“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.”