Revolutions - 4.09- What The Future Will Bring

Episode Date: February 8, 2016

From the summer of 1794 to the summer of 1795, the future of Saint-Domingue hung in the balance.

Hello and welcome to Revolutions. Episode 4.9, What the Future Will Bring. When the Second Commission sailed away from Sandomang in June 1794, the fate of the colony was truly up in the air on almost every front. On the one hand, the British had invaded and now occupied a series of ports in the west and south provinces. The main slave armies of the north, meanwhile, had resisted all French Republican overtures, and reaffirmed their allegiance to the Spanish. And then the colored, who had once upon a time been the Republic's staunchest allies, were now defecting to the enemy in droves. None of this was good news. But, on the other hand, the National Convention had accepted the Tri-Colour Commission as

official delegates from the colony, ratified the emancipation decrees in a sweeping declaration of liberty and equality, and perhaps most importantly, the French Republic still stood. contrary to all expectations the French Republic had not collapsed in 1793. And then the last bit of good news for the second commissioners as they sailed away is that they were leaving the defense of Sandalmang in pretty capable hands. Andre Rigo in the south, now Governor General LeVoe in the north, and then Tucson Louvichure holding the mountains in between. So the good news and bad news was a pretty even ratio in the summer of 1794,

and the future of the colony was a blank canvas to be painted by whoever emerged victorious in the struggles yet to come. Now, the lives of the inhabitants of Sandomang in the summer of 1794 offers a glimpse at what the possible future might be, depending on who emerged victorious from the struggles yet to come. Now, the very worst outcome, I think it's fair to say, would be if the British managed to complete the conquest of the colony. Depending on how you did the math, a good 60 to 80,000 people now lived in British occupied areas, and wherever the British went, they turned back the clock to 1788. The emancipation decrees of the Second Commission were obviously nullified, and black slaves were returned to work as slaves.

But that was not all. The British also ignored any promises made to the colored to maintain racial equality. Wherever the British were, whites were elevated to command position, while coloreds were pushed aside, even colored leaders who had invited the British in in the first place. So that was one possible future for the colony, the British conquest, spelling the end of liberty and equality, and the return of big white supremacy. A second option was found in the territories in the South province now controlled by Andre Rigo. Rigo is obviously an uncompromising defender of racial equality, duh, but as a staunch ally of the Second Commission and the

French Republic, Rigo was ready to accept the reality of slave emancipation. But as we touched on at the end of last week's episode, that emancipation would come with restrictions. Liberty did not just mean everybody doing whatever they wanted, the National Convention's decree notwithstanding. Now, with all the upheavals that had gone on since 1791, the plantation, the plantation The nations of the South province had been amongst the lease disrupted in the colony. Most of them still stood and still functioned. And Rigo made sure that the former slaves kept working those plantations, though they were now cultivators who enjoyed some rights and a small cut of the profits.

And there were actually profits to be made down here. One huge thing Rigo had going for him was that he had kept L'Kai out of British hands, and the port continued to be more or less functional. It was, in fact, the only major port still fully functional in the French Republican orbit. So Rago's people were able to cart their stuff down to Lecai and successfully export it, usually through merchants from the United States. But while the black cultivators now got a small cut of the profits, they found themselves forced to do the same work the day after emancipation

that they had been doing the day before emancipation. So on a day-to-day level, not much has really changed for them. Now, the people who did enjoy a major change for the better under Rago's regime were his colored brethren. In the same way that Rago was implementing a very particular kind of slave emancipation, he was also implementing a very particular brand of racial equality. Rigo, understandably, had no love for the whites. Now, he had some white allies, of course, but, as a class, Rigo had no interest in protecting white interests whatsoever.

When the white exodus got going in earnest in 1793, Rago's territory became littered with abandoned plantations. The buildings and equipment were all intact, but the white owners and managers had just fled. Now, Pall Varel's policy towards these types of abandoned properties had been for the government to step in and run them directly, but Rigo had a better idea. He started leasing them to private individuals to run in exchange for cut of the profits. And who were the private individuals who had the capital and the access to take advantage of this deal? Well, all of Rago's colored friends and allies, of course. The whites were all gone, and the blacks had no money.

So the coloreds wound up running everything. So that was the second possible future for Sandomang. The whites gone, the blacks either workers or mirrored. common soldiers, and the colored holding all the political, economic, and military authority. Now, the third major option was in the territory in the borderlands between the north and west provinces under Tucson Louvichuers control. Unlike Rego's system of colored supremacy, Tucson envisioned a new sandomang shared by whites, colored, and blacks together. Now, at this moment, this is obviously the most loony-tunes vision of them all, whites, color, and colors.

and blacks living together in peace, harmony, and prosperity. I mean, good luck with that, Tucson. But remember who Tucson was on the eve of the revolution. He was a free black plantation manager who had spent his life intersecting with all three groups, and he was liked and respected by all of them, and he in turn often saw the best each group had to offer rather than just the worst, and he really did think he could make tri-color harmony work. After he jumped over to the French, he started trying to make it work. But Tucson was no starry-eyed dreamer. His intellect was coldly rational, so coexistence between the three groups

was premised as much on what you were not going to get as it was on what you were going to get. So, towards the now-free blacks, Tucson embraced a vision of limited slave emancipation just like Rego, and he enforced labor rules and demanded obedience to authority. You are not slaves, and you will never be slaves again. You are forever free citizens. But you must work. And not just anywhere, you must work the plantations. Because while Tucson could envision a Sandomang inhabited by all three races,

he could not, and never would be able to, envision a Sandomang that survived without its lucrative sugar and coffee exports. Meanwhile, to the free colored, he guaranteed racial equality. I mean, white supremacy had gotten its head chopped off and posted on a spike as far as Tucson Lubature was concerned, but he would promise the colored no more than equality. He was not going to elevate them over the whites, and he soon demonstrated this in no uncertain terms. Now, as I said last week, there were whites now ready to reconcile themselves to the new regime. Some had been laying low in Sandelom, Meng, others were now returning to the colony after having taken flight. But when they came back, they found Tucson surprisingly welcoming and quite generous. He honored old land and property titles, unlike Andre Rigo, and channeling Julius Caesar a bit, was magnanimous and forgiving towards men that Tucson had literally been fighting just a few months before. If the whites respected that

their workers were now workers and not slaves, and if the whites accepted that a black ex-slave was the supreme authority in town, they could come back, and not just come back, but enjoy the protection of his regime and maybe even thrive. Tussan made a big deal about respecting their private property, and he diligently punished thieves and vandals whenever they were caught. Now, one thing that Tusson had to deal with that Rago did not was that the plantations of the northern plains had almost all been leveled by fire. But Tucson had an answer to that too, and he helped organize the rebuilding of the physical infrastructure. Both white and colored owners could expect nothing but help and encouragement from Tucson, and pretty soon, crazy option number

three was making some headway. Whites, coloreds, and blacks lived and worked side by side under the auspices of a benevolent black ex-slave who just wanted them all to thrive. Now, the fourth option for the future was a total wildcard that we only have to talk about briefly because by the end of today's episode, it will be moot. That is, what happens if the Spanish-backed slave armies, led by Jean-François and Bissou, push their way down and seize control of Sandomang? Now, it's hard to know exactly what they would have done, or what kind of political arrangement they would have made with the Spanish, who, as I mentioned, would have granted freedom

to the black soldiers, but kept slavery intact. I can't imagine, however, that a Jean-François or Bissue-led future has any place for the whites or the coloreds. But while I'm here, though, I should answer a question that I've gotten a few times about the Spanish. Why were they just cool with not only letting this massive slave rebellion go on, but actively supporting it? weren't they worried about it spilling over to Santo Domingo? And the answer is probably a little, but mostly not really. Spanish Santo Domingo was neither as populated as French San Doming, nor did it have as many slaves, nor was the slave to free ratio so wildly out of whack.

Santo Domingo was just not the same type of mass slave economy that their French neighbors were. So the Spanish weren't super worried about the gospel of slave. revolution spreading because there were actually more free Spaniards in Santa Domingo than slaves. So keeping their slaves in line seemed pretty doable. And then there was also a geographic reason. The interior of Hispaniola was not very densely populated. Most of the Spanish lived on the southeast coast. So a marauding French slave army would have a lot of ground to cover before they made it. And then, of course, there's the very fact of their support for the slave armies. From day one, the Spanish bought the loyalty of Jean-François and Bissue to make sure exactly that sort of invasion never happened.

Okay, so hopefully that answers that question, and the fourth possible future for Sandomang, the Spanish-backed slave armies overrunning the colony, is never going to happen so we can move on. Now, finally, there was a fifth major option that existed everywhere and outside the jurisdiction of any of the little regimes that I've just been. mentioned. And that fifth option is Black Liberty. No restrictions. Liberty enjoyed after being purchased with sweat and blood. Break up the hated plantations, parcel out the land, and live and work as truly free men and women. Throughout Sandomang, but most especially in the West and South, there were independent, unaligned, insurgent black communities, basically like the old Maroon communities, but more numerous and better armed. These groups inhabited their own camps and bases in the mountains,

and they would be damned if they were going to get sent back to the plantations. And then even those blacks who continued to live on the plantations and who were allegedly subject to all these new labor rules, I mean, it's not like they didn't resist. The sheer scope and constant revisions of the cultivator labor codes are pretty clear proof that a lot of freed slaves had no interest in actually following all these crazy. rules. They shirked their official duties to expand and cultivate their own plots of land.

And these plots of land would not only give them an independent food supply, but the produce of that land could still be sold for a profit in the massively disrupted colonial economy. So as it turned out, it was super hard to keep freed slaves doing the same work they had done when they were slaves. And so they represented a fifth option. No more plantations, no more master, no more rules, just free men and women working and living for themselves. So those were the five major options on the table for Sandomang in the summer of 1794. And just to recap, they are, first, the British military returning the colony to the old big whites who would restore white supremacy and slavery. Second, Rugo's system of colored supremacy with emancipation and labor rules. Third,

Tucson's system of whites, colors, and blacks working together to rebuild a plantation economy that would benefit them all. Fourth, whatever Jean-Francois and Basu's ultimate plans were, which we don't really know. And then fifth, a totally decentralized system of freedom and small-scale land ownership. So, let's see what happens next. What happened first is that the new military alliance that had been forged between now-governed, Governor-General LeVoe and Tucson Louvichure went on the offensive. In July 1794, Tucson launched an attack on Jean-Francois' positions in the eastern part of the North Province and drove the Grand Admiral's forces back in disarray. Jean-Francois himself was forced to take a hasty flight,

much to Tucson's evident delight. Meanwhile, Governor LeVos attacked bases that had been established by the Spanish and then garrisoned by actual Spanish soldiers, rather than just their slave auxiliaries, on the border between Sandelman and Santo Domingo. The surprise rejuvenation of the French Republicans in the north caught the Spanish line by surprise, and brought ominous tidings of things to come. Now, in apparent retaliation for this sudden attack, and possibly showing what a Jean-Francois-led Sand-Oman might have looked like, Jean-Francois proceeded to commit one of the the most infamous crimes in the course of the revolution.

The fortress town of Fort Dauphin, located on the north coast of the colony near the Spanish border, had been captured by the slave armies and was now being garrisoned by a mixed force of Jean-François's black soldiers, Spanish soldiers, and then 700 white French auxiliaries, some of them now ex-refugees from the LeCap exodus, for reasons that are far from clear. Just after the attack by Tucson, Jean-François ordered his soldiers to surround and massacre the 700 French auxiliaries, and the Spanish soldiers just looked on. Now, I'm not even sure what the point of it was, but he did it, and it sure did not help Spanish efforts to recruit more white Frenchmen to their side. While LeVos and Tucson launched these military attacks,

they also sent out political feelers trying to undermine the Spanish and British by breaking their local alliances. Tucson had enough legitimacy with the slave insurgents that he could appeal to the black soldiers and officers and say, look, the French have granted full emancipation, and they are going to win the war. The Spanish are the past, and when the chips are down, your generals will sell you out. So, defect now, and we'll welcome you with open arms. Now, for the moment, this argument did not carry a ton of weight, because the French Republic still seemed precariously perched atop a towering inferno. So, Tucson and LeVoe then turned to the coloreds who had defected to the British. They smuggled in messages to the leaders in San Mark, for example, and asked, how are those British promises of racial equality treating you?

Well, look, we understand that you've made a mistake, so come back over to the Republic and we'll all join forces and kick the British out together. And oh, by the way, if you don't come over voluntarily, Tucson's army is going to attack Sanmark, sack it, and probably execute the whole lot of you for treason. But still, most of the colored leaders in Sanmark hesitated. And so Tucson started marching south from his base in Gonaiv in August to make good on the threat. But lacking the forces necessary to just take the city in a direct assault, Toussaint employed a clever gambit. He sent down two of his most trusted officers to tell the British that Toussaint's recent defection to the French was a ruse to solidify his position, and now that his position had been solidified, he was ready to really defect this time to the British.

Now, the British were receptive to this, and it's not like it wasn't a believable story. Tucson had been one of the leading anti-French voices for the last three years. Discovering that his defection to the French was a ruse actually explained a somewhat inexplicable event. But the real ruse was the story about the ruse. When Tucson's officers got into San Marck, they made contacts with disaffected colors, and there were quite a few of them, and planned an internal uprising to go with the external attack from Tucson's approaching army. All of this went according to plan, and in mid-August, Tucson attacked and then a bunch of armed colored suddenly rose up in Sanmark at the same time, but there were not enough of them.

Many of the coloreds and the leaders still clung to the British promise that slavery would be maintained and equality maybe eventually implemented. With the internal uprising sputtering, Tucson's external attack ultimately failed, repelled by superior British firepower working from a strong defensive position. Now into the fall and winter of 1794, though, open war between all sides in this very complicated little conflict proceeded. In the north, Governor Laveau kept the British contained on their base in Mons-Sin-Nicola, while Tucson returned to fighting Jean-François in Bissue, and he made further thrusts into the interior. In October, he went on a quick campaign, capturing,

various towns and looting and killing wherever he went, but he did not have sufficient forces to keep what he had conquered. So we always wound up falling back to his main bases along the cordon of the west. But still, Tucson was clearly showing in the campaigns of 1794 that while he had very little practical military experience, he was turning out to be one of the best generals of the war. And he showed a true professional's obsession with logistics and supplies and training. and he constantly begged LeVos for more guns and more bullets, more shoes, and more medicine, and he forced, captured British or Spanish officers to train his men in proper technique and discipline. In December, he launched a very well-executed, multi-column offensive that captured and this time held

an important river that lay south of Le Cap. The columns were led by the two men fast becoming Tucson's most trusted lieutenants, Jean-Jacques Desaline and Tucson's adopted nephew, Moise. And down in the South, meanwhile, Andre Rago's Legion of Equality was morphing into what has historically become known as the Legion of the South, and he battled to keep the British pinned down in the ports that they had captured and not let them move out. As Toussaint was rampaging up in the north in October, Brigo managed to capture Leogne and hold it, which prevented the British from creating a land link between their forces in Jeremy and Porta Prince.

Not that the British and Porta Prince were going anywhere. They were currently besieged by one of those independent black armies that were not formally aligned with any of the principal leaders. They were just doing their own thing, but they had zero interest in the British winning and bringing back the big whites and slavery. So this army of three or four thousand blacks surrounded and besieged Porta Prince, trapping the British in the Capitol, where they slowly but surely succumbed one by one to tropical diseases. Now, the attrition rate for the British was indeed quite alarming and threatened their whole project, so much so that, like everyone else in Sandomang, they too were forced to turn to slave auxiliaries to fight for them. Though the British very clearly meant to reimpose slavery, they too started offering individuals freedom in exchange for military service.

And in the South, they found a very effective ally in a black leader named Jean Kina and the army of about 1,500 that he led. Kina and his men had originally been armed by whites in the South during that white-colored civil war that broke out in 1792. So they were among those who were not going to have their promises of freedom honored after the law of April the 4th spelled victory for the colored. Kina tried to join Rigo's Legion of Equality, but the colored officers, most of whom had just fought against Kina, wanted no part of him. So when the British came knocking, Kina and his men signed up and would fight for the British for the whole rest of the war. So as the French and Spanish and British battle for control of Sandomang among and between themselves, just remember that the battles themselves were usually black-on-black affairs. Now, through the whole first half of 1795, a general stalemate endured that no one was able to

decisively break through one way or the other. After a miserable winter cooped up in Port-au-Prince, the British managed to push their way up to Marabalé, but then Tucson swung down and pushed them back. But this action around Marabalé cast first light on the future rivalry between Tucson and Rigo, especially in their competition. for the loyalty and service of the blacks. Now, even though, as I just said, everyone had blacks fighting for them, that did not mean there weren't serious tensions inside each army, and none more so than in Rago's emerging Legion of the South.

Black leaders were allowed to serve as junior officers, but all the senior commands went to coloreds. And then, going all the way back to the betrayal of the Swiss, the blacks were always pretty suspicious of the, the ultimate intentions of the Colors. And with so many Colors, having just hopped over to the British when Emancipation hit, well, that was just further proof that it is entirely likely the Colourdes are just going to use us and then put us all back in chains. Black mistrust of the Colors was then heightened still further back in February 1794, back when the Second Commission was still around.

Sontex and Polverell had been working to forge a more formal anti-British alliance with some of these various independent black forces out there, and there was no black leader more respected than Heassant. Remember that guy? That young religious leader who had helped the coloreds defeat the small whites at Cuadabuccais in 1792? Well, he's still a hugely influential voice in the slave communities of the West. But at some point, over the winter of 1793, 1794, Heassant had been suddenly arrested by colored

allies of the Second Commission on suspicion that he was the one who was actually in league with the British. Sontanax had personally then come down, overturned the charges, and set Heassant free. But then in February 1794, Heassant was lured to an isolated spot by some colored agents and just straight up assassinated. This murder came two weeks after another prominent black leader had been assassinated by armed coloreds in the south. So there was major tension between the blacks and colored. And with the sudden rise of Tucson Louvichure, a black leader who had been one of the original, well, almost one of the original, leaders of the initial slave uprising, many of the black fighters look to Tucson as their natural leader. Now fighting near the border

with Rago's territory, Tusson was happy to cultivate their allegiance and bring them over to his side. What's Rigo ever done for you anyway? And so began a tug of war between two sons. Saun and Rigo for the rank-and-file black soldiers of San Doming. So the stalemate that had set in by the summer of 1795 was, of course, broken by, you guessed it, events back in Europe. As has been the case since day one, the course of the French Revolution defined the course of the Haitian Revolution. So, back to France we go, and where are we? Well, when last we were in Paris, it was was February 1794, and the National Convention had just decreed mass emancipation and racial equality, but then the Committee of Public Safety had upheld the recall order of the Second Commission.

And then, of course, we ended last week's episode with Sontanax and Paul Varel getting picked up and taken back to France in June 1794. While just as they were landing back in France, Paris was being convulsed by the end of the French Revolution, at least in my own idiosyncratic system of dating. On July 27, 1794, the enemies of Robespierre got together, chopped off his head, and the Terminatorian reaction set in. And this is all happening just as Sontanaks and Paul Verro are returning to France, and it's kind of crazy. They departed France just two weeks before the insurrection of August the 10th,

and then they returned just in time for Terminator. That's pretty lucky timing. Now, what Terminator meant for the various players in the battles over Sandomang was anyone's guess. And when Sontanex and Polverell got back to Paris, they discovered that most of those various players were sitting in a jail cell. For example, they learned that their arch rival Galbo did not share their lucky timing. Galbo had finally made it back to Paris in April and had been promptly arrested and thrown in prison. Meanwhile, the principal lobbyists for the colonial whites have themselves been arrested, almost certainly, due to their suspicious connections to the Committee of General Security. Also still in prison was Julian Raymond, having survived the initial liquidation of the Girondins, he too just languished in a cell.

But luckily for all these guys, those were busy days for the Revolutionary Tribunal, and colonial matters did not rate as a result. a very high priority. So all of them were still just sitting around in jail with Terminator arrived. Now, when Sontanax and Paul Varel showed up, they themselves were not thrown into prison proper, but they were placed under an implied house arrest, you know, just don't go anywhere. Once Robespier and the Committee of Public Safety had been overthrown, the various colonial interests, though not their lobbyists, who were still in prison, poked their heads out, and we're like, Hey, so this is going to be the conservative reaction phase of the revolution, right? Right. So let's kick things off by repealing the most insanely revolutionary thing the revolution ever did, the emancipation

of the slaves. But the Terminatorian Convention, no less than the overthrown committee of public safety, had way more important things to worry about than whatever was going on back in Sandomang. So for months after Dermedor, everyone with a genuine, an interest in the colony just had to sit around and wait. Raymond stayed in prison, the principal colonial lobbyist stayed in prison, Galbo's, stayed in prison, Sontanax and Paul Varel, just waited around patiently to be put on trial. It wasn't until November 1794 that the Dermedorian Convention finally got around to the question of Sandal Meng and the actions of the Second Commission.

The white lobbyists, Raymond and Galboe were all released on parole, and a committee was set up to investigate and render a verdict on the conduct of the Second Commission. Now, fortunately, for Sontanax and Paul Varel, this was not the Revolutionary Tribunal, with its swift and summary justice. But unfortunately, it was kind of the other thing. A long bureaucratic slog through all the evidence and witness testimony. But in a curious decision that I have not ever seen adequately explained, it's just this fact that is hanging out there.

Galbo was never allowed to testify at the trial. He wanted to. They just wouldn't let him. I have no idea why. So the trial dragged on for months and months, and the non-stop stress of like everything that had happened to him since arriving in Sandomang in September 1792 was finally too much for Etienne Palvaro. He died in April 1795 at the age of 55. When the story of the Haitian revolution is told, pride of place is always given to Sontanax, because he's the one who issued the decree of August the 29th. But hopefully I've shown that Paul Verro was right there in the middle of it with him. Both had started as totally obscure revolutionary backbenchers,

who went on to be the principal actors in the emancipation of all the French slaves. And sadly, he did not live long enough to see his work fully vindicated. As the trial dragged on, though, the ultimate verdict was becoming clear, much to the delight of Sontanax and the dismay of the colonial lobby. Because in one of the more surprising decisions made by the Terminatorians, as they prepared the Constitution of Year 3 that established the directory, they decided that racial equality and slave emancipation would be upheld in the Republic of France. Now, partly, this was a recognition of what's done is done, but it was also a part of a shift in attitude towards the colonies. Remember, in the early days of the revolution, enlightened opinion was that this was all leading towards greater independence and home rule for the colonies. While as the new concept of an indivisible French nation began to take hold, especially during the war, leading revolutionaries began to advocate a reverse conception that, the tricolor flag flew, was a part of the French nation, one and indivisible.

So the Constitution of Year 3 reflected this. It said there would no longer be a distinction between the metropole and the colonies. All were equal to each other. Sandalemang and Martinique and Guadalupe and the rest were basically now just departments of Greater France, and all French laws would be uniformly enforced everywhere. And since there were no slaves and no racial inequality in France, there could be none in the colonies. So yes, as the conservative directory settled into power, it explicitly upheld one of the most revolutionary things the radical revolutionaries had ever done. Then, just as the convention was wrapping up loose ends in September 1795, the trial of the second commission wrapped up. Sontanax and the late Paul Varel were

cleared of all charges. They had done a good job, and they had the thanks of the report. public. Now, as we will see next week, Sontanax, and also Julian Raymond, are not done in Sandomang, since they're about to be two of the key members of the Third Commission. So we'll leave them aside for now, but I do want to wrap things up with the depressing conclusion to the life and career of Governor Galbo. After being arrested in April 1794, Galbo had spent eight months in prison, but when he was finally released, he discovered that his arrest record now precluded him from returning to the military, the only job he had ever known. In mid-1795, he managed to land a minor bureaucratic position in the Terminatorian government.

He was then officially amnestied in the general political amnesty that was issued when the directory took over, but his application to rejoin the army was still rejected. And it continued to be rejected for the duration of the directory, and Galbo was not allowed back into the army until after Bonaparte's coup of 18 Fruitedor. But when he was finally let back in, he got what I think might have been the most rotten assignment in the history of the universe. He was posted to Egypt. That's right. Two years after Bonaparte abandoned the expedition as a hopeless loss cause, and with the French forces in Egypt little more than a sad, forgotten, demoralized, and plague-ridden garrison that was about to surrender

to the British, Galbeau received orders to take up a post in Cairo. So, he and his wife packed their bags once again, and headed off to the worst assignment imaginable. Long story short, he died of plague in 1801 at the age of 58. So everything I just told you about what happened back in France is going to have a major impact on events in Sandomang. The arrival of the directory represented the rational and sober ratification of a slave emancipation decree that had initially been issued in an emergency and then confirmed in the emotional heat of one of the most pressure cooker phases of the French Revolution. But what really unclogged the military stalemate back in Sandomang and paved the way for the

steady rise of Tucson Louvichure was the triumph of the triumph of the military stalemate back in Sandomang, and paved the way for the steady rise of Tucson Louvichure, was the triumph of the French Republic on all fronts in the war against the Allies. Remember, mid-1795 is when the Dutch joined the French as the Batavian Republic, when the Prussians pull out of the war completely, but most importantly for our purposes, this is when the Spanish pull out of the war. Admitting defeat to the French Republic was a bitter pill for the Spanish to swallow, but they were really no match for the might of the fully mobilized French nation, and so they signed a peace treaty of their own in July 1795. This treaty not only stipulated an immediate end of hostilities on all fronts, including

all colonial fronts, but get this, the handover of Santo Domingo to the French. The Spanish agreed to hand the entire island of Hispaniola over to the French, and it was that, more than anything else, that completely rearranged the military and and political situation in Sandomang. So next week, we will return to Sandomang to watch this bombshell news get dropped on everyone's head. The Spanish are out of the war. What did that mean for Jean-François and Bissue? For the last four years, since the original slave uprising in August 1791, they had been the two principal slave generals. They had full claim to the prestige being leaders in the initial fight for freedom?

I mean, what's going to happen if, for example, they suddenly decamp the island, now that their Spanish benefactors are saying, we're done funding, arming, and supplying your armies? Who would that leave as the only black leader who truly had the respect of all the black soldiers? Well, I'll tell you. Tucson, Loveture.