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An extraordinary survival: Toussaint Louverture (1743-1803) reports from the battlefield at the height of the Haitian Revolution. Louverture writes in detail - describing the action, noting his thoughts, and revealing his strategy – after an attack on French rebels.

One can hardly over-estimate the influence and importance of Toussaint Louverture, "the emancipated black slave who became the emblematic figure of the Haitian Revolution" (Hazareesingh, 1), which remains the only successful revolt by an enslaved population and led to the establishment of the first free Black republic: Haiti. None other than Frederick Douglass himself said of him: "other liberators and saviors of men came from heaven, this man came from the hell of slavery."

Apparently descended from a West African king from the Allada tribe, Louverture was born into slavery on a plantation owned by the Count de Bréda near Cap Français. He gained some knowledge of Fon, French, Latin, and geometry as well as the use of medicinal herbs from his father, and became a docteur feuilles. He could read though didn't learn to write until later in life, his spelling is largely phonetic and closer to Creole than the French in this document. Furthermore, he was granted his freedom in his thirties but remained on the plantation to be with his family who remained enslaved.

Revolutionary fervour developed quickly in the wake of the French Revolution with its slogan of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité ringing through the French colonies*.* Louverture's role in the insurrection of August 1791 remains largely unknown but on 29 August, 1793 he announced himself as a revolutionary leader.

Importantly, the upheaval wasn't limited to Saint-Domingue. Indeed, less than a year after the French government formally abolished slavery in her colonies, it seemed like the whole Caribbean was on fire. "In the eyes of British leaders, Jacobin and abolitionist principles threatened by 1795 to subvert the entire West Indian world. In Saint-Domingue, Toussaint’s ex-slaves had won brilliant victories and were closing in on Britain’s disease-ridden troops; armies of former slaves and free coloureds had expelled the British from Guadeloupe and Saint Lucia; racial warfare raged in Grenada and Saint Vincent; French free coloured agents were blamed for inciting a Maroon War in Jamaica" (Davis).

The complexity of the situation meant that Louverture was left combatting British, French, Spanish and even formerly enslaved troops. "From his base in the western Artibonite sector, a ninety-mile area in which he installed some thirty military camps, Toussaint then subjected the British and their French royalist auxiliaries to a fierce onslaught, with more than 200 encounters in the opening months [of 1795]" (Hazareesingh, 69).

All the way back in 1863, J.R. Beard lauded Louverture's efforts: "[in this] vast space of country Toussaint L'Ouverture defended for a long time against the English, the Spanish, and against French emigrants, with troops badly armed, badly disciplined, and little accustomed to military manoeuvres. This single fact is evidence of his prodigious activity and surpassing talent" (Beard).

This report concerns one of these encounters and reads in part:

"The enemy, not feeling strong enough to resist, evacuated the camp Moler and took direction of the camp Comeau. With the aim to free the camps successfully, the enemy took the precaution to position two ambushes in order to protect the entrance of two camps in town. I left straightaway for the camp Moreau opposite the camp Comeau. I hit cannonballs on it for two hours. Then one half of the reinforcement went back to the camp Comeau. The other part went to deliver the camp Belanger. On the 5th, the enemy evacuated the camp Belanger after spoiling all the provisions they could not take with them and leaving behind 2 cannons to go back to the camp Comeau. Two women took all the luggage (I made the decision not to hit cannonballs at the two women, out of consideration for their lives.) I went back to the camp Granfer one hour after midnight, finding no enemies, we therefore knew we had won. [...] Meanwhile, I endeavoured to locate all the places where the enemy could take us by surprise and I took the necessary measures to protect the camps ..."

The report goes on to add further logistical details.

Just weeks before it was written, Louverture summarised his thoughts on what a soldier should be: "a good soldier should appear cold from the outside, and be methodical, loyal and fiery on the inside." This might well have summed up "his own character but it also highlighted the challenges he faced now that he had embraced the republican cause, which focused on the campaign to expel the Spanish and the British, and their treasonous French settler allies, from the colony" (Hazareesingh, 68).

Despite his capture and death in 1803, Louverture was the galvanising force whose energy and brilliance allowed for his successor, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, to proclaim the Republic of Haiti on 1 January, 1804.

Field reports written on the ground are exceedingly rare.

Provenance: private English collection, thence the British trade.

Beard, J.R., Toussaint L'Ouverture ... (Boston, 1863) p.82; Davis, D.B., Inhumane Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (Oxford, 2006), p.166; Douglass, F., "Toussaint Louverture" in an undated ms. Frederick Douglass Papers, Library of Congress; Hazareesingh, S., Black Spartacus: the Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture. (New York, 2020) p.68; Louverture, T., "Letter to military chiefs of Petite-Riviere" (18 January, 1795) BNF NAF, 12103.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/toussaint-louverture/1795/warning.htm