteous nature, a young family that was violently sequestered from humanity. The family lived upon a plain, in a poor hut protected by an orange tree. This tree paternally extended its vigorous branches, as if it had taken pity on the flimsy cottage, leaning over to protect it from the wind. Not far off, on a hill, rose the high white walls of a superb mansion. Of vast proportions, imposing appearance, and solid construction, the building on the hill had, from the outside, something about it of a feudal castle from the Middle Ages; its tile-covered roof cut a red and sinister slice across the blue sky. The startling contrast between these two dwellings left no room for mistaking the status of the people living within. Here was opulence amidst misery, pride in the face of humiliation, and power that crushed weakness at will. [ 7 ]

stella

The master of this sumptuous house—which was done up in the rustic Sardinian style—had at his disposal the fortune of a king, judging at least by the quantity of gold that he gambled away, wasting it on his ignoble and depraved desires. All the costly pleasures of life were available to him, and there was no taste he could not satisfy—even the desire to hear humanity moan and scream. The inhabitants of the ajoupa—veritable pariahs of fate—had nothing to call their own. Would you believe it, the poor souls! They were almost reduced to rags so as to feed the plants that they cultivated with their own hands. They hardly dared to take from the tree the fruit that ripened by their door; this is because their garden and their fruit belonged to another, of whom they themselves were the spurned and trembling property. For the moment we will leave off painting the sufferings of this young family in chains, who lived amidst all this bounty without the possibility of enjoying any of it, having nothing but tears of misery and shame to offer the Divine protector of this happy clime! Slavery kept these patient creatures bent under its iron hand, condemned to demand from the soil those treasures for which they paid with sweat and blood. Not content merely to enslave their bodies with work and torture, slavery, that insatiable monster, wanted also to kill their souls through degradation and poverty. For to make a human a slave it was necessary to strip away all celestial faculties, to reduce the human to the moral insensitivity of a brute animal. As in the Greek tale in which the sorceress turns men into swine so as to keep them more surely under her fatal sway, this indispensable metamorphosis was accomplished, in reality, through the help of chains, shackles, and the murderous whip.1 And, in the course of this unworldly transformation, the slave—for a simple fault—was as soon sawed into two or thrust into the boiling sugar cauldron as placed on the burning grills of the ovens or even buried alive!!! But such infamies could not remain unpunished. These crimes brought bolts of lightning down upon the heads of their authors. One day Justice, descending from on high, came to judge solemnly between the oppressors and the oppressed, the executioners and the victims. And vengeance was terrible! . . . 

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stella

• But what a pleasant outing to Saint-Domingue, the Queen of the Antilles! What beauty, what marvels are united in this place by the glorious Hand of the Creator! Friends of nature, philosophers, poets: come delight, instruct, and inspire yourselves in the midst of such magnificence; come fill yourselves with new emotions, warm your spirit with life-giving sunbeams, quench the thirst of your soul at the springs of poetry and love. The high mountains ennoble the appearance of this landscape, surrounding and protecting the country like an army of Titans on guard. At their feet stretch immense plains; their shadows fall over an eternal ocean of green. From their fertile flanks escape streams that leap, froth, and rumble at the bottom of cascades, as if from subterranean tempests. Lakes sleep upon some of their high peaks, mysterious waters that seem to form gigantic goblets. Poetic savannahs, luscious valleys, picturesque hills, virgin forests, leafy bamboos, and capriciously winding rivers that come from deep waters fresh and pure: all add to the savage grandeur of Saint-Domingue. Come, contemplate the sky and the sea that are nowhere else as beautiful, and nowhere else speak so much of God. What a delectable sojourn! . . .  Here the vegetation, astonishing in its vigor and precocity, eternally luxurious, is one thousand times more prodigious after a hurricane— that grand and terrible phenomenon of the tropics—has broken the trees, uprooted the rocks, and turned nature entirely on its head. Here, Autumn hangs her garlands on the ruins, perfumes the woods, sews flowers everywhere, and doubles the magnificence of the cane fields by lending them white plumes that ripple in the wind. Here, Winter, the eldest sister of the seasons—who, in another hemisphere, shivers, weak and sad under her mantle of snow—is the youngest, the gayest, the most opulent of the daughters of the year: nothing equals the abundance of treasures that she draws forth. The swallow never left this happy country; the musicianI invariably continues giving his concerts and the wood pigeon continues his amorous cooing. See the lemon tree so green, so fresh, so fragrant that it seems to have been born of the voluptuous smile of nature. Remark upon the orange groves that man never planted, and that, achieving

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stella

everything that poets have dreamed of graciousness and enchantment, perpetually display the luxury of their flowers and their golden fruit. Admire these forests of palms that rise until they are lost from view; before them, the voyager stops, seized by a sort of religious respect. These majestic trees with their trunks symmetrically aligned, sleek and straight, and with their domed foliage topped by a thin spire, resemble the innumerable columns of a temple with a thousand copulas, erected by some pious Jinn of the desert. Will we invite you to other spectacles? . . . Come to the shore in the evening, when the resplendent moon—that divine queen—takes hold of the heavens and shakes her diamonds into the sea; better still, climb one of our peaks, risen at the dawn of days. There you will feel your imagination exalt, and your spirit well over; there you can but kneel and pray in quiet ecstasy.i These landscapes need no painter. Let us leave the virgin field to He whose skill we have no intention of challenging, but also let us hasten to say that it is in this ravishing country that we find sites more picturesque than those of Switzerland, romantic landscapes to make Italy envious, and curiosities far superior to the charms of Spain. And—a remarkable thing—not one dangerous reptile, not one ferocious beast, not one enemy, even, exists to challenge man for the abundant fruits of his easy labor. neque illum; Flava Ceres alto nequicquam spectat Olympo . . . ii2

Such is this marvelous island whose slave name was Saint-Domingue.

i Miss Wright, after traveling the countryside of Haiti, finally arrived at an elevation from which she could see an expansive vista. The sun was rising and the rugged, dappled summit of Mount La Selle was silhouetted against a splendid blue sky. The lushness of the landscape’s exuberant vegetation sparkled in the first beams of the morning sun. The panorama was so striking that the tender traveler spontaneously descended from her horse and lost herself in a long, rapturous moment of admiration.II ii “. . . nor is it without reward that golden Ceres looks on him from Olympian heights” (Virgil, Georgics I: 95–96).

[ 10 ]

Marie the African

The young family, captive in Saint-Domingue, was made up of a mother and her two sons, still adolescents. By some peculiarity or picturesque trick of nature, the complexion of the younger son was the hue of faded mahogany, while that of the elder was closer to the shade of darkest ebony. Yet this difference in color did not rule out a certain family resemblance that made them, at first sight, recognizable as brothers. Marie—the young mother—was black like her older son. She had reached that age where beauty becomes genuine without losing its charms. Her visage was melancholy and soft, with eyes reminiscent of the gazelle of her native land and a mouth set with shining pearls; her delicate and fine skin wore the polish of marble, thanks to the continual effects of her work in the fields. Such were the distinctive traits of this African face. The exposed shoulders of the young woman had the purity of classical models, and her flowing clothes left to guesswork the form that was paired with her graceful physiognomy. When Marie landed in the colony, perhaps twenty years before the era in which our tale begins, the Colonist, her master, deigned to notice her. She was soon compelled to cede to his sultan’s whim, and thus was born a second son to share the tenderness of this enslaved mother. The honor of having been the mistress of the Colonist brought with it no change in the fate of the young mother. She stayed constantly attached to the hoe, having periods of rest only when sickness occasionally came to seize, break, or somehow rip the tool from her hands. Her daily tasks were oppressive, and they left her barely enough strength at night to return to her shelter. Nonetheless, upon returning from the fields, she was still seen to be at work, making a modest meal for her sons, going to the river to fill their calebasses and hers, repairing their poor clothes. [ 11 ]

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In short, she took charge of all the chores that could have added to her sons’ fatigue, as if she herself never tired, as if she were made of iron. Oh, a mother! What fertile spring of devotion and love, what inexhaustible trove of heroic and sublime virtues! A mother is more than a woman, more than an angel. She is Providence itself, descended into the foyer of Man to receive him as he enters life, to warm him with her breath, to nourish him with her milk, to support this weak pilgrim’s first steps along the path of the world, to guide his childhood, to counsel him in youth, to love him, to idolize him at every age, and sometimes, to die for him as a second Redeemer. The African woman and her sons worked together during the day, and night found them dutifully grouped around the boucan in the smoky hut where they all three lived. These short hours of respite, usually dedicated to free and frank conversation, were the only hours that really counted in the lives of these hapless souls who otherwise were condemned to live silently, trembling under the eye of the pitiless Colonist. A hidden observer—someone who might attend the daily supper of the young family at this moment when, released from their fetters, they were instantly delivered unto themselves like the beast of burden when unhitched from the plow or mill—would have been struck by the healthy glow of the African mother, seated between her two sons and presiding over this slaves’ meal. He would have seen the hideous mask of servility fall and the affecting creature of God reappear; he would have seen the woman as she had been made, formed by the paternal goodness of a God who did not create masters and slaves, but men. Their dining room, we dare say, was nothing more than functional. The most necessary piece of furniture was missing: there was no seat for happiness. The room was only large enough to contain these three persons and their fire. What more was needed for vile slaves? Seated on the naked earth, grouped around the flame of the boucan, these guests of misfortune, once sated, began those innocent conversations with which they were used to distracting themselves from their troubles before seeking forgetfulness in sleep. Perhaps misery is the father to fable; it is nourished on illusions and takes pleasure in losing itself in the chase of quiet phantoms, all in order to flee sad reality. Thus stories became the consolation of the ajoupa. The imagination of the slave flies on fairy wings, as

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light as those of dreams, in pursuit of blissfulness that he knows not and possessions that he will never have! One night, the conversation lasted longer than usual. It was the mother who spoke. This time she told a touching and true story that we have collected for the benefit of the reader: “I was born very far from here,” she said to her sons, “in the bosom of joy and abundance. My father was the chief of a powerful tribe; my mother the daughter of a king. They both idolized me; I was their only child. My father, already an old man, soon began to think of my marriage prospects. He fixed his sights on a man who was worthy of both his trust and my love. “Our union,” she continued, “took place under the happiest of auspices. Still at an age not far from childhood, I left the maternal roof laden with the gifts of my much-beloved parents. The spouse whom my father chose for me was an officer in his service; so handsome, young, and brave was he. Alas! If only he had lived longer! . . .” A tear slid down the cheek of Marie the African; she wiped it away with the back of her hand, and continued: “Around the time of my marriage, the chief of a neighboring tribe declared war against my father. In those first moments we made many preparations and put ourselves on the defensive. But vigilance soon falls asleep in false security. After some time, the enemy presented himself unexpectedly at our door. Our resistance was weak; he seized our city by surprise and became the master of our days. “My father was killed in the combat; my husband died valiantly at his side. I was, as was my mother, taken prisoner by our vanquishers; they sold us to traders of men, who sent us off on a ship to Saint-Domingue. The ship, or rather the floating prison where we were incarcerated and bound with chains, had something hideous about it that I will always remember. The space was not even as tall as I; the air entered in such small quantities that we suffocated; the days were lugubrious; an unbearable odor escaped from the sides of that infected cage. “My mother was not strong enough to fight against such suffering; she succumbed two days after our embarkation. I survived by a miracle. My isolation and constant misfortune left my existence heavier than my chains. I resolved to free myself; but one cannot trick fate . . . My love

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of life came back to me in the first pains of childbirth—because, I neglected to say, I was pregnant and on the brink of becoming a mother. “Your arrival in this world,” she continued, addressing her first son, “brought consolation to my heart; but it was difficult to keep you alive. During long hours, you let out muffled complaints without moving or crying. We thought that you were dying: you barely breathed. A few drops of water given out of pity were all that you drank during two days of agony. How did you leave that state without succor and despite the tainted air of our dungeon? This, perhaps, I will never be able to explain. “Like a seed fallen from a tree, you took root thanks to a hidden Hand, unknown to men, that dug you a furrow in life. In spite of everything, you grew and my maternal joys took the place of bitter sorrows. Yet I regretted having given you life only to see you associated with my troubles. Alone on this earth, what would become of you after I was gone? This thought, born from the horror of my current situation, numbly guided me to despair when I was called to become a mother for the second time. There came to me then a comforting vision of that which may come to pass. While waiting for it, remember well these words: the solitary plant is easily torn or bent in the wind. “Therefore,” Marie pressed on, “to preserve you from grievous loneliness, the same Hand that saved you from destruction caused a companion, a friend, a brother to be born. Thanks be to God! . . . The hidden Hand, in its all-seeing goodness, wanted the product of your mother’s blood—this brother, your comrade in misery—to have no interests opposed to your own, so that he would love and strengthen you, so that you could defy the jealous fate that disinherited you at birth and seemed to turn you away from the world.” The two brothers were hearing this intimate story for the first time. The mother had kept it to herself until the conditions were right, in the same way that the intelligent farmer does not confide a seed to the ground except during a favorable season. Without knowing the precise meaning of the words that we have repeated here, the sons of Marie the African were moved to the furthest depths of their simple and good souls. Abruptly, the attitude of the Colonist toward his slaves became that of an irritated enemy. Never before had he appeared so moved by such violent passions. His cheeks were sunken and pale and his face contracted [ 14 ]

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horribly. One could read the look of death in his eyes. It was probable that the Colonist knew of the nocturnal conversation in the ajoupa, either because he had heard it himself, or because it had been treacherously told to him by someone who had been listening at the door. Interpreting the slave’s story according to his mean-spirited nature, the Colonist prepared himself to wreak a horrible vengeance. It is easy to imagine how a supposition of this sort would alarm the members of the young slave family. Initially, they had the idea to flee and become marrons; but then, thinking better of it, they decided to stay and risk what would come. We must note this act of forceful resolution: the courage to die would later give birth to the will to be free. But Marie and her sons were wrong: the anger of the Colonist was caused by reasons far less trivial. A Revolution in the name of Liberty and Equality had just erupted in France . . . It was 1789 . . .3 Here is how the murderous pique of the master made itself known: The slaves were at work. Rain threatened. One of the young sons had gone to rest under a tree at some distance from the field in which they worked. Doubtless he was suffering. The Colonist appeared and learned of the transgression. He could have listened before condemning and punishing, but he did not even take the time to inquire, so pressed was he to satisfy his ardent thirst for murder. When the Colonist called to the overseer in a voice sharp and loud, Marie quivered with terror: her mother’s heart had guessed everything. In a movement as fast as thought, she threw herself at the Colonist’s feet, with a gesture so eloquent that, in days gone by, it would have defeated the Lion of Florence.4 She cried out, “Have mercy! My master, have mercy on him; it is I instead who you must strike!” If there are exceptional beings endowed by heaven with superior morals, there are, sadly, others to whom nature has refused its best instincts, whom she has made inferior to the ferocious beast. The Colonist was one of those monsters: no one, therefore, expected him to fall like the Lion. He hesitated a minute before choosing his victim. Then, resolved, he took the mother at her word and signaled to the overseer. In an instant, the terrible whip flew back; a scene of horror, the details of which make one shiver, began. To the increasing noise of the strikes were added sharp, heart-rending cries that weakened, little by little, until finally ending in a death rattle. The whip struck, struck for two hours. The victim [ 15 ]

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jumped, twisted, and gnashed her teeth. Her mouth foamed, her nostrils flared, her eyes started out of their sockets. Even when there was no life left, the human matter still quivered, and the whip continued to strike; it did not stop until there was nothing left but an inert corpse. The crime was complete. Listen how this innocent blood cries out as it ascends toward heaven! . . .  After the Colonist left, the two brothers lifted the inanimate body of the young woman onto their shoulders and took her to their shared shelter, lowering her onto their pallet and letting the tears that they had been forced to control in the presence of her executioners flow freely. These warm tears of the heart flooded onto the face of the departed and seemed, for an instant, to call her back from nothingness; in fact, a sudden flash of life shone in her extinguished eyes; her clamped teeth opened, and from her despairing soul escaped a breath of tenderness that she sighed into the bosoms of her orphans. The dying glance of the African woman, as distinct as speech, pointed through the open door of the tiny hut and toward the mountain where her two sons would soon withdraw to avenge her death.

[ 16 ]

Romulus and Remus

History is a river of truth that follows its majestic course through the ages. The Novel is a lake of lies, the expanse of which is concealed underwater; calm and pure on the surface, it sometimes hides the secret of the destiny of peoples and societies in its depths, much like Lake Asphaltites.5 History, a sonorous echo, faithfully reproduces the sound and fury of human hurricanes. To brave these storms and guide our savage heroes to port requires something other than a frail canoe of bark; and besides, savages ourselves, we have neither map, nor compass, nor nautical expertise. Thus the experienced pilot to the stormy sea and we to the tranquil lake; trusting to the breath of God, perhaps we will arrive at the end of our journey, guided by the Star of Nations! The sons of the African woman—whom we introduce in this chapter under the names Romulus and Remus, less with the thought of establishing an analogy between these men and the historic twins and more because they were brothers—had no physical mark of distinction, no sign revealing their future greatness.6 Indeed, they were of small size and common appearance. Their character was as rough as the bark of that tree in our forests whose heart possesses the incorruptibility of iron.III Like this tree, they also possessed an excellent strength. It was this source of virtue that Liberty would later award with her divine favor. Romulus—the older brother—had a cold, reserved, taciturn character. He had absolute control of himself and rarely revealed his thoughts. Remus had an ardent, expansive, and aggressive temper. Unlike Romulus, calm and moderation were not in Remus’s nature. Yet the brothers had in common the improvidence characteristic of their kind. In childhood these young men had tended animals. This first job gave them notable dexterity and agility. No one knew as well as they how to [ 17 ]

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bend the yoke to the wild bull, how to tame the stamping steed. Their talent in the art of setting traps, preparing an ambush, or rerouting the course of a river was remarkable. They were excellent at swimming and arrived before the herds in a footrace; they mounted a horse bareback better than an Arab, fast as the wind. Was it any coincidence that the hardy childhood of William Tell was spent in the same manner?7 Romulus and Remus moved from keeping the animals to working the fields and acquired, by habit of exaggerated toil, an uncommon vigor. The advantages of the athlete and the valuable qualities of the soldier were united in these two brothers. Their sober demeanor made them insensible to the kinds of deprivations that irritate even the manliest of men. These adolescents, whom crime had made into orphans, possessed a level of maturity beyond their years. The boys awoke as men on the day after they were deprived of their guardian’s affection, in whose shade they—until then—had lived life carefree and timid, without want or anger. The feelings that bring forth independence excited their thoughts, which had ripened in the heat of their hatred. One day Remus said to Romulus: “The sight of the Colonist enrages me. I can hardly stifle my fury. I always have the desire to jump at his throat when he approaches us, that villain. He degrades us below his ass and his dog and treats us worse than all of the beasts that serve him. What reason does he have for acting so? Is he an avenger from hell come to erase the mark of some new original sin with our tears? He made our mother die by the whip! If you agree with me, my brother, we will attack him and—” “Silence!” interrupted Romulus. “You must know to moderate your reckless ardor. Impatience is often a bad advisor. Pressé pas fait jour s’ouvri; the day arrives at its own hour.IV8 Let us wait.” Another time, returning from the fields with machete in hand and a hoe upon his shoulder, Remus encountered the Colonist at a bend in the road. He had time to observe him up close and had the following thought, which he hurried to tell his brother: “Do you know that we are ridiculous to have believed for so long that our master is a giant? It is only fear that has the power to make objects grow in this way. I am truly ashamed; this so-called giant is a man like us.”

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The illusion was broken: the solution to the Sphinx’s riddle had been found. • He is a man like we are, so why does he claim rights that he denies to us? This is the idea that, in 1790, armed Ogé and Chavannes against colonial tyranny. Ogé and Chavannes, two names dear to Liberty, two heroes immortalized in defeat as others are in victory, two apostles deified by their martyrdom. Is there a soul not moved by their memory, is there a voice not raised to glorify them? The battlefield of Revolution begins at their scaffold. We bow respectfully when passing these twinned tombs, placed at the doorstep of our history. Let us honor the memory of these two modern Spartans, just as valiant, just as unfortunate as those ancient defenders of Mount Oeta’s famous pass!9

[ 19 ]

The Mountain

A year had passed since the demise of Marie the African. Time, which so often soothes pain and cools the most fervent resentment, served only to intensify the grief of the two brothers and to stir their hatred. The fury locked in their hearts had grown during this year. Like the fire that hides in the bowels of the earth, increasing in strength with each passing century until it becomes a volcano, this hate was now ready to explode. How strange the power of hatred! Had any individual wanted, at this moment, to take the Colonist’s life, the brothers would have opposed it. They would have risked their lives to defend that of their enemy, but this sense of devotion came from a belief in the lex talionis: only they had acquired the right to punish their enemy, to extract from him the justice that was their due.10 The anniversary of their loss called for more than tears. That night, a plot was hatched in their ajoupa. Together, Romulus and Remus had kept alive their desire for vengeance, feeding it on their shared sorrow; but as the moment for revenge drew near, each brother assumed the character—if that may be said—of his own individual emotions. The first was silent and glum. His aspect was somber and he remained, arms crossed over his chest, sinisterly motionless. The second burned with impatience and zeal. His face was agitated; his lips quivered. In one corner of the ajoupa, lit by the flame of the boucan, sat two axes and two machetes, recently sharpened, two makoutes,V two torches, and one dress made of a coarse fabric, torn in several places, and stained with blood. The two brothers’ attention was focused on this last object when they started the following conversation: “These remains are all that is left of she who loved us,” said Remus, whose voice shook with emotion. “We swore upon this mournful token [ 20 ]

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to punish our mother’s murderer or to die . . . The blood is already dark and dried. Let us hurry to avenge her before it fades away . . . Do you not want to do so, my brother?” “Yes,” responded Romulus, “but it would be best if we go first to the mountain. From there, while they believe we are marrons, we will plan and launch an unexpected attack on our enemy.” “It is decided. We will set up a camp over which this flag will be raised,” added Romulus, pointing to the piece of bloodied clothing. “This is the gift that crime has bestowed upon our despair.” “Let it be the source of crime’s demise!” At that instant, they heard the rooster’s morning call. “Let us go!” cried one of the brothers. Forthwith they grabbed their machetes, swung their axes onto their shoulders, and armed themselves with their torches. Marie’s dress was placed in one of the makoutes hanging from their arms. Taking leave, alas, possibly for good, of the poor hut where they had spent their childhood, a place that had witnessed both their most painful and their most tender memories, Romulus and Remus began to feel weak. With their feet on the threshold, they stopped, looked back, and cried as if they were leaving a loved one whom no one could replace. We are born with the religion of the heart. Man no more learns to love than he learns to satisfy the cruder appetites of humankind. Love, this basic need, is as innate as other needs. Even those who live in the state of nature have love enough. The Savage never abandons the bones of his ancestors. The Indian woman squeezes her milk onto the tomb of her infant. This cult of love comes from God and reaches back up to Him from our affections here on earth. Once across the threshold, the two brothers stopped again to embrace each other and make their final goodbyes to the deserted hut; then they disappeared. They were joined by a few suffering and unfortunate friends like themselves, with whom they had first traveled to that mountain chosen by their dying mother. All of this happened well before dawn, and a radiant sun rose over a new camp of insurgents. Imagine, if you will, a steep mountain whose rounded summit is crowned by a large plateau. A deep and rapid river surrounds its colossal base with a flood of silver. If man approaches from the vast plain over which the mountain dominates, he must cross this fast-moving channel [ 21 ]

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to reach the only accessible route up the mountainside. A narrow pathway, deeply carved by rainwater, agonizingly twists its way around this gigantic mass, which is so secure that it seems an immense fortress built by nature. The first task of the refugees of the mountain was to clear away the trees that blocked their view, and to enclose the plateau with a solid rampart made from the trunks of these trees and covered with stones. Their axes began to ring at dawn, and by midday their rapidly built fortification had already put them in a position to defend themselves. Deprived of firearms, the insurgents could only fight their enemies up close. With the help of an overhead network made of branches secured by strong vines, they amplified their small forces by suspending many enormous rocks over the craggy pathway. It was a machine of war, crude but powerful, a structure of murderous scaffolding that they needed only let collapse—in case of attack—to crush the enemy and close off the road to the camp. Precautions in place, the intrepid brigandsiii had nothing to do but rest behind their protective ramparts. They kept watch, waiting until the hour to act arrived. The sun had run over half its course; the tilted orb shone in a dazzling cloudless sky. The countryside that it illuminated would defy even the brush of an artist. There reigns in the tropics a lavish chaos, an extravagance of which no one from the outside has any idea. The air is warm and the breeze is filled with untamed fragrances. There is no noise but the rustling of the trees, the whirring of the insects, and the murmuring of the river, muffled and constant like the monotonous drone of a dance somewhere off in the distance. Giving themselves over to rest in the profound silence of their solitude, Romulus and Remus felt a sense of despondency creep, little by little, into their souls. In certain situations of life, movement is as necessary to courage as it is to existence. As in those icy regions that man must cross by running, the traveler who slows on the summit of the Alps will feel his limbs swell and his blood freeze. If he stops to sleep, he will wake no more. So thoroughly had the two brothers been occupied with preparing the means for their defense, and so entirely had they used all of their energies to achieve this goal, it had not occurred to them to think of the iii This is the name the Colonist gave the rebellious slaves.

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difficulties and perils of the task in which they were engaging. However, once relaxed, they naturally began to consider the recklessness of their actions. Their minds began to overtake their hearts, which had been motivated by the most fearless of resolutions, and they now felt themselves frightened by a host of cowardly terrors. Their troubled imaginations raised an army of phantoms against them. In the disorder of their thoughts, they saw themselves attacked, hunted, vanquished, laden with chains; after imagining their kidneys ruptured, their wrists cut, and the sufferings of a thousand other deaths, they saw themselves attached to the wheel. They saw also the terrifying appearance of the Colonist, remorseless, multiplying their torture, gorging himself on their pain, drinking in their blood through his eyes just as he had drunk the blood of their mother. Fortunately, after falling into this shameful stupor, they were brought back to themselves by the loving voice of their mother, who continued to watch over them from the depths of her tomb. She was outraged by their reprehensible weakness and showed them her torn and bloodied body. A noble cry went out from their hearts in response to this new call for vengeance.

[ 23 ]

Retaliation

It was perhaps near ten o’clock. The night was serene and beautiful, the moon had just disappeared from the firmament, and several constellations sparkled in the azure sky. Two men made their way, with hurried steps, toward the Colonist’s plantation, which was located several leagues from where they had started. Others followed at a distance. They kept to the shadows, walking without stopping, without hesitating, as if moved by an invisible power. The sound of their footfall barely troubled the silence of this calm night. Romulus and Remus left the mountain. At a fork in the road, they stopped for a brief moment to whisper the following words: “Take this side, and when you arrive, light your torch and let out a cry.” “Agreed. Watch for my signal.” After these words, they separated, each leading a troop of their compatriots on a mysterious and rapid course. Let us now look in on the residence of the European proprietor. The spacious house, less elegant than solid, boasted thick stone walls, massive mahogany doors, and slabs of multicolored marble. The floors and paneling inside were made of polished cedar with splendid gilt-work. A second-floor balcony ran the length of the building and dominated the exterior of the mansion. It jutted out, ten to twelve feet from the ground, at the height of dazzling apartments decorated with silk curtains, soft carpets, opulent tapestries, and luxurious furniture in the Asian style. A wide mahogany staircase connected these apartments to the ground floor, which was divided into several large rooms, including a dining room that was a frequent witness to the debaucheries of the Colonist. A tree-lined avenue led to the estate, which was surrounded by flowering gardens. The massive complex was situated, as we have said, at [ 24 ]

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some height, and consisted of a central building with two secondary wings. In one of these wings was located the Colonist’s vast, airy, and sumptuous bedroom. His windows opened onto an exquisite orchard filled with birds whose morning concert enlivened the master’s wakening each day. Someone who had been on the avenue leading to this stately chateau at the silent hour of midnight would have seen Marie’s two sons, followed by their troops, appear at once from opposite directions. The two forces arranged themselves for battle at the two flanks of the building, which they then climbed with rare agility. The Colonist was asleep in the secluded house. As soon as the two brothers reached the balcony, they took their flints from their makoutes and lit their torches. One of them stopped and waited; the other placed the burning piece of wood on the roof. At first contact, the destructive element flew, leapt, and penetrated everything that provided nourishment for its wrath. The flame pierced the roof and flowed like lava between the tiles. Its progress was rapid and dreadful: to the sinister cry announcing its presence, another yet more sinister cry responded from the other side of the building. The noise of these calls, the rumble of the fire, and the crash of broken tiles finally woke the Colonist who, half dressed, cracked his door and timidly stuck out his head. Suddenly, a glinting machete whistled by, the misdirected blow lightly grazing his face. He barely had time to pull the badly splintered shutter toward him. “Here, my brother!” screamed Remus, who rushed the main door with the violence of a cannonball. Romulus ran up beside his brother and they shattered the lock and the iron hinges. Soon they were inside the house and, like madmen, ran around screaming, cursing, and breaking the furniture in their path. They wasted their time on curses and vain commotion: the only effect of this long interval of disorder was that it allowed the Colonist to descend into his cellar and hide from the brothers’ wrath. However, the roof was beginning to crack; the beams were crashing down and warning them to leave the burning edifice. The two brothers, a little calmer now, regretted having let such a favorable moment for vengeance pass them by. To kill their enemy with their own hands, to feel him die, would have been an exquisite pleasure. The knowledge that [ 25 ]

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he was buried underneath the smoking ruins of his palace provided only incomplete satisfaction. They nevertheless took hope from this because it was the only hope left. The brothers thus went to inspect the two main facades of the house, already guarded by their soldiers so as to prohibit any possible escape on the part of the Colonist. The ring of fire that was enveloping the vast roof continued its destruction away from the section of the house first exposed to the ravages of the conflagration. Parts of some of the walls were blackened from the inside, while, on the outside, the fire, still in its beginning stages, spread with frightening intensity. Suddenly a pitiful voice rose from the flames; a mournful sigh traversed the air to reach the two brothers. Thinking it was the anguished cry of the dying Colonist, they responded with a cruel laugh. While celebrating, they heard a second and more painful cry. Looking toward the burning building, they could distinguish a human form amidst the flames: it was not that of a man, but of a disheveled and distraught woman who was struggling with the horror and the desperation of certain death. The circle of fire was rapidly closing around her. Flaming red snakes had already settled on her head. There was barely time to save her. Romulus and Remus, driven by their nobler instincts, propelled themselves to the second floor and heroically wrangled the victim from a fast-approaching death. They struggled for a few moments without success: the flames presented an insurmountable obstacle. One last cry transported them over the wall of fire and they took up the young, almost lifeless, woman in their arms. Return was so difficult that they almost left their precious burden in order to save themselves. Yet the danger was less than their courage: they triumphed in their final effort and, on the grass some distance away from the house, laid the unconscious and half-burnt young woman. Finally, everything disappeared: the fire, reduced to devouring only debris, occasionally burst forth in a few sparkling flames amidst thick swirls of smoke that the wind carried far away. Charred stones, twisted and glowing metal, and innumerable pieces of tile were strewn over the ground. The sun’s fugitive glow dyed the trees lining the avenue a blood red. Day would soon break. The Colonist was no more—at least for those who wanted to believe it. His remains were no doubt lying under the smoking debris. Prevented [ 26 ]

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from fleeing, he had surely perished under the rubble. The two brothers happily surrendered themselves to these speculations and, without searching for further proof, took the road back up to the mountain, carrying with them the unknown woman whom they had just saved from death. Along their march back to camp, they set fire to sugarcane fields to light the way. The young woman saved from the flames—we should tell you— was often mistaken for the Colonist’s child. Since her arrival in SaintDomingue, her supposed father had kept her in seclusion in a part of the house that appeared uninhabited. Guests were never allowed to speak to her and always saw her alone. Why? This unknown woman will tell us herself.

[ 27 ]

The Unknown Woman

At times, you have seen her in your dreams: she is a messenger from God, an angel with white wings, a chaste look, a virtuous body. She is vaporous like a shadow and ethereal like the transparent mist of the cosmos; a faint perfume of goodness—the goodness that sent her—radiates from her exquisite form. This angel is at once the interpreter and the image of benevolence. Say, is there a human being who reminds you of this celestial vision? Would you dare compare her to any beauty on earth without fear of desecration? . . . Well, the young woman wrested from the flames was this angel of your dreams. Everything in her possessed a grace, a perfection divine. Neither the painter’s brush nor the sculptor’s chisel has ever given life to something that could even approach the poetry that she embodied. Romulus and Remus—whom a noble impulse of generosity had driven to rescue the young woman, as we saw, a few moments before— had, while leading her back to camp, the reprehensible idea to make her a sacrifice to their mother’s angry ghost. Since chance had delivered the daughter of their enemy rather than the Colonist himself, they thought it meant that she should be sacrificed instead. Besides, two victims were barely enough to slake their bloodthirsty hatred. While the Colonist had perhaps died without suffering, their mother had died in the convulsions of a long agony. The crime had not yet been avenged: the daughter must pay the debt of her father. The brothers’ reasoning, disfigured by passion as it was, settled on an outcome. Murdering the nameless woman had become obligatory. The brothers resolved to act. Ira furor brevis est.iv As soon as he accepts the counsel of resentment, man reiv “Anger is but a brief madness” (Horace, Epistles 1.2.62).

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signs himself to wild fury. His reason remains quiet and hidden; brutal instinct replaces sense and leads his soul astray; only later does it bring the soul to remorse. Dawn was breaking on the horizon as the two brothers arrived at the mountain. They tied up the young woman and attached her to one of the stakes of the barricade; they settled a short distance away to rest after the night’s excesses of emotion and fatigue. When they awoke, the sun had already reached its highest point in the sky. Its rays beamed down, setting the atmosphere aflame. The earth throbbed in the abundant blaze. The heat of the noonday sun kindled the blood of Marie’s avengers. Irritated and feverish, machetes raised, they advanced upon the victim reserved for expiatory sacrifice. The young woman was calm and smiling. A sovereign air of dignity emanated from her brow and enhanced the brilliance of her harmonious and pure features. Her blond hair glistened in the sun like a golden frame about her face. Such beauty struck the two brothers; it overwhelmed and fascinated them. Each looked at the other, trying to motivate themselves to act, but hesitation and confusion inhibited any movement on their part. Upon moving closer to the young woman, their embarrassment grew stronger. They wanted to strike, but their weapons fell from their hands. Entirely conquered, vanquished, they rushed to the young girl’s feet and asked her pardon for their criminal designs against her life. They—who had sworn never again to be slaves—begged for the honor of serving her! The unknown woman, touched by their remorse, helped them to their feet, asking: “Why this show of respect? Am I not your captive? What have I done to deserve to be served by you?” Knowing, of course, that it was her duty, she humbly asked what they required in exchange for the life that they had spared. “We ask nothing of you,” they replied enthusiastically. “Nothing but a bit of attention and pity. Since our birth, we have known only hardship and contempt. There was only one being who loved us, our mother. The Colonist killed her. This lost loved one will never be found. A child has but one mother. We are forever orphans. Have compassion for our misery, and we will give you our hearts completely.” “You would give me your hearts without knowing who I am?” the young woman asked. “This is more than confidence; this is carelessness—a carelessness that you will perhaps regret in the future.” [ 29 ]

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“Oh, no!” they responded, even more moved than before. “No. There is something in you that captivates and draws us to you. Something good, true, and grand that knows not how to deceive.” “Yet what can the attention and pity of a poor stranger do for you?” “It will make our lives bearable, perhaps even happy. After the death of our mother, we had only hate to sustain us while we plotted revenge. Now that the Colonist has been punished, this hate is without object and our existence is without purpose. Please, at least make it so that our existence is not a burden to us.” “How? In what manner?” “By allowing us to commit our lives to you. When we had a mother, we stayed by her side. We worked with her, suffered with her; we lived only for her. If you guide us with your goodness, we will likewise live only for you.” “You obviously attach too high a price to fruitless devotion.” “Oh! You do not know what benevolence is to those unfortunate people for whom everything in this world is hostile! Work is nothing, deprivation is nothing, physical torture is nothing when compared to the pain of suffering alone without anyone to notice or pity you. We envy the fate of the animals that we cared for as children: the master was concerned for the bull and caressed his horse . . . and we, we endured only unending physical abuse! Led astray by the memory of our mother’s murder and the resentment created by these cruel atrocities, we considered, for a moment, acting reprehensibly toward you. But you have already forgiven us. Now, please, have pity on our loneliness. Do not abandon us.” “You sensitive and good men,” said the young woman while holding their hands. “I surrender to your pleas and will do even more if only you remain as you now are. I will live near you and never leave, on the condition that you never forget your devotion to me. Like you, I also have suffered much. The atrocious persecution that I have endured at the hands of the strong has taught me to sympathize with the pain of the weak. Count upon my own tender feelings now to replace your mother’s love.” From this day forth, the brothers had only one ambition: to deserve the friendship of the young woman who had agreed to live with them and share in their solitude and misery. They built her a shelter made of branches, decorated with climbing plants and flowering vines, in the middle of the compound. This rustic construction was soon trans[ 30 ]

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formed into a temple, and the virgin that it sheltered became a holy idol. Some religious scruple prevented the brothers from entering this sanctuary, whose door they approached loyally every morning, their hearts devoted to an unknown faith. Each day, the spangle of their solitude arose more beautiful, more radiant, more adored. The horizon of their souls was enlarged and purified in the light of this star that shone so generously for them. As their fervor and enthusiasm grew, they felt their faith in themselves grow as well, as did the horror with which they began to understand their previous enslavement. Certain kinds of worship rehabilitate and purify, just like faith in the true God. In the evenings, the young woman became accustomed to strolling along the river’s bamboo-covered shore with her faithful companions. The gracious and gigantic palms intertwined, bending in response to the strange moaning notes of the breeze. These walks were, for the two brothers, a chance to learn a multitude of interesting facts from the wise, nameless woman who knew so much of the history of all people and all ages. She often cited Spartacus and other famous names of Antiquity. Early on, the brothers familiarized themselves with the heroic actions of great men who indirectly became their models. One time, leaving aside these glorious subjects, the young woman proposed to speak with them about herself. They could not have listened any more eagerly to a story about which they were more curious, but they would have never dared to show the extent of this curiosity! Their attention hung on the young woman’s lips, which sparkled with surprise and joy as she began to say: “My friends, a strong concern prevents me from telling you who I am. For now, just know that the Colonist is not my father and that I call myself Stella.”11

[ 31 ]

The Colonist

The young woman continued her story in the following manner: “I found myself in Paris in 17—. I was miserable, dressed in rags, a stranger to everyone. I had nothing but bread and public charity to feed myself, and this bread, which I could obtain only by enduring contempt and insult, was often not enough. The wealthy handed it to me, although some turned their heads, while others let the bread drop into the gutter. Only the common man, the needy worker, gladly shared his pittance with me—when I saw him and when he could—for he, too, was hungry. Day and night I ran through the streets of that great city, knocking on every door to acquire the little that I needed to sustain my weakening frame. Once some good people, moved by compassion, noticed me and offered me refuge and employment, but unable to submit to their demands, I left after a few days and returned to the streets. I have an incurable aversion to discomfort and darkness. My health declines at the slightest constraint. I would undoubtedly perish in a prison cell. I must have open fields—even if they are deserts—fresh air and full sun. I am reborn in such a place. It was exactly the opposite at the home of the charitable people who took me in: I languished and wilted from the lack of fresh air. As soon as I returned to my treasured habits of independence and activity, I recovered my health and all of a sudden found myself adorned with a new beauty. And thus I no longer needed to beg. The merchants sought me out; artisans threw celebrations for me; crowds gathered around me in excitement. On a cold winter’s day sometime before this, when I was sitting on a post, shivering and eating a morsel of bread given to me by a generous [ 32 ]

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worker, a sullen-looking man approached me. With a rough voice that he tried to soften, he asked: ‘My child, what are you doing here?’ ‘Nothing,’ I responded. ‘I—I am eating my bread, as you can see.’ ‘And where did you get that bread?’ ‘It was a gift from a worker who just walked by.’ ‘What is the name of this worker?’ ‘I do not know him.’ ‘Do you have relatives in Paris?’ ‘No, Sir, none.’ ‘Who, then, takes care of you in this cursed city where so many unfortunate souls die of hunger and want?’ ‘No one, Sir. I live here off the charity of the people.’ ‘Is it generous, this public charity?’ my interlocutor asked with a sneer. ‘Not always,’ I responded. ‘But sometimes the poor give to the poor.’ ‘That is true,’ he continued, ‘but since you are here without family and thus susceptible to dying one of these days from hunger and misery, come with me to Saint-Domingue. The land there provides without cultivation, and one can gather gold from the streets. In two days, I will make a fortune and marry you.’ The proposition scandalized me, and I remained silent. ‘What? Do you not accept?’ continued the sinister character, after vainly waiting for my response. ‘Riches leave you indifferent? In your state? But . . . that is impossible. Perhaps you believe that I am deceiving you. Come, then, and you shall see.’ Having pronounced these words, he advanced to grab my arm, but I jumped back. ‘Who are you, Sir?’ I cried out in an obvious expression of dread and disgust. ‘Ah! You question me?’ he replied, mockingly. ‘Precaution is excellent. It would be very easy for me to take advantage of the gullibility of your youth. But what would I gain from deceiving you? My intention, to the contrary, is to speak frankly. Will you follow me?’ ‘Yes,’ I responded mechanically. ‘Swear to me you will!’ ‘I swear it.’ ‘Now, listen. I belong to an obscure and fortuneless family. I had but a modest inheritance, which I spent. Misery lives in my home and chases [ 33 ]

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me from it. I will embark for Saint-Domingue. In France, I eke out an existence with shame at my heels. In the colony, I will soon be rich, powerful, and well-regarded. It is an easy decision. We go!’ With these last words, he covered the distance separating us and grabbed my dress. I pulled away with a sudden and swift movement, and he was left holding a shred of cloth. I ran away as fast as I could. The adventurer did not bother to follow me. He went on his way, toward the city walls. Ten years later, this man, for whom I had an irremediable aversion, enjoyed—just as he had predicted—a large fortune and great reputation. He was the Colonist, your master.” A cry from the two brothers interrupted the young woman. She restarted her story at the point of her rising popularity in Paris: “I had grown remarkably in the imagination of the people. They called me a fairy and attributed me with supernatural powers. I possessed— according to them—the secret of their happiness. To make them happy was certainly my desire, for I sympathized wholeheartedly with their suffering, but their happiness was their own to find. In workshops, on the street corner, and in public squares, I was flattered, honored, and praised as if I were divine. This honest and peaceful worship pleased my heart. I was even proud of it. Yet, unfortunately, the people did not stop there. Their superstitious passions gained in strength, and boiled over into a delirious fever, a veritable frenzy.12 They fought and killed each other, slitting one another’s throat in my name. Blood flowed like water and bodies were piled high. Severed heads appeared on the end of pikes. Seeing this, fear took hold of me; my thoughts were so jumbled that I began to believe that the same men who were killing in my name might come after me. I fled, crazy with fear, without knowing where I was headed. Arriving at a seaport, I threw myself on the first departing ship. I left France. The cry of Land! brought me out of my lethargic state which had lasted throughout the voyage. We were in Saint-Domingue. A new fear struck me as soon as we disembarked. I saw, amidst the people gathered on the shore, my detestable former acquaintance from Paris. The Colonist—as I have already called him—boldly presented himself, claimed that I was his daughter, and led me to his carriage by force.

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My first night under the roof of that insolent upstart was horrible. Worry and uneasiness kept the sleep from my eyes; it seemed that every instant I heard footsteps in my room or saw a despicable specter at the foot of my bed. The next morning, the Colonist came to me in a familiar way and declared that, to keep his earlier promise, he was ready to marry me. ‘Me! Your wife?’ I responded with indignation. ‘You are considering marriage, Sir?’ ‘Yes, I am. And seriously,’ he added, in a mocking tone edged with cynicism. ‘I will tell your friends how despicable your behavior toward me has been.’ ‘You will tell no one.’ ‘And why not?’ ‘Because no one will see you. No one will speak to you.’ ‘You plan, then, on locking me up?’ ‘Until you consent to belong to me.’ ‘What cowardice!’ ‘It would cost you so little to love me.’ ‘You are worthy only of my disdain.’ ‘No matter. Be mine forever and I will clear you of the rest.’ ‘Never! Never!’ ‘Well then, you will be a prisoner! . . .’ The Colonist’s words made my entire body shudder. Prison, as you know, is the last torment that I could endure. I would rather die a hundred times. I appealed to him with the anger of a monster. ‘You are an infamous man!’ I told him with the courage of desperation. ‘Take my life, since fate has delivered me into your hands. A wild beast or a highwayman—from which you differ very little—would behave thusly.’ The Colonist was not the least bit irritated, and his threat was executed as promised. I was entirely shut away. During the day, a tiny bit of air was allowed into my room so that I did not die a violent death by asphyxiation. At night, my merciless jailer locked the doors himself. The Colonist waited patiently for a resignation bred from suffering. I had no other company but his. A snake would have repulsed me less.

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You know that I was in no state to prolong this fight against my enemy. Will alone sustained me. I would not have made it much longer if you, without knowing it, had not come to my rescue. And this happiness, perhaps I owe it to the concern that I have held for you for a long time. From my prison, I heard you wail out. I was present, though invisible, at each one of your tortures. I pitied you sincerely. You had in me a friend whom you did not know, someone whose existence you could barely have suspected. Similarly, I found in the two of you the liberators on whom I had never counted. The brutal and impious tyranny of force has a propensity for uniting against it hearts that were previously strangers to one another, hearts that never opened to one another. From this mysterious and saintly league, this providential phenomenon, the salvation of the weak and the triumph of justice are born almost every time.”

[ 36 ]

The Dream

Stella had sparked the imagination of the two brothers, as much by the moving circumstances of her story as by the mysterious veil with which she hid her divinity. It was a divinity that one might suspect, but that was not yet visible. Romulus and Remus, in a state of mind for dreaming, fell asleep; both had the same vision. Their mother, stern and sad, came to them. Her features exuded suffering; her wounds still bled. She was excessively thin. Gone was all of the grace and beauty that she had possessed before death. She stood in front of the brothers’ bed, looking at them for a long time before she uttered, in a faint voice, words that seemed to come from the grave: “Unnatural sons, is this the way that you think of me? Is this how you take charge of my vengeance? You think that you have fulfilled everything by setting fire to the Colonist’s plantation, and you sleep like laborers at the end of the day. Are you certain that your enemy exists no more? Have you sifted through the ashes of his house to find proof of his death? My vengeance deserves at least this proof—I gave my blood for you!” The reproach was cruel and merited. Romulus and Remus could respond only with tears. After a solemn pause, Marie the African continued: “It is in my name that you took possession of this mountain. It was I who suggested that you establish a camp here. What good are these ramparts if not used to defend yourselves? This simple reflection would have prevented you from forgetting your duties; but you did not think of it. You must love me no longer. Your indifference is a betrayal. I came to see for myself, and to renounce you both.” The tears of the two brothers flowed abundantly.

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. . . lacrymæ pondera vocis habent.v Marie, softened, took a tenderer tone, and continued with kindness: “My children, there are times when a man must confront himself as if he were his own worst enemy. What he has seen is often nonexistent while what he has not seen does exist. Thus when he risks his life for interests more precious even than life, he must keep this enemy within him to prevent himself from falling into traps of his own making. He must neglect no means of assuring himself of the truth. Rise! Investigate the ruins of the Colonist’s burned plantation; comb through the rubble where you should discover his remains. If there are none, return, sharpen your machetes and your axes anew, strengthen your ramparts, and stand guard: for if not, woe be to you!” With this, the apparition disappeared. Lying on the same bed of leaves, and upset by the same dream, Romulus and Remus together let out a scream that delivered them from their painful nightmare. They awoke with eyes wet and spirits overwrought. “Did you see her?” asked the younger brother. “She was just here.” “She spoke for a long time. Did you hear her?” Romulus asked. “How sad she is, and how changed!” “Oh, how distressing are her words!” “But was it not a dream?” exclaimed the brothers, while looking at each other in terror. “Tell me, brother,” asked Remus in a dejected tone, “did she accuse you, as she did me, of forgetting her and betraying your duties?” “She did more than that,” responded Romulus. “In her anger, she threatened to disown me.” “Then you also received the order to go and search the Colonist’s plantation for proof of his death?” “And, if proof is lacking,” added Romulus, “to return and make new preparations for our defense.” “There can no longer be any doubt,” said the second son, with conviction. “Our mother came to us in our sleep. Her reproaches are the expression of stern love. The order comes from her wise will, which has our best interests at heart. Let us heed this beneficial advice from the tomb and do all that she has asked.” v “Tears are often as weighty as words” (Ovid, Epistolæ Ex Ponto III.1.158.41).

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“This is my thought as well,” responded Romulus. Without further delay, the brothers arose and departed, guided by faith in their dream. It was late at night. A few clouds made white stripes across the dark azure sky. The stars had begun to dim in the east. The far-off mountains, still cast in shadows, seemed like immobile giants draped in long black robes. So hurriedly had Romulus and Remus taken up their march to the Colonist’s plantation that they failed to calculate either the distance to be covered or the time remaining before daybreak. They were nearly a third of the way there when the first hints of morning light shone over the horizon. The brothers had no choice but to disappear into the woods, where they discussed whether to go ahead or turn back. Turning back would have been the prudent approach, but the will of Marie the African was so urgent and had been expressed so clearly that it seemed a crime to return and deny her wishes. They walked for several hours. Finally, the burned ruins of the house emerged from behind the thinning curtain of the forest. They climbed a tree to see what was happening, but discovered nothing out of the ordinary. However, only a short distance away, they saw the Colonist and his army advancing along the large road. It took only a few seconds for the two brothers to descend the tree and rush to the mountain. They ran back to their camp in one breath. Stella, impatient for their return, met them like a worried sister. Traveling the long distance on foot as quickly as if they had been on horseback left the brothers without air enough to speak. After an indispensable moment of rest, they told Stella—omitting no detail—of their dream. They told her of their departure, which had been so immediate that they were unable to inform her beforehand; they told her of the tree that they climbed near the plantation, and of the important discovery that they made there, thanks to the dream. “Oh! Our mother, our mother,” they cried in the midst of such powerful emotion. “Our mother, so good, so devoted to us during life, so generous and attentive after death. May she be blessed!” Joyfully, the wild echo of the mountain seemed to repeat this spontaneous cry of human gratitude. Romulus and Remus sharpened their tools and made a few useful additions to their equipment. They asked Stella if they might take her to a grotto carved by nature from the side of the mountain. It was a retreat [ 39 ]

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of perfect safety: thanks to a group of dense trees that masked the entrance, she could not be seen from below, and the only way to descend the mountain, steep as a wall, was by grasping at the vines that dangled over an abyss. Nonetheless, Stella refused to hide. “You propose a shameful act,” she told the brothers. “The Colonist is no less my enemy than yours, and it is as much my responsibility to fight him as it is your own. I want to be next to you and be with you. Even though I am a woman, I can still be useful.” “Endangering yourself in such a way will make us nervous,” objected the brothers. “Your presence will make us too hesitant.” “On the contrary, I will give you confidence through my steadfastness.” “You have no arms,” they continued to object, hoping to overcome her grave persistence. “With what will you fight?” “I need only a lance. You shall make me one from wood that is solid and hard. My resolution is unwavering; fight it no longer. I will share in your peril; no matter your destiny, I will share in that, too.” Noble would have been the man who pronounced these words; the woman who uttered them was sublime. Stella’s enthusiastic companions regretted that they had nothing more to offer since they had already given her their hearts.

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The Attack

To arms! To arms! Stella gave the battle cry. With lance in hand, she was positioned at the head of the camp. Bare-breasted, hair blowing in the wind, she was the very embodiment of the goddess Athena. Stella’s mission was to watch the enemy and report his movements to the two brothers and their comrades, waiting at the masses of stones suspended above the road. When the moment was right, they would release the stones upon their enemy below. As we know, Romulus and Remus, with their small army, could engage only in close combat. This required that they depend primarily on their own bodily strength. Their arms were vigorous, their axes and machetes sharp, but that which made them truly strong was the moral support of Stella, their divine ally. Love creates faith that saves. They called upon it with the same ardor as the sailor in a storm who calls to that other, no less helpful virgin, Maris Stella, Star of the Sea. In the meanwhile, the Colonist’s army organized his line of defense parallel to the river’s edge. “On your guard!” cried the young girl whose head alone was visible to those below. “Fire!” ordered the Colonist in response. Guns discharged upon the encampment, which was soon covered in a thick smoke that followed the violent crack of the rifles. Cannonballs whistled as they fell at the base of the ramparts. No answer came from the mountain. Emboldened by the silence, the Colonist’s troops crossed the river and resolutely embarked on the path before them. Just then, a conch sounded several times to warn of the approaching troops. The Colonist paid no attention to the alarm or to the giant rocks hanging [ 41 ]

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over the path. Even though the climb was steep and the path narrow, he walked quickly toward the brothers’ camp. The soldiers ascended two by two. They had almost reached the level of the ramparts when the conch sounded again. At this new signal from Stella, the snake of men uncoiling itself down the long path was split in two and crushed by the sudden, violent, and deadly collapse of the overhang. Next, the two brothers attacked the head of the army with a fierceness that is impossible to describe. The tail of the snake rolled into the river and did not stop until it reached the other side. Stella rallied to the aid of her bold companions and fought no less valiantly than they. She deflected a pistol shot that would have hit Remus. While his axe was raised against an enemy, Romulus was threatened from behind; the young woman saw the soldier about to strike and thrust her sword into his throat. Later, when Stella was surrounded by enemy bayonets, the two brothers overcame a thousand obstacles to save her life. The battle continued. On one side, the Colonist’s soldiers fought desperately, recognizing the impossibility of escape. On the other, the sons of the African, driven to murder by their thirst for vengeance, showed no mercy. It would be difficult to imagine a scene more awful than this battle to the death, accompanied as it was by such irreverence and profanity, and taking place without any witnesses . . . Even the beautiful verses of Lucretius would not have sufficed to describe such a battlefield: everything there was horrible excepting the courage that was demonstrated by the brothers’ victory, which was won despite their forces’ inequality in experience and number.13 Only the opponents whose fear had chased them to the other side of the stream remained, for most of the Colonist’s defenders had perished. They took advantage of the confusion to retrace their steps and begin a new offensive. Romulus and Remus, armed with guns and ammunition taken from the dead, energetically resisted these new adversaries. A bullet instantly defeated every soldier who showed himself above the debris left from the crash. A moment arrived, however, when the brothers’ ammunition ran low; sparing their last cartridges, they waited without firing until the last few enemies had crossed the stones blocking the path before finishing all of them off at once. The insurgents pulled back as if they were returning to their camp, in the hopes of attracting the enemy to the top. The Colonist’s soldiers fell [ 42 ]

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for the trick and threw themselves, pell-mell, into pursuit. “Let us take these brigands!” cried the Colonist, who himself had cautiously stopped at the rocks. At the sound of this recognizable and loathsome voice, the two brothers and their companions, full of rage, abruptly turned and pounced on their enemies, exterminating them to the last. Their triumph was complete, but the murderer of Marie the African had once again escaped the vengeance of her children. They saw the Colonist abandon the battle at a critical moment and escape to the other side of the river. A strange fate seemed to prevent them from punishing their victim. Romulus chased after him. The deserter was on horseback, but this was no matter to his pursuer, who was used to running faster than even the most agile four-legged beast. They raced across the immense plain on the other side of the mountain torrent. The steed knows by instinct that he must safeguard his master and increase his efforts while the man’s wrath lends him wings of lightning. The distance between man and beast did not exceed the reach of a pistol: one bullet more and the Colonist would have been no longer. Yet the cartridges were empty; what use was a gun now? Romulus had nails and teeth; he threw away the useless weapon. A few pounds lighter, he was sure to reach the horseman and bring him to the ground. Except he had not accounted for exhaustion. After the day’s grueling climbs and continuous battle, he could continue no longer. His limbs had lost their strength of steel. His legs gave out and his back ached; his temples throbbed violently, his chest tightened, and his lungs stopped working. He fell, unconscious and bathed in the icy sweat of death. Remus, having no more enemies to fight, flew along his brother’s footsteps. Stella followed. They feared that Romulus would battle the Colonist alone. Upon reaching the spot where Romulus had collapsed, they saw his pale, damp body. The young woman and her companion were struck by the horrible feeling of looking at a corpse. Remus could step no further. Stella approached and bent her virginal head over the warrior stretched out on the plain. She examined his clothing and noticed no blood. She placed her hand on his heart and felt it beat. She let out a cry of joy that resounded in the soul of Remus, who had stood motionless up until that moment. In one bound, he moved toward his brother, embracing him several times. Remus splashed water onto Romulus’s face and bade him drink from the gourd that he carried as a [ 43 ]

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flask. Romulus came to his senses, but was too weak to return to the mountain. Remus left him in the care of the young woman and returned to the battlefield, from which he gathered a great number of arms and ammunition to take back to his camp. • This is how the Indigènes of Haiti acquired the instruments of war that helped them win their independence and found their country. Slavery was, in point of fact, decapitated by its own weapons, which gave their struggle a sacred force similar to that between David and Goliath. David, who fought the Philistine Goliath, the terror of the Israelites, was mocked for his weakness and accused of vanity. Nonetheless, he insisted that the Israelites take him to King Saul. The king rebuked the child’s foolhardiness. Who could possibly match this enemy’s formidable force and skill in warfare? David was only a young shepherd, yet he promised to conquer the giant, and was allowed to try. He took a stick, five river rocks, and a sling into the battle. When Goliath saw him coming, he insulted the boy. David responded by striking the giant in the forehead with a rock shot from his sling. Goliath fell, face first, onto the ground. As David had no sword, he chopped off the Philistine’s head with his enemy’s weapon. Behind David was the invisible hand of the almighty God. Woe to the unfaithful!!!

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The Day following Victory

The camp awoke early or, perhaps we should say, it never slept. War is the enemy of rest; it creates an anxious fervor that will not be quiet. Yet it also lends an invincible power to the work at hand, when one knows how to unite courage and brilliance. Romulus and Remus spent the majority of the night speaking about the battle, remembering its perils, and inebriating themselves with their triumphs. They were still awake at daybreak and were preparing a new campaign. They wanted to surprise the Colonist before he could acquire new forces. This time, however, Stella would have to be warned and consulted: the young woman had become their support and their guide. They walked toward her ajoupa. She was leaning on her lance, keeping watch for them. The moon flooded in with its voluptuous rays, crowning her with a halo of light. She appeared, as she was, their divine sentinel. The two brothers approached her with a religious respect and told her of their plans, which she sanctioned. “I would like to accompany you,” she said, “but it would not be right to leave your weapons and ammunition unattended. Go, then; be careful and do not venture too far. If you happen to meet the enemy in large numbers, avoid fighting him and discretely retrace your steps to this camp. Remember that only here are you strong.” They left steeped in the wisdom of Stella’s advice. The axe and machete were no longer useful; they were replaced by the pistol and flint, which suited the two men better and lent them an incomparable advantage over their previous weapons. They invaded the Colonist’s lands, covering their expanse in every direction. The huts were empty and the plantations deserted. Where [ 45 ]

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were the workshops? What had become of the Colonist? They asked themselves these questions while following the path to their old cabin. Grass had grown over the wild path, erasing from the earth any trace of their footsteps. The work of time was devastating and rapid. They noted these changes with indifference, thinking only of the happiness that they would experience upon seeing the poor abandoned nest that reminded them of their childhood and of their mother. Oh, the emotion that man feels for his birthplace! . . . No, the homeland is not where man feels best: it is often the place where man has suffered most . . . Yet for this reason, perhaps, man loves it all the more. For it is this roof, shabby or opulent, that man sees when first born. It is the space occupied by this home, the air that is breathed there; it is the friendly, awakening ray of sunlight that slips through the window in the morning, and the moonlight that bids man adieu at night . . . It is impossible to separate man from this corner of blessed land. When fate inevitably takes him elsewhere, he leaves his heart at home. Yet the brothers’ ajoupa was no more. They even had trouble remembering exactly where it had been. The Colonist had destroyed this altar of their memories, and the sacrilege infuriated them. In turn, they burnt and laid waste to the remains that had been spared by the first fire. Stella received the brothers’ report that the Colonist was missing without any apparent distress, but inwardly she was worried because she knew the real cause of his disappearance. The brothers, out of pride, falsely attributed the Colonist’s absence to his fear. Pride was the demon against which the young woman, due to her enlightened friendship, decided to warn her naïve companions. Pride reigns with the force of darkness; all the giants of history owe their fall to pride’s power. Its influence ruins the woman and hastens the angel’s fall. Vulture of the fable and serpent of the Bible, its voracious beak picked through the heart of the foolish man who stole fire from heaven. Pride places itself insidiously and perversely between creature and Creator. Stella dreamed of a destiny for her protégés of which they had no knowledge. The goal was far off, but she took the responsibility of guiding them along the rugged path, which, while difficult, was certain. The colonial Hydra would deploy his one hundred regenerating heads against the brothers, and they would have to cut them down one by one. They would have to walk a long time; they would have their feet torn [ 46 ]

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and bloodied by the brambles along the way. They would have to hide in the shadows, to consider each other enemies, to fight one another and, in the end, they would have to reconcile in order to regret their errors and mourn their losses. Yet, what great reward in the end! They would be free, independent citizens of a country formed through courage and merit. They would refute unjust prejudices, destroy their slanderers, reintegrate a banished race into humanity, and establish on the ruins of a reprehensible colony the foundation of a glorious homeland. Only one stone was lacking for this future edifice: their hearts, which had to be pure. This is why the stern virgin protested so strongly against their burgeoning pride. “Are you convinced,” she asked, “that the Colonist left out of fear?” “We dare guarantee it,” the brothers responded in a tone of foolish presumptuousness. “And yet,” announced the visibly annoyed young woman, “nothing would indicate this. Instead, the Colonist has taken the time to reassemble and depart with his compatriots. If he were afraid, he would have fled alone in order to travel more quickly. In any case, why would he flee? What have you already done to inspire such terror? One single victory can as easily be attributed to chance as to genius. Alas! What it must take to establish in an incontestable way that you are men! . . . Renounce your miserable pride. You do not yet know the desperate energy of human prejudice. These prejudices are like the weeds that resist iron and flame. It is as difficult to rid them from the minds that they contaminate, as it is to eliminate the weeds from the terrain that they poison. The more preposterous they are, the more vivacious they become. Sometimes they exhaust the efforts of several centuries of struggle. Those prejudices of which you are the object will prevent you, for a long time to come, from being considered anything other than rebellious animals. They will push the limits of blindness and stupidity to the point of using dogs to bring you down. Do you hear? Dogs, real dogs, transformed into soldiers to fight you! . . . After all this, how dare you pride yourself on a success that counts for nothing! Leave depravity and madness to the Colonist. Be strength to his weakness. Do not show yourselves full of self-conceit if you desire the protection of the heavens, where every star is an open eye on the world and, occasionally, also a sword of fire! Unfortunately, some [ 47 ]

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men abandon one excess only to fall prey to its opposite. Despite previous humility, pride often returns. If this is your lot, tremble, because your cause is lost!” Romulus and Remus regretted having incurred Stella’s severe reprimand, and showed their remorse by repenting earnestly. Nevertheless, Stella illustrated her point to make it clear in their minds. Inside the confines of the camp grew a cactus, heavy with fruit; Stella picked the most beautiful of these and ripped it open, revealing a worm living inside the ravaged fruit. “Here is pride and its dreadful effects,” she showed the brothers. “It enters the heart after victory and, if not promptly extinguished, it ruins the success entirely. Remember this example!”

[ 48 ]

A New Enemy

In the Antilles, only thirty-eight leagues from the former colony of SaintDomingue, lies an important island that belongs to the English. Despite the proximity of the two lands, the French colony of yesteryear had nothing in common with Jamaica except the poetic sea whose blue tides caress its shores. Daughters of the Ocean both, perhaps born the same day, there exist so few connections between them that nature seems to have blessed the second only after having run out of gifts for the first. Saint-Domingue is without rival among her sisters in the New World. Thus England had wanted to add this island—enviable even when compared to the East Indies—to its list of possessions. From the moment of the brothers’ first attack, the Colonist withdrew his loyalties from France, a country that—thanks to its dawning Revolution—had proclaimed principles favorable to the emancipation of all persons and peoples. He turned to Great Britain for aid and protection, but because the two countries were at peace, France’s ancient rival could not oblige. Yet, the execution of Louis XVI in 1793 armed the monarchies of Europe against republican France. England, the keenest to avenge this attack on the inviolability of the throne, immediately gave the order to take over Saint-Domingue. Thus the governor of Jamaica allied himself with the Colonist in order to occupy the French island; he sent English troops. The Colonist forged ahead, impatient to take revenge. Stella had descended from the heights of morality. From above, she struck down vice, but now she placed herself on the level of current events of which she was aware. Thanks to her divine perception, she warned Romulus and Remus to be on their guard. Following her advice, the sons of the African intensified their vigilance and each day conducted reconnaissance far and wide. [ 49 ]

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They promised to be faithful to her warning and not to engage in any combat away from their camp. But the pride that they had not fully conquered set them a trap. At a bend in the road, the enemy fell upon the brothers suddenly. Their response had been rehearsed: they were to avoid the clash and return to the mountain. Pride distracted them from their promise to Stella and to themselves. At the head of their small brigade, the brothers received the enemy unflinchingly and returned his blows. Aware that they were doing wrong, they nonetheless were so ruled by the memory of their first victory that they could not resist the provocation. To withdraw without fighting in the presence of the Colonist, whom they had defeated just a short while ago, was for them something much easier to promise than to do. They preferred to run the risk of defeat. The fighting lasted several hours and was bloody; both sides showed great courage. The two brothers were particularly careless with their lives. Recklessness belongs to youth and inexperience, but leads to triumph only in rare cases. Sangfroid and strategy always bring success. The enemy spread out, tightened its ranks, changed positions, and took on a thousand different military forms. After trying without success to deal their enemy a blow, using up the energy of their own soldiers and losing the confidence that had first led them astray, Romulus and Remus thought of returning to camp. Ten thousand men in ancient Greece made themselves immortal by their skillful retreat, but for troops with less discipline, departure is defeat. The two brothers, unschooled in the art of war, were unlikely to reenact the adventure of Xenophon.14 They withdrew in a disorderly manner and the enemy pursued them with excessive force. This defeat confounded the brothers: it was the final strike to their pride. The state in which they presented themselves to Stella inspired her pity. Covered in blood and dirt, exhausted and demoralized, they were unrecognizable. The young woman wanted to blame them, but instead she could only feel sorry for them. She bandaged their wounds, revived their morale, and showed to them the advancing enemy. During the climb, the English army had divided itself into two so as to encircle the mountain. Halted by unforeseen difficulties, they had to abandon this plan and resolved instead to advance in a single straight line. The path to camp was narrow, winding, and cluttered with the enormous rocks that had been released from above; it presented almost [ 50 ]

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insurmountable obstacles to an advancing army. The English climbed slowly and with difficulty and were often obliged to stop. During these breaks, the two brothers fired upon them murderously. Many soldiers never advanced any further along the road, expiring where they fell. Despite the bullets raining down upon them, the soldiers nonetheless managed to continue, thanks to their perseverance. They finally arrived at the plateau. There they were met by a furious assault. Romulus and Remus resisted vigorously. The many heads that showed themselves above the ramparts became as many cadavers falling back toward the enemy. The brothers ripped out the stakes and pushed their muskets through the holes. When fired, the muskets spewed death into the English ranks. The brothers had the advantage. There was, however, a moment of extreme danger in the camp. The English had been able to penetrate the encampment through a breach in the enclosure; at the same time, soldiers were climbing the ramparts on the other side. This double attack forced the brothers apart and consequently weakened their positions. Stella, who up to this moment had been observing the combat from the center of the fortification as if she were a general or a ship captain, moved quickly to the breach and repelled the invading torrent of soldiers. By herself, the young woman defended the camp against numerous enemies. Several shots were fired. A bullet grazed her chest. She staggered and it appeared as if she would fall. The soldiers regained their strength and again forced open the passage when their mighty adversary stood up, brandished her lance, and launched a fury of disorder and confusion among them. The two brothers and all of their soldiers were having difficulty containing the enemy on the other side. If Stella had died, the Colonist would have immediately become master of the camp. Fortunately, she did not perish. Her life came from justice and truth, two eternal forces. Romulus and Remus, in this last battle, proved themselves worthy of their celestial companion. They expunged the shame and the disgrace that they had recently attracted. The honor of the day belonged to them. The enemy, weakened and discouraged, climbed down the mountain hidden in the shadows of nightfall. They were still under the control of the Colonist who, once again, had evaded the vengeance of Romulus and Remus. [ 51 ]

The Peacemaker

The camp was illuminated by the presence of Stella, who shone with the glory of a rising star or a rising power. Her existence weighed heavily on the destiny of the colony. A man came to the foot of the mountain and asked to speak to the two brothers.15 He was alone and unarmed, and showed no sign of being an enemy. Stella advised the brothers to give him entry and listen to his message. He was allowed to climb up. The maiden, for reasons she did not share, retired to her hut. She did not want to be present at this interview. Before reproducing the words of this stranger, let us mention his appearance: he was a man of about fifty years of age, handsome in form and pleasant in bearing. His physiognomy reflected a lofty soul that united philanthropy16 with the highest virtues of republicanism. He wore a scarf of vibrant colors: they were the colors worn by a new France that would yet immortalize them in innumerable, unparalleled victories. The stranger’s strong voice, matching his large stature, lent him a manly eloquence and bestowed upon his person an immense power. One stroke suffices to paint the character of this man. After a battle at Cap-Français—today Cap-Haïtien—the man’s son was taken prisoner. The assailants proposed to exchange their captive for the brother of their leader, who had fallen into the man’s charge. He responded stoically: “No! I love my son . . . I know all the pain that his and my position hold . . . He was taken prisoner while spreading words of peace to those in revolt . . . while the guilty man whom I hold in my camp was taken, arms in hand, acting against the delegates of France. There can be no equal exchange . . . My son can die . . . I sacrifice him for the Republic.”17

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Let us listen now to the speech that the stranger made to Romulus and Remus, who were gathered in a group before Stella’s ajoupa. Thus positioned, Stella was an invisible witness to their conference: “Friends,” he said with warmth and concern, “you have acquired the right to be free and equal to your oppressors. I come to offer you this liberty, in the name of France, which I represent in Saint-Domingue; a liberty that, through your suffering, energy, and valor, you deserve. The hour of reparation has struck for you. Your misfortunes are over. Come down from this mountain and use your warriors’ daring for the benefit of the common good. You will be the swords of the nation.” There was a note of truth in the man’s language that convinced the two brothers. They nonetheless did not dare to accept his proposition. The most sensitive issue was that of abandoning their camp: they knew the danger of straying too far from the mountain. The setback on the plain was still alive in their memory. Furthermore, they did not know the opinion of Stella, which would have been law; they asked the man for time to reflect and promised to bring the response—if favorable—themselves. The stranger departed; a good omen guided his path. Stella, who had heard and observed all without being seen, happily recognized in the French commissioner one of the generous and enthusiastic hearts who had been enamored of her in Paris. His political convictions united him to an honest party, that famous faction, the Girondins, which was sustained by the wisdom of its ideals but guilty of wanting to moderate the Revolution. This was a virtuous crime, if one can call it such, for which the Girondins paid in blood.18 Stella needed such a man in whom to entrust her pupils’ future. The moment had come for the two brothers to think and act on their own. They could no longer be kept at the margins. Thus without hesitation, Stella told them: “Go, follow this guide that Providence has sent you! Your destiny is not to live on this mountain forever. You may return here later if necessary. In the meanwhile, you must learn to rely on yourselves, to be free. The man who came here is no stranger to me. I know his beliefs and the principles that he professes. He is fundamentally different from the Colonist. This freedom that he offers is a gift that he wants to present to you without the involvement of France. Receive it

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willingly. Who knows if it will be challenged, who knows if this representative of the Metropole will not have to defend himself as if he had committed a real crime, or who knows if, finally, you will not be forced to fight for this freedom after having already attained it. The contest is open; enlist yourself against the Colonist and his accomplices. It is no longer about ending the life of your enemy: his death would be useless— and even contrary—to your success. Remember, a superior will has always shielded him from your attacks. What is important today is to find a way to fight on equal footing, not as lions tracked by hunters, but as men attacked by men. Make use of all your resources. Your faculties will inevitably develop in the fight and provide you with more ammunition for victory. Go forth—I repeat to you—and while you are below preparing for a new theatre of battle and for a more active and glorious role, I will stay here. You will be in my thoughts always.” “What?” rejoined the two brothers, surprised and distressed. “You want us to leave without you? Is this possible? We will never consent!” “Yet, it must be so,” the young woman added with resolve. “This mountain is a sacred place that I will take under my protection and guard until the memory of your mother is completely avenged. I have told you before that here is the seat of your force and your salvation. By advising you to leave this impenetrable retreat, I do not abjure my previous words. I am maintaining this refuge by staying here and guaranteeing it for you in case you will need it again.” “We recognize your wisdom and your ineffable goodness,” responded the sons of the African, who began to feel an increasing sense of loss. “However, let us remind you that you promised never to abandon us.” “I love that you remember my promises. They will shield you, doubtless, against those forgotten promises of your own. To abandon you would mean to desert you and care for you no longer. I, however, will remain the guardian of your camp and watch over your dearest assets.” “We would rather stay with you than leave to try to achieve fortune beyond our ambition and hopes.” “I know. You do not yet understand the mission that is destined for you. The time will come, however, when you will be happy and proud to have accomplished it. Take me to the grotto where you once promised to lead me. Instead of being a refuge from fear, it will be a secret temple of reflection. All religions have their mysteries. If you love me, which I [ 54 ]

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believe you do, you will come and tell me often and we will reflect upon your fate and your future.” Romulus and Remus, accustomed to respecting Stella’s wishes, submitted to her decision without protest. They knew that the decision could have resulted only from serious conviction on her part, so even though they suffered at the thought of such a painful separation, they showed themselves no more distressed or less attentive than usual.

[ 55 ]

The Grotto

Romulus and Remus quickly took on the task of establishing an easier pathway between the camp and Stella’s grotto. We have mentioned the difficulty of reaching the place where Stella was to live. Strong vines, anchored by deep-growing roots that stuck halfway out from the earth crossed in front of the grotto’s entrance and sealed themselves to the rock like clamps of iron. The brothers bound the most flexible of these vines to one another in order to make a ladder similar to those that ascend the masts of ships. Other vines were left within arm’s reach to facilitate the use of this aerial staircase. Stella was led to her new dwelling without incident. Her refuge was charming: spacious and airy, its ceiling was vaulted as if fashioned by man. This underground hollow possessed all the qualities of a safe and pleasant dwelling for Stella, foe to discomfort and darkness. A spring brought in fresh water and emitted coolness and refreshing sounds. At certain hours of the day, the sun entered through an opening that seemed to have been made intentionally so that daylight could suspend its flame from the center of the high ceiling. Occasionally, the moon’s gentle and melancholic rays seeped into the grotto as well. Climbing plants fastened themselves to the grotto’s walls, adorning it with festoons, garlands, and draperies of green; they unfurled their long and noble stems to the ground where water swirled by in quiet murmurs. Vibrantly colored flowers dipped their fragrant petals into the pure waters of the stream, which they framed with a cheerful and dappled border. After running over a bed of silvery sand for some length, the water changed its predictable path and, via a crack in the rock, offered its mysterious tribute to the river.

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Among the trees that covered the entrance to the grotto was the palm, haughty and proud of its innate supremacy. Victory made the palm— one of the noblest products of nature—into a symbol immortally consecrated to that most sacred right of humanity. Like the oak called royal for having served as a refuge for a defeated monarch, the palm—the glorious marquee of a conquering people—was called the Tree of Liberty.VI Romulus and Remus disarmed the camp and deposited in Stella’s grotto all that they had in the way of weaponry. The maiden accepted the responsibility of taking this subterranean arsenal under her control. The ajoupas were demolished. The destruction of Stella’s ajoupa, which was the largest and best constructed, caused the two brothers physical and moral pain. It seemed as if its very foundation had taken root in the earth. All of this work reminded Marie’s sons of the painful separation whose time was drawing near. The young woman walked along the river’s edge with the brothers one last time. There they were again enjoined to leave without delay. Their respectful obedience concealed so much of their distress that Stella, to console them, lifted the veil of time and showed them a portion of their vast future. “Let us imagine,” she told them, “that you are dressed in the uniforms of military officers and are both called to fill eminent positions. The war is finished, the English have been chased from the territory, and it is even possible that the Colonist recognizes and obeys your authority. In this case, what would you do?” “We would satisfy ourselves with our own turn at persecuting the Colonist, since you forbid us from killing him.” “I advise you instead to treat him with respect.” “Is he no longer the murderer of our mother? Has his crime been forgotten?” “He is your enemy and your friend. Your enemy for the evil he has done to you, your friend for the good that he will do for you. You should reconcile with him.” “Is this rapprochement even possible? Will the Colonist ever admit us among the ranks of his equals?” “No. He will never stop despising you and he will constantly dream of ways to enslave you again.”

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“Then he will always be our enemy.” “And your friend at the same time. I do not mean to say that he will take you by the hand and raise you up to do you good. On the contrary, by working obstinately to debase and harm you, he will clear a path to your greater destiny. The ways of Providence are unknowable. For some, Providence flattens obstacles; for others, it offers only thorns. Sometimes it gives the man whom it protects a generous and devoted hand ready to come to his rescue. At other times, the victim is saved through the assassin himself. Nothing is entirely bad in this world. Everything that moves away from goodness returns by way of a winding path. The river almost always flows in long, circuitous routes before entering the common reservoir.” “You are implying that we must fight the Colonist and his accomplices for a long while yet.” “My belief in this is well-founded.” “Could not we shorten these battles if they seem too long or too painful?” “No, for then the goal of Providence would not be achieved. You must exhaust the treachery of your enemy. Unable to attack you honestly, he must attack you from behind and from below. His tricks must divide you and lead you to lose yourselves. The vessel of crime must run over, and this overflow must swallow him like vengeful lava. It is likely that you will suffer much more in the future, but do not be alarmed. At the end of such hardship will be joy and rest that is as gentle and comforting as your fatigue and pain were long and cruel.” That night, seated upon a mound at the base of a palm in the grotto, Stella continued to speak on the topic, surrounded by her attentive companions. Nothing could have been more poetic than this group, half hidden by foliage and fortuitously lit by a few stray rays of the melancholic night stars. The palm tree, trembling in the wind, seemed to take part in the mysterious discussion happening in its cool shade. It appeared as another figure in this painting of ancient beauty. Stella spared neither her opinions nor her advice when talking with these men whom she loved and who would soon be far from her. After telling them of all the perils that they must avoid and of all the difficulties that they must overcome, the young woman stood up, held their hands, and said: [ 58 ]

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“I have only one more thing to stipulate, and it is that you help each other, rely on each other, and live together as if you were one and the same being.” • In nature, all that is fertile is twofold. The combination of the two colors in Haitian society can only favor the nation’s prosperity. It has already produced freedom and independence. It will also produce a great civilization by incorporating the germ of life contained in this divine exhortation: Love one another.

[ 59 ]

General Emancipation

It was a beautiful day for Haiti, or rather, Saint-Domingue: it was the day when the chains of the captives were broken and when it was declared that man would no longer be the property of man in this land so long made desolate by slavery! . . .  Abolishing the horrible tyranny under which an entire human family had suffered for centuries separated the present from a past that was sullied by monstrous atrocities. The heavens, so lenient and so good, might have granted a pardon for this act of justice on the condition that the act was always respected! Alas, masters clung to their slaves as executioners to their victims. The act was soon met with violence. Decidedly, one could be free in Saint-Domingue only by the force of will and the strength of arms. Freedom required fighting evil with evil, crime with crime. God abandons those villains who deny and offend Liberty to the fury of their enemies. What could be done with them? They did not even know how to repent! . . .  • On the morning of the day when the liberation of the oppressed was to be declared, the houses were hung with the precious fabric of the tricolored flag. These bright banners fluttered in the air. There were flowers in the windows, flowers in the streets, flowers everywhere. A great joy accompanied the day’s preparations. When the time came, drums and martial music added to the solemn nature of the announcement of the Act of General Emancipation, which was read aloud at every crossroads. An immense crowd, as a matter of highest importance, processed to the national altar, where shouts of joy were heard as the words that forever abolished slavery in Saint-Domingue were pronounced. The crowd [ 60 ]

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repeated those words with ineffable happiness. Everyone had faith: France had responded and the Universe was witness. The heavens could testify! . . .  A vessel filled with spirits was placed at the foot of the Tree of Liberty. The Marseillaise, born just years before of a patriotic inspiration of genius—that vibrant beat of all hearts, that rapturous music of all passions, that prophetic sound of all victories—the Marseillaise was sung in unison by a people alight with joy: Sacred love of the fatherland, Lend, support our avenging arms; Liberty, cherished Liberty, Fight with thy defenders. Under our flags, shall victory Hurry to thy manly accents, That thy expiring enemies, See thy triumph and our glory! . . .  To arms, citizens! Form your battalions, March on! March on! Let an impure blood Water our furrows!19

When they came to that famous refrain, they lit fire to the spirits. The people kneeled around the sacred flame that seemed to catch each heart. Hymns of thanksgiving rang out from the temple of the Lord. A religious ceremony completed the political ceremony, thereby sanctifying it and placing a divine seal upon the act that returned to humanity its inalienable rights and immortal privileges. The two brothers attended the ceremony with tears in their eyes and gratitude in their hearts. A new era was beginning. Raised to the dignity of men, Romulus and Remus wasted no time in acquiring titles worthy of she who had sponsored them on their path to liberty. They demonstrated the falseness of the common misconception that individuals of their kind were struck with a moral blindness, that the sun of intelligence would never rise for them, that they were good only for completing tasks as machines that slavishly obeyed the will of a [ 61 ]

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master. To have hands, nothing but hands, to clear the land, to cultivate it in the same way as the mill grinds sugarcane and combs cotton—that is to say, without thinking or feeling—this was the goal of the importers of men in Saint-Domingue. However, they misunderstood the work of God, who creates no superfluous human beings. The Africans proved, at a certain point, that the color of their skin was not a reflection of night or of their spirit. Haiti rose from within a storm. Despite the work of the architects of chaos, there was light in the genesis of this nation. • Romulus and Remus secured positions favorable to their interests: they made themselves necessary. The country, torn apart by internal factions, was also subject to dangerous external forces due to hostilities between France and other European powers. Saint-Domingue could not count on protection or help from the motherland. The administrator from the Metropole did not know on whom to count: everyone was defecting around him. The two brothers, whom he did trust, became his strongest allies and most energetic supporters. One is rarely as devoted and brave as were these restored men. They seemed to have kept in reserve for these difficult conditions all the virtues that exemplify citizens and distinguish heroes. The zeal and self-sacrifice with which they served their country were their best claims to the title deed of Liberty. A remarkable coincidence happened at the same time, eighteen hundred leagues away, in the magical empire of new ideas. While France— threatened on all sides—was recruiting her former serfs to form battalions that pushed convulsively at her borders, Saint-Domingue was enrolling the slaves of yesterday in her defense. In each county, these new citizens were justifying their new acquisition of liberty, and ennobling themselves through their victories. As Stella had predicted, the two brothers were called to high military postings. The fate of the colony depended on their loyalty and courage. They could be relied upon entirely. Two powerful feelings provided the guarantee of this inviolable fidelity: gratitude and hate. One attached them to their liberator, France, and moved in them the noble resolution to die rather than betray her. The other moved them to pursue the assassin of their mother, a pursuit that could end only in blood. [ 62 ]

New Battles

English reinforcements arrived in the colony. These new troops emboldened the Colonist, giving him certainty and confidence. The enemy attacked and took several cities in succession. Fierce fighting occurred between the enemy and the two brothers who, on new terrain, no longer had the same advantages as before. Stella had warned them that they could not stay on the mountain forever; they would need to learn to win on enemy terrain. War is a horrible science of destruction that wields profit only after the harshest of trials. The people of Antiquity who possessed the highest talent in the art of war were themselves not exempt from defeat. Rome blushed more than once in front of its rival Carthage . . . He who eclipsed Alexander, Caesar, and Hannibal and reduced the most astonishing events of ancient history to petty proportions, a modern warrior, a man of the century, thought that he had confirmed the superiority of his might after having won a hundred battles against the strongest nations of the globe.20 These nations fought in vain on their own territory. One day, hardened by war and enlightened by the sacrifices of so many battles, they marched against France and defeated the undefeatable. The misfortune of having been so regularly defeated had taught them, finally, to fight back. Romulus and Remus needed only arm themselves with dogged will to gain a similar advantage and continue in their warrior’s work. At least this is what they believed. They tried to retake the conquered cities. One, located on the southern coast near the edge of a mountainous cape that stretched toward Jamaica, served as a ready point of communication between the two islands.VII On a clear day, only forty-eight hours were required to cross the narrow strait and bring reinforcements to the enemy. [ 63 ]

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This city thus acquired a level of importance that made the area dangerous for all other cities located along the same coast. The two brothers attacked the city with the ardor and intensity for which they were already known. A furious struggle ensued at its walls, but the city was well protected by its fortifications and a well-manned garrison, which resisted the brothers’ efforts. They were forced to retreat. On the opposite coastline, the English occupied another post from which they could view the expanse of conquests enabled by treason.VIII Romulus and Remus attacked their enemy anew, but this attempt failed, just as their previous efforts had failed. A short time later, in the city that was then the capital, the enemy acquired intelligence that allowed them to take an important fortification during a nighttime surprise attack under the cover of a tempestuous downpour. The situation troubled the two brothers, who were exposed to the difficulties of bad fortune. It might have seemed that they were poorly prepared, but this offensive suspicion remained for only a few moments, after which it was roundly refuted by the events themselves. The foreign invaders were making progress. However, the English did not have enough power to lay claim to the rest of the colony. Their only resource was to win, if possible, by making fallacious promises to the supporters of France. They started by slandering the man to whom the two brothers were closest, trying to ruin his reputation. Next, once the defenders’ convictions were weakened, the enemies offered them money, military promotions, and tax exemptions in exchange for fictive and ephemeral rights guaranteed by the magnanimous Albion. The English wrote to the sons of Marie the African: “What do you gain by spilling your blood for such an ungrateful homeland? France disavows your manumission and therefore the service that you perform as citizens and as men. Her agent misled you. In France, he has been asked to account for his conduct and to justify himself for the crime of freeing the children of this island. France has promised to reestablish slavery under conditions more difficult and more demeaning than ever. What sorry repayment for your loyalty! Come over to our side; we will, in good faith and disinterestedness, assure your liberty in the name of our generous nation.” Romulus and Remus angrily refused the perfidious offer extended by the English and their agents. They responded with the noble conscience [ 64 ]

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of duty: “Until France, if she is so inclined, denies our contributions, we are happy to shed our blood for her. Your promises mean nothing to us. We prefer being the persecuted sons of an ungrateful mother to fighting under the flag of treason. You are allied with the Colonist, which suffices to prove your treachery. Keep your gold and your favors: we cannot but be enemies.” The brothers also sent a package of gunpowder and lead shot to their enemies, along with the following bitter words: “You no doubt lack ammunition: for only the lack of those things necessary to make war could motivate such a humiliating gesture. Here is something for your defense. Dishonor yourselves no longer! Know that we will never participate in such a despicable exchange!” Any previous suspicion fell, and was replaced by admiration, in the face of such honorable loyalty.

[ 65 ]

Coalition

The Revolution in France, which grew in excess and fury, caused the nobility—those enemies of popular sovereignty who recognized the power of divine right alone—to flee. Except for a few foolish people too slow to reach the borders, all of the nobles had emigrated; according to one member of the National Assembly, the noblemen believed that they “carried the nation with them in the soil on their shoes.”21 These aristocrats allied themselves with foreigners in order to purge France of the monster who had devoured Louis XVI, and who would next devour his wife, son, and sister. This new Minotaur required a great lot of victims for his daily meal. A certain number of these determined royalists left for SaintDomingue and joined with the English or the inhabitants of the eastern part of the island, that is, the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo. This region was under the influence of monarchical philosophies from the Metropole, and it shared sympathies with the Bourbons, the family from which Spain had drawn her kings. Santo Domingo had slaves, which explains its hostility toward Saint-Domingue, where freedom had just been proclaimed. Therefore, Santo Domingo allied itself with the English.22 Thus the Revolution that had made France the enemy of several nations in Europe brought all the evils of war to America, to the daughter of France, Saint-Domingue. Yet the mother, attacked at home, was also threatened from within, in a portion of her empire impossible to defend. To hurt her, the separatists supported—unthinkingly—the independence of Saint-Domingue. This capability of defending herself against foreigners by her own means and by her own force would, however, later help her oppose any attempt to reestablish slavery and to [ 66 ]

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shake off the yolk of the Metropole. Perhaps such a serious consequence, had there been a way to predict it, would have stopped the enemies of France who fought out of pure animosity. No one thought of the former slaves, although they should have! The enemies were instead preparing new chains; but first, they wanted revenge for the Revolution. This desire blinded all those who flew to fight in the haste of anger. Without a doubt, this was later a source of regret. They worked for the cause of Liberty without knowing it. These events, when reflected upon at a distance, provided one of those great lessons of Providence, according to which men’s hatred is punished and his pride thwarted. While the two brothers distinguished themselves in several battles, it had already been written that their efforts at the beginning of the war would be fruitless. They remained at a disadvantage, but they did not lack resolution. Their ardor had not cooled in the least. Despite the occupation by the English and the Spanish, a large swathe of territory was under their control, and the brothers knew how to use the resources of the lands that they possessed. With these, they could be patient. Besides, to rise from their previous falls, they had only to recall the pure and comforting advice that Stella had given them: “The ways of Providence are unknowable. For some, Providence removes fences; for others, it offers only thorns.” This moral, the meaning of which was clear, had biblical power in its sublime brevity: believe and hope.

[ 67 ]

Accusation, Departure

As the English had predicted, though they knew only that a party of colonists had gone to Paris to mislead the government and prejudice it against the agent in Saint-Domingue, it came to pass that the agent, protector of the two brothers, was charged and recalled to France. His capital fault was having declared freedom in Saint-Domingue. Yet, since the government had determined that it was obliged to sanction this liberty by a formal decision in order to maintain a colony that they were on the verge of losing, the colonial faction did not dare arm itself with arguments against abolition. Instead, it fabricated other accusations that it brought wholeheartedly against the virtuous philanthropist whom they pledged to oust.23 Here is what the friends of the Colonist wanted: once they had deprived the brothers of the upright and frank man to whom they had become so attached, the Colonist’s allies hoped to send to Saint-Domingue scheming and faithless representatives who would fan the flames of passion and sow division between the two brothers. This division would then give birth to disorder, anarchy, and civil war . . . After the brothers had exhausted and harmed each other, France would return to impose new chains on Saint-Domingue. France would say, as if with right, “I gave you this freedom believing that it would make you happy; but you only responded by destroying each other and wreaking havoc on the colony. You are returned to servitude because you have proven yourselves unworthy of a better state.” Thus the destroyed regime would be barbarically rebuilt. This dream of slavery’s supporters was not as absurd as an honest soul might believe: the only obstacle to its realization was the disapproval of God.

[ 68 ]

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“What!” you, the reader, will shout. But you are a stranger to the events that took place in a time period already far away. “What! France—that noble, chivalric power—would have had a hand in such an assault? Is this believable? . . .” We remain quiet so as to not stray from our course. The weather is nice, the sky auspicious. Our frail barque sails joyously upon the breeze. We remain quiet because we do not have the time to stop and provide the proof. We remain silent . . . but history will respond. In the meanwhile, Romulus and Remus continued to offer their loyal services to the mother country. At this time, the two brothers became aware of two Acts—one relating to the French agent’s release from his duties in the colony, the other relating to the general emancipation that France seemed, at least for the moment, ready to maintain. The satisfaction that they received from the second was not enough to compensate for the regret that they felt due to the first. They were moved more by gratitude than by self-interest. The French government henceforth guaranteed their rights, but it was the disgraced agent who had been the first to recognize these rights: they had already been freed thanks to him. As for the agent, he must have felt deep pain upon leaving the two brothers, a pain independent of that caused by his unmerited disgrace. Yet the agent expressed nothing of it in the written goodbyes that would, for posterity, serve as testimony in his favor. At that moment, he doubtless needed to be and appear strong; he thus avoided any action that might have shown him weak. We do not exaggerate the sympathy that we feel: we have the right to assume all in honor of this noble character. • The withdrawn agent hastened to comply with the order that required his return to France, and the two brothers accompanied him to the place of embarkation. He was leaving the colony’s affairs in a distressing state that was inseparable from the ongoing war. This situation had not been of his making; since freedom was a crime, it was yet possible to reproach him for having transformed the once enslaved inhabitants of the island into daring soldiers and devoted citizens. He left . . . and never returned.

[ 69 ]

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Lycurgus, the legislator of Sparta, having bestowed upon his fellow citizens the laws that he thought necessary to their liberty and happiness, received a promise that they would preserve the laws during his absence. He left Sparta and died so as to make certain the perpetuation of his sacred trust. More fortunate than Lycurgus’s countrymen, the Haitians knew how to preserve their own liberty as if it were kept in a precious vault. It had come to them from a man endowed with the virtues of Antiquity; he, too, died away from the country in order to place the stamp of eternity on his work. Blessed be the memory of this philanthropist! After the departure of the French agent, the two brothers were uniquely responsible for the well-being of the colony. Their rivalry grew due to circumstances that left them to themselves and isolated from any help. So as to shoulder the immense burden of their task, the brothers had a force that met the needs of the most urgent demands, which stemmed from the greatest of duties: patriotism. The brothers led a new attack on the city nearest the current capital, the one that had already resisted their might. It was taken by storm. Their impetuousness triumphed over the garrison’s efforts in a battle that lasted a few hours and finished in flight. The English did not delay in returning with ground troops supported by a naval fleet. Romulus and Remus organized themselves to resist the attack. A serious battle ensued. Thousands of bullets spewed from the fleet’s cannons, but did nothing in favor of the enemy. The ships, many badly damaged, were soon forced to retreat. Without these naval forces, the two brothers had only to fight the ground troops. These men were also driven back. Thus the brothers maintained their conquest by a double victory. A little while later, they marched through another city on the southern coast; they had already tried to take this city, but in vain. The English, warned of their movements, had prepared a strong resistance. The two brothers undermined their defense, however, by accelerating their pace. They acted with lightning speed. When the English believed them far away, they were in fact at the doors to the city. They attacked the primary fortification in the short span of one night. Action began at dawn. It was long and bloody, but surrender ensued. The English had lost many men to death or imprisonment; their disasters were made worse when a sloop moored in the port, on which the most prestigious families [ 70 ]

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of the city had taken refuge, exploded under fierce cannon fire. It made a dreadful sound. The two brothers entered the town square amidst boisterous shouts; they donned the cherished colors of France. The leader of the vanquished army committed suicide out of desperation. Romulus and Remus also made themselves known in the North, thanks to considerable victories over the English and Spanish alike. Fortune brightened and offered its first smiles to the valorous children of the land who claimed only the glory of her defense; Fortune promised that one day they would be the country’s legitimate proprietors and its sovereign masters.

[ 71 ]

Deborah

During these prosperous times, Romulus and Remus did not forget the virgin of the mysterious religion to whom they had dedicated themselves. Their hearts secretly paid tribute to her for their victories and thanked the young woman to whom they owed their successes. Without her, would they have had the steadfastness to fight through their first setbacks while waiting for the infallible hour of success? Would they have been virtuous enough citizens and soldiers to have remained deaf to the most seductive offers and to reject with disdain the corruptive gold of the foreigner? Remember that they had taken up arms in the interest of a limited vengeance; had they been guided by vengeance alone, they would never have been able to accomplish more than mere revenge. Had they never met Stella—all-powerful in her eloquence and charm—along their way, who showed them a new goal for which they might aim, one that was further off but greater still, they would never have arrived where they were at this moment. It was to her that they owed their freedom and their triumphs. Even though this liberty would be attacked before long, it was henceforth a right that no one was permitted to contravene without committing a crime. It placed the two brothers on the side of God and Justice. They went to the mountain to tell Stella of the first fruits of their success, and to be inspired by her advice. The young woman received them with joy. Sitting in the shade of the palm tree, she symbolized the wisdom of all words exhaled in a celestial perfume: she was Deborah, the prophetess of Scripture, on the mountain of Ephraim. After having tried the most irresistible methods of corruption in vain, and becoming disillusioned by the upright and firm conduct of the two brothers, the English found that they had no choice but to abandon [ 72 ]

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the land where, as proven by their recent defeats, they could not retain power by force. In the interest of commerce, the English desired to retreat without leaving behind any hatred motivated by acts of destruction; they gave the brothers a few large cities almost without condition. The brothers found these cities still in the state in which they had been taken. A collective evacuation began. The enemy wanted to deal only with the two brothers, despite the fact that there was a representative of France present in Saint-Domingue. The sons of the African, knowing only how to fight, worried over signing an agreement that would have been disadvantageous to their country. While, in this case, their inexperience would have been an excuse, the wrong would yet remain. They expressed their concerns to Stella, who admired them for it. She happily quieted their misgivings and, feeling proud of her students, told them that one always knows enough to dictate peace and accept the sword of the conquered. “Yet any treaty that is signed,” the brothers responded, “will necessarily profit the Colonist.” “No matter!” “He will return to his position in the colony.” “And so?” “This is what we oppose: it repulses us to step foot on the same land as this traitor.” “I thought that I had already warned you that a rapprochement would be necessary. If it could be otherwise, would I impose upon you the harsh condition of tolerating the presence of your mother’s assassin, that dreadful being who is separated from you by a wide abyss? You have already seen some of my predictions come true; remain faithful to my advice and the rest will be confirmed.” The conversation continued onto other topics and lasted a long time. Stella, always passionate in her concern for the two brothers, never tired of repeating, in the interest of their future, that which she had said a hundred times before: “Love one another, support each other; act together and with intelligence; walk in step on the path to retrieve the goods that have been promised you. One should not overtake the other to gain a greater share; everything that is given to you individually will become your collective property. Neither has more right than the other. You came from the same womb, you have suffered the same pains, and [ 73 ]

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you will have the same reward. The land on which you live does not belong to you, yet if one day it trembles in its refusal to allow slavery and in its convulsions detaches itself from France, then Providence will grant it to you. The one condition is that it must always remain a family home, inalienable, indivisible. It must be your children’s heritage and the refuge of the persecuted men of your race. If, by some misfortune, selfishness or another malicious feeling takes hold of one of your hearts and makes one of you the enemy who seeks to oust the other from this common domain, may he receive an exemplary punishment. God would smite him! God, the strongest of the strong!” Thus spoke the virgin of the mountain. She had good reason to insist upon the reciprocal obligations of the brothers to one another: the fateful moment approached. Soon, they would draw swords against one another, fighting for meaningless power. The wise counsel of the young woman was not given to stop them from raising their arms; she hoped instead that they would remember her appeal and, on the edge of peril, sacrifice their resentment to the common good, turning their arms on the true enemy. Before Romulus and Remus left Stella, she led them into the grotto where their arms and ammunition had been placed. They found the supply perfectly preserved. The young woman led them back out, passing by the camp on the way to the edge of the river. She was happy to offer them a tour of this place that had become her empire. Never had the two brothers seen her look so beautiful. The vibrant air of the countryside had completely erased from her brow the slight sign of ill health left from her days of captivity with the Colonist, and it had added to her complexion a glowing color of incomparable freshness and celestial purity.

[ 74 ]

The End of the Foreign War

Peace was declared in Saint-Domingue. It was an honorable peace made necessary by five years of continuous war. Hostilities began to cease after Spain ceded the eastern part of the island to France, according to the terms of a treaty signed in Europe.IX Liberty, arms in hand, nevertheless had time to avenge herself against those who had trafficked in the noble blood of Ogé and Chavannes, her glorious martyrs.X Several battles were finished in their name, and Haitians would soon step a victorious foot onto the land that had become inhospitable to slavery, thanks to the bravery of its most unfortunate inhabitants. The departure of the English troops brought calm and security to the colony. Now the wounds of war would turn into scars. A wise administration could succeed at this without difficulty by relying on the resources of this country so blessed with fertility. The two brothers applied themselves to the task of replenishing the land. It is said that the English, while retreating, suggested to Romulus that he make the island independent and found a monarchy there for his own benefit. Driven by a dedication to selflessness, Romulus refused. The Colonist—as predicted—chose a moment when all had become calm to approach the two brothers. Minding the recommendations of Stella, they welcomed him, but each in a way appropriate to his character. Remus could not hide the horror that his enemy inspired in him. Given his frank and indomitable nature, it was too difficult for the youngest of Marie’s sons to hide his feelings. They were visible despite his best efforts. Reconciliation was impossible. The Colonist understood this, and perfidiously tied his hopes instead to Romulus, whom he found more accessible.

[ 75 ]

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Self-controlled, Romulus had received the gifts of silence and impassivity in equal measures. It took little effort for the older brother to conceal his thoughts, taking on an air of calm benevolence. The Colonist believed that the past had been forgotten, and he flattered himself with visions of reigning over the future ruins of the brothers’ power, which they would destroy themselves. Everything would have to be put into place to achieve this abominable outcome. Yet what was beyond the capabilities of a man who had, through cowardly selfishness, betrayed France, his homeland, and called foreigners to Saint-Domingue? . . .  Romulus did not know how to escape the influence of this pernicious association. Base flatteries and treacherous caresses cheapened the hate in which he had obstinately enclosed himself in order to maintain his innocence and purity. Weakness put him at the mercy of his enemy. He let himself be carried away by a torrent of seductions that diverted him from his obligations and separated him from his brother. Stella, who intuitively knew of the brothers’ coming trials, had foretold the division that placed between them the schemes of the Colonist: at the time, the two brothers kept silent out of respect for her, but they doubted that such a thing was even possible. Their hearts, when asked, told them that they would never be parted. And yet they no longer got along. Misunderstanding, to the point of causing an explosion, gave way to a chill that was only a sinister warning of what was to come. The Colonist’s influence was real, profound, and grew more dangerous as the older brother denied it, all the while submitting to it. The horizon grew dark. Remus thought that he should try to summon the storm. He wanted at least to be at peace with his conscience. Therefore, taking the initiative to begin a frank and affectionate conversation, he said: “Brother, you are distancing yourself from me. You are abandoning that friendship in whose warmth we have always lived. What did I do to you? Why such a change? Explain yourself.” “Why do I need explain myself?” answered Romulus. “This change of which you speak is only in your imagination.” “Brother, you have delivered yourself defenseless to our enemy. He held out his hand, which is stained with the blood of our mother, and you took it. This is evil. By requiring us to approach him with moderation, Stella did not mean us to accord him a confidence of which he is unworthy. This confidence can be placed only in a faithful and reliable [ 76 ]

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friend. The new alliance that you have formed is reprehensible. Fear what will follow. Think of the misfortunes that have been predicted!” “You incriminate me for your pleasure! My heart reproaches nothing.” “Brother,” Remus continued, without paying much attention to the denial, “you cannot be the friend of the Colonist without ceasing to be mine, and ceasing to belong to yourself. You will be obliged to sacrifice your ideas, convictions, and your will to his own. This will happen soon unless an unforeseen circumstance enlightens you. You will divest yourself of your own beneficial passions in order to take on his. But alas! You will repent only to yourself.” “Your dreams are those of a sorrowful spirit. Beware of them, I advise you.” “Brother, you are succumbing to the temptation of evil. You are opening your heart to deception. You are lending a complacent ear to the denunciatory words of our enemy. You obey his perverse suggestions. You repudiate the most saintly of your affections. All because his hold on you is irresistible.” “This is not true.” “You will protect his selfish views. You will support his ambitious projects. You will share in his guilty prospects. You will maintain his reputation. You will add to his power. In a word, you will be the instrument of his criminal fortune because you already depend upon the example of his conduct.” “It is not true, I tell you.” “It is easier to deny than to prove false the truth that I claim. If, however, you were sincere in your disavowal, if you only carried the influence of this enemy unwillingly, it would take you only the slightest act of will to break this yoke. Then we would be protected from this evil that I suspect. Oh, brother! Recall the tale that our mother loved to tell. It is a tale whose moral is striking. “Listen: The fig tree had provoked the anger of heaven, and was rendered sterile and cursed to creep upon the ground, the very image of mediocrity. One day in the forest, the fig tree spoke to his neighboring trees, calling upon their pity to support his weak branches. The trees refused mercilessly because they knew of his malice and his innate depravity. All of them knew this except the good and honest elm who, touched by the fig’s request, bent over with paternal kindness and invited the [ 77 ]

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fig tree to ascend. No sooner had the elm assented to the fig tree’s wish than the fig climbed up, spread his branches, and multiplied his limbs, quickly reaching the summit of the elm. From there, the fig smothered the elm with his rage, and embedded himself in his heart, devouring his essence. The elm languished and dried out; eventually he died. The cursed fig tree, taking on the life of this cadaver, then became the largest tree in the forest.”XI Romulus paid little attention to this fraternal warning. He persisted in his blindness and offered the Colonist all the opportunities that he espied to reestablish his infernal rule. And this is what happened.

[ 78 ]

Colonial Machiavellianism

The Colonist, like the fig tree that exploited a confidence too easily gained, dominated Romulus and made him an accomplice to his shadowy politics. He persuaded Romulus that his brother was an enemy who had to be defeated because Remus was unyielding, enterprising, and envious of his brother’s authority. Why did he envy this authority? Someone other than the Colonist would have been embarrassed to ask. It was because the brother that he slandered was overseeing a portion of the colony and had created an almost independent position for himself. Despite this, Remus had never contested his brother’s authority or hesitated to obey him. His conduct refuted any hint of envy or jealousy. Moreover, since he was held in high esteem and looked upon favorably by the Metropole—as was his brother—what reason had Remus to envy Romulus? The power that they each exercised was in no way incompatible with the harmony that had always existed between them. These two powers touched without colliding. Clearly, the supposed jealousy that the Colonist wanted to prove did not, in fact, exist. He therefore had to find it elsewhere: his spirit, infected by the most odious of prejudices, found cause for jealously in these precise prejudices. “You differ from your brother in the color of your skin,” said the Colonist to Romulus. “You are of a shade darker than he: this is why he believes you to be morally beneath him, and why it pains him to be commanded by you. He is audacious and bold. You have everything to fear from him. Hurry to defeat him. Your security requires it.” It may be surprising that Romulus would be gullible enough to fall into the trap of this crude lie, but the Colonist’s own insolence—of which he dared make a weapon—was itself all the more astonishing be[ 79 ]

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cause his own epidermis was of a color so dissimilar to that of the man whom he indoctrinated by calling him friend. A vile question, the vilest that has ever been raised among men, is without a doubt that question vulgarly called “color.” It contains within it a proposition whose simple articulation is absurd; it is consequently useless and even ridiculous to discuss. The raison d’être of slavery and prejudice, which form its hideous retinue, are well known. They both rely upon insatiable greed. In order to torture the unfortunate Africans without remorse, the clever masters obscured their crime with sophistry, fallaciously maintaining that the Africans were inferior to others within the human species just because they were black. Many others, who were not themselves masters—no doubt to their chagrin—said and wrote it. However, this supposed inferiority is so little demonstrated that we are convinced that even the inventors never really believed it. Does nature privilege one color over another? Which animal do we judge based on the characteristics of its coat? The prejudice of complexion is meanspirited foolishness; hatred based on color is a remarkable lie. Man hates others—if he knows how to hate—for that which others have and for that which he has not: value and virtue. Man does not hate because of color. Let us curse these diabolical inventions, based in the Machiavellianism of the colonists. They were deadly even to their inventors . . . • Romulus adopted the prejudices expressed by his false friend, and he became suspicious and hostile while Remus took on an air of superiority, defying the Colonist who had hidden behind his brother. A violent and murderous shock would soon take place between the sons of the African, who had been so tightly united and were now divided by the machinations of a cowardly enemy. This enemy pushed the older brother against the younger in the interest of a policy whose goals we have already explained. No human power could have averted the approaching catastrophe, not even Stella, the sublime incarnation of the divine, the brothers’ guardian angel. At the last moment, the brothers turned to her: not together, as they had done during their beautiful days of confidence and friendship, but separately, hiding from one another as if they were enemies. They asked for her assistance and each tried to obtain her favor over the other. What [ 80 ]

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use would be the young woman’s benevolent intervention in this poisoned quarrel amid the growing agitation of these parties? If her previous advice, so wise and generously given, had not been able to warn against this unfortunate extreme, what could her simple mediation accomplish today? She would be thus obliged to choose sides, to adopt a banner, to advocate for one cause: but which? Romulus’s cause was decisively not the best. The Colonist was too personally involved for it to be moral. Nevertheless, did not this son of the African, for whom victory would be so costly, merit some pity? Remus’s cause was just. He opposed the reestablishment of that impious domination: he challenged and tried to intimidate the perfidious adversary who was furnishing his brother with poisoned arms. It was a legitimate case of defense, but the cause was lost from the start. Stella knew this. She did not want to embrace the cause of the younger brother just to assure his triumph. What would have become of the valuable lesson provided to those who are called to know and appreciate good only after they have done evil and suffered for it? Prevented from acting by these considerations, the young woman said nothing, no matter what the two brothers—whom she loved equally— did. She had to maintain neutrality, even though she very much wanted to intervene between these two men who were ready to come to blows. Neutrality vexed her sorely. The blood that was going to spill was the blood of civil war, which the soil of a country never drinks without disgust. This blood, when Stella thought of it, terrified her. She would have fled Saint-Domingue, just as she had fled Paris, if she could have brought herself to abandon the arms that she had volunteered to guard. Her refuge was the mountain grotto, from which she could only watch this battle between brothers.

[ 81 ]

Love and Rivalry

After their last visit with Stella, Romulus and Remus were less prepared to reconcile than ever. The virgin of the mountain refused to choose sides, and in this refusal the brothers found a new reason to declare war on each other. The path of battle seemed the best and swiftest way to sway the young woman. A deplorable change had taken place in their hearts: they no longer loved Stella as one loves God, with selflessness and abnegation; they loved her for themselves, for the advantages that would come from her precious support, and they ardently coveted her love, each one excluding the other. Divine love is tender, generous, and noble; human love is harsh, narrow, and selfish. This depraved sense of love made the brothers rivals. The brothers calculated the probabilities of war in their dreams of ambition, each according to his own hopes. They also convinced themselves that Stella, despite her scruples, would be forced to crown and side with the victor, to endow him with her divine power, as if it could be separated from justice and forced by victory to prostitute itself to crime. They remembered nothing: their unhappy childhoods, their first work, the battles on the mountain, their actions against the English, their first pitfalls, the perils that they had braved together, the successes achieved due to their common effort. All was erased from their memory. In this moment, they even forgot that they were brothers. Deaf to the maternal lessons of Marie the African and to the enlightened advice of Stella, the daughter of heaven, they would madly compromise the glory and military fortune that they had acquired. They even risked compromising their own existence, which had been devoted to a duty whose sacred nature meant that it belonged not to them. The brothers needed to exercise restraint, and each was tormented by this [ 82 ]

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necessity. They lacked only the opportunity to draw sword from sheath, and it would not take long for such an occasion to present itself. Several French administrators had arrived in the colony, one after another, since the departure of the man who died faithful to Liberty. Each acted in turn on behalf of the Colonist, speaking his words and preaching disharmony, further agitating Romulus against Remus. The last of these colonial officials—the man who had the sad honor of sparking civil war in Saint-Domingue—arrived at the end of the foreign war, at almost the exact moment that the two brothers were arranging the evacuation of the English army from the island that they had defended so well. They had maintained it intact for France. The agent found the brothers too empowered to belittle them. The radiance of their victories was reflected in their titles. Their records were incontestable: the facts needed no interpretation. He therefore did not try to lessen the power with which the men were vested. Theirs was a military force more real than the moral force which stemmed from his own character and mission. He had to achieve his goals in a different manner. Leaders often attain power by relying upon their weapons, and they draw on their successes to shatter the legal authority over them if it acts as an obstacle. Such was the case for the sons of the African. The French official understood this, but he did not show his fear. His confidence was his only strength. He met with the two brothers, during which time he tried to add to Romulus’s jealousy by spending more time with Remus, thus showing favor for one over the other. These men had become powerful and at the same time dangerous because it was possible that they were secretly aiming for independence. The forces at their disposal were beyond comparison. There was only one way to thwart their ambitious plans—to divide and pit them against one another—to cause their doubled power to fight against itself and, logically, to destroy itself. The official did not hesitate to use this tactic. He was of the same mind as the Colonist who, on his own side, was pushing with all his might for a civil war to restore slavery. The French administrator must have believed his ruse to have worked, for after the meeting of which we just spoke, Romulus—of his own accord—confessed in a letter to his jealousy of Remus. This first victory assured the accomplishment of the rest. All the administrator had to do [ 83 ]

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was be prudent. He did not, however, know how to exercise enough caution to assure the success of his policy. Thrown into the middle of a dark labyrinth, he met unexpected difficulties, became troubled, and ended up clashing with Romulus, who forced him to leave Saint-Domingue. Obviously, this result was not the one for which he had planned; but he realized his mistake too late. Things became complicated with such speed that, faced suddenly with an insurrection, he wrote to Romulus to ask for help, even though the insurrection was Romulus’s own work. The official was violently removed from the difficulty in which he found himself. The truth seemed to him threatening and terrible. He had to leave. Upon departure, he sent Remus a dispatch releasing him from Romulus’s authority. He accused Romulus of treason against France. He maintained Remus under his command, however, the limits of which had been set according to the law that delineated the country’s administrative regions. The area assigned to Remus’s control was decided upon arbitrarily, and in a way that was more restrictive than had previously been ordered by the official. The result was that Marie’s youngest son’s jurisdiction was limited. He attempted to widen his authority by taking possession of the territory on which it depended. Romulus was also not to perceive this as an infringement upon his authority. The official’s decision was that of a legitimate authority, and he followed the formal legal provisions. Remus was right to rely upon it, for it gave him legitimacy. Nonetheless, Romulus had not rebelled against an absent authority just to follow its decisions, especially when it might threaten his power. This question of limits exasperated the two rivals; it was the moment that each had been anticipating in order to finish their quarrel. Romulus was eager to send an army to occupy the cities under the command of his brother. Remus, in his own right, sent troops to defend these cities. The first that they reachedXII became the theatre of a bloody battle in which they each gained an advantage. Then they marched on a village further away,XIII one that was relinquished without resistance. Remus reached the garrison and strengthened it, which is where his military operations stopped and his fall began. Amongst the population controlled by Romulus, even including the officers of his army, Remus had many supporters who were ready to aid his cause if only he would follow through on his victories. All these [ 84 ]

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hearts were given over to Remus; they knew of the monstrous association that his brother had formed with the Colonist, whose pernicious doctrine counseled violence and encouraged slavery. They expected that Remus would use his first wins to march ahead. Victory would have been easy with so much support. Instead, Remus refused it with scorn and condemned himself to defeat. He left to the supporters those passions that could not be hidden, which erupted violently and were drowned in blood.

[ 85 ]

The Spirit of the Nation

Why did Remus, given his ardent courage and invincible audacity, halt in the middle of his successful conquests? It was as if he wanted only to elicit respect for his command, to conquer disputed cities, and to protect his territory. Did he find it repugnant to finish a triumph that had already cost so much blood? Had his ambition suddenly quieted in order to hear the words of brotherly love? Why was he so tepid after having been so fierce? Why did he fail to increase the size of his army, which was limited to a small number of brave fighters? What confidence did he possess in himself, in his own worth, that he found it useless to acquire new soldiers? As the leader of a devoted people, why did he not stir these populations who were as interested in preventing an invasion of their territory as he? Why did he not imitate his brother who, not content to leave him to the public’s hatred, raised solders en masse and made the necessary preparations for an all-out war? Able to conquer, the younger son began to demonstrate behavior befitting one who prefers to be conquered; he seemed to fear less the throwing down of his gauntlet than the unwelcome favors of the victory of his flag. Why? This is what history has not told us. History has indicated possible causes for the events to which Remus fell victim through his own fault, but this mistake remains unexplained. Indeed, it is inexplicable to anyone ignorant of the secret and powerful ideas that prevailed in the mind of Romulus’s brother. History can tell only what it knows. Its sight, limited to the horizon of natural things, has trouble knowing the truth that shines behind that horizon. The miraculous is not within its domain. History leaves the field of mystery to the Novel. Pleased that it has only to tell the tale of the solemn act tied to Remus’s hidden motive, the Novel tells the secret story thus: [ 86 ]

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On the same day that Remus entered the village that had been turned over to him without a fight, he was determined to march ahead. The troops had received the order to prepare for the following day. That night, Remus roamed the temporary barracks and offered a few friendly words to the soldiers. He was next seen walking past the line of the sentinels and wandering into the depths of a wooded area. The general was meditating on his plans for war; he needed to be alone with his thoughts. No one followed him. Remus slowly continued his solitary ramble. Night had fallen all at once; it was a dark one, without stars, and the sky seemed to hang heavy with clouds. Reaching the edge of the woods, Remus turned to retrace his steps when he heard a voice, coming from the middle of the forest, call his name. Walking toward the sound, he soon found himself in front of a man who was unusually tall and majestically dressed. His brow was furrowed and his head was half-covered by the tree leaves that surrounded him. With an imperious gesture, the man ordered Remus to follow him. They abandoned the marked path and walked deeper into the thickness of the woods until they arrived at a clearing made by a fallen old mahogany tree. When the tree originally fell, it broke many other trees around it, but they were now coming to life in new sprouts. There, on the mahogany’s peeled trunk, sat this mysterious host of the forest. Even in this position, he towered over Remus, who stood a few steps away. A deep calm and solemn silence reigned over the forest. They could hear the rhythmic sound of water falling from leaves in the humidity of the night. The drops seemed to be keeping track of the fleeting hours, as if to form a natural water clock. A few minutes passed before Remus could respond to any questions. It seemed as if the giant had paused so as to offer the youngest son of the African the chance to take in all of his features. This study filled Remus’s heart with a holy admiration for the extraordinary being in front of him. He was wise, venerable, and intelligent, a sublime mixture of authority, grace, and strength. The giant’s masculine face was similar to that of an alabaster statue lit from within: it glowed in the darkness and was remarkable for the pureness of its lines and the beauty of its contours. It was hard to maintain eye contact with this man whose vibrant and penetrating stare animated his noble face, which was framed by long, flowing hair. His sonorous voice had the [ 87 ]

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velvety sound of an organ. It inspired not fear, but instead a religious respect that took hold of Remus as soon as these words vibrated in his ear: “Young man, do you know why I called you?” “No,” the brother of Romulus responded humbly. “I came to find out.” “You are the head of the army stationed nearby. Hostilities have commenced between you and your brother. You have stifled the voice of nature; you have become enemies. Yet your quarrel does not concern me. I concern myself little with the wrongs of the past and with those who may have committed them. You have your conscience to judge your actions. I am not your judge. I am not asking you to tell me the goal that led you to war: why should I care to know? This goal can only be shameful in the eyes of the Creator who gave you both the same mother so that you would be friends and brothers. What I have come to say is that your army should suspend its aggressive march. True, you have not yet arrived at your limits and your command extends past the city that you occupy. Of no importance! You will not go any further. This is my will!” “Your will? . . . ,” responded Remus with his characteristic petulance, ready to rebel against any oppression. “Yes, my will! . . . ,” repeated the giant in a thunderous voice. “What is surprising about the fact that I impose my will upon you? Do you not recognize that my superior size is enough to require you to obey? I told you in the beginning that you were going to receive an order. An order is not a request: it assumes that the one who gives it has the right to demand its execution. Have you, by chance, the impudence to resist?” Remus could not defy the angry look that accompanied the giant’s words. He lowered his head and did not respond. The powerful speaker continued more softly: “Young man, I wish you no harm. You are necessary for the accomplishment of my plan. Submit your will to mine obediently. You will not advance; you will not reinforce your army and you will not call on the male population to follow your orders, arm themselves, and join your cause, as is your intention. Your inaction, I know, will be to the advantage of your brother, who will soon unite his forces and begin a formidable offensive against you. You will have thus renounced war’s profit. This war, however, is ungodly. Do not regret lost profit that will only bring you misfortune. Young man, believe me: there are crowns [ 88 ]

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of laurels sadder than those of cypress, and chariots of triumph more dismal than those that carry the dead. Prevent yourself from aspiring to a glory that requires sacrificing the tenderest feelings of nature, a glory that only can be attained at the price of your brother’s blood! . . .” These words, forcefully pronounced, inspired a pious elation in the soul of the warrior. The giant suspected this and said: “Remus, you have already done enough for your reputation. You have shown yourself to be intrepid in battle; you have valiantly chased foreigners from this land. No one would contest the eminent military strengths that make you a distinguished warrior. You have justly merited the title of a brave fighter. Without a doubt, the courage that led you to defy death on the battlefield is grand and beautiful. Men deify this courage. There is, however, another kind of courage that exceeds this one in grandeur and beauty: it is the courage of self-denial. Many can be energetic and resolute in the presence of danger that threatens only their life. Few have the strength to brave the kind of misfortune that threatens their pride. You, for example, whose military virtues are known, if I were to leave you free to act by saying simply: consent to being conquered, accept in advance the humiliating conditions of retreat, surrender your pride, sacrifice what is within your rights, offer yourself as a victim to redeem the useless spilling of blood and to appease the Heavens that you and your brother have angered—would you be capable of such abnegation? Would you do it?” Remus, who possessed every kind of courage, responded without hesitation: “I would.” “Well then! I order nothing more. I leave you to yourself. Be faithful to your word. A voluntary sacrifice is worthy of highest praise. Accomplish it all. It will be beneficial to you in the future.” The giant disappeared at the same time that a furious storm fell upon the forest. His last words were muffled by the sound of roaring thunder. The torrents of rain that the clouds had held in the long-darkened sky fell suddenly. The rain was accompanied by a sudden wind that tormented the trees, making them sway and twist. The storm, erupting as if from a sky that was angry with Remus, was a sinister omen. Yet the hero took no notice, and left the forest without losing his resolve to sacrifice himself. Who had communicated this resolution to Remus? The Genie of the Forest, the Spirit of the Nation! [ 89 ]

Civil War

The first shots that the brothers fired at each other in Saint-Domingue sounded with a mournful report. Marie the African trembled in her tomb. Stella withdrew to the depths of her grotto. The country was a vast arena open to Romulus and Remus; they descended into a war full of rage and passion without anyone to stand between them, without anyone to stop the fratricide. The Colonist was the only witness to this duel to the death. He never took his eyes off the combatants, watching them like a bird of prey gliding over the battlefield. He never lost sight of the warriors destined for his meal. As we already know, Remus stopped after the first blows. He sacrificed himself according to a secret plan that was stronger than his passions and more decisive than right. He abandoned the gains that he had made and held a strict defensive. Romulus took advantage of his adversary’s inaction; he recruited more forces and continued to attack. The troops that he launched against Remus were repelled several times, despite the immense superiority of their numbers. They returned to the spot from where they had begun; but they were, thanks to new recruits, so much more numerous now that the difference in size between their forces and the handful of intrepid men who opposed them was vast. In the meanwhile, the noise of the victory spread and electrified the souls sympathetic to Remus’s cause. Everyone believed that he would continue his campaign. This hope encouraged friends to join in, and simultaneous insurrections broke out across Romulus’s army. Romulus then had to spare some of his military might to quiet these insurgencies. It was an opportune moment. Would Remus take the offensive? He had only a few demoralized troops to lead. Friends who had compromised themselves for his cause reached out to him and his soldiers [ 90 ]

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wanted to push on. He had to respect this double wish: honor and his interest required him to do so. Was it possible that he did not want his side to triumph? Could he allow the men armed for him to die when he had the means to save them? No! Surely he would continue. He was not afraid; he was only indecisive. Circumstances would help him decide. Such was the common understanding, but still he remained . . . He was deaf to the voices that called to him, inert to the events surrounding him, and indifferent to his fate. Romulus went in person to quell insurrections at their source, and Remus, who did not take one step ahead and sought to make no diversion to help his followers in arms, had permitted his brother freedom of movement. After taking the lives of those whom he knew or presumed to be hostile to his cause, spreading consternation and fear everywhere, Romulus turned his terrible power on his brother, whom he found in the same place and with the same attitude as before. Having had such a substantial opportunity for conquest placed before him, Remus’s enduring immobility implied that he doubted the legitimacy of his cause. He gave reason to believe in Romulus, because his brother’s troops were resolutely engaged in a battle that they had, until then, found repugnant. These troops swooped down on Remus’s men. Yet this small, strikingly valorous army exceeded its abilities. For a long time it held out against forces that were ten times its size; but in the end, numbers mattered. The small army yielded ground to its enemies . . . then surged and gained ground, then yielded again, just until the moment when it was crushed . . . From then on, resistance was not more than heroic retreat, during which Remus could be followed by the trail of blood that he left behind. Romulus had to conquer all of the cities from which he had retreated, and he left them all reduced to ashes. At that time, fire was a weapon, and unfortunately desperation made use of it in this war, ennobling it far less than the Russian Herostratus who, in Europe a few years later, used fire to combat a foreign invasion.24 The battle between the two brothers continued without a truce.25 It had just ended in favor of Remus when representatives from France, with the order to end hostilities, landed in Saint-Domingue. It is likely that France intervened in the troubles of this period so late because leaving events to sort themselves out would allow them to do [ 91 ]

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nothing but affirm the results. This internal war, in which France now seemed interested, had lasted more than a year; no one authorized from the motherland had come to try to end it. The messengers of peace, who arrived at the denouement of this bloody drama, seemed to have been sent only to congratulate the winner. Romulus received from these representatives the title of Commander in Chief of the Colonial Army. This title, conferred upon him by the Metropole, as well as the de facto power that he attained from his victories, made him omnipotent. He triumphantly crossed the territory that had been given to his brother. Rural residents lined the major roads to greet him when he passed. City dwellers gathered in crowds around him. Everywhere he listened to sermons about obedience and fidelity, and heard grandiose tributes to the good fortune of war. The Colonist was certainly not the last to exalt the glory of his conquering friend. He organized sumptuous parties that the favored Romulus attended with joy, and at which the Colonist celebrated, in Romulus’s name, his own victory.

[ 92 ]

Civil War: The Last Episode

Remus came out of the combat bloodied and bruised. He completely stepped aside. Romulus became drunk on a victory that caused him to grow conceited thanks to his newfound rights. His ambition had no limits. Soon, having boarded the ship of his hopes with the Colonist at the helm, Romulus turned his course away from France. The port was nearby and the weather was friendly. He was only partially disguised. The project and its goal were identifiable from afar, as was the powerseeking adventurer. Suddenly, the Spirit of Storms set a hurricane in motion to sink the ship, the loss of which would initiate the loss of the colony. Before this storm, the Colonist decided that he wanted no trouble from Remus’s friends, several of whom still remained in the region that he had governed. Calculating according to that bizarre logic that it is only from the dead that we have nothing to fear, the Colonist resorted to a plot to make these men disappear; otherwise, their existence might jeopardize the plans that he held for Romulus. The Colonist planned to feign a conspiracy against the current head of the colony, thereby luring those whom he wished to defeat. He would set out deadly traps and direct everything according to the skill that came naturally to one so steeped in the art of treachery. He would lead them to the point where they would initiate an act of hostility, a flagrant attack, and just at this moment, he would subtly abandon his own role in the conspiracy and betray the unfortunate men who had trusted his word. He would cease to be an associate or accomplice and instead become an informant. The Colonist’s plan was as subtle as it was cowardly, but it would give Romulus the pretext to strike his many supposed en[ 93 ]

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emies, an excuse to end the truce that had been agreed upon before Romulus’s arrival in the newly conquered region. Thanks to this supposed favor that he would perform for the leader, the Colonist would have yet another title with which to compromise the integrity of the current administration. In this way, France would be forced to return, trample the current government, and resuscitate slavery. The plan was executed promptly. The Colonist began with one of Remus’s followers, telling him that the lost cause would be won in the end, and that France was sympathetic to the fate of their conquered chief. Help from France would soon arrive, and Remus would regain the power that his brother had usurped. To prove the truth of his story, the Colonist showed falsified letters to the man whom he had chosen as his instrument. He announced that an insurrection would be necessary to support quickly and efficiently the good intentions of the mother country; the reckless man accepted the honor that the Colonist, the traitor, bestowed upon him: he agreed to be the leader of the revolt. The traitor modestly proposed to be his lieutenant. They agreed on the measures needed to ensure the success of their conspiracy. The Colonist promised to pay its costs while Remus’s friend took on the responsibility of recruiting soldiers. The time and place of the armed revolt were set. All swore an oath of allegiance. Honor was of the utmost importance to this oath, but the word was empty of all meaning for the Colonist, the apostle of dishonesty and crime! Without wasting any time, Remus’s supporter warned his family, friends, and a large number of people what was to be done. His social standing added to his influence. He was courageous. People rallied around him. The enterprise was quickly underway, but the Colonist had not yet fulfilled his promise. They were still waiting for arms and ammunition. Nevertheless, the movement continued to attract supporters and the insurrection grew in size. No one doubted the Colonist’s good intentions. Who could have guessed that the web that he had woven concealed a trap? The possibility of betrayal does not often occur to those who are not made to betray. On the chosen day, the Colonist, Romulus’s official agent, came to review the army of which he was second in command. He counted the soldiers as if he planned to procure them arms, but in fact he was counting their number so that he could give the authorities an exact figure. He [ 94 ]

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was going to divulge the secret of the conspiracy to the authorities immediately after his departure from the camp. While the calm and confident conspirators awaited his return, they were denounced, betrayed, and sold. News of the insurrection triggered the warning cannon, signaling a general call to arms. Troops were dispatched against the rebels; in a way, these soldiers were the messengers who announced the perfidy of their accomplice, the Colonist. The rebels were prepared to give the sign for revolt, still relying on the promise of weapons to come, when they heard the drumroll and cannon fire. It was a sign that the authorities had anticipated them, a sign of destruction rather than battle because they had no way to defend themselves. Troops appeared on the horizon. It was useless to resist. The insurgents dispersed; their leader blew out his brains. A hunt for the fleeing men was organized. In a short amount of time, they were arrested and the majority were punished by death. Further arrests were made the following day and for several days afterward. Romulus’s forces did not stop with merely those who were seen in the insurgents’ camp or those who were known to have participated in the plot: in the name of prevention, arrests extended to those whose criminality was merely in intent, as well as to those who were supposed to have or who had proven to have sympathies for Remus. The administrative center of the southern region, a city neighboring the one where the insurgents had gathered, soon saw its prisons overflow. Prisoners were even placed in the holds of warships; almost all of these men were drowned. One night, the ships sailed off and dumped their human cargo into the open sea. For fear that the ocean might return its victims to shore, cannonballs were attached to their necks and the prisoners were stabbed before being thrown into the water. As for those prisoners kept in the city, some were shot at the city crossroads, while others were sent to cities in the North and West, where they shared the same fate. A very small number of prisoners were spared, hidden as troops in Romulus’s uniform. The Colonist, who through his cowardly artifice had caused so many innocents to perish in such dreadful circumstances, borrowed against his life once more: sooner or later he would have to pay this enormous debt of blood! [ 95 ]

Results of the Civil War

In vain, Romulus had vowed to force Stella to support him after his victory. Now he did not dare present himself, with his blood-covered laurels, in front of the virgin to demand their consecration. Common sense, at least on this point, had returned to him. He knew that Stella would never agree under such duress. The moment he started toward her, he remembered all that she had told him of her previous life: the sorrows that she had suffered under the Colonist and her virtuous resistance, which not even imprisonment could conquer. The memory made him stop. Feeling guilty, Romulus abandoned the idea of visiting the young woman. Before the war, she had been the dream of his eager love; now, she was the holy object of his terror. Armed with her virtue, the austere virgin appeared like Nemesis armed with her whip, torturing his thoughts.26 He closed his eyes so as not to gaze upon the mountain. Thus doubly blinded, he began to establish an absolutist government. The Colonist vigorously aided him in constituting his new order of things; he drew up all the acts of executive power and cooperated in the formation of the procedures for interior organization. A large number of decisions were announced, laws were published, decrees were made, and rules were put into effect, all under the control of Romulus’s evil genius. It was he who was the author of the famous “rural system” that was established at this time, a system which differed from slavery only in name. In creating this system, the Colonist had himself and his fortune in mind. This was natural, especially for such a profoundly selfish spirit. He told himself that the State could not be rich without him or above him, and that his interests took precedence over those of the country. [ 96 ]

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Since his lands had been deserted, his plantations burned, and his slaves freed, he believed that, for the greatest good of the country, it was necessary to correct all these wrongs as soon as possible. The country obviously did not include the unfortunate farmers who were called by force to the plantations, and upon whom the economy depended. The farmers were constrained to work under constant threat of being beaten to death, without relief. It also did not include Romulus, even as highly as he thought of himself, and as necessary as he seemed for the installation of this system that was taking the country back to the days of the Ancien Régime. Romulus had defeated his brother for nothing; he had bloodied his victory and taken upon himself the horrible results of the trap set by the Colonist. Vainly he raised himself above all who surrounded him, yet colonial society refused to admit him as a member. In their eyes, he was nothing more than an instrument of oppression that, if necessary, would be crushed. In fact, the country was a political unit represented by European interests, specifically those of the Colonist, to which the eldest son of the African was dedicated. To be more worthy, he zealously exaggerated his evil works, rushing blindly toward the precipice. At last, the moment arrived to give the government its constitution, which would provide its security and definitive form.27 As blind as Romulus was about his position and his right to accomplish all that he planned to do, he drew back instinctively from this enormous task. He could have recklessly disregarded the unwelcomed authority of France’s agents, expelled them from the colony, made a treaty with the English and Americans that had secret provisions, even struck coins in his own image. Yet this—the creation of a constitution—this was a direct attack on the sovereignty of France; it was something that France would never excuse. This fearful reflection had a powerful, albeit brief, effect on Romulus. It altered his ideas: he would need to appear loyal to the Metropole while being, in reality, independent of it. The Colonist did not understand affairs thus. For him, the constitution was useful only because it would unfailingly cause the downfall of whoever made the error of declaring himself the author. This fault would be added to all the other mistakes that Romulus had previously made, which had been tolerated but not pardoned. They would all be punished together. [ 97 ]

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Romulus’s demanding associate, the absolute master of his spirit, prevented him from retracting. Once the constitution was complete, the only thing that the Colonist allowed him to do, out of pity for Romulus’s weakness, was to send it to France for approval. This was a ridiculous measure, since the constitution would be put into effect on the island before it reached the mainland. The Colonist presided over an assembly that worked on the constitution for three months. As soon as it was completed, it was delivered to Romulus so that he could issue it. The pomp and circumstance with which it was published in the capital proved how important the Colonist found this work. This importance stemmed less from its inherent value than from the result it was destined to produce. Indeed, it offered nothing remarkable in the way of fundamental laws. Only a few grand principles were formulated in its articles. The questions of religion and freedom were considered. These are divine words when they are inscribed upon tables of truth; yet when they serve only to augment a code of lies, they represent derision and blasphemy. The rest of the constitution meant little. That which already existed undermined that which had been written. The Act was read at the national altar, between the speech of the Colonist, who commented on it, and the speech of Romulus, who praised it. It was saluted with loud and enthusiastic cries. A high-ranking officer carried it to Paris. The French government considered the constitution both an attack and an insult. It was decided that an army would avenge the Metropole and replace the yoke of slavery upon the shoulders of Saint-Domingue’s affranchis. France was well positioned for such an undertaking: she had just, albeit momentarily, reconciled with her most formidable enemy.28 Now, all of her attention could be turned to this far-flung Expedition. An immense fleet was prepared. Troops were selected and readied in large numbers. The general who was to command the French Expedition was chosen, and the date of departure was set. It would be soon . . .29 Woe to you, Romulus! . . .  The Colonist, as we have seen, was not mistaken in his calculations. The constitution that he had helped to write, aided by the grumbling of his Parisian friends, hastened a vast deployment of force against the au-

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dacious power that had established itself in Saint-Domingue. Hastened is indeed the correct word, because even without the constitution as motive, the French Expedition would still have taken place. The officials, as previously stated, had prepared everything long before. In concert with the Colonist, they had provoked a civil war so that France could reinstate slavery. That which happened in 1802 was always supposed to happen. Yet by advancing the timing, the tenacious enemy of Liberty had also hastened his own death. Romulus turned to the Colonist in irritation when he learned of the unfortunate effect that his constitution had produced in Paris. Little kept him from lashing out at his depraved friend. A natural movement of the heart brought Romulus back to his brother; it was the same sentiment that detached him from the author of their fatal rupture. In the face of such danger, he bitterly regretted his past behavior. He repented having sacrificed Remus to his vain ideas of domination and for depriving himself of Remus’s loyal support. However, this wrong had only to be forgiven; for it was written that Romulus, after having conquered, would in the end be conquered himself, and that, in his distress, would discover that Remus held no grudge. He would rush to take the hand that his younger brother held out to save them both from the shipwreck of their freedom. When God punishes, he often proceeds by analogy. He makes the penance similar to the sin so that even the least attentive cannot mistake the meaning of His retribution. The lesson reserved for Romulus was to benefit an entire people. This is why Providence wanted it to be eloquent, severe, and grand. The oldest son of Marie the African had exploited his power to use it against his brother; likewise, France would use its power against him. Romulus would be a victim of his own injustice and unnatural dissention. He would learn that equity is a law of God that should never be transgressed, and that unity alone offers the solid guarantee of peace and prosperity to members of the same family. Let us cease this short reflection so as to follow the chain of events and arrive at the glorious time when the two brothers, friends again, unite their arms and their hearts to conquer those conquerors of Europe, to win on the battlefield of their nation. The war for independence would heal the wounds of civil war.

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In the meanwhile, Romulus, not knowing his fate, worries. He knows not how to proceed. Preoccupied, he gives no orders and organizes no defense. He seems already defeated . . . We will, nonetheless, see him resist, and brilliant actions will dignify his fall.

[ 100 ]

The French Expedition

Eighty-four warships carrying twenty-five thousand elite soldiers left France for the coast of Saint-Domingue, arriving there near the end of January 1802. Romulus, still perplexed, had made no preparations for war. It is possible that he had placed his faith in Parisian newspaper articles that were written to beguile him; he may have believed that the mother country would be lenient toward him in recognition of his past service. Perhaps to make it better for himself, Romulus published a proclamation before the arrival of the Expeditionary Army, asking the inhabitants of Saint-Domingue to receive the Army with filial love. However, as soon as he saw the immense fleet, Romulus lost all hope. The appearance of such force contradicted the pacific claims of the Metropole. Lowering his head sadly, he addressed the approaching ships with these somber words: “You bring the war to me. France is an unnatural mother who desires the destruction of her child. Well! War it will be! I fear no one. If I must die, I will die with honor, as a soldier, and God will take care of my vengeance!” This is how the leader of Saint-Domingue accepted war: without a chance of winning. He allowed himself to be taken amidst indecisiveness, and public sympathy was not with him. He had to succumb: “If only I die bravely!” he told himself as he grabbed his weapons. Several divisions of the fleet were already landing at the island’s ports and soldiers were disembarking. These Frenchvi troops gained the advantage over Romulus’s troops, and ran numerous prisoners of war through with their swords. The Indigènes, in reaction, burned the cities that they could not defend and rushed at the Europeans in battle. vi We call the soldiers of 1802 French in order to distinguish them from their adversaries, the Africans and descendants of Africans, who called themselves Indigènes.

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This struggle, a prologue to the battle that the defenders of Liberty would soon wage against the restorers of slavery, ensued in the following manner: It started with murder. The Expeditionary Army was guilty first. To what end was this cruelty designed? The French from Europe and the French in the colony had a common nationality: why, then, did the attackers not prove themselves more generous? They were, after all, only momentarily the strongest. What did they gain by pushing their adversaries to the point of despair? . . . Desperation sometimes gives birth to wonders, but it is nonetheless terrible in its vengeance. We had already observed this on the island. It did not, however, cause the aggressors to change tactics, for they were confident in the superiority of their weapons and certain of the final result: slavery. Romulus was informed of the death of his imprisoned soldiers. This violation of the rules of war happened in a city not far from where the son of the African was located. He learned about it thanks to a letter written by the same general who had ordered the crime. The general announced it, no doubt hoping to strike terror in Romulus’s heart and to encourage his surrender. His reaction was quite to the contrary. Exasperated, Romulus responded thus to the French general: “I will fight to the death to avenge these brave men, just as I will fight to the death to defend Liberty.”30 He ran to place himself at the head of the forces that he had united against the Expeditionary Army. Nonetheless, the invasion’s progress was quick. Romulus’s troops ceded at various points. He was repelled by the enemy’s bayonet and by the disapproval of the surrounding population. The system of oppression that the complicit friend of the Colonist put in place had made him unpopular with the public. The French were welcomed at the moment of their arrival; the doors of one of the most important cities were opened to them. This was not treason, this was vengeance. The entire southern region organized itself under the flag of the Expeditionary Army. Marie’s oldest son had held particularly strong influence over this area, which previously belonged to his brother. This is where—it is remembered—the Colonist, cowardly and perfidious, delivered so many supposedly dangerous men over to Romulus, men whom Romulus had destroyed. The South, grieving a large number of its children and moaning under a fist of iron, greeted the French as liberators. [ 102 ]

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The West, for the same reasons, conducted itself in the same manner. Only the Northvii remained faithful and loyal to its leader despite the perils of war. This was not because the North had suffered less than the others; the new colonial regime that Romulus instituted had burdened the entire country, and the painful consequences of civil war had made themselves known, more or less, everywhere. The North remained immobile because Romulus held it under his foot. Blessed with the capacity for tremendous activity, the head of the colony had constantly traveled the country before the arrival of the Expedition, in reality living in no one place. Stopping often in the North, he had made this region, more so than any other, used to dreading his authority. Instead of devotion, he inspired fear. As violence does not lead to devotion, the people clung to fear, a feeling as hostile as hatred, but which is really nothing more than silence. It was in the North that Romulus had published his constitution, rendered new decrees, and practically played the role of a sovereign. There, too, he now defied the power of the Metropole, whose formidable battalions he had the honor of keeping at bay. Increasingly, the North would be witness to the acts of his power and the efforts of his courage. The region would see him, in the end, fall . . . It would be a fall that was profound, memorable, and resounding, yet less resounding than the fall of the European power that was now pressing down on the formidable army of the Indigènes, a power that tomorrow would be no more! Romulus chose a central location, a popular neighborhood, where he amassed his troops. From this spot, he directed the operations of a rather vast swath of land. He gave orders and tried to compensate for the disadvantage that his indecision had created in the first moments of war, when his lieutenants had acted on their own and completed what they believed to be a simple military task. The silence and irresolution of the leader are not entirely to blame for the failure of their hasty and erratic defense. The French Army was powerful in numbers and discipline, a discipline that came from the generous and liberal ideas that the Army was assumed to hold, despite the atrocities that it committed upon arrival. vii To simplify our narrative, we adopt the territorial division of the country as it was under Leclerc, who divided the French colony into three departments. The North included Artibonite.

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Romulus was always going to be defeated no matter what he did. The Colonist, taking the place of his brother beside him, gave him no support. All Romulus’s power resided in the soldiers whom he made ministers of his severity. These were the men whom he used to beat farmers with sticks, to maintain the system that was slavery in all but name, a system that had been established for the profit of the Colonist. These soldiers, despite their privileged position as tormentors, were also subject to excessive military despotism. They were indifferent, to say the least, to the fate of the power that they held. Yet, resistance was not as long or unrelenting as it might have been had it been prepared resolutely and rationally, or if superior officers had been warned in advance and given sufficient instructions. This was easy to evaluate, based on the conduct of one of the lieutenantsXIV who was known by a fine name in history. He was told to fight an all-out war and to defend himself with iron and flame . . . This general had just received Romulus’s letter when several warships appeared in front of the city that he commanded.XV Of these ships, one small vessel approached to negotiate, but it was not welcome. The larger ships, loaded with troops to disembark, wanted to force entrance to the port, but the city’s cannons required them to withdraw. The ships went out a bit further and dropped anchor. Troops began unloading and, as soon as they arrived, marched toward the area that Romulus’s troops were defending. Romulus’s lieutenant guessed their intentions and sent a battalion to wait for them at the river crossing. The waters were swollen because of rain. The battalion showed self-restraint. The French were forced to find another ford to cross. They ran into an ambush and were thus slowed. This gave the Indigènes time to evacuate the city that they could no longer hope to keep. Standing tall, this city would be a conquest, a great prize for the enemy. It was thus necessary to burn it so that these Europeans, who were not used to the rigorous climate, would find themselves without shelter. It was a new way of fighting. Romulus’s lieutenant strictly executed the orders and set his own house aflame. The Indigènes organized a fort filled with line troops and national guardsmen a short distance away. The enemy occupied the city that had been reduced to ashes and invited their ships ashore. They soon at[ 104 ]

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tacked. The fort where the Indigènes had retreated crowned the hill that overlooked the river only a few leagues away. They could not be moved. After ardent and unsuccessful efforts, the French were forced to retreat to the city. Thanks to reinforcements who arrived just in time to prevent the French from reaching their ships, the Indigènes began again their offensive. Again, they were beaten. Romulus was engaging in war not because of right or principle; these people were fighting because of the heavy consequences of his mistakes. His soldiers fought without enthusiasm and yet showed exemplary courage. What would happen when these same soldiers had to fight for a possession more precious than life, more dear than honor: freedom! . . . It was again time. Those who wanted to reestablish slavery in Saint-Domingue would have to renounce their mission upon seeing the kind of men they faced. One voice called out from amidst the action and cried to them in vain: Do not do it!

[ 105 ]

The Defense of Crête- à- Pierrot

The unrelenting resistance that Romulus’s forces showed toward the French Army aided in its decision to launch a vigorous campaign against him. The Expeditionary Army’s leader, who was also the Captain General of the colony, wrote to the son of Marie the African before beginning the campaign. He invited Romulus to lay down his arms and submit to the authority of France; he even offered him the position of Lieutenant General to better persuade him. It was a trap; Romulus suspected this, and did not accept the offer. His refusal, aggravated by the losses sustained by the French, made him an outlaw. At the same time, various Army corps received orders to converge on the area that Romulus occupied. Knowing that this area was not well defended, Romulus abandoned it. His lieutenants were obliged to cede several areas to the invading forces. They sought to rejoin him. In the interim, a French division worked to cut off his principal means of communication. Romulus now had only a few hundred disciplined men at his command and a small team of poorly armed peasants. With these forces, he marched toward the enemy. A clash occurred in a mountain gorge.XVI Its violence was equal to its duration. They fought over the passage for six hours. Fighting on foot like a simple soldier, and energetically supported by his troops, Romulus forced the French to retreat. He took advantage of their withdrawal to rally his lieutenants and reassemble his weakened forces. Romulus strengthened defenses at Crête-à-Pierrot—the repute of which dates to this period—and gathered supplies, asking some of his best officers to guard them. Then he left, having been called to take care of other matters.

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The fortress was attacked during Romulus’s absence. A French division, not knowing that it was so heavily guarded, thought that desire alone would give them control of Crête-à-Pierrot. The French soldiers boldly began their assault, but they were stopped by intense gunfire. Surprised, they sought to overcome this unexpected resistance. They retreated, returned, and retreated again. After several hundred of their men had been killed and many others injured so gravely that they could not return to combat, the French made their final retreat in disarray. The noise of this action attracted the heated attention of the enemy, and soon another division arrived. These troops were also taken in by the illusion produced by courage, which stretches the limits of the possible. The troops engaged; they were full of confidence and believed that they could overcome any unforeseen difficulties. Yet the fortress had been better prepared for this new attack than the last. Its second defense was even more admirable. Beforehand, the officer in charge of the Indigènes made his soldiers promise to conquer or die trying. During the fight, he held aloft a flaming ember of wood, ready to reduce the fort to cinders if the Indigènes were weakened. This resolution came from desperation, but thanks to it, the Indigènes prevailed, despite the seemingly overwhelming bravery of their assailants. The second French division sustained considerable losses, including the loss of more than one general. Just as the Indigènes were forcing them back, a third French division arrived and resolutely took position. These were the same troops that they had defeated a few days earlier by taking two generals out of commission. Now they were under the command of another. The gaps in their ranks had been filled and the soldiers had been given rest. The French were returning to avenge the bloody affront. The Indigènes, on the contrary, were already tired; they had been waging war since daybreak. Nevertheless, victory was steadfast. The French tried to take it away with their incredible persistence: twenty times they advanced, bayonets drawn; twenty times they fell back under the murderous firepower from the fortress. The Captain General, who was in charge of these repeated assaults, was struck by a bullet. The division, whose leader was wounded twice, suffered greatly. All of the aggressors’ efforts resulted in nothing more than a humiliating retreat.

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The three battles had the following results: several French corps were defeated in succession, five generals were wounded, and more than one thousand men on the French side were killed. The last of these battles was the most honorable for the Indigène forces. The enemy was convinced of the difficulty of forcing the Indigènes to retreat by brute force alone. Instead, they made the wise decision to stage a siege. While the French gathered the necessary materials, the Indigènes repaired the damages from the struggle and established their forces on a neighboring hill so as to provide support. The adversaries of the French knew what their enemy was thinking. Although they expected to be besieged and conquered in the end, their commitment was firm. They would withdraw only when resistance was materially impossible. An army of twelve thousand men found the Indigènes in this position when they surrounded the fort. The French opened fire, but the Indigènes disabled the battery from which they launched their sudden assault. Lamartinière, an officer of rare bravery, occupied this post.31 A French historian spoke of Lamartinière as a man to whom nature had given a soul rich in moral fiber. Haiti owes a debt of admiration to his memory. With uncommon audacity, this officer braved the assault and forced the assailants to withdraw to their lines, killing two or three hundred. However, they were not able to maintain the stronghold. Cannons were dislodged and barricades were broken. Those who defended the redoubt had proven that it could not be taken by great force: this was enough. The Indigènes abandoned the post and withdrew to their original position. The fort was no less damaged than the stronghold. The garrison was no longer protected, and while there was ammunition within, there were no supplies. It was therefore necessary to evacuate the fortress and pave a path across enemy lines. However, they could not accomplish this without risking half of the garrison. In this case, surrender would be preferable, although no one admitted it. Who would dare think of surrendering at a moment when each soldier was waiting for the new perils that would determine his share of glory? . . .  During the night, the Indigènes soundlessly descended the hill and came up against the French forces. The first point that they attacked was impregnable. They had wanted to force a second break, but an iron bar[ 108 ]

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rier prevented them from doing so. Instead, they tightened their ranks and advanced in a rage. Day broke with bayonets. What had become of Romulus? Where was he when the army of the Indigènes was so valiantly fighting for the honor of his flag? He was far away, searching for more resources. He did not succeed. People proved miserly when asked to sacrifice and they balked at supporting a cause in which they only showed interest due to misery. The ruin of Remus’s brother was complete. Nonetheless, his suffering was not without majesty. He preserved his dignity during his fall and finished bravely, just as he had predicted upon the arrival of the French fleet. The cruelties inflicted upon his people had been avenged: not by inflecting cruelty in return, but by the noble conduct of his intrepid soldiers. Crime does not avenge crime. There were a few other battles following those that we have succinctly narrated here, but we will not take the time to recount them. True resistance ended with the evacuation of Crête-à-Pierrot. It was an honorable retreat that ended a series of glorious events. A short time later, having no orders and no more military honor to preserve, Romulus’s officers surrendered to the French. They submitted themselves to the conqueror’s rule . . . The Colonist celebrated Romulus’s defeat more joyously than he had the defeat of Remus, which he had once so feted, when Romulus remained triumphant still. The artisan of servitude was nearing his goal: events were moving rapidly in this direction. Nothing, it seemed, could stop or derail the progress toward slavery. Nothing, except the grain of providential sand that the Colonist could not see.

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The Government of the Captain General

Romulus was defeated; of the remaining members of his army, some were dismissed, but most were dispersed among the European forces. The officers who took up arms in the name of the French Expedition usually received positions equivalent to their previous rank. The government felt that it was necessary to keep peace with these soldiers, for it relied on them to pacify the colony. Those who had distinguished themselves through their bravery during the recent battles were given signs of esteem by their new brothers-in-arms, who only yesterday had been their enemies. Not even prejudice could deny the kinship of courage. The Captain General did his utmost to make the still-trembling society safe. In order to defend the colony, Romulus used the same atrocious means as his adversaries in their attack: this was how so many Europeans, whom he had so explicitly protected during his administration, perished. People witnessed his fury; they felt imperiled. Thus, even though Romulus was defeated, people trembled still. In an effort to guarantee peace, the Captain General ordered the national guard, which was made up of farmers who could cause a future insurrection, to disarm. The measure was prudent. It was in line with the principle point of the Expedition: to reestablish slavery, one first had to remove any weapons from the potential slaves, so as to assure that they would not be able to free themselves. Romulus informed several of his former officers of the disarmament policy. The fallen leader uttered his final words, as beautiful and true as those of a prophet: “In overthrowing me, you have done nothing but chop down the trunk of the Tree of Liberty of the Blacks. It will grow back from its roots, for they are numerous and deep.”32 [ 110 ]

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Romulus had already tried violence and had attempted to establish a state of slavery in all but name, against which the people protested through indifference if not outright hostility. These actions caused Romulus to recognize that the people desired freedom instinctively; this desire no one would ever manage to snuff out. He therefore announced to the restorers of the Ancien Régime that their work would be impossible. But his words, regardless of their remarkable nature, fell on deaf ears. No one would recall them until afterward, when events confirmed their accuracy. Truth spoke with bitterness: no one believed her, even though she could have been of use. Moreover, we must ask, who could have heard her? A well-known policy required the establishment of the new government and disarmament to occur before the reestablishment of slavery. The Colonist did not wait for the moment when his tyranny would be decreed; he began persecutions as a prelude to his new reign. He acted as if these persecutions were interest paid in advance on a loan that he was due, as if he were being compensated for the inconvenience of waiting. The principle was sure. A law from France had just legalized the slave trade and confirmed the principle of servitude in the colonies returned to France by the Treaty of Amiens. This law, in truth, did not mention Saint-Domingue: was it really an issue only for Guadeloupe? And yet, before long, this latter island was placed again under the yoke. Guadeloupe, smaller and less populous than Saint-Domingue, was easier to reenslave, so France started there. France showed the chains to Guadeloupe, and the island roared with anger. Its children took up arms and a short-lived struggle ensued. Their weakness in numbers overcame the strength of their will. Devastated, Liberty fled from Guadeloupe’s shores: there were not enough hands to hold her there. Liberty fled, but not without first offering to the heroic soul of Delgrès33 a crown woven of the same immortal tree that supplied Ogé and Chavannes their martyr’s wreaths. Guadeloupe thus became a slave again. Saint-Domingue was supposed to receive new chains as well, but only if it could be forced to accept them. In the meanwhile, the Captain General adopted Romulus’s rigorous agricultural system without much alteration. Retaining Romulus’s system seemed to provide a good transitional step in light of the regime [ 111 ]

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that was supposed to be implemented next. Thus the agricultural system was set up just as it had been before the return of the French. Before, it had prospered and it would prosper again with the help of forced labor. The farmer was a serf. He was prohibited from owning any land, due to an ingenious legislative arrangement that had been established by the previous government: the law was made so that land could be sold only in quantities far greater than what the farmer could ever hope to purchase. The Captain General also established numerous laws related to trade, law, religion, and public services. In this way, police ordinances restricted—or shall we say annulled—the rights of the people. Immediately following the fall of Marie’s oldest son, the Captain General established the Colonial Council, which was charged with aiding him in the administration of the country; it was led by the Colonist and driven by his ideas. At a discussion of some administrative question during one particular session, the Colonist, supported by other members of the Council, exclaimed: “No slavery, no colony!”34 Despite the threat of persecution, one of Romulus’s former lieutenants,XVII also a member of the Council, had the courage to respond: “No liberty, no colony!” A few days later, as if punished for the Colonist’s sacrilegious words, the majority of the Council members succumbed to yellow fever. The Colonial Council was thus dissolved and the Captain General governed alone, taking up all of its powers. He divided the territory again and arranged its subdivisions along the same lines as those drawn under the Ancien Régime. The Captain General held the country under siege. Everything was decided by military tribunal. The death penalty returned in many forms: drowning, hanging, and shooting. Nevertheless, the colony flourished. Its commodities abounded due to the harsh regulations placed upon farmers. Imitating the mistakes of Romulus, his successor, the Colonist, acquired riches. • When we return in our imagination to this distant time; when we think of the vast, well-manicured plantations of Saint-Domingue that were maintained by a multitude of hands motivated to work by fear; when we think on the Colonist’s role, on his well-being and his license under the Ancien Régime, it is easy to see why he clung to his wealth and material [ 112 ]

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comforts with all his might. He worked impatiently and feverishly to hold onto his privileges. It is not up to us to approve or excuse him. Indeed, he was allowed to love power and desire wealth. In general, human pleasures stay close to human miseries. The right to happiness is denied no one. Each of us builds the structure of our joy according to the loftiness of our ideas and the righteousness of our dreams. This edifice is respectable as long as it does not deprive others of their portion of air and sun. However, if it is built upon the suffering of others and cemented with the tears of our neighbor, joy becomes criminal. Sooner or later, the earth will swallow it up, or the heavens will strike it down. • The Captain General took extreme measures to disarm the farmers. In a small amount of time, and with the help of violence, thirty thousand guns were returned to the country’s arsenals. Yet in reality, the guns were to be feared less than the mistreated people from whose hands they were snatched. These people needed no arms to rebel against the European authority that seemed to take pleasure in tormenting them. Once transformed into instruments of war in the hands of the people, stones and tree branches could be just as dangerous as the guns that had been taken away. Along with these acts of barbarism, the Captain General prohibited members of the Indigène population from taking the name of their European fathers. This was a rule from the former colonial days. When laws such as this were reinstated after having been revoked in the name of civil equality, you might imagine the widespread discontent that reigned in Saint-Domingue. The government did not bother to hide its disposition. Things were prepared so overtly that only the word itself was left to be written: Slavery!

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Reconciliation

While the enemies of Saint-Domingue were preparing her iron shackles, while the Captain General hastened the return to slavery, and while the Colonist readied his whip, Romulus and Remus met on the field of defeat. Dismissing all the feelings that had, at one moment, divided them, they grasped hands in brotherhood. Their meeting took place on the untamed spot of land where their mother rested. Since his misfortune, Remus had become accustomed to seeking solace at the tomb of Marie the African. The memory of she who loved him most lifted the weight of enmity that oppressed him. The goodness that his mother provided grew in his heart, in opposition to the evil that he endured; this process diminished his resentment and augmented his gratitude. One night, kneeling upon a grassy hillock, Remus found himself in communication—through a mysterious faculty of the soul—with the woman whose memory we have just evoked. He sternly reviewed his behavior and let his conscience speak. In the mute confession that he made to his mother’s shade, as if to an invisible pastor, Remus asked for God’s clemency. He felt the need for a celestial pardon even more keenly after learning that his brother was as unhappy as he. Their misfortune was the common handiwork of their ambition and, even though it was not he who had committed the most egregious wrongs, Remus cursed both their misfortune and the division that it had caused. The sacrifice inspired by the Spirit of the Nation had already helped him to forget his humiliation and suffering. Remus was ready to repair that which was repairable, and to move toward reconciliation with his brother. “When the occasion presents itself,” he said in his heart of hearts, “you will see, Mother, how ready I am to seize the moment in order to erase the [ 114 ]

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wrongs that I have done, and to console you in the grief that I caused you to suffer.” This thought had barely formed in his mind when he heard footsteps behind him in the distance. The night was beautiful. The moon was dark but the horizon was so clear and the firmament so starry that one could see as plainly as day even in the darkest shadows. It was one of those magical nights in the tropics when the sky is so blue that the depths of infinity appear to swell wider before the eye. The constellations stood out against the background of rich azure as if they were jeweled inlays in an enameled sky. Bright meteors traced furrows of fire between the stars which, not content to light the skies alone, reflected their brightness in the drops of water on the leaves below. Their radiance seemed to form a new empyrean on earth. At the sound of the footsteps, the youngest son of the African turned his head and recognized his brother. Romulus saw him as well and stopped, not knowing if he faced enemy or friend. Remus promptly put an end to any doubt. He ran toward Romulus and threw himself into his brother’s arms. Each one was profoundly moved. They embraced for a long time. Their friendship, their memories, and their shared past all rushed back and softened their hearts. Joy overflowed and transformed into generous tears. How sweet it is to love! Why should man ever be separated from his fellow man? Discord is a violent and painful state that exhausts individuals and ruins societies. Oh, that discord be forever banished from our land! . . .  Their first joys calmed, Romulus and Remus walked to the tomb of their mother to make her a witness, in some small way, to their reconciliation and to the new projects with which they would bind together their futures. Romulus felt his past mistakes deeply, which is why he had not approached his younger brother before. He feared that Remus, still bleeding from his wounds, would be cross with him. Yet, as we have seen, he was soon reassured. Romulus began the explanation necessary to make a sincere confession of his faults and regrets. “Brother,” he said to Remus, “you have many reasons to resent me. I persecuted and insulted you. Please forget this; I repent. A subtle and venomous enemy slid, like the serpent, between the two of us. I had the misfortune of listening to his insidious proposals. You warned me of his [ 115 ]

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deceptive ways, but I did not believe you. I was under the influence of his charm. Does not the reptile bewitch his prey before devouring it? Well, then, I was bewitched as well. The Colonist taught me to distrust you but not to hate you. My heart refused that. “At his request, I made war against you. Your blood spilt and mine did as well, although less profusely. You succumbed. I should have mourned your defeat, which was the precursor to my own; instead, I took delight in it, and the Colonist even more so. Had I been paying attention, his extraordinary joy would have been sufficient to arouse my suspicion. While he was feeding off such animosity toward you, why should he have been so attached to me? What reason did he have to love me and to hate you? I was besotted. This reflection, which should have brought me to my senses, did not occur to me. I let myself be guided blindly by him, and you see where he led me. He encouraged my pretentions in order to ruin me. I went along with every ambitious idea that he suggested, which he lodged in my heart, and he pretended all along to join with me in their realization. He forced me to take bloody measures against those who loved you. I complacently put my name to his crime. Incited by the Colonist, I did everything that could undermine my own survival. I inspired the anger of France against me. “The Expeditionary Army had hardly arrived when the Colonist went into the French camp and began to play the same dishonorable role with them as he had played with me. He sought to turn them against me, just as he had turned me against you. All too late, I saw the enemy in whom I had confided. I thought of you, of your true affection, and of what I had given in exchange for the hypocritical friendship of this deviant. Providence arranged this meeting for us just at the moment when I most needed to see you. I take advantage of it to say again: Brother, I persecuted and insulted you. Please forget the past. I repent!” Remus had his own wrongs to confess, and he was no less severe than his brother in his self-accusation. As soon as Romulus had ceased speaking, Marie’s youngest son took his brother’s hand in his, and responded: “Brother, I have forgotten everything. In turn, please forget the wrongs that I have committed against you. Love me, and let us always love one another. You were susceptible to the criminal passions of the Colonist and I noticed this. It was my duty to warn you that you had been fooled and that you would be a victim of the error into which you were drawn. [ 116 ]

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I am your brother. I had a real interest in enlightening you, since my future is linked to yours. Your adversities would become my own. I knew this. I spoke about it to you without reserve, but you scorned my advice. This irritated me. I was even more irritated when you slandered me, when you publicly committed a crime of prejudice so foreign to my heart. It was at this moment that the French agent, in secret agreement with the Colonist who was working to divide us, declared that you were a traitor to France and released me from my obligations to obey you. He reminded me that the limits of my territory, which were established by law, extended past the borders to which I had hitherto confined myself. This circumstance augmented my indignation. I sent my troops to march against yours, who were found on my side of the boundary, and war was struck. The ambition to conquer and to control came over me. I reproach myself bitterly for it. I also reproach myself for the loss of all those who were killed in my name. In this respect, I am unhappier than you. I saw my friends fall, some during battle, others afterward; some while fighting, some without defense. I saw them fall and my remorse is as biting as if I had struck them down with my own hand. I experienced all the humiliations of defeat, but I never resented you for it. On the contrary, I was moved to pity you, knowing the fate that you would be assigned. By fighting me, you destroyed your own strength, and therefore you could not help but be defeated. “This is what took place. Since your fall, I have rediscovered my fondness for you. You are unhappy; my heart absolves you. Absolve me, too. I was impatient to meet with you, and I had made the sincere wish to see you just when you appeared. Brother, let us ask forgiveness from the memory of our aggrieved mother. Let us swear never to separate again and to be united forever!” They kneeled on the tomb of Marie the African and made their promise with joy. They softly proclaimed another oath that, perhaps, their mother alone heard . . . These men who had been harshly tested now knew the price of harmony. They loved each other. You, who rendered them instant enemies, fear for their new alliance! The brothers paid dearly for their error. Their past glories cost them the purest of their blood. From now on, they would not be misled. Truth brought its torch into the lair that harbored civil war, a dark den from which you wished to draw forth the institution of slavery. The two brothers would [ 117 ]

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not stand for this monster to see the light of day again. They would fight and conquer it: l’union, c’est la force!35 Upon leaving the cemetery, Remus told his brother: “There is a woman to whom we are indebted. She has offered us great kindness, but we have saddened her with our quarrels. In the debauchery of our vile passions, we have dared look upon her with impure gazes. This woman, you know, is not of this earth. Her incomparable beauty, her steadfast kindness, her profound insight, her superhuman courage, her striking wisdom, and her sublime knowledge all reveal a creature innately superior to us. She draws her existence from a higher source. She knows nothing of our vulgar needs. She is, without a doubt, a messenger from heaven. If we angered her, we have angered the Divinity that she represents. Let us not be heretical. Let us go repent, humbly, at the feet of this holy idol to whom we promised the faith of our life.” “I had been thinking of this,” responded Romulus. “Do you believe that she will accept our repentance?” “I am sure that she will. Have we not already experienced her goodness?” “That is true. Let us go!” And with that, they immediately began upon the path to the mountain.

[ 118 ]

Return to the Mountain

Stella was not surprised by the arrival of the two brothers. She knew that it would not be long before they returned, and she waited . . . to pardon them. Stella’s divine authority showed in her love and kindness. Heaven is made more powerful by its forgiveness than by its anger. Where fire burns and destroys, water tempers and fertilizes. God only rarely, and regretfully, sends down the thunderbolt. Each night, He offers the dew as a gentle gift to the earth, an example for man of the eternal manifestation of His goodness. Romulus and Remus found the virgin of the mountain even more lenient than they had dared hope, and they were, for their part, so full of respect, humility, and fervent remorse that they regained all of her goodwill without difficulty. After having listened to the detailed story of their misfortune, which began with discord and ended with reconciliation, Stella asked: “What now do you plan to do?” “We do not yet know,” responded the two brothers. “We must reflect.” “You must have had, nevertheless, the opportunity to think on it during your journey here.” “Yes, but our tormented conscience took from us the freedom of our spirit. We were preoccupied by the desire to gain your forgiveness, for it alone could console the grief of having caused you offense.” “This concern does you honor. It has disappeared with its cause, however: I pardon you. You need repent no longer. Through your reprehensible carelessness and your bloody folly, you have called a considerable military force to this country, the aims of which are to aid a return to slavery. An entire population is about to receive new chains, and you will have provided them. If you do not find a way to prevent slavery’s return,

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you will be cursed and will have to answer before God for your mistakes. Search and discover that which will help you achieve this goal.” The two brothers convened, and after a moment of reflection they decided to wait until yellow fever had ravaged the French Army before taking further actions toward their goal of common deliverance. Stella could not hear this timid declaration without reacting. Her cheeks reddened and her eyes flashed: “What! You thus elude the question of duty? Have you not more energy thanks to remorse? This is a disappointment to me. I thought better of you . . . You wish to let run an epidemic, but do you know where it will stop? Have we not recently received troops from Europe? Will not others arrive as well? These reinforcements, will they not incessantly replace those ravaged by disease? Will reinforcements ever allow you the more favorable odds on which you are counting in order to decide to act? What will become of the unfortunate children of this country in the meanwhile? What will become of you? “I do not seek to excite you by frightening your imagination. The current state of things is just as I have shown. For the rest, the simplest test will prove its truth. “France has led a formidable Expedition against its rebellious colony. No one will find her at fault: it was her right to assert her authority at a moment when it was disrespected. Until now, there was no indication of France’s intention to snuff out the Liberty whose existence has been naturalized on the island these ten years. This Liberty, born in France— that is to say, from its Revolution—and sanctioned by French decrees, is France’s legitimate offspring. To destroy it would be to commit parricide, and no one would believe France capable of such a feat. Yet, she has recently published a law that encourages the slave trade, and servitude is again favored in all of the colonies regained after the war. France reestablished slavery in Guadeloupe. Here, the persecutions arranged by the Colonist, as well as his confidence and his joy, clearly announce what is on the horizon. “Listen to the trembling voice of the people who are being disarmed, tortured, and hanged. Soon they will scream louder in their chains, but it will be too late . . . Stand up and throw yourselves in front of slavery to purge it from this island or you shall be crushed. Return immediately to the place where you store your arms and ammunition,” the young [ 120 ]

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woman added with intense anger, “and if you feel that you have not the strength for this task, I will release you from the promises that you made to me and go away from here forever . . .” These words provoked a courage that was ardent and proud in the two brothers. “We did not know that peril was imminent,” they replied. “Avoiding it is far from our minds. Sound the charge, utter the battle cry: we march! . . .” At the same moment, they both stood to leave. Yet Stella retained them. She was satisfied, as she should have been, by this act of enthusiasm. Her speech had produced the desired effect: it revealed the robust nature that before had seemed to fold under the heavy hand of misfortune. Knowing their characteristics perfectly well, she appealed to their morals. Stella was like an able horseman leading vigorous riders across a long distance and through innumerable difficulties. Seeing the goal gleaming from a distance, at the most difficult point in the road, she understood that her riders needed encouragement. Stella used her powerful words to give the men whom she guided the energy necessary for this final struggle. “Before leaving,” she said to them, “you must repair that which you have built. The structures have aged and degraded since your absence. I visited them and thought then that if you did not return quickly, they would become only ruins. It will also be useful for you to assess the items that you left in this grotto, and ensure that they are in good condition. You should know upon which resources you can count. “Finally, I would like for the camp to be reestablished and for you to build me a new ajoupa. I will leave this retreat today and reassume my post at the fortification. This is where I previously played the role of sentinel, and this is where I will again keep watch for you. Do not think, I pray you, that after preaching this necessary and just war I intend to hide from it. I shall not be like those miserable troublemakers, quicker to utter battle cries than to ever expose themselves to danger, or like those pusillanimous generals who push their soldiers to battle while staying safely behind the line of fire. I want to fight and to fight on the front lines. The cause to which you will dedicate yourselves is as much the cause of humanity as it is your own. It is a cause with which I identify as well, and perhaps it will succeed with my help. Trust in me! Remember that my assistance has been useful to you in the past!” [ 121 ]

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Romulus and Remus obeyed Stella’s words and worked quickly to rebuild the ramparts that they found dilapidated. They approached their work with such ardor that everything was repaired in two days. Stella did not leave them for an instant. The constant presence of this young woman redoubled the activity of their hands and their hearts, which belonged to her. Her companions, who at first refused her help, later allowed her to share in their harsh work because she insisted so energetically. In touching the materials with her divine hand, her intention was to give a supernatural strength to their ramparts. Stella contributed to the work of sanctification. As if by magic, a new ajoupa went up on the same spot as the first, and with its same dimensions and form. The particular care with which the brothers constructed this modest edifice showed that it was more than a mere building: it was a shrine to the blessedness of this location. The arms and ammunition were transported from the grotto to the camp and placed under Stella’s roof. She wanted it thus so that she could save the two brothers from losing the time and energy it would take to build a new storehouse. So quickly did the time come to begin their crusade against slavery—a crusade advocated by the virgin of the mountain—that the brothers had no time to build an ajoupa for themselves. All rest was prohibited until the war was ended . . . in either victory or death! Conquered, they would need no shelter. Conquerors, they would possess cities. Their resolution was set from this early moment: they would break from France to become independent and free! The arms and supplies in the grotto remained just as they had been on the day that they were deposited there. In the grotto, the brothers also recovered an object whose sight revived their hatred of the Colonist and caused them to shake with anger: it was the funeral dress of their mother, Marie the African. They had entrusted it to the woman who, in her friendship, had known to protect this cloth from the destructive forces of time. An entire past lived in this souvenir of affection and grief. In it, the brothers had both their mother and her agonizing death in front of them. They connected the present to this cursed past, and experienced new feelings of resentment provoked by the attacks that their mother’s assassin added to his previous record. They eagerly grabbed the blood-tinged dress to pursue the sinister project that, earlier, had been [ 122 ]

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the subject of the following exchange: “Crime made this garment a sign of our despair. May crime now receive it as its own funeral shroud!” In the middle of the camp, attached to the end of a mast formed from a shaft of bamboo whose leaves had been removed, the African’s dress was raised as a somber flag. Its bloody folds unfurled in the breeze. Later another color, borrowed from the azure of our sky, was placed next to the first color that signaled vengeance. This addition was intended either to soften the flag’s sinister aspect or to recall the duality of Haitian Independence—an independence that would be accomplished by the common devotion of two individuals with differently colored skin, an independence that Providence would bless, creating another society under the auspices of Liberty.

[ 123 ]

War for Independence

The two brothers gave the signal and, like an electric spark, the fire of enthusiasm suddenly engulfed the hearts of the Indigènes, who rose up by the thousands and called for arms. Their impatience suffered no delay. The armory in the mountain was not enough. To obtain weapons, the majority of these men were forced to procure them from a wellknown source: the enemy. They cheerfully accepted this obligation. Their danger was doubled, but so was their share of the glory. The virgin of the mountain reviewed the men and distributed a supply of arms and ammunition to a small group. If the arms were given by her, could they but be victorious? . . .  Stella addressed Romulus and Remus: “Let us begin our campaign. Let us make it so that the success of the first battle stays with us: it will influence the morale of the enemy and be a sign of a happy ending to the war. It is no longer true that you are strong only on this mountain. When I warned you of that, you had few soldiers and could only defend, not assail. Today, you are the assailants and have the support of an entire people.” A few men remained at the camp. Under Stella’s direction, the army moved toward the capital. At one league’s distance was a city well protected by many French soldiers. The Captain General, who knew that the brothers were taking up arms, went in person to this city to make the necessary arrangements for resistance. The Indigènes appeared in the middle of the night. A fierce battle ensued, darkness amplifying its horror: cannonballs rang out and landed at random, blood flowed, bullets whistled by, iron gnashed, and death stole lives away. The screams of the wounded and dying echoed through the air; imagination made the unseen carnage even more horrifying. [ 124 ]

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Over the atrocious tumult rose the strong and vibrant voice of Stella, like the voice of a pilot who uses a speaking trumpet to dominate the noise of wind and wave in a storm. Faithful to her word, the virgin kept her place at the head of the battalions, which she led to battle, saving them from fire by standing in front of the line. Her white dress, the only rallying sign distinguishable in the depth of that dark night, shone brightly ahead. When day broke, her angelic face, blackened by gunpowder, and her clothes, torn and damaged in several places, reminded the soldiers of her superhuman bravery, which rendered them even more devoted to their cause. The battle lasted until four in the morning. The French, chased from their posts, doubled back to the capital. There was nothing left but to follow them and, perhaps, take control of that well-nigh undefended city. However, the virgin of the mountain, the guiding spirit of the two brothers, opposed this idea. She was satisfied with the moral impact of their first action. Taking the city would not, in her eyes, merit the sacrifice of the men that it would require. Besides, she had conceived of another method for this war: the French should be left in control of the cities, where they would be shut in with the disease that would decimate them. The Indigènes would intercept their communications, disrupt the delivery of supplies that they were extracting from the interior, and threaten them without end. They would deprive the French of rest during the day and of sleep at night: they would exploit the noon hour by carrying on in such a way as to oblige the soldiers to be always at the ready, making them brave the ardor of a murderous sun; at midnight, they would awaken the French with false attacks that would constantly expose them to the penetrating humidity of the climate. Being thus so fatigued, the French forces would have no chance to escape the epidemic that would become more terrible than the war itself. This system of aggression was both simple and sure. The two brothers had only to follow it. The young woman went back to the camp and would return to be with them when she judged it useful. The mountain was the headquarters of the insurrection, and Romulus and Remus were under orders to go there regularly. Stella stayed on there with a reserve force ready to help at a moment’s notice. The uprising of the two brothers led to the issuing of a proclamation a few days later in which the Captain General denounced the inhabit[ 125 ]

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ants of Saint-Domingue as cowards to be punished when reinforcements arrived from France. This was October, and the reinforcements were expected to arrive the next month. These forces would, according to the proclamation, help retake the colony, which apparently had been conquered by ideas contrary to servitude, ideas that had caused an eruption against his leadership. Was the mind of the Captain General so shaken by events that were still at their beginning? Was his alarmed conscience forcing him to regret his mandate? . . .  In the meanwhile, at the beginning of this new war, the French committed a hitherto unheard of act of atrocity. We report it with a scrupulous adherence to the truth: When the colonial government learned of the brothers’ revolt, they imprisoned an entire corps of disarmed Indigènes, twelve hundred men, on their warships. This happened during the first battle, when the French were defeated and forced to return to the capital, believing all was lost. The crews on the ships realized with fear that they were outnumbered by the prisoners; motivated by the danger of death, these jailors took only their desperation into account. “Kill that which can kill us!”36 they cried. Their deed was as quick as their word. The waves of the sea opened and closed on twelve hundred cadavers. We borrow this narrative from a pen little inclined to exaggeration, that of a general officer viii who, as part of the French Expedition, was more likely to dull rather than deepen the colors with which he painted this horrible tale. While he writes of a crime born from fear, we write only of calculated cruelty. This action worsened the situation, and was not useful. The number of victims alone is enough to crush the executioners: twelve hundred cadavers, twelve hundred prisoners, twelve hundred defenseless men, killed in one fell swoop . . . We deplore this mass assassination out of pity for the victims and because, at the tribunal of overexcited passions convened at the bloody hour of revenge, this slaying will plead the case for massacre. • European troops rallied to defend themselves better. The garrisons of the principle cities gathered troops from those of the secondary cities. viii Paul de Lacroix.

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The sick were evacuated to Tortuga, a small neighboring island. Munitions were unloaded from the boats. All these measures testified to the concerns and weaknesses of the colonial government. The number of the colony’s defenders had markedly diminished: since the arrival of the Expedition, eighteen thousand men had perished, either by disease or battle, and the hospitals contained a further eight thousand. Only about eighty-five hundred soldiers were left to guard the entire territory of Saint-Domingue. In other times, this would have been more than enough, but it was truly too little for the necessities of war. The Captain General, troubled by the need to replace this lack of men and searching for a solution, turned to the Colonist, whose good will and inventive spirit he well knew. The instigator of the civil war had already prepared a solution, and he made this known to the Captain General. Since his Machiavellianism had succeeded so well in cunningly dividing Romulus and Remus before, he did not doubt that there was still a possibility of fostering division between them. Feeling strong in this belief, the Colonist boldly proposed a tactic, the inanity of which he himself did not delay in recognizing. Following the advice of the Colonist, the Captain General published an act by which he offered liberty to all those Indigènes who would fight under the French flag. In other words, this offer was made to the fools who, in an effort to be faithful to their government, would be traitors to their cause and their true interests. He also promised to honor them, upon the reestablishment of peace, with small sections of land. This would both be the reward for their service and the guarantee of their freedom: for they would be property owners. Note, however, that this was only a promise. This largesse, which was miserly nonetheless, would have to wait. It was purposefully stingy. Necessity bargaining with security: this was hardly logical. However, the opposite of what the Colonist expected happened.37 Instead of dividing their enemies, this effort strengthened the bonds uniting them. They soundly judged the ill-defined position that their oppressors had taken in relation to them up until now; they had the material proof of the forces of reenslavement against which they were uprising, even though these forces had not yet been declared by the oppressors. The Indigènes had only one heart with which to hate and one hand with which to fight. [ 127 ]

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Such was the effect of the Colonist’s tactlessness. Cruelty’s fleeting successes do not prevent it from being blind and senseless at its core. Only goodness is intelligent. On his side, the Colonist showed a level of disinterest that one would not have thought possible. He renounced his rights over those who had been and were still, in his mind, slaves. He freely agreed to grant them their liberty in front of a notary. In this way, many certificates of freedom were delivered and sanctioned by the government. What had become of the solemn emancipation of 1793 and the decree, no less solemn, of the National Convention of 1794? It was clear to all that slavery existed in the colony, although the word had yet to be penned. By divine will, the ink with which this wicked word was supposed to be written would soon run dry.

[ 128 ]

The Death of the Captain General

The two brothers, working together, found the secret to being everywhere at once. Their activity could compare only with their valor. Even when they surrounded the colony’s capital city, they threatened and overtook other locations as well. The French abandoned the fortress that, defended so skillfully, had brought fame to Romulus’s troops. The evacuation procedure conformed to the Captain General’s system of centralized forces: when the garrison was abandoned, the two brothers found supplies there that were, given their circumstances, priceless. The brothers made themselves masters of that cityXVIII where, after their final victory, independence would be proclaimed. Upon learning of the imminent attack, Stella rushed from the mountain to provide the support of her invincible hand. Even though its capture was not, as we know, in the plan that she had drawn out for the two brothers, Stella could not resist taking the city where the first national altar would be raised. Romulus and Remus sent two lines of troops: the first arrived too early and was almost forced to flee; the second came later and nearly experienced the same fate. The lines were already falling back when Stella appeared. She seized a flag and planted it on the ramparts to rally the deserters around this sign of honor. By acting together, they were strong enough to challenge the counterassault. It was approaching night and, after offering the Indigènes a violent farewell, the enemy sought refuge in ships that moved quickly away from shore. After conquering this city—which was never retaken—the two brothers vainly laid siege over eight days to another site in the North.XIX At the same time, the capital was attacked. The Indigènes overcame the primary French outposts and “reduced the enemy to a tight defensive [ 129 ]

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that extended no further than the city walls.”38 More than four thousand men came to the enemy’s defense, arriving by sea from various French garrisons. The Indigènes were defeated and forced to pull back a great distance. These defeats were punishment for the brothers’ mistake in pursuing a measure contrary to Stella’s instructions for conducting the war. They acted out of an impatient bravery; unfortunately, these infractions were not their last. Nevertheless, the young woman forgave their disobedience because it was in pursuit of her cause. She was not even angered by the minor setbacks whereby the brothers made themselves stronger and stronger. The war dragged on due to these oft-repeated mistakes. The brothers received a harsh shock every time that they ceded to their natural impetuousness and tried to force entry into a well-defended area. They had to retreat long distances to reform their ranks, and disorder was a constant threat. The French were thus less anxious and had time to rest and obtain supplies. On the other side, the Indigène women—whose fathers, husbands, sons, and brothers were fighting under the flag of insurrection—worked simultaneously as doctors and nuns, taking care of sick Europeans with an almost unparalleled generosity. They thus countered the ferocity of a scourge aroused by this powerful vengeance against slavery, which was the other scourge of humanity. The same soldiers that these women kept from death today could tomorrow make them into widows or orphans. They knew this, but nevertheless their devotion was so deep that the Captain General could not refrain from publicly acknowledging and commending them. Yellow fever was in a period of decline when the Captain General succumbed to its power. One could say that after ravaging the soldiers and officers of the Expedition, whose ranks it had thinned, the plague had kept the colony’s governor as illustrious prey for just the moment when it had enjoyed its fill of unknown victims. The disease would not, however, stop there; its violence would diminish only to grow in strength during the hot season. The disease would last as long as the war. Let us begin where we left off above. Two months after its invasion, the epidemic acquired an increased intensity under the blistering sun. So many people perished that it was [ 130 ]

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almost impossible to bury the dead. Instead, they were thrown pell-mell into large pits that were quickly filled and covered over with lime so as to be used again. No one received last rites. Funerals were forbidden. Carts traveled through the streets at midnight to collect cadavers that had been left outside the houses. Several generals perished. Of the sick who did regain their health, they owed their lives in particular to those Good Samaritans whose kindness was more reliable than science. In the meanwhile, the Captain General, relieved of his public service duties because of the siege, confident in the efficiency of the measures that he had taken, satisfied by the excessive zeal of his lieutenants, and reassured by the quantity of arms that they had ripped out of the hands of the farmers, retired to Tortuga to rest and flee the plague. This small island, part of the colony’s territory, is situated to the northwest of former Saint-Domingue. It was populated and developed under the French, who, during the Expedition, constructed hospitals for sick soldiers there. Tortuga owes its celebrity to the explorers, known as boucaniers, who lived on the island a long time ago. The climate is gentle, the air healthy, and the view pleasant. While on the mainland, the summer sun set the city’s atmosphere on fire and burned the blood of the Europeans; but fresh, temperate, and constant breezes reigned on this little island. Only a few leagues away, the fertility of Tortuga rivaled that of the mainland. The colony’s governor could enjoy the gentle peace of this delicious retreat for a short time only. Troubles, which were occasioned by the disarming of the farmers and the horrendously strict treatment that they received, soon returned to Saint-Domingue. The Captain General had to return in a hurry to take up the burden of public affairs; this burden had increased due to conspiracies that he now hastened to extinguish. A great vexation agitated him: just as he thought he was nearing the end, he saw himself being drawn back to the beginning. Everything had smiled upon his first efforts. Romulus was vanquished and the tranquil and flowering country had seen its downtrodden masses almost entirely disarmed. The Captain General had hoped to achieve the complete execution of his secret instructions without any trouble. Yet, all of a sudden, revolt occurred again. To regain peace almost without men was a difficult task; that the two brothers had again taken up arms added to the difficulty of this task by giving it a sudden perilous seriousness. [ 131 ]

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• We have remarked upon the governor’s troubles in our earlier mention of the proclamation that was published to address these events. After the Captain General probed the depths of the chasm that he had unintentionally opened beneath his feet, he jumped back in terror. Nevertheless, finding himself at the head of the storm, he gave orders, used powerful methods of repression, frequently traveled by horseback, and often spent entire nights in vigil and meditation. Such physical and mental activities predisposed him to the disease that carried him away. It manifested itself in a short fever, which hit with such force that he took to his bed, never to wake again. His end was courageous and dignified. He condemned, in his final hours, the goal of the Expedition. “He bemoaned the enterprise undertaken by and against men worthy of a better destiny.”ix39 His feelings seemed to have been inspired by Justice, who was hovering at the threshold of the Supreme Tribunal. These feelings redeemed the wrongs of a life nearing its extinction. Let us pity the warrior who died for such a terrible cause, so far from his homeland. His existence could have been more usefully sacrificed elsewhere. He offered it here without compensation: the colony escaped, nonetheless, from France. He died young. Thirty years separated his cradle from his grave. We feel involuntarily moved by this untimely end; we regret not having exclaimed with the Roman orator: O fortunata mors, quae naturae debita pro patria est potissimum reddita!x The army, which he had commanded in the midst of almost desperate circumstances, felt his loss keenly. The soldiers regretfully accompanied the coffin that the motherland would, alas, soon receive. As for the Colonist, he cried not. He was not of a tender nature and, besides, he thought that the late governor had acted too slowly and too mildly. Since he was more severe, that is to say, more cruel, he certainly would have reestablished slavery before dying. • ix Paul de Lacroix. x “O fortunate death which, due to nature, is most preferably paid for one’s native country” (Cicero, Orationes Philippicae XIV).

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In another chapter, we offered a few details about the government that followed Romulus’s. These details allow for the appreciation of the Captain General’s conduct and the system of administration that, certainly, was not exempt from rigor. These details are taken strictly from history. After having read them, one sincerely wonders to what further excesses the Colonist could have resorted, short of being Rochambeau.40 The name has escaped our pen. Let us say, then, that in the event of his death, the Captain General designated Rochambeau to replace him as commander-in-chief of the army and governor of the colony. France supported this choice, and the Colonist applauded it with joy; for him, Rochambeau alone was capable of holding the reins in Saint-Domingue. We will try to describe the man who took up the position of Captain General and, along with his rights and rank, the title of the colony’s greatest enemy.

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Rochambeau

The nomination of Rochambeau to govern Saint-Domingue was an injurious event for the colony. It fortified the unshakeable resolution of the Indigènes to separate from France or die with guns in hand. Never before had a leader been more loathed, or loathed for more sound reasons. Even today, people still speak of him in accusations and curses. His was a common and disheveled look. Survivors from the period consistently depicted him as dressed in hide-skin breeches and a dolman jacket, never buttoned due to the weighty epaulets pulling it open at his breast. They did not forget to mention his small stature, angular form, or fierce gaze, all of which painted a portrait that recalled his moral vileness only imperfectly. From the moment of Rochambeau’s arrival in the colony, the Expeditionary Army almost effortlessly attacked and seized a certain city.XX The Indigènes at the garrison were taken prisoner and put to the sword. The general who stained his hands with this crime had the barbarous courage to boast about it: this was General Rochambeau. Later, surrounded by insurgents in another city,XXI Rochambeau ordered the deaths of one hundred men. They belonged to a corps that he found suspicious and were killed in an act of ingenious and unparalleled cruelty: the men were enclosed in the hold of a ship that was burned with sulfur until they were completely asphyxiated. Then they were thrown into the sea. As soon as he grasped the reins of the colony, Rochambeau ordered the murder of a general,XXII along with several lower-level officers and soldiers, who were accused of inaction; these men had been arrested by his predecessor. The previous leader had decided that the general was to be sent to France and the officers and soldiers were to stay in prison [ 134 ]

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for a certain amount of time. In the meanwhile, they had been detained aboard a warship. However, Rochambeau disliked this decision and condemned them all to a fate for which he had special affection: one night, they all disappeared under the waves. This was the prelude to his new power. The condition of the colony under his government could be compared to that of a ship in a storm under the control of a drunken captain. Additional forces arrived from France. From the debris of his army, disorganized by war and disease, the new Captain General formed a complete corps. He created divisions comprised of former Indigène fighters. Had he not been so reviled, he could have received excellent support from them; but between the cause of an abhorred leader and the cause of Liberty, their choice was certain. None too soon, these Indigènes would increase the size of the insurrection. On their side, the two brothers had organized their boisterous groups into regulated, trained, and disciplined troops. Rochambeau ordered a takeover of one of the northern cities that had recently fallen to the Indigènes. The French troops embarked in several ships and set sail for this position, which they attacked by sea and land. The Indigènes fought valiantly, but they were outnumbered. The area was evacuated and the French entered a city in ashes. Rochambeau pompously announced this success, and the Colonist exaggerated its importance. His confidence in the new governor had not yet been challenged. He wrote his friends in Paris to ask that they lend political support to “the leader needed in Saint-Domingue and required for the public good.”41 We should say that the support of the Colonist’s friends was not entirely unhelpful to Rochambeau because, among the Expedition’s generals and high-level administrators, there were those who were no more sympathetic to him than were the Indigènes. These generals and administrators were infuriated by the atrocities that they witnessed daily and often requested to leave their posts. Moreover, in their letters to the French government, they openly declared that the colony was lost. It was doubtless thanks to these influential friends—the voices of whom were heard too often and caused the metropolitan government to make enormous errors that were later confessed at a moment of repentance—that the Colonist found himself momentarily liberated from his creditors. During this time, a consular decree was issued that [ 135 ]

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accorded the Colonist five years to repay his debts, a period during which he would be sheltered from harassment by his creditors. If what followed would, in the end, not allow him to benefit from this immunity, at least the disposition of the motherland was manifestly in his favor. Despite his wrongs, his ingratitude, and the crime of having previously delivered the country to a foreign power, the Colonist remained a beloved son of France. Rochambeau knew what he would gain from being so highly respected by the Metropole’s darling. He neglected no opportunity to please the Colonist. The two resembled each other in such a way that the Captain General could remain agreeable to the Colonist without having to change his own ways. Both were vicious, cruel, and aimed for the same goal: slavery. They had to get along and collaborate. For a long time, Rochambeau had written that after having given freedom to the slaves of Saint-Domingue, armed forces would be needed to make them work or, in other words, to force them into servitude. He pursued this idea, if we can believe that such a man was capable of ideas, for it was rather an expression of evil passion that drove Rochambeau in all things and at all times. • Rochambeau came to Saint-Domingue for the first time in 1792, when Fortune named him the provisional governor of the French part of the island. The other Europeans there judged him as “without talent and without virtue.”42 Later, he was placed in charge of Martinique, but was chased out of power by the English. He next fled to the United States of America, returned to France, and then came back to the island to command the Spanish part of the colony in 1796. After a short time in the capital, the local French authorities accused him of “being at the center of a ring of disloyal citizens,”43 and he was dismissed and deported to France. In Bordeaux, he was placed in prison, where he remained, in disgrace, until 1800. The Expedition of 1802 brought him back to the colony, and he made his arrival known by that ferocious act against the prisoners of war. From his arrival to the moment of our current story, his presence always had a sinister effect. • [ 136 ]

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No matter what the Colonist wrote to his friends, this leader was obviously not the one who was going to save a public in danger. Nevertheless, the new Captain General worked to meet the imperious needs of his administration by establishing, as we have stated, a new army founded upon the old one. With its new troops from Europe, this army was in better shape to contribute to the general defense of the colony. The reinforcements who were constantly arriving raised the number of French troops to twelve thousand men. Furthermore, while his predecessor had given permission to officers, functionaries, and civilians alike to return to France, Rochambeau limited this right to invalids alone. He knew how to supply the capital city, and how to make abundance follow scarcity. He tried to establish financial order, which was a difficult task during this time of general disorder. A tax collector was arrested and judged, but this did nothing. The government used other means that were just as toothless. Finally, discouraged, Rochambeau took his place as first among plunderers. This organized pillage helped him to pursue shameful new romances. Rochambeau had in common with the Colonist those lascivious habits which, having become commonplace, created one of the wounds of the colonies . . . It was customary in Saint-Domingue, as in all societies under slavery, for colonists to keep numerous concubines in addition to or in place of legitimate relationships. The Colonist used this arrangement to the complete satisfaction of his brutal appetites. He usually chose his mistresses from that class of the population that he condescendingly despised. His latest few female slaves were occasionally the instruments of his filthy debaucheries. Yet even European women did not escape from the torrent of his behavior. Slavery, the great immorality, could give birth only to other immoral customs. It left sediment at the foundation of societies where it lingered longest. No wonder that this muck would delay the march of civilization. Progress, contaminated from the cradle, would necessarily be slow. Yet the stain marking the base of these societies also left an indelible mark on the brows of those supposedly civilized men who left nothing behind but vice! • Rochambeau was encouraged by his previous fraudulent activities and so sent an envoy to a neighboring islandXXIII to negotiate a loan of six [ 137 ]

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million francs at a usurious rate, furnished in French bills of exchange. While the bills specified that the total borrowed had been received in cash, the money in fact could be accessed only after six months. At that future time, the amount received would be only a portion of the agreed upon sum, and the Metropole would be forced to accept bills for a debt that its agents were supposed to have already repaid. The French government, however, was too intelligent to be taken in by such a ruse, and the deal was cancelled. Rochambeau’s envoy was supposed to go to another islandXXIV to receive a sum of money held by the vice-regent of Mexico, a sum that had been meant as a loan to the late Captain General. While there, the envoy was also tasked with another delicate mission, to which we will return in proper time. In the meanwhile, the bloodthirsty fury of Rochambeau flared up in the South, which was the region least affected by insurrection. Many Indigènes were made its victims, and among these were those who had sympathized most with the French. The prisons of the region’s capital were brimming with suspects. The daily, unjustified tortures provoked a riot in the city, but it was quickly snuffed out. Rochambeau’s ministers delivered themselves over to excesses that had no limits. Such were the crimes directed by this man, who was destined to be cut down by a Leipzig cannonball! . . . 

[ 138 ]

The Ball

The two brothers fought together with more or less good luck. Their operations were a combination of victories and setbacks, but overall the insurrection strengthened and grew in size. The various leaders who had been acting, until this point, on their own and almost in opposition, were now united under one power. The army marched, as much as it could, in unison. Generals were selected and well-made decisions began to replace the chaotic choices of the first revolts. The Indigènes proved to be distinguished fighters through their surprising vigor and audacity. French troops were sent to attack a northern city that the Indigènes occupied. They seized it, but not without difficulty. The Expedition had as its main goals the protection of Tortuga Island, where the army’s sick had been transferred, and the maintenance of communication between this little island and the colony’s capital. Although the Indigènes had ceded the city, they knew the enemy’s plan and stayed close so as to be in a position to attack. Their general,XXV a man as resolute as he was enterprising, had conceived of a risky plan. To execute it, he needed, above all, gunpowder. This he managed to acquire in a nighttime raid on the city near to where he was camped. He emptied the fort’s magazine while its sleeping inhabitants were put to death. After this, he ordered the construction of rafts made with bamboo and strong vines, upon which were placed one hundred and fifty choice troops. Trailing two light crafts, these rafts crossed the inlet separating Saint-Domingue from Tortuga. The Indigène soldiers left at dark and arrived on the small island the same night. They roused the farmers and with their help attacked and dispersed the French garrison. They took advantage of this moment to liberate all of the Indigènes held prisoner there. The former prisoners [ 139 ]

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then threw themselves onto the sick, all of whom they would have destroyed if the garrison had not assembled to rush to their aid. As French forces arrived from Saint-Domingue, this detachment of Indigènes was forced to flee. The farmers were severely punished and sent back to work. Of the one hundred and fifty men who sowed death and fear on the small island, only a few managed to survive. All of the others paid for this audacious enterprise with their lives. Yet they had inspired a hatred of oppression that would not delay in rising up again. The plaguestricken were again slaughtered, except for a very small number who were brought back to Saint-Domingue. In the interim, the general who had just completed this adventurous mission attempted to retake the city that had recently been captured by the French; he wanted the honor of taking it back. Only the forces of perseverance and bravery could capture a position so well defended by several fortifications. A few days prior to this, another generalXXVI had tried to retake the capital city. He was forced to retreat and stopped at a location not far away, a position that he had previously secured. The enemy followed him into battle a second time, but they did not fight as unswervingly as they might have given that two other generalsXXVII and a few battalions of fresh troops arrived to aid the general. The Indigènes retraced their steps and tried to claim the capital again. This important stronghold had numerous defenders who were as experienced as they were brave. Despite their most valiant efforts, the Indigènes were pushed back. Romulus and Remus presided over all of these operations and persisted in their error of desiring to conquer Saint-Domingue’s cities at any cost. Many men were sacrificed to this obsession, of which Stella refused to cure them. During this last assault on the capital, an Indigène officer was taken prisoner by the French. He had the dishonor of denouncing, in hopes of receiving a pardon, a large number of people in the city who had, according to him, sworn to help the Indigènes in battle. Rochambeau, even more repugnant than he was cowardly, sent these people to be tortured along with their informer, even though their conduct was irreproachable. All of these events occurred in the North, which had been in turmoil for some time. Since the beginning of the insurrection, the South had been little moved to act on behalf of the two brothers. Because it [ 140 ]

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had suffered under Romulus more than the other regions, the South threw itself into the arms of the French. Yet it was unable to watch with indifference as children were drowned and hanged without cause; therefore—as we have said—the South’s disappointment translated into unrest in the largest city, the consequences of which added to the incredible number of victims that the Indigène population had to mourn. With these sufferings arose a mass of hatred that suffocated any sympathy that had been shown to the French upon their arrival. The entire region was set alight. Anger sprang up in several places at once. This anger was similar to a fire lighted at four corners of a field where the plough traces its furrows in the earth; this fire grows larger and eventually meets to form one great conflagration. This is how events occurred in the North; at first, the field was only partially set ablaze, but it promptly became home to an immense fire. It offered its flames to the universal blaze that would leave the earth of Saint-Domingue bare. This earth was where Liberty would see a new people grow in the fertile path of its plow. The insurrection in the South was led by a manXXVIII as generous as he was brave. Since he was repulsed by the killings, he had all of the nearby Europeans sent to the capital of the region by boat as soon as the flag of revolt was raised. When he ran into a French patrol a short time later, the officer and soldiers whom he imprisoned were merely disarmed and sent back to the enemy’s outposts. The same magnanimous conduct was shown toward the French in the North, at the beginning of this war, by a manXXIX who since has become the greatest personification of our military glory. At the end of a vigorous battle, two cities in the SouthXXX fell into the hands of a generalXXXI who shines among our first military luminaries. Soon, he had to defend the cities against the French, who returned in force, but he could do nothing but abandon them. The violent shock that he had tried in vain to resist sent him into a neighboring region. There he learned of the advantage that his soldiers had recently gained over the French in the heart of the region that he had recently left. He told this to one of his comrades in arms,XXXII a general also of renown, who rushed to supply him with ammunition and good will, which was no less precious to him. The two men, at the head of their united forces, took the route to the South and were welcomed with enthusiasm. [ 141 ]

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The Indigènes were thus in a position to challenge the enemy en masse. They pushed the French back to the walls of the region’s main city, which they seized the next day, finally penetrating its fortifications. The temptation to pillage created disorder in their ranks: they were soon thrown out of the city walls. Nonetheless, moments of individual courage marked this short triumph. We would like to cite in particular the conduct of a young battalion leader who has since become a distinguished general.XXXIII He did not give up until the very last, and only after being wounded and flying the flag of the Indigènes on the conquered ramparts. At about the same time, a French general and twelve hundred infantrymen disembarked in another southern city. The line of soldiers marched with the certitude that they would purge the region of all insurgents along the way. From the administrative center of the city, where the line reached, a sortie was created as a diversion. Yet despite this tactic, the French troops had immeasurable trouble and lost five hundred men in battle. Their march was nothing more than a long stretch of fighting. Rushed, tired, and harassed, the French general refused to return to camp with his injured men. Instead, he gave them over to the enemy after an agreement made under fire. The Indigènes would care for the wounded French soldiers as well as their own. Liberty was gaining ground. Its defenders set up camp four leagues from the South’s main city in order to place it under constant siege. At a city in the West, a few spirited youths planned to declare themselves in favor of the insurrection. They were denounced. To capture the youths, the authorities ordered a review. Upon learning that the young men would be arrested, the most intrepid among them became their leader. He was a cavalry captain whose name is synonymous with bravery: Lamarre. Lamarre, later General Lamarre, ultimately faced a heroic and unfortunate end that immortalized him at the same time that it made him the object of profound regret for both the country and for History. He called on all of his friends and, from the fort where he had retreated, attacked French troops lined up on the Place d’Armes. Taken aback by the brusqueness of the movement, the French soldiers rushed disorderedly to the shore where a moored frigate awaited them. The frigate attacked the fort, which forced it to raise anchor. Lamarre thus attracted

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the attention of Romulus and Remus, who gave the young captain control of the city. In the meanwhile, these events that were growing more and more complicated excited the sanguinary passions of Rochambeau. In the North, this was signaled by atrocities that had been unknown until that point. For example, the Captain General had those Indigène officers whom he condemned to die of hunger sent to a small island crawling with insects; there the men were tied, naked, to trees. Others were put in large bags weighted with enormous stones that sent the whole rapidly to the bottom of the sea. Some were hanged from the ships’ yard and then drowned—double torture. A woman and her husband were brought in to be hanged. The man turned pale at the sight of the cord. The woman, stoic and strong, passed the cord around her own neck and encouraged her husband, by her example and her words, to sacrifice his life for freedom. A mother, witnessing the terror of her two daughters and the fate that she would soon share told them: “My children, do not cry. Rather, rejoice in death. Our wombs will carry slaves no longer.” These tortures preceded Rochambeau’s departure for the West, where he transferred the seat of the government in order to act more efficiently against the insurgents in the South. His entrances into the city that had become the country’s capital were an occasion for celebration for those who liked him, or looked like him. A brilliant show of lights reflected the public joy. First, the Captain General satisfied his depraved desires and impure sensual pleasures. Then, he gave a ball to which the city’s most prominent Indigène families were invited. These families naturally shrank from such an honor. The terrible things that were happening around them had thrown fear and desolation into their souls. Each of them had already seen a member of their family exposed to the hazards of war; no one expected to enjoy the ball. There was too much to criticize about the barbarity of the Captain General to dance at his home with pleasure. Moreover, they also feared that humiliations of the kind to which they had grown accustomed would take place there. Yet prudence advised them to attend, for during this time of atrocious persecutions, even the least pretext was enough to justify death. The Indigènes ignored the ex-

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cellent reasons not to attend in favor of a more convincing one: their personal safety. The ball was brilliant. The splendid room in which it took place was lent the luster of ornaments, candles, and flowers. Guests danced until the middle of the night, at which time Rochambeau announced that the party would end in another room, toward which he directed everyone. The attendees followed him across several magnificently illuminated rooms, arriving in an apartment lighted with a sepulchral lamp and decorated with black wall coverings, upon which hung funereal emblems. In the corners of the room were coffins. Unseen eulogists chanted hymns to the deceased. More than half of the room was given over to this gloomy spectacle. This event was no secret except to the local women; it was a surprise created just for them. As they recoiled in horror, screaming and close to fainting, the European women whispered maliciously amongst themselves. Upon the order of Rochambeau, the hymns ceased and a menacing voice addressed the Indigènes: “You have attended the funerals of your husbands and brothers.”44 The next day’s chaos could not have confirmed these sinister words more plainly.

[ 144 ]

The Dogs

We permit ourselves to detail, overall, the military operations that the Captain General led upon his arrival in the West. There his troops assaulted the Indigènes, who occupied a fort in a guarded area that they could not capture, despite launching continual assaults against it. At the same time, others were sent to attack the city that remained under the control of the young officer, the one who had made himself known through glorious military efforts. These two expeditions had two different results. The first was crowned a success for the French: a rude battle forced the Indigènes to abandon the area that they had threatened to overtake and to move into the interior. The second was a failure: as soon as the ships bringing new soldiers came into view, the young captain burned the city, for he knew that he could not defend it. He left to take a position nearby on a hill that he had previously fortified and supplied with provisions. The French disembarked, crossed the smoldering city without stopping, and sent two lines of attack to seize the fort with extreme vigor. The Indigènes fought back with equal vigor. In quick succession, they repelled the two French lines, which suffered large losses. The French returned by sea to the region’s main city; there, the general died of a wound that he had received during the raid. This loss irritated Rochambeau to the point that he exceeded all restraint; he slaughtered all of the Indigènes under his control. There was no honest or courageous influence to interfere. He ordered the imprisonment of the mother and entire family of the valorous officer who authored this affront. He sought revenge in acts against women . . . Let us return to the story of the envoy. His primary mission consisted in going to two neighboring islands to negotiate a loan, as we [ 145 ]

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have stated, and to collect money from the vice-regent of Mexico. He had a third task of which the reader is still ignorant. This is the proper place to speak of it. Principally, it involved the purchase of dogs trained to hunt men. The dogs were to be used in the war against the Indigènes. The French had difficulty avoiding the ambushes set upon them by the Indigène soldiers, and those attacks left gaps in the French Army that were only partially filled by reinforcements from Europe. The dogs were to help with these difficulties. The usefulness of these animals was so well demonstrated that the envoy did not even bargain. He believed that a high price was an indication of quality. Thus he returned with a few hundred dogs purchased at considerable expense. Part of the shipment was sent to the North, and he took the rest to the West himself. The first shipment arrived before Rochambeau left for the West. To find out if this acquisition met his expectations, the Captain General conducted an experiment that excited the curiosity of the city’s entire European population. Since the dogs had cost an amount even above the price paid by the most extravagant admirers of these kinds of animals, Rochambeau claimed with a certain objectivity that these dogs had commensurate qualities; this is to say that they were dogs for hunting as well as fighting. They knew how to track the enemy’s scent, how to attack him, how to take him to the ground, and how to rip him apart. To show off his dogs’ talents, Rochambeau transformed a courtyard into an amphitheater with terraced seating like in the times when Romans attended the battles of gladiators and ferocious beasts. A young man of African origin was attached to a post in the middle of the arena. He was the person unfortunate enough to serve as part of this cruel experiment: the young man was to be food for the dogs. A crowd of luxuriously dressed men and women occupied the seats. Rochambeau was seated in the place of honor amidst his staff. They had taken pains to starve the dogs before releasing them on the victim. Yet even though the dogs were famished, they merely sniffed the young man and walked away, despite the excited calls of the handlers. There was a great disappointment among the spectators. Rochambeau was the first to shake his head; he seemed to say to himself, “I have been robbed.”

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In an act of savagery, a French general took out his saber, cut across the body of the young black man, and pressed a dog’s snout into the wound. His appetite whetted by the blood, the dog resolved to bite; all of the others followed his example. In less than five minutes, the human prey was devoured. Only the bones, from which hung a few twitching pieces of flesh, remained. Hunting horns blew an immense hallali, which was accompanied by frenetic applause. Rochambeau possessed what he needed. The Captain General attributed the dogs’ initial hesitation to lack of practice, and thought that it would be easy to familiarize them with their new task. He ordered that their training be completed and that they be taught to develop a taste for human flesh. Soon, the dogs were included in an army corps that was sent to attack the Indigènes at their mountain camp. Stella had called for the two brothers to meet there, sensing that the cradle of the insurrection would soon be attacked. She had neglected no precaution for its general defense, knowing that the Indigènes relied upon her more than on numerous battalions. Nonetheless, she wanted the elite troops to surround her so that the entire army would enjoy the fruit of victory. The ramparts that she had constructed were indestructible. The enemy would smash in vain against this wall of bronze. Nevertheless, she required that the two brothers contribute, visibly and concretely, to the safety of the camp so as to leave all the glory to them. In order to inherit the work of the daughter of heaven, the sons of Marie the African were obliged to contribute actively. In offering them her gifts, Stella wanted the brothers to appear for everyone to see, so that upon the sight of these gifts their enemies would be required to say: “They have earned them.” Who would dare deny that the right to be free, sovereign, and independent, to own land and to take one’s place amongst the great family of nations—a right that was solemnly recognized by a liberal and just France—was not honorably and legitimately acquired by those who inhabit the isle of Saint-Domingue today? Many people occupy a larger space on the earth, but none has more noble political origins. • The measures taken to defend the camp were ingenious and simple. Troops lined the interior of the ramparts two deep. Large detachments

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were placed in the woods on both sides of the road and before the river in order to set up ambushes. The water was stopped a few steps above the ford and completely diverted from its path, thanks to a barrier made of sticks. Soldiers with axes took their positions next to the dam, which was to be broken when the signal was given. The road leading up to the mountain was cleared and flattened as if to invite the enemy to climb it. When the French division appeared on the other side of the river, Stella reminded the two brothers of her previous words, which were now confirmed so completely. Showing them the dogs, she said: “They will push the limits of blindness and stupidity to the point of using dogs to bring you down. Do you hear? Dogs, real dogs, transformed into soldiers to fight you.” Romulus and Remus felt this humiliation deeply. Their hearts beat with rage. The enemy advanced and the dogs, placed in front, discovered the forces lying in ambush. These forces were fired upon, but the French soldiers neither stopped nor sought to enter into the thickness of the forest where the Indigènes were hiding. Terrible shots were fired, with perfect regularity and unity. The French showed themselves to be accomplished soldiers. The artist’s brush could improve nothing. Their actions seemed to be those of expert guerrilla soldiers. Sheltered by the trees, huddled behind rocks, and lying flat on their stomachs in the bushes, the Indigènes admired the talent of their enemies in almost complete security. They did not fire as well as their enemies, far from it. Heard from a distance, the Indigènes’ gunshots bore a striking resemblance to the popping sound made by burning clumps of bamboo;XXXIV nonetheless, almost all of these shots hit the target. Before arriving at the camp, the enemy counted far fewer men, especially officers. The French crossed the dry riverbed in a torrent and ascended the mountain with confidence. There they battled on with muskets. The French, listening only to their valor, ran toward the fortification with bayonets in hand, but this did nothing to weaken the Indigène defenses. During the ambushes, which were the first battles, the dogs showed themselves to have few warrior-like instincts. They shamefully moved from the front to the back of the line. The rear guard could barely hold back the barking and howling pack. [ 148 ]

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In the meanwhile, the assailants arrived at the ramparts and were forced to recoil under heavy and sustained resistance. They climbed up the mountain several times but always returned back down again. The final time, Stella, followed by the two brothers and the entire garrison, left the camp and overtook the French at the foot of the mountain. While the French troops were rushing to the riverbed and toward the former ford, the Indigènes broke the dam; water, with the force of an avalanche, bubbled and rushed forth. It submerged them and carried them away. As if to add to their disgrace, the few who escaped the sword or the river’s flood were threatened in their detour by the dogs, which did not know how to distinguish the French soldiers from the Indigènes. This was an understandable error, especially during a retreat; the dogs treated the French as if they were the true enemies. Over the years, this success for the Indigènes has been tied to the first exploits of the two brothers. It lent new fame to the mountain, which remains both as holy as the memory of the African woman who told her sons to build their camp there, and as glorious as the name of the virgin who ensured their victory upon it. On the night of the battle, Romulus and Remus thought that they saw the shadow of their mother wandering around the camp. She did not walk up to them, but thanks to her mannerisms and the way that she carried herself, they could tell that she was satisfied: nothing more was necessary to please these simple men whose hearts guided them in their superstition. Once, Marie the African had appeared in a dream in order to rebuke them. Her irate manner and bitter words caused them pain; now, she appeared as a gentle ghost. She brought them joy by letting them know that she was pleased. Then it was their conscience that had reproached them for neglecting the duties that they owed to the memory of their tender mother; today it was their conscience still that told them that they had proven themselves worthy of her. This mother would live again for them in the nation. Ah, what veneration would they not offer her! . . .  • Rochambeau, who could no longer depend upon his dogs, was reduced to relying solely upon his army. He had, however, lost none of his energy. Resolutely steadfast, this leader was renowned for his ferocity. The [ 149 ]

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enormity of his vices prevents us from pointing out what is otherwise thought to be a most admirable quality among men: courage. Reinforcements of two thousand soldiers from Europe allowed the Captain General to continue his operations vigorously. He executed a skillfully conceived campaign in the South: three lines of attack, leaving from different points, were to converge on the region’s main city. There, a fourth line would join and form a circle of fire, inside which they would trap and crush the Indigènes who were camped nearby. If the Indigènes had been surprised, his plan would have succeeded; but it is hard to surprise such vigilant men who, aware of their enemy’s superiority, sought to equal them, if not in the quality of their maneuvers, then by the quickness of their movements. They also had an entire population as spies . . . The French could not escape their fatal ambuscades. The two lines were diverted without difficulty, although the third resisted for a longer period. A bloody battle ensued between the French and the Indigènes; it gave its name to the hillXXXV that, like so many other famous places in the country, is the guardian of the undying memories of the War for Independence. The French were beaten at this spot and lost three hundred men, including a warrant officer. They withdrew to a city several leagues away where they were welcomed by warships. Had other European troops not arrived in time to lend them support, the surrounded fourth line would have been torn to pieces. Thus except for two large cities and a few villages, the Indigènes could call themselves masters of the South. They were almost masters of the West and North as well. Their prosperous position radically differed from that of the French, which had become so strained that Rochambeau found it necessary to send a general to France to notify the mainland of their predicament. While there, he was to try to obtain money and men as quickly as possible. As the war went on, Saint-Domingue’s agricultural production slowed. Finally, the colony had no exports at all. Public revenues dried up at their source and the country suffered from a lack of provisions. A chasm of need opened, which swallowed up two shipments of funds from the Metropole. Famine reigned in the areas under siege. Luckily for his people, Rochambeau left the command of Saint-Domingue’s capital to French generals whom the Indigènes held in high regard. Despite working under a violent leader, these moderate lieutenants managed to [ 150 ]

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cooperate with the farmers, who gave them all kinds of supplies. This was the contraband of the insurrection. Thanks to a truce in the South, a market opened at the gates of the main city. It provided food to the population there, which could thus hold out a bit longer. Stella highly approved of this action. She was impatient for an outcome, and felt that concessions made to the enemy were slowing the war’s conclusion. Nonetheless, she liked seeing the Indigènes honor themselves by committing such acts of generosity.

[ 151 ]

Last Efforts

While Saint-Domingue was the theatre of such grave events, an even greater affair was taking place in Europe: the Treaty of Amiens had been broken, and France was again drawing her sword against her irreconcilable enemy, England. This European war was to absorb the thought, interest, and means of the Metropole. Saint-Domingue was to be neglected and, effectively, she was. From this moment forward, the colony received no further help from the motherland. A new unfortunate incident seemed to announce the upcoming loss of Saint-Domingue. The general whom Rochambeau had sent to Paris to tell of the colony’s sad situation fell into the hands of the English. The details held in the dispatches that he carried offered information allowing the English to act with perfect knowledge of the colony’s interior affairs. The English offered indirect help to the Indigènes by blocking the island’s ports. At the same time, the two brothers pursued with increasing energy the operations of the immense siege that had imprisoned the French in the cities, where they were overcome by disease and food shortages. The African’s sons knew how to establish an almost harmonious order in their army, which was spread across the country. Their rather severe discipline produced a unity of action necessary for great results. They created divisions of numbered demi-brigades, just like the French troops had. Their flag was bicolored, a simplification of the French flag to which they had remained faithful for so long. They had carried that prior flag triumphantly in the war against foreigners, but now it would forever represent an enemy. It was the flag of slavery. The colors that the two brothers had adopted for the new standard possessed, morally, a [ 152 ]

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meaning that we have already tried to translate: the political significance was independence. At the moment when they saw the new flag raised above the insurgent camp, the French did not have a complete understanding of what was happening. The bloody dress, formerly a sign of an unpunished crime, was now a sign of vengeance under which Stella permitted the two brothers to unite their soldiers because this banner invoked a surge of strong passion. To the soaring red flag Stella attached a second color, thus keeping alive the memory of the glorious partnership that forever connected Marie’s sons, making them brothers twice over. Until then, their enemies believed themselves to be observing only an act of insurrection. Great was their surprise, and even greater their chagrin, when the French recognized that this flag was the symbol of a revolution.45 The French played their role with courage, but the odds were against them. A return of fortune was no longer possible. Their calamities were irreparable. They were imprudent gamblers who had risked everything at once. For them, the gain had been too tempting! . . . They were so confident in their power that they took no account of the omnipotent Hand that controls destinies. On one hand, the colony had fallen prey to two destructive elements: disease and war. On the other, the path of escape was closed. Here was the providential grain of sand that would destroy the Colonist’s chariot. Just as the previous year, the epidemic increased in intensity once the weather grew hotter. Hospitals were filled with sick Europeans and the army was thus diminished. The two brothers spread fire through the vast plain that neighbored the city where Rochambeau was located, and wrought bloody havoc there. They were, however, beaten on several occasions. Yet the French were not at an advantage due to these gains, for they had no way to replace their dead. The European forces would soon be exhausted and rapidly destroyed; their numbers were decimated each day and they had no ability to refresh their ranks. The government in France, because of the war declared in Europe, sent an order to the Captain General of Saint-Domingue to retake his position in the North, the location of which was more favorable for receiving regular communications from the Metropole. Furthermore, because of its natural setting, this city was less susceptible to blockade than [ 153 ]

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the western city where Rochambeau had moved nearly four months earlier. Upon his return to the capital, the Captain General let it be known that the state of siege was to continue. He removed all tariffs from foreign food products, supposing that some would arrive; yet unless they were counting on a forced truce or other such luck, the colonial government could not seriously expect something to come of this measure. The lack of commodities for export and the English blockade had been enough to leave the ports completely deserted. The Captain General took unnecessary care to announce that the siege would continue with the ulterior motive of pressuring shopkeepers and extorting the money that the government, at the end of its resources, needed. By proclamation, he told the country that war had flared up again between England and France. Of this subject, he said anything that he thought might heighten the morale of the soldiers and calm the worries of the Colonist. Yet despite official encouragement, the African’s assassin—the Colonist—was not reassured. Recent events had left little room for illusions. He was apprehensive and trembled with dread. Spinelessness was not the least of his moral infirmities. He had a weakness of the soul that is particular to people with vain and selfish natures. Those who are prideful and cruel in their prosperity are ordinarily shy and low in their adversity. True courage is aligned with generosity, to which goodness gives birth. The two brothers’ hope was increased by the Colonist’s despair. They closed in around the large cities in order to force the enemy to open its doors. One of the cities in the West surrendered, not counting one garrison that harbored a warship. The few areas of the North that held out were on the verge of surrender. The small region occupied by Rochambeau was like that indispensable part of a failed venture that a businessman guards in distress, the assets needed to settle his accounts. During the time that Rochambeau was in this extreme situation, when his own compatriots were fatigued by the ferocious tyranny that had made them victims in turn, they conspired to have him sent away from Saint-Domingue. The French generals who hatched this plot hoped that, after Rochambeau’s expulsion, they would approach the Indigènes with offers of reconciliation. This hope was ill-founded. Rapprochement [ 154 ]

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was no longer possible between the two races of men who battled in the colony. There is no doubt that Rochambeau had made himself odious to the children of Saint-Domingue. There is no doubt that he brought all the excesses of power against them. Let us proclaim loudly that it is to him, to his unheard of atrocities, that we must attribute, in large part, the terrible reprisals enacted by the victorious Indigènes against their enemies. Yet the two brothers hated slavery more than they loathed Rochambeau; thus, for this lesser leader, the question remained the same: life or death? Nevertheless, the plot was exposed. The generals in charge were punished by deportation to France, and such was the fear impressed upon the army by the leader’s despotism that the soldiers did not dare murmur a word about the expulsion of these generals whom they had held dear. A short time later, others were sent away for acting too moderately or for speaking too brazenly to the governor, for the supposed good of the colony. During this time, the Indigènes retook a major city in the South.XXXVI It was one that the Colonist prized, a city that in an earlier time he had handed over to the English. It was also the city that the English had abandoned last. There his influence had lasted the longest, and it was there that the memory of his treachery remained deepest. He was very sensitive to the loss of this former center of treason: his desperation increased. On its way out of the city, the French garrison was taken prisoner by the English. Two areas in the North surrendered at the same time. In one,XXXVII the Indigènes announced their presence with disorder. In the other,XXXVIII the English offered a beautiful but incomplete example of their magnanimity. The French general who commanded the last city had been taken from his army due to a reprehensible ruse. An English warship arrived at the port, forced entrance, and destroyed a French ship at anchor, the crew of which had been eliminated by yellow fever. The warship prepared to take the French garrison prisoners when it learned that the ship had no general. This news had a powerful effect on the spirit of the English captain. He reflected on the influence that the absence of their captain, the soul of the ship, must have had on its defense. Soldiers without a leader were certainly not his enemies: they were unfortunate men [ 155 ]

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in need of help. The English captain took them onto his ship and transported them to the capital. The exchange would have been sublime if, after having reclaimed the French general whom the Indigènes had held prisoner jus gentium, the English captain had not himself been taken, in violation of the same law.46 A city in the WestXXXIX fell at about the same time, and the French garrison evacuated to the former Spanish territory. The Indigènes took possession of the city and refrained from violence, even though they were drawn to act violently due to a circumstance that was nearly lethal to the European population: upon leaving the city, a French officer had left behind gunpowder in a blockhouse. Without suspecting this, the Indigènes took possession of the blockhouse at night. A spark from a cigar lit the powder and caused an explosion that was fatal to many of the Indigènes. For a moment, the frantic soldiers wanted to punish the innocent population there, but they were constrained by the voice of their leaders. Thanks be to God that wisdom thus guided the words of the two brothers! . . .  The leader of the western region was inclined to surrender. The moderation showed by the Indigènes, who had taken control of a neighboring area, encouraged this disposition in the majority of the regions’ inhabitants. Moreover, famine began to make its effects known. Foreign food shipments were lacking each day and people were forced to travel great distances to gather sustenance in the countryside. This kind of work was not easy, and providing for oneself required serious excursions. The same level of effort was needed to reestablish running water in the fountains, which the enemy had redirected from their source. Two European factions fought over authority in the area: one demanded evacuation, while the other wanted to resist as long as resistance was possible. This last was the party of Rochambeau. When the leaders of the other side left the colony, the Captain General won over the rest. The Indigènes in the city, subject to a dreadful revolt of their subordinates, secretly sent for the sons of the African. The war was reaching its end. The French would concede: these were their last efforts.

[ 156 ]

The Departure of the French Army

Stella knew that victory was near, and so she brought Romulus and Remus under her tent to instruct them in the ways of clemency. She spoke about the obligations that humanity required them to show to the conquered, and she finished with words full of mercy: “You are right to complain of the barbarity of your former oppressors and of the iniquity of a government which, after solemnly recognizing your freedom, criminally attempted to take it from you. The great number of recent cruelties has only added to these causes of hatred, and urged you to vengeance. However, you will soon be conquerors: do not stain your laurels with blood spilt away from the battlefield. Murder dishonors and avenges nothing. Above all, spare those soldiers who battled only out of loyalty to their flags and obedience to their leaders. They are not truly your enemies.” The two brothers listened respectfully to the exhortations made by the daughter of heaven, but they made no promises upon their departure. They turned their steps toward the city that called them. Under the orders of their leaders, four demi-brigades and several battalions stopped not far from the city walls and blocked the principal route of communication. A convoy of supplies, escorted by seven hundred men from the most renowned corps of the Expeditionary Army—which itself was composed of valiant troops—was on its way to the city when it learned that forces superior to theirs blocked the passage. Though the convoy would have been able to turn around and reach a city that was just steps away from the former Spanish territory, it preferred to advance instead. The officerXL who commanded the retinue knew not what it meant to retreat in the face of danger. His white hair contradicted his recklessness and ardor. He had earned a brilliant reputation for bravery in the region. [ 157 ]

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Resolved to continue their march, the French nevertheless understood that it was impossible to take the main road. Thus they took small paths and detours, advancing over plantations and plains. The Indigènes sent troops to attack them from the front, side, and back. Although they lost two cannons and all their artillery, the French forces could not be stopped. They continued marching in an orderly fashion even though they were weakened by enormous losses. Further along, they were disabled by the charge of cavalry and overthrown by a final shock. Nonetheless, a handful of men, with their colonel in the lead, reached the doors to the city and entered to the applause of friends and enemies alike. Several blockhouses that had been set up by the French to facilitate communication had fallen to the Indigènes, who also took and executed four hundred French prisoners of war. This crime was the precursor to all that would soon come to pass. It proved true Stella’s charitable words: hate is deaf to pity. The Indigènes took position closer to the city, placing batteries at key points in the area. Despite murderous fire from the forts that were armed with large-caliber cannons, their outposts reached the city walls. Completely deprived of water from the fountains, the Indigènes were required to drink the barely potable well water. Without supplies from any side, the city would, in all probability, not hold out for long. In the meanwhile, some of the cannonballs launched by the Indigènes had landed at a hospital full of sick Europeans. The patients ran fearfully in all directions, most of them without clothing, causing alarm in the city. This scene promptly became one of terror due to the screams of distraught women. Its effect led the authorities to decide to surrender. They gathered a certain number of men and informed them of the change that they were making. One of the men who got along with the Indigènes was charged with transmitting their propositions in person. The French were given four days to evacuate the area. They exchanged hostages. Both sides observed the agreement religiously, and the enemy surrendered the city at the end of the four days. The French left on ships, almost all of which were captured; the general and his head officers were the only ones to escape the English cruisers, which were hiding out on a neighboring island. Soon, how[ 158 ]

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ever, this group fell victim to a tempest, which required that they return to the part of Saint-Domingue that formerly belonged to the Spanish. What was left of the Expeditionary Army thus escaped the anger of the Indigènes only to become either English prisoners or ocean prey. What can be said of this destiny, except that it was the impious cause of the Army, whatever its convictions, that had brought misfortune upon them. Before leaving Saint-Domingue, the old colonel who had fought so valiantly against the brothers at the head of unfailing troops that guarded a supply convoy wanted to show his respect by visiting their camp. Those who are brave form a separate family that is of no country and of no race. The French officer was received with distinction. Romulus showered him with praise and vaunted his bravery. The fact that he had so exposed himself and was not even injured surprised the son of the African, who innocently told the officer that he attributed his luck to a divine cause, which he meant as a great compliment. Romulus was the head of the army of the Indigènes. From the beginning of the events that had changed the face of the country, his brother Remus obligingly took up a position by his side, where he was confirmed by Stella. Remus began the task of dismantling the robust defenses that had been taken against him in response to his past behavior. He succeeded so well at pleading his cause that he gained the support of all. He did not limit himself to preaching obedience to the leader: he obeyed the leader himself, offering an example to follow. In this respect, there can be no two ways of recounting the events. What, then, is to be made of the Colonist’s former assertion that the younger son was jealous of his brother’s authority and found it repugnant to obey him? The assertion remains what it always was, and what it will be for all eternity: a miserable slander, a cowardly charade. The Indigènes took possession of the capital of the western region without the least amount of disorder. Attempts at pillage were put down as quickly as they sprang up. The army maintained a strict level of discipline, even though the soldiers had to endure serious shortages. Their nakedness attested to their needs. The conduct of the Indigènes was no less commendable in the main city of the South, which they entered at the same time, following a surrender signed by the French to their overseas enemies. The French gar[ 159 ]

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rison was taken prisoner by the English under the condition that the sick and injured would be transported to another point on the island via merchant ship. This was done. Resistance was now limited to two cities in the North. The Indigènes would unite their forces against these two cities and deliver to their enemy what is, in common parlance, called the coup de grâce. Rochambeau, as we have already indicated, had not announced the state of existing siege for nothing; he had the concerns of his public to satisfy. The government was without resources, and thus all of the inhabitants of the colony’s capital were forced to pay a special tax within two hours. The local authority was charged with fixing the sum for each person according to his wealth. Eight merchants were taxed independently. The Captain General was suspicious that they had occasionally dared to criticize his actions, but he mainly suspected them of complicity with the generals who conspired to have him removed from the colony. He wanted to make them pay. Thus, according to his will, these merchants had to contribute a considerable sum. Three did so graciously; five others refused and were put in prison. The sacrifices made by three of the five led to their release, although one—who was ruined by paying such a large sum—went mad. The two others had neither the money nor the means to procure their immediate liberty, which Rochambeau well knew. To obtain revenge against one of the men, Rochambeau ordered his death. This merchant’s brother, who was also his associate, offered to pay off the debt with all of the merchandise in his store, but his offer was made in vain. Other generous people asked for the time needed to collect the required amount. While the Captain General pretended to honor their request, and while these people were out diligently seeking charity, the prisoner was taken a few steps from the governor’s house and shot. The man who remained was released without bond. It was with a European, French like himself, that Rochambeau satisfied his bloodthirsty rage. If this still did not leave room for retaliation on the part of the Indigènes, we must note this example of ferocity in addition to the many others! What a gruesome example of cruel insanity!! . . . The city where the murder took place remained dumbfounded in its aftermath. As for Rochambeau, his brow was serene, even though he soon expected to see enemy forces at an arm’s length. [ 160 ]

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It is said that he had but five thousand soldiers in good shape. Many of his people asked him to leave and take refuge in the eastern part of the island, but he laughed off this faint-hearted advice. It was an act of courageous resolution that, all things considered, should have surprised no one. He was both a general and a man: one part of him lacked neither talent nor bravery—despite what was said at the time of his first trip to Saint-Domingue (which we have related)—and the other part was ferocious and without virtue. The merit of the first was erased by the vice of the second. The man dominated the general; this was why Rochambeau was cursed. The Indigènes, no longer needing to fight in the West or South, moved en masse to the North, where a final campaign would decide the fate of the colony. They marched under the direction of Romulus. The army was striking, not because of its dress and discipline, but because of its attitude and number: it had risen to over twenty thousand men. The war had made those who wished for independence into true soldiers. They had been educated in the school of danger; the routine of gunfire and the hatred of slavery engendered in them an absolute disdain for death. Not one of these men would refuse to give his life for liberty. • The fighting in Saint-Domingue had lasted for thirteen years, and not all of the Indigènes had the same amount of military experience. The elders of the Revolution had made names for themselves in 1790 and 1791. Their records dated from the era of the French Republic. They had long been enthusiastic republicans and high-ranking patriots. Yet when they learned that they could no longer have faith in the Metropole, they dreamed only of independence. To accuse France of not having known how to maintain and keep its most precious elements, which would have forever ensured French possession of this richest of colonies, would be to repeat that which we have already said so many times in the course of this narrative. It would be to return eternally to past events. The hour of regret has passed. The present time is that of History: let it also be the apotheosis of the grandest men of our country! . . .  The younger officers received their first promotions during the trying days of our internecine struggles. They deserved these distinctions and proved it. This was obviously a sign of God’s handiwork. The Civil War [ 161 ]

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in which the Metropole was implicated, the war that had been in fact the doing of its own agents, ended up working against France. Half of the civilian population of Saint-Domingue had been involved in the combat. The war produced fighters who seemed to have been educated precisely so as to oppose the blameworthy designs of the French at a later time. Perhaps for this reason we might consider the war useful without ceasing to recognize it as a public tragedy, a general anguish, and a stigma on the creators of that horrendous discord, which was a source of shame and remorse for the two brothers. The youngest of the officers owed their epaulets to the current war. Since the beginning, they had taken an active part in the battle that was just finishing. They would be part of the Revolution’s triumph and sit at the banquet of the newborn nation. Though their titles to glory were more recent, they were neither less beautiful nor less legitimate. Thus comprised the principle members of this colossal corps, which moved like a gigantic reptile on the road to the capital. The capital area was protected by a powerful line of exterior fortifications, including three or four strengthened blockhouses or outposts built upon hillocks that were dotted by high-caliber cannons designed to watch over the large garrisons. The Indigènes had to march against these fortifications. They sent a battery to the enemy’s blockhouse, and firing began. At the first cannon shot, Rochambeau left the city, at the head of his best cavalry and infantry troops, to occupy a place of observation. From there, he missed not one detail of this event upon which the fate of the capital depended. He had also brought with him a cannon that fired ceaselessly. Between the city and the fortified outposts in question was a bridge that the French had neglected to occupy, and to which their adversaries attached great importance. From this position, the Indigènes determined that they could separate the city from its exterior fortifications and therefore readily take control of it. The position, however, was not easily reached. The Indigènes had to contend with enemy crossfire, artillery, and musketeers from the blockhouse—not to mention Rochambeau’s cannon—as well as the seriously difficult terrain. Nonetheless, recognizing these obstacles only convinced them all the more that nothing could stand up to their ardor. [ 162 ]

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The Army of the Indigènes divided itself thusly: the vanguard, aided by a cavalry that would march, if needed, against the enemy, answered to a generalXLI of proven valor. The main attack forces were commanded by two generals,XLII both equally brave. An intrepid generalXLIII directed the rearguard, and anotherXLIV who had justly received the name “Valiant” commanded the reserve troops. These different corps set off. Romulus spoke to them, indicating the position that they were to take should they “disappear one by one.”47 His orders given, the son of the African sat on a rock. He was confident in the valor of his troops and awaited the result of which he had no doubt. Arms at the ready, the Indigènes marched, as did their enemies, the French. In the course of fighting them, the Indigènes had learned to imitate the French soldiers. While some of them were descendants of the French, all were students of these outstanding soldiers, and the Indigènes knew to honor them for their military expertise. All of the outposts fired repeatedly at Romulus’s army, and the hail of bullets injured his ranks. They were decimated by the musketeers; entire lines disappeared. Nonetheless, the Indigènes advanced surefootedly. The vanguard was at the base of the fortification nearest the road. There, they experienced terrible fire. Some hesitation occurred among the soldiers, but their general supported them and urged them to press forward. They attempted to make it through the passage, but the enemy artillery fire increased and threw the ranks into confusion. The disorder of the Indigènes seemed to indicate a desire for retreat. The French left their entrenchments and prepared to pursue them, but they did not have enough time. The courageous vanguard, brought back to firing by its general, obliged the French to return to the fortification against which the Indigènes rushed furiously. The musketeers and the artillery vomited fire and flame. The indefatigable ardor of the Indigènes, who ran against this current of fire, burst forth, thanks to their desperate efforts, tenacity, rage, the miracle of their heroic loyalty, the fury of their attack and defense, and all the incertitude of victory. This combination formed a spectacle worthy of the attention of both camps. The vanguard was repelled several times; several times it returned on the attack. The Indigènes had neither gained nor lost ground. The general’s impatience grew; he harangued them and launched an impetuous attack against a battery that he wished to displace. He could [ 163 ]

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be seen from afar, pressing his spur against the flank of his horse, which sprinted to the head of the ranks. The Indigènes mounted an attack and had already reached the stockade when a shot rang out, pushing them back. The general’s horse was killed, and he rolled on the ground with the animal in the middle of the road. The general was believed to be dead, but he got up, dusty and bloodied, drawing his sword and ordering: Charge! . . . Suddenly, a sound was heard near Rochambeau’s camp. His army had spontaneously cried out: Bravo! followed by drumroll. Combat immediately ceased, and a French horseman came in the name of the Captain General to congratulate the general who had “dressed himself in such glory.”48 The compliment was flattering, particularly coming from the mouth of Rochambeau. When leaving Saint-Domingue, Rochambeau remembered the general who had produced such a high level of admiration and sent him, as a last mark of his esteem, one of his most handsome battle horses. We have done the highest justice to Rochambeau’s valor. Unfortunately, in him this quality joined with vices for which valor could not compensate. We recognize, nonetheless, the chivalric enthusiasm that inspired a trait of heroism easily appreciated. The combat, momentarily interrupted, began again. The attack corps arrived to lend their support to this courageous vanguard that had suffered so cruelly. The rearguard and the reserves appeared in succession. Finally, the passage was forced and the advantage fell to the Indigènes. As soon as they had conquered this position, they worked to take cover. However, they had to resist the enemy who took great pains to dislodge them at the same time: the blood of the Indigènes reddened the earth. At the height of the battle, an abundant rain fell and extinguished the fires of the battery, rendering the use of rifles impossible. The storm in the heavens put an end to the storm on earth. It was nearly nightfall. The combat had lasted almost twelve hours. After the storm, Romulus appeared amidst those troops who were owed the credit for this bloody day, when “generals had launched an intrepid assault alongside their soldiers.”49 Romulus lauded their conduct. Combat would begin again at daybreak. He gave orders to this effect and returned to his quarters.

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For his part, Rochambeau had entered the city. He was witness to the resolution with which the Indigènes had fought, and he expected to see the battle recommence the next day with more favorable conditions for the Indigènes. He knew that the outpost needed supplies and soldiers and that it was in no state to resist. He wanted to prevent the area from being pillaged, which another assault would have made possible. At that exact moment, Rochambeau conceived of a plan to surrender. At about midnight, he sent an officer to see if Romulus might hear his offer. The garrisons of some of the exterior fortifications, against which the Indigènes had fought so tenaciously—notably that of a famous outpostXLV that illustrated both their valor and that of the enemy—had already withdrawn to the city. Romulus told Rochambeau’s messenger that he would deal only with an envoy who held the appropriate rank to parley with him. Romulus warned the officer, however, of his intention to continue his operations vigorously if an arrangement was not made posthaste. The next day, the same officer brought a letter from the Major General of the French Army. It made known to Romulus that the arrangements for the evacuation of the area had begun to be negotiated with the English who were at port, and it requested that hostilities be suspended until the end of these negotiations. The General-in-Chief of the Army of the Indigènes consented to a truce for one day only. This would not have been too short if the treaty had been completed, but it was not. The English proposed conditions that Rochambeau believed he should reject. The same day, he made overtures to Romulus. One of the sticking points in the negotiations was the refusal on the part of the English to provide the Colonist with asylum in Jamaica. The English had grown weary of him! . . . They were, however, old and good friends, at least in appearance. Although the English had benefitted from his treason because it opened up Saint-Domingue, they did not hold the traitor in high esteem. Understandably, they could only despise him. By prohibiting the Colonist from going to Jamaica, the English imposed upon him an almost legal obligation to stay in Saint-Domingue. Thus, without meaning to, they contributed to France’s loss of the colony. It is true that the hour of retribution had arrived, and everything favored its fulfillment!

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The arrangements that Rochambeau had made with Romulus were followed by a surrender that was signed by one of his officers. This officer had been granted these powers by the General-in-Chief of the Army of the Indigènes himself. The Act of Surrender stipulated that the city would be returned to the Indigènes within ten days; that the French Army would leave with the honors of war; that all of the ships necessary for the transport of the French Army and the city’s colonists would be free to leave the port on an assigned day; that the sick and injured would be cared for in hospitals until they were fully cured; that the few European colonists who stayed behind would be protected; and that local men could not, under any circumstance, be obliged to leave with the French Army. To ensure the execution of the treaty, hostages were exchanged on both sides. The ten days given to the French were not yet over when, retreating to their ships, the French surrendered their position to Romulus. The entrance of the Indigènes into the capital was accompanied by lively displays of joy. The war was over; the country was conquered. What a legitimate reason for the soldiers’ enthusiasm. After having endured so many and such harsh trials, they would now rest. After having braved the sun, the rain, and all kinds of weather, they now had shelter. After having spent so long in the woods, they now found themselves in a city. After having consistently eaten nothing but roots, they now had provisions and substantial food. These pariahs had never known the delights of the nation; they were pleasures that no one had permitted them to experience. They had only watched from afar, in the shadows of their country. Now they saw in front of them an expansive horizon, as splendid as their dreams and as vast as their hopes! The happiness of the city’s Indigènes was at least equal to that of the warriors who had just ripped it from the iron hand of despotism. The city lived, breathed for the first time in twenty-one months! . . . Tender scenes of affection occurred in the streets. People greeted one another, hugged, cried, and laughed. They called each other brother and sister.XLVI They were brothers and sisters of the nation: from this time forth, the orphans had a mother . . . The presence of the Army of the Indigènes in the city led to no excesses. Perfect order reigned. The Indigènes wanted, however, to force [ 166 ]

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the French ships on which Rochambeau and his troops had embarked to raise anchor, and they threatened the ships with cannon fire. The French had to refer to their agreement, Act in hand, to be respected. Yet, the Indigènes were easily pardoned of this brutality by their conduct during the same time in the following circumstance: since the surrender, the English had been actively surveying the port. They were impatient to seize their prey, fearing that the northern winds would blow and move them further out to sea. This would have favored the invasion of their enemies, so they asked Romulus for a pilot in order to move into the port and capture the ships docked there. Romulus refused. No matter how we interpret it, this refusal was noble. It was noble because it showed that the Indigènes were reluctant to meddle in foreign affairs and because it was an expression of respect for the conquered. It was nobler still because the refusal had been motivated by the selfrespect of men who, having arrived at the end of a perilous and great work, were careful not to act in a way that would allow others to say that they had been helped. In reality, no one had done anything for the Indigènes, not even wished them well. The Indigènes avoided every opportunity for help so scrupulously that during the war they often bought powder from the English and paid in full, either in silver or commodities, so as to owe them nothing. As for the rest, they had little sympathy for the Colonist’s former allies. Those who had declared themselves the friends of slavery could never be more than their enemies. In the meanwhile, Rochambeau found himself in the difficult position of being, along with his army, a prisoner of the English. His naval forces were not sufficient to require the English to retreat, and he recognized the impossibility of escape. A convention thus took place between Rochambeau and his European enemies, after which all able-bodied men in the French Army were expedited to England. Those who were sick were sent to France, and the colonists of SaintDomingue who had supported the French Army were pushed out to the former Spanish territory. The Colonist was also transported to the eastern part of the island, which still belonged to France. He could not bring himself to leave it. Destiny retained him there. He lovingly dreamt of the possessions that he had once owned: a secret hope took hold of him . . . [ 167 ]

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Yet he was afraid. Indeed, the Colonist was so afraid that it took a declaration by Romulus to make him decide to leave his house, where he had taken refuge until now. He went to pay his respects to the conqueror with a humble face and a gloomy attitude. Romulus received him with goodwill, but after his departure, it was clear from the leader’s menacing expression that his goodwill had been artificial. The Colonist, that dishonest debtor, was dealing with a ruthless creditor. The capital of Saint-Domingue was in the power of the Indigènes and Rochambeau had departed. What was the last city in SaintDomingueXLVII flying the French flag to do? Surrender. Escape by sea was impossible, and floods of farmers and a battalion of troops choked off all of the overland routes. It would have been difficult for this city to learn what had happened if the English had not taken on the task of announcing it themselves. Along with this, the English obligingly offered to deal with the general in charge of the garrison according to the same conditions offered to Rochambeau. The general to whom they made this offer belonged to one of the oldest families in France.XLVIII It was he who had been tasked, a year earlier, with purchasing the dogs that were destined to play such an important role in the war against the blacks. Even in fulfilling such an ignoble mission, he had managed not to debase the name of his ancestors. The French general pretended to accept the English proposition, but while he was responding and inviting them to formulate their conditions, the general and his troops, along with all of the families who wanted to leave the country, boarded three warships. He intended to force the English line. He preferred to die rather than surrender. The three ships cast off at night. Two were captured while the third, with the intrepid general on board, had the good fortune of breaching the English cordon. The French ship continued its course until it met, on the coast of a neighboring island, with an English frigate, upon which it fired unremittingly. The French boarded the frigate, but the general who had so carelessly risked his life received an injury. He died soon afterward, leaving to France his prize and his glory.

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Liberty, Independence

We know that the surrender signed by Romulus had promised that the sick and wounded French soldiers, who had been left in SaintDomingue’s hospitals, would be cared for and tended to until they were restored to perfect health. The son of Marie the African freely agreed to this condition, and backed it with the full faith of his signature. Romulus could not, therefore, fail to look after these men, whose situation commanded his respect, nor could he fail to protect them under the shield of his authority, at least until it was possible to send them back to France. This, at least, should have been the case. Unfortunately, it was not. Three days after Rochambeau’s departure, in the silence of deepest night, all of the patients were taken from the hospitals, placed on rowboats, and sent several leagues out to sea. Over eight hundred soldiers were drowned. The Colonist trembled in terror at the news of this slaughter. Stella was infuriated. Her mouth opened to form a curse, but she held back the terrible word that was about to escape her lips. Just at the moment of letting out this malediction against Romulus and Remus—who stood together in solidarity, each responsible for the good and the bad that resulted from the actions of the other—Stella experienced something like an uneasiness of conscience. Indulgence came to her, thanks to a reflection about the two brothers that we have related in another chapter: “They were barely out of the state of nature; indomitable passions tyrannized them. They had before their eyes the pernicious example of enlightened men who knew not how to conduct themselves. Their wounds still bled; they had faced such injustices and suffered so much! . . .” The daughter of heaven remembered these things with lenient goodness. Divine charity pled the case for the African’s descendants at the [ 169 ]

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court of Stella’s love. The project that the brothers had guided to its glorious end pled for them as well. Stella could not deny the workers without denying the work, and theirs was the most beautiful among all other human works, which are always and everywhere marred by imperfections. Not one is perfect; not one achieves the ideal. The thought of God always loses its innocence when translated by man. In the moral, as well as in the physical, even the edifice that man lifts highest and with the most care, that he decorates with paintings and sculpture and lavishes with marble and gold, has its foundation in mud. Old Europe offers recent proof of this truth. It felt the need for moral transformation. The spirit of humanity was embodied in the greatest nation on earth, and it had taken this form to raise a new social edifice on a foundation that was almost divine. All loving and enlightened souls sincerely dedicated themselves to the task; yet, despite this immense show of intelligence and virtue, the first stone was laid in blood. Stella, the messenger of Justice, who stopped in the land inhabited by this powerful nation, saw this blood before arriving in the colony and she groaned at the sight of it. Nevertheless, the Revolution was not cursed in France. This was the strongest reason why it could not be cursed in Saint-Domingue, where above all else one had to make allowances for the actions of men. Stella freed the plant of victory from the weeds of murder, the sterile darnel that was ready to smother the seedling destined to bring forth the fruits of civilization. She let the two brothers know that the disgrace of their crime remained with them, as would any future crimes for which they would have to account before the Supreme Judge. In order to leave them in full responsibility for their terrible actions, Stella spared them none of her opinions, lessons, or advice. By way of compensation, however, she made their work her own, consecrating it with her power and bestowing upon it her immortal name. • About one month had passed since the end of the war, and the Indigènes had succeeded the French in the possession of the country. Their liberty was no longer disputable. Independence guaranteed it. Stella wanted to blend the fragrance of incorruptibility with the intoxicating scent of these two flowers of victory—liberty and independence—by giving [ 170 ]

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the Indigènes God for a father and celebrating in His sacred name their flourishing on this fallow land. A splendid ceremony would answer the intentions of this daughter of heaven. It was held in the northern city that was taken by the Indigènes at the beginning of their fight for independence. The two brothers received the order to arrange everything for the grand occasion. Military pomp would be united with religious ritual to make the offering of their hearts more pleasing to the God of all armies. Prayers would ascend to the heavens at the sound of bells, drums, and cannon fire. The celebration was to have, as much as possible, the effect, brilliance, and grandeur befitting the glorious deed that it was meant to consecrate. Stella set the program herself. In this way, our greatest national celebration was established. Each year, it reminds the current generation of the recognition that we owe to the Almighty who allowed us to be born happy and free, of the love of the previous generation who won for us this precious legacy, and of the loyalty that we owe to our nation. The moment had come for the virgin of the mountain to leave Marie’s sons, the sons to whom she had given everything—glory, power, and freedom—and who had only to await that which they would produce themselves. We say leave because it is the most appropriate word to explain their simple parting of ways. Yet the generous daughter of heaven had promised never to abandon Romulus, Remus, or the island; she was merely returning to that eternal dwelling place on high from which invisible powers watch over the people below. Stella took the approaching national solemnity as an occasion for revealing her true identity to the brothers, a mystery that they had desired to solve since her arrival on the mountain. Thanks to her great revelation, the ceremony took on new significance. • It was not yet night; the sun had just disappeared behind the high mountains lining the horizon. A sustained rumbling—the thunder of artillery fire—could be heard in the distance. The city was announcing the next day’s celebration. Stella had only that night to spend on the mountain, to descend into her grotto, to walk along the banks of the river, and to visit for one last time all of the places that she had lived and blessed. She [ 171 ]

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had the palm tree uprooted and the camp taken down to its ramparts: for there were no more enemies. Awakening before daylight the next morning, Stella took the path to the city. The morning star was rising: it was the dawning of a new year. 1804 presented itself even before the sun. The month of January was born in the perfume of darkness. There are places where the year is first old so that it may next become young and finally mature into adulthood. Yet here the year started in youth so as to mature but never to age. The path that Stella followed was lined with flowering logwoods; the brooks that she crossed flowed with crystal waters; the breeze that played in her hair was cool and sweet smelling; the sky overhead was a clear blue; the star that guided her was as bright as the sun. The first day of January began even more beautifully than the loveliest day of spring. The daughter of heaven increased her pace toward the city and arrived just as the cannon saluted Apollo, ascending to the throne of infinity and lending the entirety of his splendor to the festivities. The two brothers waited for their protectress at the door. They bowed to her with new feelings of respect and love, and with great pageantry they accompanied her to the Place d’Armes. The army and the people were already there. The soldiers admirably and orderly lined the entire rectangular expanse of the square. The people gathered around the nation’s altar, the wooden form of which—elevated in the center of the square—was decorated with flags, palm branches, and military articles. Shading the altar was the palm tree from the mountain, ornamental and symbolic at the same time. Stella had ordered that it be transported from her grotto and planted with care so that it would lose none of its beauty or vitality. The procession stopped. Stella ascended slowly and majestically, like the Priestess of Victory. She positioned herself under the palm with Romulus and Remus at her side. A profound silence descended upon the square. The soldiers shouldered their weapons and the crowd waited attentively. Remus read a Proclamation in which the violence and crimes of the former oppressors were described in lines of fire. The horrors of slavery and of masters burst forth from this document: in it, hate growled, anger twitched, and menace rumbled. At that moment, they all pledged never to disturb the peace of any neighboring island, but at the same time,

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they also made the solemn promise to live free or die. The people were moved to the last fiber of their being. The Declaration of Independence, no less energetic despite its succinctness, was read by Romulus.50 This pact indissolubly tied together those generals who had taken part in the victories of the war so as to preserve their collaborative work indefinitely. The Declaration proclaimed to posterity and the universe that they would forever renounce France and would rather die than live again under French law. In the presence of Stella and in unison with the people, Romulus and Remus swore this oath. Fanfare, drumrolls, and artillery fire echoed the promise spoken by ten thousand mouths. The procession, which had swelled in number, made its way from the Place d’Armes to the church. There, bells chimed, incense burned, and gratitude rose in hymns of praise. The priest blessed the laurels that were placed in the sanctuary, at the foot of God. During the Te Deum, the cannon did not cease its firing, the drum did not stop its sounding, and the trumpet did not end its blowing. Victory received the baptism of religion: it was now Christian, which is to say, everlasting. They left the church strengthened by a new conviction drawn from the source of all strength. Prayer, that celestial vapor which rises and then falls upon the heart as beneficent dew, had replenished their souls. Stella walked ahead, again leading the way toward the altar. This time, she climbed it alone. In a loud voice that could be heard on the far side of the square, she uttered these memorable words: “Citizens of a country henceforth independent and free: fourteen years ago, the common Father of Man and Sovereign Protector of Societies sent me to this colony to ensure the triumph of His justice. God forbids violence, condemns oppression, and denounces inequality. All tyranny is to Him an outrage. He did not create servitude; man imposed that yoke upon man. It is an attack upon His power. All of Creation is free. His laws, which are as gentle as they are wise, regulate a world that breathes nothing but happiness. Look at this land, so richly blessed, so poetically undulating, so wondrously decorated. It is always profuse in its greenery, always abundant in its fruits, and always covered in flowers! Here nothing suffers, nothing languishes, and nothing is endangered. The soil always produces without cultivation. If slavery is a monstrosity, it is seen nowhere

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more clearly than upon this island, where its hideousness is contrasted with the most ravishing beauties of Creation. Here, its barbarous rigors were in direct contradiction to God, who reveals Himself through such ineffable beauty. “Make it your duty to hate oppression so as never to suffer under oppressors in the future, and never to become oppressors yourselves. You have suffered these long years under the soul-destroying weight of your chains; in your desperation, you have committed blasphemy more than once and denied that divine justice was waiting to shine. You did not understand that, while Heaven seemed deaf to your complaints, a century for man is only a minute for God. The Great Redeemer is more interested in compensating than in punishing. Merciful because He is strong, patient because He is eternal, the Supreme Arbiter often lets crime continue and He withholds punishment like a blade resting in its sheath. Due to this, we believe that Injustice has dethroned Justice, and that evil reigns over earth. The pious man is saddened and desolate; he hangs his head in silence while the wicked man becomes emboldened, increasing in pride as he looks defiantly toward the sky. Yet all of a sudden, the wicked man disappears, his good fortune gone with him. He whom the thunderbolt obeys does not strike only to punish: why would He listen to anger alone? He does not give in to the terrible demand for destruction; a more paternal reason guides His way. God avenges a portion of humanity. For this reason, His justice only bursts forth at a moment decided in advance, at an hour that is always propitious but sometimes far off. One must know how to wait with confidence. Woe beset the weak soul who doubts! . . .  “Nonetheless, your voice—the voice of your suffering—was heard. I was called to help you and that is what I did. I appeared to you in the midst of flames; you thought that you saw a fellow creature in peril, and you generously endangered yourselves for me. Then you had the idea to sacrifice me to your resentment; you mistook me for another. However, your hearts slowly brought you enlightenment: nothing is more intelligent than the heart. You loved me without knowing me and without fear of remorse. This love was a gift that was sincere and freely given, the kindest gift that you could offer. “I returned this love to you: I supported, directed, and protected you. I watched over you from near and far; I guarded your arms and ammu[ 174 ]

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nition; I fought for you; I remained your friend, despite your errors and your faults. When Remus, at the time of your disagreement—of which I speak only to condemn and banish it from memory—took on the task of sacrificing himself, the supernatural being who advised him said that one day it would be reckoned. The Spirit of the Nation kept his word, and I can say that I have kept mine as well. Everything that exists at this moment is the work of my hands: I, Stella, am Liberty, Star of Nations! Each time that you raise your eyes to the heavens, you will see me. Like the unwavering celestial body guiding the sailor across vast expanses of the Ocean, I will guide you through the limitless fields of the future. Keep faith in me; you will be happy!” The people, including the two brothers, knelt down, deeply moved by Stella’s message. The revered virgin gave them her softest smile and, using her angel’s wings, took flight toward the heavens. Everyone followed her path with tearful eyes until the moment she disappeared into space, leaving behind a long furrow of gold.

[ 175 ]

Haiti

When Christopher Columbus, driven by his genius, set out on unknown waters in search of a new world, he discovered, after a long and perilous voyage, the island that would become the theatre of the events that we have incompletely narrated. The island appeared to him as an oasis in an ocean desert. The Indians knew it as Haiti (mountainous land); he called it Hispaniola, Ínsula España (Spanish Island). The island was inhabited by a gentle, inoffensive, and hospitable people who welcomed him with friendship and offered him gold. This fatal gift, however, excited the greed of the Spaniards, who were Columbus’s companions. Friends became enemies, peaceful conquerors became exterminators. The unfortunate aborigines of Haiti were soon turned on the attack, subdued by force, and condemned to perilous work in the mines. Their fanatical masters made them search the entrails of the earth for a golden vein. The mine descended, becoming narrower and narrower until it opened into a veritable abyss. Of those who were forced to dig underground, many found their tomb. Others perished due to torture and war harvested the rest. They all died, vanquished but not conquered. Who were these primitive people? From where on the island had they come? To which branch of the human family tree did they belong? From whom did they descend? No one knows. Their origin is entirely obscure. We know only of their lamentable end. These people left no history, no chronicle, and no tradition. They lived in a savage state and were kept from barbarism only by their peaceable and gentle manners. Their knowledge was limited to songs, fables, and a primitive poetry that had, perhaps, the charm and magic of the place that inspired it. Nothing survives except a few words that have passed into the language of the new inhabitants of the island. [ 176 ]

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The Indians of Haiti worshiped unsightly animals such as the grass snake and the crocodile. To this pantheon they added crude figurines that they made themselves. In order to convert them to the true religion, the Spanish resorted to all kinds of atrocities. They transformed the law of grace into a law of destruction; they made the religion of Christ, the Tree of Life that nourishes and shelters the world, just as fatal to the aborigines as the deadly shadow of the lethal manchineel tree. After having exterminated the Indians, the Spanish sat at the edge of the gaping crater left by the depleted mines. The island was without crops and they had raised only a few animals to serve their basic needs. This was the beginning of the seventeenth century. Soon rovers, who were the scum of Europe’s populations and who had been blown to the island by the winds, settled on Tortuga. They were first called boucaniers because of the way that they prepared their food, which consisted of meat that was roasted on the open flame of a boucan. Their only job was hunting wild ox and boar, and they went to Haiti, where these animals were found in abundance, to kill them. The boucaniers lived off the spoils of their chase as well as a rather lucrative trade in animal skins. This was all without disturbing the Spanish. Nonetheless, the Spanish, who considered themselves the sole masters of the New World, one day descended upon Tortuga to surprise and scatter its inhabitants. The boucaniers, newly united under the control of an enterprising leader, declared war to the death on their neighbors. Since they were not numerous enough to invade Haiti, they attacked the Spanish ships, becoming flibustiers, a new name that they made fearsome. Aboard flimsy boats, these intrepid navigators captured warships, seized rich prizes, and crisscrossed the waters of the Antilles. Soon they became the terrors of the region. However, upon learning that France had sent a governor and supporting military forces to a neighboring island—Saint Christopher—the pirates, who were mostly French, offered to recognize his authority in order to receive his protection. Their offer was accepted. The boucaniers selected a leader and other flibustiers, who came from Saint Christopher, enlarged their numbers to about four hundred. The arrival of these new compatriots, who were French like themselves, allowed them to drive out the English, who were settling in Jamaica and whom the flibustiers associated with their misfortunes. [ 177 ]

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Despite their growth in numbers and the terrible reputation that they had earned for themselves, Tortuga’s inhabitants continued to suffer under Spanish attacks. Even though they had been victorious, the French flibustiers were later attacked again, and they were eventually chased off the small island. Several years passed between this violent expulsion and their recapture and return to Tortuga in 1660. From that point on, the island remained definitively in their possession. At this time, the king of France began to consider in earnest how he might protect his subjects in America. He created the West India Company, which made contact with the French population and took over their place on the island with a small sum of money.51 The Company gave control of the island to a native man whose dreams of fortune had thrown him into the haphazard life of a flibustier. As their leader, this man sought to convince them of the need for order, to convert their robber’s spirit into one of usefulness, and to soften their morals by bringing women from Europe and auctioning them off to the men. He encouraged agriculture, and many flibustiers were persuaded to renounce their adventurous existence, choosing instead to work in the fields. It was under his control that the French began to settle in Haiti, which was not done without the opposition of the Spanish. There were continual wars until the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697, which ceded the western part of the island to France. In the beginning, the flibustiers felt the need for more laborers to cultivate their expansive terrain. These they found through the slave trade, which the French government had encouraged by abolishing the five percent tax lodged upon those bringing Africans to the French islands of America. This is how slavery and masters came to be in Haiti. The island took the name of Saint-Domingue. On both the French and Spanish sides, the slave trade grew considerably. It furnished thousands of slaves to Saint-Domingue in little time. This atrocious commerce in human flesh was embraced with fervor. It appealed to the greed of even the least greedy in the same way that slavery, a right assumed against nature in the name of selfishness, dried up masters’ hearts, hardening even the tenderest among them. With these first masters were born the first injustices. Even in this early period of colonization the Africans on the island rebelled, an event that was doubtless provoked by the hardships that had already been thrust upon these poor exiles. The insurrection was put down before it [ 178 ]

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produced any results: it was, however, at least a challenge to the denial of liberty at the root of slavery. The flibustiers also had Europeans—indentured laborers—under their command. Those who had given themselves up for temporary servitude were generally called “thirty-six monthers.” Once their contract was over, they recovered all of their rights; they, too, often became flibustiers, acquiring slaves and reaching the highest levels of colonial society. Yet for the African, things were very different. He did not come to another hemisphere in search of fortune: he was ripped from his native land. He did not sign up voluntarily: he was brutally forced under the yoke. For him, slavery had no end; it continued for his children. The iron ring that fastened neck to ankle was attached to other rings that tied his grandchildren, those born and yet to be born, to his misfortune. It was a fatal chain that stretched into eternity. The slave could buy his freedom when he could offer the price that someone had decided he was worth; in his miserable condition, this did not happen often. Sometimes, when he showed proof of extraordinary devotion and fidelity to his master, he was freed. Sometimes the female slave, whom the Colonist made a mother, acquired her freedom after bringing children—that the father would never recognize—into the world. Yet no matter how they arrived at their liberty, Africans of both sexes were never citizens and could never claim to be the equals of their former masters: mentally, they were always enslaved. While the real chain—the one that weighed on their limbs, their will, their lives, and the lives of their families— had been broken, another chain—one that was invisible, intangible, and made of prejudice—wound around and strangled them. Prejudice is like the miasma of slavery: it pollutes the air of the colonies. To live there, one must raise one’s head and breathe a higher atmosphere. In Saint-Domingue, the freed African and his descendants, including those children disinherited by the Colonist, were kept on the margins and prevented access to society by the force of prejudice. These people were called affranchis. They were no longer dependents: no one had the right to sell them, violently separate them from one another, or kill them, but they were nonetheless constantly offended, bullied, and humiliated. Under the threat of persecution, they had to profess respect for the European and maintain a distance from him that was declared to be insurmountable. [ 179 ]

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They were treated this way because of a blind passion that brazenly claimed to have read in their features—and on their skin—the word inferiority in discernible lettering that had been written by nature itself. Vile greed seized upon this lie to legitimate slavery. Did God assign man courage, intelligence, and virtue according to skin color? This is the question that has been answered by the victory of the Indigènes over their adversaries. Haiti meant freedom, while Saint-Domingue meant slavery. The heroes of 1803 restored the country to its original name, that which had been given to it by the Indians. According to the will of Providence, these heroes were the Indians’ heirs, regardless of their community of origin. They named it Haiti in memory of those same Indians who enjoyed independence and happiness until the day when the wind brought them unknown guests that they were, alas, too eager to welcome! • After proclaiming the independence of the island, the Haitians recovered from the fatigues of war through public celebrations; they seemed to have laid down their anger with their guns. Happiness brings forgiveness. While the Haitians no longer thought of vengeance, the Colonist, who had rediscovered his arrogance, had the misfortune of mentioning an upcoming French invasion and his hope of recovering that which he had lost. His words, indiscreet at best, spread quickly and had the most disastrous effect. The still-weak position of Haiti would suffice to explain the indignation and alarm that these words produced, even if the profound hatred felt for the Colonist was not known. This hatred, asleep in hearts that had been given over to joy, awoke abruptly amidst a general agitation. The people demanded the destruction of their enemy. In a southern city on the other side of the island, a few Frenchmen, one an officer in the Haitian Army, quickly left on an English corvette that was waiting at the port. The officer was on duty and had abandoned his post. He was understood to have committed treason. The authority in charge declared him a fugitive, but he was not returned. However, the English ship, about to depart, had sent out a dinghy in order to collect water from a spring outside of the city. It was forbidden for foreign ships to land in Haiti, except in ports open to trade. Thus the men on the dinghy were arrested. The people rose up against them and demanded [ 180 ]

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satisfaction; the men were required to request that the corvette release the French officer. If he was not released, the captured men would be put to death. The commander of the corvette could exchange the lives of his sailors for those of foreigners who had taken refuge on his ship; he offered to release all foreigners aboard. Yet the crowd wanted only the officer who, of his own will, had become Haitian, but had gone over to the enemy. From then on, everyone believed in a foreign conspiracy against the security of the country. These two circumstances decided the fate of the European population in Haiti: the Europeans died under the blows of a thousand hands armed by fury. No matter their sex, age, innocence, or crime, all suffered the same punishment. Fire insentiently destroys both the most worthless and the most precious of metals; the hurricane sweeps up the earth indiscriminately, taking with it foul manure and sweet-smelling roses. This is how the anger of the people was sated: it was as reckless as a hurricane and as terrible as a fire. Women and young girls had their throats slit; the elderly were massacred; the skulls of children were smashed against rocks. The cities and the countryside were drowned in blood. So much was spilt and with such ardor that it seemed as if blood had the ability to purify the land of the stains of slavery. The men were the first to perish. They were killed until there was no one left to kill. Then there was a pause. The women exhaled, protected by the sacredness of their sex. Besides, their spouses and closest relatives had been sacrificed before their eyes; some had been stabbed repeatedly. Was the grief, terror, and anguish of these women not torture enough? Unfortunately, it was not. The killers had stopped only to catch their breath and sit with their rage. The final part of their work was the most difficult. They had to raise new courage to lift their arms and let them fall upon the heads of crying mothers and smiling children. This could be accomplished only by violating nature. The intermission of their hatred does honor to humanity. The massacre began again. Appalling circumstances accompanied these last scenes of carnage. In the capital of the former colony, a great number of women who were placed between two rows of soldiers were driven, to the sound of drums, along the main road to the place of execution. The funeral convoy and the sound it caused stirred the curiosity of an old and feeble [ 181 ]

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woman who had been holed up in her home for a long period. She asked what was happening outside, and was told that the French women were walking to their death. French herself, the courageous old woman took up her crutches and went to share in their fate. The unfortunate women were slain by bayonet. Nonetheless, noble-hearted people, women of the country—as many in the cities as in the countryside—were seen carefully hiding French people, feeding them food that they had prepared themselves so that they did not have to worry about contamination. They helped those they protected to escape by covering them with their own clothing. Haitian women were seen wresting French children from desperate hands, and swearing that they were the offspring of Africans. Holy falsehood, which saves the innocent! Lastly, there were the sons of Frenchmen—the descendants of slaves who had not been recognized and who had once been prevented from taking their fathers’ names—who determinedly fought for the lives of these Europeans, even at the risk of their own. The Governor of Haiti pardoned a few of the outcasts. He saved the Polish who had served in the French Army and even gave them Haitian citizenship. Nevertheless, the French population disappeared from the land, the Colonist first. When he was taken, he was already trembling with death. He was dragged to the tomb of Marie the African, where he was forced to kneel and ask God and humanity to forgive his sins. There, all his blood was spilt. • This is how the Revolution in Saint-Domingue was carried out. Inaugurated by torture—the sacrifice of Ogé and Chavannes and other martyrs—and finished by massacre . . . Despite all of the crimes that bloodied its path, this Revolution was greater than any other. Today, the people that it emancipated can glory in it. They should reflect upon the Revolution often, so that they learn not to break with their past. These people blended their lives with those of two other peoples. In 1779 they furnished protectors of American Independence—well before their country became a nation itself.52 In 1816, Bolívar sought inspiration in Haiti to prepare for the fight that would emancipate Spanish America. At this time Haiti, threatened from the inside, needed the help of all its [ 182 ]

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sons. Pétion replied for the good of the State. He made it possible for Haitians to ally themselves with the future liberator of Colombia. He gave munitions, arms, and advice. The price of his help was the general emancipation of all slaves.53 Perhaps the Colombians forgot the role that Haiti played in their liberation. There are, however, things that the heart must always remember. The country of Washington denies the service of the Rigauds, Beauvaises, Villattes, Chavanneses, Christophe Mornets, Belleys, Henri Christophes, and so many other warriors who rivaled the most zealous defenders in their heroism. It denies them by oppressing the race of these valiant men and keeping them in chains. Thus slavery acquires the horror of a new crime. America should be ashamed! . . .54 The people of Haiti are full of youth and vigor. They are made to last: this we believe. So much vitality has not been given to them in vain. They live in the most beautiful country that the sun touches. As in that delectable garden where the first man was placed, all Haitians must do is extend their hands to pick of the fruit that the land herself offers. So young, vigorous, and abundantly provided with the things necessary for their survival, they can more easily than others acquire the intellectual riches that alone count in the aristocracy of nations. To benefit from this happiness that is worthy of envy, Haitians have only to want it; and why would they not? They know that no one is truly happy except in their soul, nor strong except in their mind. They know that these exalted abilities develop only through contact with civilization. Civilization is not exclusive. It attracts rather than rejects because it is through civilization that the coalition of humankind must function. Thanks to its all-powerful influence, there will soon be no blacks, whites, mulattos, Africans, Europeans, Asians, or Americans on earth: there will be brothers. The light of civilization chases after hidden barbarism. Everywhere that barbarism speaks with its dying voice in favor of war, civilization preaches peace. When barbarism utters the word “hate,” civilization responds, “love.” Our country is no stranger to the progressive ideas of this century. God cries to Haiti: forward, march! On this difficult ascent, our sincere wishes accompany Haiti. The End

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Glossary of Foreign Words and Expressions

Affranchi: A freed person in Saint-Domingue, usually of African but sometimes of both African and European descent. Ajoupa: A thatched-roof shelter common in the Caribbean. Ancien Régime: The term for France’s monarchical political system before 1789. B oucan: A raised grill upon which to cook over a fire, which is still common in Haiti today. The verb in Haitian, boukannen, means to roast or cook over a fire: for example, mayi boukannen is roasted corn and poul boukannen is barbecued chicken. B oucanier: A buccaneer. Originally, this term applied to the Europeans who settled on Tortuga and the northern shore of Hispaniola; they were so named because they cooked their food on boucans. Brigand: Literally, an armed person who steals or pillages; by extension, it denotes someone who is dishonest. During the Revolution, this term was often used to describe rebelling slaves. Calebasse: A calabash or gourd used for transporting water or other liquids. The word is kalbas in Haitian. Flibustier: Colonial-era pirates who raided Spanish ships for booty; from the seventeenth-century English and Dutch words flibutor and vrïjbuiter. By extension, this word referred to buccaneers and other bandits. The English equivalent is “freebooter” or “filibuster.” Gens de couleur: This term was used to refer to free people of color (who were often of both African and European ancestry) in Saint-Domingue. Sometimes written as gens de couleur libres. Houngan: A male spiritual leader or priest in the Haitian Vodou tradition. Ougan in Haitian. Indigène(s): Literally meaning “indigenous” or “native,” this was the term adopted by the Haitian forces during the Revolution. It is in this sense that Dessalines referred to the conquering forces of 1804 as l’Armée indigène, or the “Indigenous

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Glossary of Foreign Words and Expressions

Army,” in the Independence documents. In French, it can be either a noun or an adjective. Makoute: A burlap or straw satchel, sometimes known as a gunnysack. Also spelled macoute. Mambo: A female spiritual leader or priestess in the Haitian Vodou tradition. Marron: A runaway slave, known in English as a “maroon,” from the Spanish cimarron; also written in French as nègre marron. In Haitian, the phrase is nèg mawon. Outre- mer: Overseas. Today, this specifically refers to French overseas territories, i.e., former French colonies and possessions in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

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Original Explanatory Notes

I. In the east of Vallières is Mont Organisé, which belongs to this region. The mountain is called “organisé” because it seems to be the preferred refuge of the “musician” (or organist) bird, so named for its brilliant throat and ability to modulate many notes of music with an exactitude that charms men, who are always trying to find it. This is one of the pleasures of the high places. Moreau de St-Méry, Description topographique, physique, civile, politique et historique de la partie française de l’isle Saint-Domingue (Philadelphia, 1797) I: 155. II. Miss Frances Wright, Scottish by origin and mistress of a grand fortune, came to Haiti in 1832 with thirty slaves in order to provide them with the benefits of liberty. These slaves had been part of a plantation in Louisiana. In buying them, Miss Wright—who had preached against slavery—had at heart the aim of proving to the American colonists that a soft and humane regime was better than their violent and cruel system, founded as it was on the supposed wickedness of Africans. She had failed in this attempt, the goal of which had been to ameliorate the lot of the slaves: her neighbors in Louisiana made a point to work against her generous views by every means in their power. They showered her with bitterness and disgust; they excited her own people against her. So, far from this land of selfishness, the philanthropist came, like we said, to Haiti with her slaves, in order to make them free. She brought them on a ship that she had freighted and stocked with provisions for the unfortunate souls whom she called her children. Miss Wright took an excursion to the interior of the country, and proclaimed it the most beautiful that she had seen, including Switzerland. III. There is in our forests a cluster of high trees commonly known by the name Ironwood. The heart is so hard that it chips even the best tools. We use it as timber. It is indestructible, even if buried in the earth or exposed to the injuries of the weather. IV. We have tried to translate this creole proverb as “the sun rises when it is time.” V. A coarsely woven shoulder bag. VI. To the King of England, Charles II, after the battle of Worcester. VII. The city of Tiburon. VIII. The city of Léogane.

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Original Explanatory Notes

IX. The Treaty of Bale. X. The governor of the Spanish colony, Don Garcia, asked for and was awarded the Cross of the Order of Saint-Louis in recompense for handing over Ogé and Chavannes, as well as other fugitives, to the executioners. XI. The fable of the Cursed Fig Tree is a creole invention. If it does not altogether conform to the history of nature, it is, in our opinion, nonetheless ingenious. In the chapter that ends with this story, we have only improved the passage which comes from a letter by Rigaud, dated April 20, 1790: “Why do the most perfidious enemies have the ability to incite brother against brother, friends against friends? Until what time will distrust bring some to suspect others and destroy the unity and harmony that is so necessary to our happiness, etc.?” [quoted in Ardouin, Études III: 32—Eds.]. XII. The city of Petit-Goave. XIII. The neighborhood of Grand-Goave. XIV. General Maurepas. XV. The city of Port-de-Paix. XVI. Ravine-à-Couleuvres. XVII. General H. Christophe. XVIII. The city of Gonaïves. XIX. The city of Saint-Marc. XX. The city of Port-Liberté. XXI. The city of Jacmel. XXII. General Maurepas, the same who was so villainously taken to Port-de-Paix when the French arrived. XXIII. The island of Jamaica. XXIV. The island of Cuba. XXV. General Capois. XXVI. General Romain. XXVII. Generals Clervaux and Christophe. XXVIII. Férou, former battalion commander and later general. XXIX. Pétion. XXX. The cities of Miragoane and Anse-à-Veau. XXXI. General Geffrard. XXXII. General Cangé. XXXIII. General Francisque. XXXIV. During the war meant to liberate the country, the Indigènes had the habit of approaching the city of Les Cayes, around which grew enormous tufts of bamboo, and setting it on fire. These trees, as we know, are hollow and divided into a multitude of knots more or less close together. When alight, they burst and produce a sort of explosion that is similar to a rifle shot. When the entire cluster is engulfed, it sounds like real gunfire. It was in this way that the enemies of the French kept them awake and armed during each night. Aided by fatigue, the epidemic had its harvest. [ 188 ]

Original Explanatory Notes

XXXV. XXXVI. XXXVII. XXXVIII. XXXIX. XL. XLI. XLII. XLIII. XLIV. XLV.

Karatas hill. The city of Jérémie. The city of Saint-Marc. The city of Port-Liberté. The city of Jacmel. The French Colonel Lux. General Capois. Generals Clervaux and Vernet. General Cangé. General Gabart. The Verrières Outpost. [A misprint in the original; it should be Vertières Outpost. See Ardouin, Études V—Eds.] XLVI. The words brothers and sisters were in general use during the time of Haitian Independence. Practically each person one knew, or with whom there was any intimacy, used these names with each other. These were relationships consecrated by the events of the war and, notwithstanding the names that we hardly ever hear any more, the relationships continue. XLVII. The city of Môle-Saint-Nicolas. XLVIII. The French General Louis-Marie, vicomte de Noailles.

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Editors’ Notes

1 In Homer’s Odyssey, Circe cast a spell on Odysseus’ crew, turning them all into pigs. 2 In his footnote, Bergeaud supplies a 1770 translation by Jacques Delille. 3 The storming of the Bastille prison on July 14, 1789, is generally regarded as the beginning of the French Revolution. 4 The lion is the emblem of Florence, and here refers to Donatello’s famous leonine statue, Il Marzocco. It also may be a reference to the Medici Lions, two marble statues moved to Florence in 1787. 5 The Dead Sea, also known as Lake Asphaltites, is the deepest saltwater lake on earth. 6 Romulus and Remus are the mythical twin founders of Rome. Born of Rhea Silvia and the god Mars, they are abandoned, suckled by a wolf, and raised as shepherds, unaware of their background or destiny. In the classical myth, Romulus and Remus quarrel over the future site of Rome, and Remus is killed. 7 William Tell, a fourteenth-century Swiss folk hero, was supposed to have been an expert marksman. 8 The original text includes this phrase translated into French, and the Haitian is provided in the “Explanatory Notes” at the novel’s end. The original French translation of the Haitian proverb might have been recognizable as such to nineteenth-century Haitian readers, but likely not to their French contemporaries. The modern Haitian Kreyòl phrase is twò prese pa fè jou louvri. 9 A mountain in eastern central Greece, Mount Oeta is known for the narrow coastal passageway it forms with the sea, called the pass of Thermopylae. The pass, through which all north-south traffic along the eastern part of the country must travel, was an important strategic route in antiquity. It is particularly remembered as the site of a 480 BCE battle in which Greek forces held off a much stronger Persian enemy. 10 Here Bergeaud is using lex talionis to refer to the Old Testament code of justice, “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” 11 From the Latin, stella, for star. 12 This is an allusion to the period of violence during the French Revolution that lasted from September 5, 1793, to July 28, 1794, known as the Reign of Terror.

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Editors’ Notes

13 The Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius wrote the epic poem De rerum natura about Epicurean philosophy, which had considerable influence on Virgil and Horace. 14 Xenophon (c. 430–354 BCE) was a Greek soldier and leader of the Ten Thousand, an army of mercenaries who fought against the Persians in the Persian Empire. 15 This character is based on the French civil commissioners Étienne Polverel (1740–1795) and Léger-Félicité Sonthonax (1763–1813). 16 In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, abolitionists were often called “philanthropists.” Both Polverel and Sonthonax had spoken out against slavery. The pair are credited with proclaiming the end of slavery in Saint-Domingue on August 29, 1793, six months before the official declaration by the National Assembly on February 4, 1794. 17 These words are attributed to Polverel. They are cited in several nineteenthcentury sources, including Victor Schœlcher’s Vie de Toussaint Louverture (Paris: Paul Ollendorf, 1889), which references Joseph-Francois Pamphile de Lacroix’s Mémoires pour server à l’histoire de la Révolution de Saint-Domingue, 2 vols. (Paris: Pillet Ainé, 1819). Stella’s wording comes directly from Ardouin (Études II: 137). 18 The Girondins were a political faction in France that pushed for the end of the monarchy during the French Revolution. The execution of many Girondins, who opposed the more radical Montagnards, marked the beginning of the Reign of Terror. 19 “La Marseillaise” or “the song from Marseilles” was composed in 1792 by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle (1760–1836) and originally sung by volunteer soldiers from Marseilles. It was adopted as the official anthem of the Republic of France in 1795 and remains France’s national anthem today. 20 Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) rose to power during the French Revolution, becoming First Consul of France in 1799 and emperor in 1804. Napoleon revoked the abolition of slavery with the Law of 20 May 1802, relegalizing slavery in the French colonies. In 1803, he sold Louisiana to the United States in order to repay the debt of his expedition against Saint-Domingue and finance his wars in Europe. 21 These words are attributed to French Revolutionary leader Georges-Jacques Danton (1759–1794), who was guillotined for his moderate position during the Reign of Terror. 22 Slavery was not abolished in Santo Domingo after it passed into French hands in 1795. When Toussaint Louverture (1743–1803) arrived there in 1801, he ended slavery. 23 The friends of the Colonist represent members of the Club Massiac, a lobby of proslavery planters formed in Paris at the beginning of the Revolution. Their name came from the Hotel Massiac where they met. 24 Herostratus was executed for burning down the Ephesian Temple of Artemis in 356 BCE. Upon his defeat by Napoleon in September 1812, Russian count Fyodor Rostopchin (1763–1826) ordered that the buildings of Moscow be burned rather than turned over to the French. Although it is unknown who actually set the fires, much of the city was destroyed. [ 192 ]

Editors’ Notes

25 The “War of the Knives,” which took place between the army of Toussaint Louverture and those forces assembled under André Rigaud (1761–1811), lasted from June 1799 until March 1800, when Jacmel fell to Louverture. After this, Rigaud, Jean-Pierre Boyer (1776–1850), and Alexandre Pétion (1770–1818) fled to France, but they returned with Charles Leclerc (1772–1802) in 1802. 26 In Greek mythology, Nemesis, the “goddess of Rhamnous” or the “goddess of revenge,” brought divine retribution upon anyone who defied the gods. 27 The Constitution of 1801, promulgated under Louverture, outlawed slavery and declared Louverture leader for life, but insisted on Saint-Domingue’s fidelity to France. 28 Here, Bergeaud is referring to England. 29 The leader of the French expedition was Napoleon’s brother-in-law, Charles Victoire Emmanuel Leclerc. The Expeditionary Army set off from France on December 14, 1801, and landed in Saint-Domingue at the end of January 1802. 30 These words were spoken by Louverture (quoted in Ardouin, Études V: 295). 31 Louis Daure Lamartinière (1771–1802) was second in command of the Indigènes forces at Crête-à-Pierrot, after Jean-Jacques Dessalines (1758–1806). In his Mémoires, Pamphile de Lacroix (1774–1841) wrote that Lamartinière’s actions were a “remarkable feat of arms” (quoted in Ardouin, Études V: 109–111). 32 These were the farewell words spoken by Louverture as he was removed from Saint-Domingue (quoted in Ardouin, Études V: 186.) 33 Louis Delgrès (1766–1802), a gens de couleur military officer from Martinique, led the fight against the reinstitution of slavery in Guadeloupe under Napoleon. He died at the battle of Matouba, Guadeloupe, in 1802. In the original edition of this novel, the name is spelled “Delgress.” 34 This refrain was commonly voiced by colonists during the period of the 1802 expedition, and was cited by many historians, including Antoine Métral (1778–1839). 35 “Unity is strength.” A slightly altered version (L’Union fait la Force!) features on the Haitian flag today. 36 Lacroix, Mémoires II: 238. 37 In the original edition, this paragraph appears after “Only goodness is intelligent.” We have altered the order so as to preserve the novel’s chronology in this section. 38 Lacroix, Mémoires II: 250. 39 Lacroix, Mémoires II: 251. 40 Donatien-Marie-Joseph de Vimeur, vicomte de Rochambeau (1755–1813), led the French expedition to recapture Saint-Domingue after the death of Leclerc. Known for his brutality, Rochambeau surrendered to Jean-Jacques Dessalines in 1803. He died fighting for Napoleon at Leipzig in 1813. 41 This line is taken from an 1802 act by the colonists recommending Rochambeau to Napoleon (Ardouin, Études V: 343). 42 Ardouin, Études II: 19. 43 Ardouin, Études III: 217. [ 193 ]

Editors’ Notes

44 According to Lacroix, Rochambeau himself spoke these words to the grief-stricken women (quoted in Ardouin, Études V: 396). 45 The colors of the tricolor French flag, blue, white, and red, stand for liberty, equality, and fraternity, respectively. According to Haitian lore, the white was removed to create the Haitian blue-and-red flag. 46 Jus gentium, the “law of nations,” was a set of rules based on the laws of ancient Rome that all reasonable members of the international community (or gentes) were expected to follow. 47 Quoted in Thomas Madiou, Histoire d’Haïti, 3 vols. (Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie de J. Courtois, 1847–1848), III: 87. The final volumes of this series were published posthumously. 48 Madiou, Histoire II: 49. 49 Ardouin, Études V: 457. 50 Here, Bergeaud describes the first part of the Declaration of Independence as a “proclamation” and reserves the term “declaration” for the actual decree of separation from France. In the official government-printed Declaration rediscovered in the British National Archives in 2010, the Declaration is preceded by an oath signed by several military officials, which Bergeaud appears to refer to here as a “pact.” 51 The French West India Company (la Compagnie française des Indes occidentales) was founded in 1664. 52 The Chasseurs-Volontaires de Saint-Domingue was a company of soldiers of African descent from Saint-Domingue who fought with American patriot forces at the 1779 Battle of Savannah during the American Revolution. 53 In exchange for the support of Haiti, Pétion made Simón Bolívar (1783–1830) promise to abolish slavery in all of the newly independent South American states. 54 Louis-Jacques Beauvais (1759–1799), Jean-Louis Villatte (1751–1802), Jean-Baptiste Chavannes (1748–1791), Jean-Baptiste Léveillé Christophe Mornet (c. 1749–1799), Jean-Baptiste Mars Belley (1746–1805), and Henri Christophe all fought to capture Savannah from the British.

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About the Editors

Lesley S. Curtis is Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow of Comparative Literature at the Newhouse Center for the Humanities at Wellesley College. Her writings have been published by Women in French Studies, Lingua Romana, The 18th-Century Common, and The Postcolonialist. She is also the author and editor of Quatre Nouvelles antillaises de Fanny Reybaud (2014), a collection of nineteenth-century novellas about race, slavery, gender, and the Caribbean. Christen Mucher is Assistant Professor of American Studies at Smith College. She specializes in early American studies with a focus on historical fiction, historiography, and Indigenous communities in the U.S., Mexico, and Haiti.

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