Pitt’s Hypocritical Opportunism

Toussaint Louverture adeptly played the colonial superpowers, France, Britain and Spain against each other, seeking the best arrangement, but his belief that independence was unnecessary ultimately cost him dear. Early in the Revolution, British Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger, tried to exploit France’s difficulties by proposing legislation to abolish slavery, but William Wilburforce was soon stopped in his tracks as Pitt saw an opportunity to seize Haiti for Britain and deal a blow to France in the process.

Who cared if that would cost slaves their liberty for another 45 years? Pitt certainly didn’t. Slavery wasn’t abolished in Britain and her empire by his government – nor was the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Pitt died a year before the slave trade was abolished. Baron William Grenville succeeded Pitt and was the Prime Minister when the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act was passed on March 25th 1807.

Instead of abolishing slavery, Pitt decided to try to seize Saint-Domingue for Britain – it was after all, a very coveted possession. Less than a decade earlier it had been the most productive colony France ever had. Why wouldn’t Pitt covet it? But his greed cost Britain dear, culminating in a military disaster. Meanwhile, Toussaint got the offer he wanted – Léger-Félicité Sonthonax, the revolutionary French Governor of Saint-Domingue, as it then was, abolished slavery in 1793 and Toussaint abandoned his Spanish ‘allies’ and threw his lot in with revolutionary France. He now fought against his former allies and Britain too, as the revolutionaries switched sides.

Disaster

Pitt’s attempt to seize the French colony proved to be the worst military disaster in British history, costing huge resources, ships and men. It began in 1793 when France declared war on Britain and ended in September 1798 after the British had suffered debilitating losses to guerrilla warfare and Yellow Fever. It is hardly ever mentioned.

A force of 20000 men, mainly mercenaries, added to by 7000 slaves offered freed to to fight failed to make headway against the armies led by Toussaint Louverture and his equal among Mulattos, General André Rigaud. Two years before they ended the fiasco, Britain had accepted that they could not win, but carried on through fear of the effect on other nearby colonies. It remains a very costly military fiasco. The evacuation by the British coincided with Toussaint, then Colonial Governor, granting protection to colonists who had aided the British if they remained in Saint-Domingue. The disaster could have been even more costly.

The weather caused turbulent waters on route to Ireland and that wrecked French plans for Irish ‘independence’ by blowing supplies for Wolfe Tone’s rebellion off course – the same problems that almost scuppered William of Normandy’s invasion in 1066 and Julius Cæsar’s too. Pitt’s folly almost resulted in Ireland’s independence. It could have cost him even more dearly, and would have done too had it not been for an even greater folly committed by Napoléon Bonaparte.

War and More War

A year after Pitt abandoned hopes of seizing Saint-Domingue, two major events occurred. The uneasy alliance between blacks and Mulattos ended and Bonaparte’s coup brought Napoléon to power.

Rigaud and Louverture allowed their enemies to get inside their heads and turn them against each other – classic divide and rule. The former brothers-in-arms became bitter enemies, as the old racial suspicions resurfaced. The War of Knives ended in the siege of the southern port of Jacmel, which fell to Jean-Jacques Dessalines in March 1800. That led to the Mulatto leaders Rigaud, Alexandre Pétion and Jean-Pierre Boyer and the survivors of their army being evacuated to France. They would return in 1802, having been duped into a shameful plot.

The other event of 1799 was the end of the French Revolution. Napoléon seized power from the Thermidor government and set the world on a descent to war and tyranny. Saint-Domingue was a major part of his plans and so were the Mulatto leaders. They returned in 1802 under the command of Napoléon’s brother-in-law Charles Leclerc, but they had been tricked – the French invasion had no intention of including the Mulattos in a post-revolutionary government. They would be cowed into submission too by the fate of the revolutionaries.

Errors of Judgement

They thought that they were returning to govern Saint-Domingue and that the French government recognised that, but that was not Bonaparte’s intention at all. He planned to restore slavery – a plan approved of by Britain and the USA in advance of the invasion – and regain the most productive colony France had ever had. Toussaint, too, was misguided. He believed in France and in Napoléon and used the lull in hostilities to act against more radical revolutionaries.

It backfired against him, and almost against the revolutionaries. Among the casualties – executed on Toussaint’s orders – was the popular and courageous General Moïse, his own nephew. Moïse never trusted French colonial intentions and sided with former slaves keen to defend their gains against any who would re-enslave them, including the French. It led Moïse into what was considered a treacherous rebellion by Louverture. It was suppressed by Dessalines, who executed Moïse. Toussaint soon had cause to regret executing Moïse.

A Free Hand

Baron William Grenville, succeeded William Pitt the Younger as Prime Minister in 1806. Four years earlier he played an important in securing a temporary peace with Napoléon Bonaparte’s France- the Treaty of Amiens. While some condemn Grenville over it, the Treaty of Amiens allowed Britain to rebuild after the disastrous Haiti campaign and a war that showed few signs of ending favourably.

Amiens allowed Napoléon to put his resources and efforts into regaining Saint-Domingue. Both the British and Americans were secretly informed of Napoléon’s plans and approved them at least by inaction.

Betrayed

The USA in particular benefited from Revolutionary Saint-Domingue as it provided a useful trading partner and outlet for them, but despite the contribution of Haitian Revolutionaries to US independence – the Savannah Monument acknowledges this, as the drummer-boy in the Monument is Henri Christophe, who had escaped slavery to assist – and after Toussaint Louverture became the Governor, the revolutionaries restored the economy to two-thirds of its pre-Revolution state.

Toussaint’s government provided an important trading outlet for the Americans. But there was a huge contradiction in the amerce approach. They needed an alternative trading partner, or they would be dependent on Britain or France, and Saint-Domingue was geographically more convenient too, but the US economy needed and depended on slavery.

Their War of Independence consciously chose to retain slavery. Haiti’s chose to abolish it, and that offered an example the Americans feared greatly. It speaks volumes that Britain, very recently at war with Napoléon’s France, was prepared to allow the French dictator a free hand in his efforts to restore slavery.

Given the constant battles and destructive effect they had on the country, that is remarkable. It was however, achieved with a harsh agrarian-based economy.

Scorched Earth

Napoléon had underestimated Haitians’ desire to be free. Toussaint and the Haitian revolutionaries had a potent weapon. A decade before General Winter demolished Napoléon’s plans to conquer Russia, the Haitian revolutionaries used their local weapon too. It is no coincidence that they ended hostilities with the French at the time of year they did – exactly when Yellow Fever started to bite. Instead of fighting the French, the Revolutionaries settled a few scores and left the French to do the same.

Just as Britain was beaten by a combination of guerrilla warfare and Yellow Fever, Bonaparte proved that his arrogance knew no bounds. He made the same mistake and suffered the same fate.

Toussaint was fortunate I that he had a ‘liberal’ master who allowed him to learn to read and write. He was later influenced by French Enlightenment philosophers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The French Revolutionaries who overthrew Louis XVI did not abolish slavery and eventually withdrew the limited rights that it gave to free Mulattos and blacks – this contributed to Saint-Domingue’s Revolution.

Toussaint was on the moderate side of the Revolution in Saint-Domingue. He did not want independence and saw no need for it. He trusted the French to act honourably, but he had miscalculated. There were hidden agendas. Louverture was arrested in May 1802 by Jean-Baptiste Brunet. It breached the agreement between Napoléon’s representative in Saint-Domingue, Charles Leclerc and Toussaint. The trigger for Louverture’s arrest was a letter to Leclerc, denouncing him for not ordering a rebel leader to lay down is arms, as was required by the ceasefire agreement – the author of that letter was Jean-Jacques Dessalines.

It gave the pretext needed. Louverture later claimed that following bad behaviour by his troops, he sought a meeting with Brunet and was arrested at it – Brunet absented himself, but Toussaint’s arrest and subsequent treatment was planned.

Years later – a prisoner himself – Napoléon was confronted over his dishonourable treatment of Toussaint. He didn’t see why he should be bothered about the treatment of ‘one wretched Negro’. Toussaint was deported to France arriving on July 2nd 1802. He was imprisoned in the mountain jail Fort-de-Joux from August 25th. He was starved in the cold, dying on April 7th 1803 from the neglect he suffered.

Louverture learned too late that Leclerc and Brunet had an agenda to execute – reversing the gains of the Revolution Louverture had led for over a decade. Prophetically, he told his captors that his comrades would not repeat his mistake. “In overthrowing me you have cut down in Saint Domingue only the trunk of the tree of liberty”, Louverture said. “It will spring up again from the roots, for they are numerous and they are deep”.

The French intentions were demonstrated clearly, as not only was Louverture deported, but Mulatto leader André Rigaud too. Rigaud was imprisoned in the same jail. It became clear later that year that the French intended to restore slavery in Saint-Domingue – they did that in Guadeloupe on July 16th 1802, just two weeks after Louverture was deported. The threat of that in Saint-Domingue was the final straw for the Revolutionaries, black and Mulatto. Pétion and Dessalines met secretly and switched sides in October 1803. The following month under Dessalines’ leadership they attacked the fort of Vertières – the final battle of the Haitian Revolution.