Chapter Thirty Three.
Conflicting.
“What to do!” said L’Ouverture to Christophe, as they entered his apartment at Le Dondon. “What to do? Everything, this year and for the future, may depend on what we decide on for our next step. And we must decide before we leave this room, say your thoughts, Henri.”
“I am for a truce.”
“I am for a retreat in the mountains. Now for our reasons! Why do you desire a truce?”
“Because I see that Leclerc so earnestly wishes it, that I am confident we may make good terms, for the interval of waiting till we recover altogether our power, our territory, and our people. Leclerc will revoke our outlawry. That done, you will be the virtual rider of our people till August; after which no foes will be left upon our soil. What have you to say against this?”
“That it is yielding, unnecessarily and fatally, to the invaders. Where are our censures of Clerveaux and Maurepas, if we, too, yield to Leclerc, and make terms with him?”
“Every one of our people will understand the difference in the cases. Every one of them sees the difference between falling at the feet of Leclerc, like Clerveaux; or joining him on the very field on which you were about to oppose him, like Maurepas; and making a truce, for a short interval, when you are almost destitute of ammunition, and the enemy so exhausted with the heats as to decline coming into the field; while, at the same time, fresh troops are pouring in upon the coast, in such numbers as to prevent your regaining your independence by remaining in arms. If every man of the negroes has not wit enough to understand this for himself, who is better able than you to inform them of whatsoever you desire them to know? Be assured, Toussaint, powerful as your influence is this day among our people, it will be more so when you are no longer an outlaw. It is worth a large sacrifice of our feelings to have our outlawry revoked.”
“Have you more reasons to give for accepting a truce; or, as the French understand it, a peace?”
“Let me first hear your reasons for a retreat in the mountains.”
“A retreat in the mountains is the more honest proceeding of the two, Henri. If we make terms with the French, it will be knowing that that which goes by the name of peace is no more than a truce till August.”
“And will not they know that as well as we? Is it necessary to tell the whites, at this day, that they are liable to the fever in the heats, and that any army, however glorious in its strength previously, becomes a skeleton at that season? This is a matter that is perfectly understood by all the parties.”
“We must look forward, Henri, to the days to come, when August itself is past. The influence of myself or my successor will be injured by my having, even apparently, yielded to the invaders. My power over our people’s minds will be immeasurably greater, if I shall have consistently refused to tolerate the foe, from the moment of their first hostile act to the end of the struggle. Am I not right?”
“That character of consistency will be purchased at a price too dear;—at the cost of your characteristic of mercy, Toussaint—of reverence for human life. You will be ranked with Dessalines, if you keep up, for four months, the disturbance and devastation of war, when every one knows that your end will be as certainly gained after these four months have been spent in peace. What a grief it would be to see you changed in all eyes from the adored L’Ouverture to Toussaint the bandit! Pardon my freedom.”
“I required it of you, my friend; so do not speak of pardon. We are agreed that the moral influence of my conduct is the main consideration, as the destruction of the French army is certain, sooner or later—our independence secure, if we so will it. If we remain in the mountains, cutting off in detail the grasp which France shall attempt to lay on any part of our territory or our system; training our people, meantime, for another campaign, if France should attempt another; replenishing gradually our stores with perpetual small captures from the enemy, allowing them no asylum, discountenancing their presence, in every possible way—we shall be taking the shortest, and therefore the most merciful method of convincing the French and the blacks at once that their empire here is at an end, and slavery henceforth impossible for the negroes of Saint Domingo. But, if I make a peace or truce, how dim and perplexed will be the impression of my conduct! I cannot hold office, civil or military, under the French. Henri, you would not have me do so!”
“Certainly not. Till August, retire to your estate, that every office in the colony may thereafter be in your hand.”
“If I co-operate with the French, even in the faintest appearance, my moral influence will be all on their side, and a second year of warfare will find us farther from peace or independence than the first. If I act, more or less, for the blacks, Leclerc will send me to France as a traitor. If I do nothing, neither party will believe in my doing nothing: each will suspect me of secret dealings with the other. It is also true that I cannot, if I would, be inoperative. Every glance of my eye, every word of my lips, in my own piazza at Pongaudin, would be made to bear its interpretation, and go to disturb the single and distinct image which I now stand before every eye and in every mind.”
“I do not agree with you,” said Henri. “While the image of August is distinct in the minds of the Saint Domingo people, it will keep your influence single and intelligible to them. As for what the French think, that is their own affair. They have the means of knowledge. Let them use them. There is one fact which no one can misunderstand, the while—that after the defections under which you have suffered, and under your known want of military stores, an incursive war from the mountains appears ferocious—both revengeful and cruel—when every one knows that time will render it unnecessary.”
“These defections do not discourage me as they do you, Henri. Full one third of my forces are faithful—are proved so by trial. These, with the goodness of our cause, are enough for my hopes—almost for my desires. There is no ferocity, but rather mercy, in hastening on the day of our independence and peace, by using a force so respectable—so honoured, as this tried remnant of my army.”
“You reckon fallaciously, Toussaint. You include my troops in the force you speak of.”
“Henri!” exclaimed L’Ouverture, stopping in his walk up the apartment; “it cannot be that you will desert me. No, no! forgive me that the words passed my lips!”
“Never will I desert you or our cause, Toussaint. Never will I intermit my enmity to our invaders; never will I live for any other object than the liberties of our people. But the time may be come for us to pursue our common object by different paths. I cannot go and play the bandit in the mountains.”
“Why did you not call me a bandit when I was at the Plateaux?”
“Because you were then waging an honourable war. War, not peace, was then beckoning you on to freedom. A state of voluntary outlawry, a practice of needless ravage, will make a different man of you. Say no more of it, Toussaint: I cannot be lieutenant to— Do not make me utter the word.”
“You have always hitherto obeyed me, Henri.”
“I have; and when we are in a state of war, I will obey you again. Do not class me with La Plume and Clerveaux—or, rather, do, if you will, and when August is past I will prove to you the difference.”
“Do not you see, Henri, that you not only cease to aid me at a great crisis but that you put a force upon me?”
“I cannot help it; I must do so, rather than go and be a butcher in the mornes with Dessalines.”
“Say with me, too: call me a butcher, too! After the long years that you have known my heart, call me a butcher too.”
“Let us talk sense, Toussaint: this is no time for trifling. After August, I shall join you again—to fight, if it be necessary: but I hope it will not.”
“Not if heaven strengthens me to do my work without you, Christophe. After the fever, it is much for the sick to walk: we do not expect the dead to rise.”
“When I join you, after August,” resumed Christophe, “whether for the labours of war or peace, you, and perhaps even Jacques, will wish that your hands were as clean from blood as mine. Your thought, Toussaint!—tell me your thought. If—”
“I was thinking that you will join us, Henri. You will labour till our great work is done. You may err; and you may injure our cause by your error; but you will never be seduced from the rectitude of your own intentions. That is what I was thinking. I would fain keep my judgment of you undisturbed by a grieving heart.”
“You are more than generous, Toussaint: you are just. I was neither. Pardon me. But I am unhappy—I am wretched that you are about to forfeit your greatness, when—Oh, Toussaint! nothing should ever grieve me again, if we could but agree to-day—if I could but see you retire, with your wonted magnanimity, to Pongaudin, there, with your wonted piety, to await the leadings from above. Where is your wonted faith, that you do not see them now, through the clouds that are about us?”
“I cannot but see them now,” said Toussaint, sighing; “and to see is to follow. If you are wholly resolved to make a truce for yourself and your division—”
“I am wholly resolved to do so.”
“Then you compel me to do the same. Without you, I have not force sufficient to maintain an effectual resistance.”
“Thank God! then we shall see you again L’Ouverture, and no longer Toussaint, the outlaw. You will—”
“Hear me, Henri! You put this constraint upon me. What are you prepared to do, if the French prove treacherous, after our peace is made?”
“To drive them into the sea, to be sure. You do not suppose I shall regard them as friends the more for making a truce with them! We will keep our eyes upon them. We will preserve an understanding with the whole island, as to the vigilance which the blacks must exercise, day and night, over their invaders. The first treacherous thought in Leclerc’s mind is a breach of the truce; and dearly shall he rue it.”
“This is all well-planned, Henri. If the cunning of Leclerc proves deeper than yours—”
“Say ours, Toussaint.”
“No. I have no part in this arrangement. I act under your compulsion, and under my own protest; as I require of you, Henri, to remember. If we are not deep enough, vigilant enough, active enough, for Leclerc and his council—if he injures us before August, and Bonaparte ordains a second campaign after it, are you ready to endure the responsibility of whatever may befall?”
“I am.”
“Have you looked well forward into the future, and detected every mischief that may arise from our present temporising, and resolved that it was a less evil than losing the rest of this season, putting a compulsion upon your best friend, and fettering the deliverer of your people?”
“I have so looked forward—repudiating the charge of undutiful compulsion. I act for myself, and those under my command.”
“Virtually compelling me to act with you, by reducing me from being the General of an army to be the leader of a troop; and by exposing our cause to the peril—the greatest of all—of a declared division between you and me. I yield, Christophe; but what I am going to do, I do under protest. Order in the French prisoners.”
“Yet one moment,” said Henri. “Let me reason with you a little further. Be satisfied of the goodness of the act before you do it.”
“I do not need satisfaction on that. I do not quarrel with the terms we are to make. I do not protest against any of the provisions of the treaty. I protest against the necessity of treating. Summon the prisoners.”
“Can you,” said Christophe, still delaying, “can you improve upon the terms proposed? Can the conditions be altered, so as to give more satisfaction to your superior foresight? I would not use flattering terms at this moment, Toussaint; you know I would not. But your sagacity is greater than mine, or any one’s. I distrust myself about the terms of the treaty, I assure you.”
“About anything more than the mere terms of the treaty?” asked Toussaint, again stopping in his walk.
“About the conditions—and about the conditions only.”
“Your self-distrust is misplaced, and comes too late. Order the prisoners to be brought in.”
As Sabès and Martin entered, L’Ouverture and Christophe renewed, by a glance, their agreement to speak and act with the utmost apparent sameness of views and intentions. It was but a poor substitute for the real coincidence which had always hitherto existed; but it was all that was now possible.
“I am going to send you back to your Captain-General, gentlemen,” said Toussaint.
“Not without apology, I trust,” said Sabès, “for having subjected to such treatment as we have undergone, messengers sent to parley—bearing actually the necessary credentials from the Captain-General. For nine weeks have my companion and I been dragged from place to place, wherever it suited your purposes to go, in perpetual fear for our lives.”
“I am sorry you have trembled for your lives, gentlemen,” replied Toussaint. “It was an unnecessary suffering, as I gave you my word, on your capture, that your persons were safe. Considering that you were found crouching among the ferns, within hearing of my private conversation with my son respecting the affairs of the war, I think your complaints of your detention unreasonable; and I have no apology to make, on that ground, either to yourselves or your commander. I cannot hear another word of complaint, gentlemen. You know well that by any general in Europe you would, under similar circumstances, have been hanged as spies. Now to public business. I am about to send you to General Leclerc, with proposals from General Christophe and myself to bring this painful war to an end, according to the desire of the heads of both armies. We all know such to be the wish of the Captain-General.”
“No doubt. It was never his desire, nor that of any true Frenchman,” said Sabès, “to be at war on the soil of this colony. You alone, General Toussaint, are responsible for the loss of lives, and all the other miseries which it has occasioned.”
“How so? Let him say on, Lieutenant Martin. No one suffers by speaking his thoughts to me, be they what they may. On what consideration is it possible to impute this war to me?”
“It would never have broken out if you had not despised the authority, and thrown off the control, of the mother-country. This view cannot be new to you, General Toussaint,” continued Sabès, on seeing the look of amazement with which L’Ouverture turned to Christophe.
“Indeed it is,” replied Toussaint. “The charge is as unexpected as it is untrue. You, sir,” he said, appealing to Lieutenant Martin, “are a naval officer. Tell me how you would act in such a case as this. Suppose you commanded a vessel of the state, authorised and approved in your office? suppose another officer came—without notice, without your having heard a word of complaint—and leaped upon your deck, with a crew double the number of your own, striking down and fettering your men. If you resisted their violence in such a case, successfully or unsuccessfully, would you admit that you were the cause of the struggle—that you despised the government under which you held your command—that you threw off the control of your superiors?”
There was a pause.
“Such is my case,” said Toussaint; “and thus you must represent it, if you be men of honour. The purport of my letter to the Captain-General (which will be ready by the time you are prepared for your journey), is to declare the willingness of General Christophe and myself to negotiate, as the continuation of the war, under the circumstances which have arisen, appears to be without object. The terms which we require, and which it is supposed General Leclerc will agree to, are an amnesty for all who have ever fought, or otherwise acted, under our command; and the preservation of the rank of all black officers, civil and military. My friend Christophe and I will retire to our estates, to pray for the peace and welfare of the colony—the peace and welfare which have, notwithstanding our prayers, been so unhappily broken up. Gentlemen, there can be little doubt that the Captain-General will agree to these terms of pacification.”
“We cannot answer for his replies,” said Martin. “Our representations shall be faithful.”
“I doubt it not,” said Toussaint, “after experiencing your companion’s courage and fidelity in rebuke; for which, though he is mistaken in fact, I honour him. Nor can I doubt the readiness of the Captain-General to treat with us on the terms I shall propose; for he must know that I shall always, among my native fastnesses, be strong to burn, ravage, and destroy. He must know, that though my negroes may be conquered, they will never more be subdued; and that, entrenched in the mornes, they can always effectually prevent an unfriendly settlement of the island. He must know that I am open to generous treatment; but otherwise ready and able to sell dearly a life which has done our country some service.”
The French officers assented; but waited, as if to hear something more, besides Christophe’s declaration, for his own part, of agreement in what L’Ouverture had said.
Sabès at length spoke, not without another cautionary sign from his companion.
“Your generous frankness, General Toussaint,” said he, “induces me to remind you of one more duty which, in case of the desired pacification, you will owe to the Captain-General. You will hold yourself indebted to France for all such treasure as, in an hour of alarm, you may have chosen to conceal.”
“What does this mean?” said Toussaint. “General Christophe, do you know of any public treasure being concealed in any part of the island?”
“None,” said Christophe, “public or private.”
“Nor do I. You hear, gentlemen.”
“You forget, General Toussaint, what we heard on the occasion of our capture.”
“You forget your own words to us,” said Lieutenant Martin—“that we had seen and heard too much for you to let us go.”
“I remember my words perfectly; and that they referred to my choice of a post in the mornes, and a retreat for my family—affairs long since made public enough. What else do you suppose you saw and heard? If I spoke of depositing my treasures in the mornes, I was doubtless speaking of my household. Did you understand me to mean gold and silver? What was it that you suppose you saw and heard?”
“We saw new-made graves, and the tools that dug them, after having heard shots.”
“You are welcome to dig upon the Plateaux, and to take whatever treasure you may find. You will find only the bones of the brave who fell in attacking and defending the post.”
“And of those who, being there, can tell no tales. You forget that we heard their death-shots before we saw their graves. The time is come for you to tell the secret that you buried with them.”
Christophe rarely laughed; but he laughed now.
“They believe,” said he—“apparently they believe—that you hid treasure in the morne, and then shot and buried the servants employed.”
“We do,” said the officers, gravely.
“Were you really about to carry this story to the Captain-general?” asked Toussaint, smiling. “Tell him that the wealth of the colony, sufficient for the desires of its inhabitants, is dispersed through all its dwellings, to be enjoyed—not hidden by avarice, and sealed with blood.”
“We are too well informed,” said Sabès, “concerning the wealth and splendour of the colony to believe that any part of its treasure has met our eyes that can be concealed. Duty to France now requires that she should be put in possession of the whole wealth of the island.”
“Let France cultivate an honourable peace,” said Toussaint, “and her authorities will assuredly see the wealth of the colony spread over all its fields, and amassed in every harbour. We can then present an overflowing public treasury. That is all I have to offer: and it ought to be enough.”
Sabès did not press the point further, because he saw it would be useless. But he and his companion were more and more persuaded of the truth of their notion of what they had seen and heard, the more they recalled the tales told at the Court of France of the plate, the gems, the bullion and coin, and the personal ornaments which abounded, even in the prosperous days of the old emigrants. Every one knew, too, that the colony had been more prosperous than ever since. It is not known by whom the amount of the hidden treasure was, at length, fixed at thirty-two millions of francs. Sabès and Martin simply told their story and their ideas to Leclerc, adding the information that Toussaint L’Ouverture was an adept in dissimulation; that they had as nearly as possible been deprived of this piece of insight, by the apparent frankness and candour of his manners; and that, but for the boldness of Sabès in pressing the affair of the buried treasure, they should actually have quitted the negro chief, after an occasional intercourse of nine weeks, without any knowledge of that power of dissimulation which had been formerly attributed to him by those who, it now appeared, knew him well, and which must be the guiding fact in all the Captain-General’s dealings with him. His cunning must be met by all the cunning that Leclerc’s united council could muster, or destruction would lurk under the pretended pacification. Accordingly, the whole of Leclerc’s policy henceforth proceeded on the supposed fact of Toussaint L’Ouverture being the prince of dissemblers.