Revolutions - 4.10- The Third Commission

Episode Date: February 15, 2016

By mid-1796, Toussaint Louverture had no rival on Saint-Domingue. Then Sonthonax came back.

Hello and welcome to revolutions. Episode 4.10, the Third Commission. In November 1795, news finally reached Sandomang of the incredible turn of events back in Europe that we ended with last week. Spain is out of the war. In the all-important North province of Sandomang, this news would change everything. Since August 1791, the slave armies of Jean-Françain, zoo had occupied most of the province, and they had been able to maintain that occupation because of Spanish support. First, the clandestine support that had seen them transition

successfully from passionate insurgents to a stable and pretty well-organized army, and then the official support that saw the Spanish bring that army under their banner. Now, Governor General LeVoe had run some successful campaigns against these forces back when he was still Colonel LeVoe, and as we saw last week, Tucson Lubbature was making in roads of his own. But in the main, Jean-Francuan Bissue had never been seriously threatened, but it was all premised on Spanish support, and that support was now gone. So whatever fancy plans Jean-François-Bissue had dreamed up over the years, whatever that fourth option we talked about last week might have been, it would remain an eternal might have been. When the Spanish

said we're cutting you off, British agents made contact and offered to replace the Spanish as patrons, but there were a number of problems with this. Logistically, British supplies could never be counted on the way that Spanish supplies could always be counted on, since they were just coming right over the border. But more importantly, the deal offered by the British was not nearly as appealing to Jean-François and Basu as the old deal offered by the Spanish. The Spanish had essentially left the slave generals to their own devices with little or no direct oversight. Basu was currently living like a de facto king down in this homemade palace of his. The British, on the other hand, planned to insert the slave generals into their regular command structure.

They would have to take orders from British officers, do whatever the British said. So Jean-François and Basu declined to hop over to the British. Instead, the two slave generals decided it was time to get out while the getting was good. The Spanish offered them asylum as free men, and they said, okay. Each general took with him a cadre of senior officers, and they decamped the island forever. Jean-François and Basu are never coming back. Bissue wound up resettling in Spanish Florida, where he was eventually given command of the black militia there, and there he died in 1801. Jean-François and his loyalists, meanwhile, went first to Havana, but the Spanish governor flipped out when this slave general and his entourage showed up, and he begged his superiors to deport them all before they started a slave revolt in Cuba.

The Spanish authorities granted this request, and Jean-Francois's group was taken back across. the Atlantic to Cadiz. And their exile was not a comfortable one. Though the Spanish kept their word and allowed the black officers to live free, they did not grant them any sort of pension, or recognized the ranks they had held during their two and a half years of service in the Spanish army. Jean-François himself would die in Cadiz, nearly penniless in 1805. So the Grand Admiral, and the Governor General and Royal Viceroy, are now totally out of the picture. What there seems senior commanders gone, it was finally time for the insurgent army of the north to demobilize. And what to do with them all was a vexing question. Now, these armies had obviously managed to hold out

long enough that when their generals ditched out on them, the regular soldiers were not thrown back into chains. They were walking down into a world where they were officially free citizens. And amnesty and reconciliation did seem to be the order of the day. Tucson, for example, was happy to recruit as many of these guys as he could directly into his own forces. But those who were tired of fighting were welcome to return to work on the plantations as free citizens, though they would, of course, be subject to all the labor laws that were now going into effect. All of this proceeded with no final spasm of death or destruction. And it is pretty remarkable that the final chapter of these original slave armies of the Northern Plains

is a story told with practically no bloodshed at all. Now, as we have seen many times on the Revolution's podcast, the removal of a shared enemy often leads to a factional conflict on the winning side. So, with the threat of Jean-François' army removed, tensions within the French Republican ranks quickly erupted into open, armed hostility. The tensions in particular were between two men who stood one rung below Governor General LeVoe in the command structure. Tucson Louvichure is obviously one of the.

too, and the other is a guy we haven't talked about yet, and his name is Jean-Louis Velot. Now, we don't know a ton about Velot, but he was a free-colored born in Sandomang in 1751. He appears to have joined a regiment of dragoons as a teenager in 1768, and was then among those who volunteered to join the expedition to the United States in 1778, where he fought at the siege of Savannah. After that, we lose track of him, but I feel pretty confident saying that he was was not in on Vassan Oge's uprising, because most of the guys who escaped that little debacle wound up fighting with the slaves after August 1791.

The next time we see Vlotte pop up is when the Second Commission arrives and the battles over the law of April the 4th begin. When these battles led Sontanax to create those free-colored militias who were answerable only to the Second Commission, Vlotte wound up a colonel in that militia. Volat was then one of the principal officers, along with Jean-Baptiste's belly, fighting for the second commission during the Battle of Le Capp. And then when the British invaded and LeVos moved his headquarters over to Portaupai to contain them, he left Valot in charge of the defense of LeCap. So until Toussaint came over to the French side in April 1794, Vallot was the principal Creole officer in the North province, and he was among the very Véclos. and he was among the very few on the Republican side not absolutely thrilled when Tucson defected, because right away, LeVos started to show preferential treatment for Tucson. And of course, he was a little myth that Tucson had been offered a generalship

after fighting against the Republic for the last three years. In July 1795, the National Convention approved all the field promotions LeVos had doled out to his principal Creole officers, and the convention officially made brigadier generals of, in the north, Tucson, and Valat, and then in the south, Andre Rago, and another guy that I have not talked about yet, and that's Louis Jacques Beauvais. Beauvais was another of these prototypical free-colored men who had struggled for dignity in the old apartheid system. Beauvais had been educated in Bordeaux, and then, along with Volta, taken part in the Savannah Expedition, and then returned to San Doming to be a school teacher. When the revolution broke out, he was one of the first to take up arms to defend the law of April 4th,

and then he had stuck with the Republic after emancipation, and was now Rago's chief lieutenant in the south, and Beauvais, too, is now a full brigadier general. So of the four newly created Creole generals, it was three coloreds, all born free, and then Tucson, the lone black born a slave. And Volat was super annoyed that Tucson was now his equal. not only because he was a black ex-slave, but because Tucson had spent the last three years fighting against the Republic that Volat had put his own life on the line time and time again to defend. Vlaught did not trust Tucson even a little bit, but as long as Jean-François

Bissue were still out there, that conflict would simmer but never boil over. Now that Jean-Francéeu are departing, it's time for Vlaught to boil over. But his anger and frustration with LeVos is really what got him going, especially after LeVos moved his headquarters back to LeCapap after having spent the better part of a year in Porta Pai. Now, probably some of the lot's anger comes from being the boss because the boss is out of the office, and now that the boss is back in the office, it being kind of annoying that you're not the boss anymore. But there was more to it than that. Like, the first thing Levo did upon his return was release a whole bunch of black prisoners that Volot had been keeping locked up, which possibly implied a continuation of LeVos' growing preference for the blacks over the coloreds. After this initial slap in the face, LeVos then proceeded to really offend Volat and his allies.

Over the past year, the colored in Le Cap, under Velot's protection, had been busy rebuilding the city. As I mentioned in passing, Lecap had been built mostly out of brick and stone. So though everything flammable had burned in June 1793, the court structures all remained. And the colored citizens spied a golden opportunity. They laid claim to all the abandoned white property and built it back up. But when Levoire arrived back in the city, the governor and his treasury secretary were like, wow, guys, this looks great. But just so you know, according to Republican law, property abandoned by emigraise, automatically reverts to the state. So you can keep occupying the property, but we do expect a small rent.

This came as an abrupt and pretty obnoxious shock. But the thing that was really grating is that Governor-General LeVoe just wasn't one of them. And it wasn't that he wasn't colored, but that he wasn't Creole. He was a Frenchman. France was his home, not Sandalame. So why should he order us around in our own home? And this gets to the heart of the newly forming conflict that we're about to see. Because back in 1791, it was the whites who wanted self-government and the colored allied with the metropole. Well, now that the whites are gone, it's the colored who are now chafing under French authority and the colored who will start agitating for self-government. Valat did not make his move right away, though. In fact, much to Tucson's great annoyance,

Vlaught was doing a bit of careful planning. He sent agents out into the camps under Tucson's command, asking if Tucson's men were happy with their situation. They said life in Le Cap has been great for us. Valot pays us more, and we are treated way better. And according to letters sent from Tucson to Governor LeVos, we know that at least some of Tucson's men began to transfer their allegiance over to Volat. Finally, on March the 20th, 1796, Volat made his surprise move. He gathered a company of armed men, push into LeVos' headquarters, and arrested the governor general. Then he said that because LeVos had lost the support of the people, that Vallot was declaring himself, Governor General. So, March the 20th, 1796, straight up armed coup by General

Jean-Louis Vallotte. To help solidify his position inside the city, Volta then spread the rumor that the principal impetus for the coup was news that ships had arrived in the harbor and that they were literally carrying chains. But now that the Spanish were gone, LeVos had new orders from Paris to re-enslave all the blacks. Now, one thing we do not know is how much of a role colored leaders down in the West or South provinces, and Andre Rigo, we are looking at you, had to do with any of this. But we do know that there was no simultaneous rising on their part or ready declaration of allegiance to Volat. So it's entirely possible that he was just out there acting on his own. But it was also over so quickly that it's tough to tell if it was supposed to be a part of a

broader colored insurrection. So men loyal to Governor LeVos managed to get word of the coup spread to nearby army camps, camps that were run by men not allied with the lot, particularly the one led by Puro. You remember him? He was the first slave leader to come over to the republic. He'd been fighting alongside LeVos for years now and raised his men to prepare defense of the governor general. But Puro was just one stop on the messenger chain. The final destination was Tucson. Toussaint was in Gonaiv on March the 20th,

but when he found out that LeVos had been arrested, he immediately raised his army and sent word back to Le Cap, saying, I have raised my army. Meanwhile, Vlaat appears to have recognized that whatever careful planning had gone into the coup was not enough. Because just as he had spread the rumor that the French wanted to put the blacks back into chains, allies of Levo spread the rumor, a rumor they might have actually believed, that

Volat's coup was just the first stage of a plan to hand the city over to the British. It's not like colored leaders haven't done it before. So it's really Volat, who stands for re-enslavement. So Volat was unable to muster unified support for his coup inside LeCamp, and he realized that if Tucson really did come marching down out of the mountains, that there would be no opposing him. So on March the 22nd, Volot let LeVos go, and as Tucson's army did indeed start approaching, 10,000 strong by some estimates, Volot and his principal conspirators fled the city. Volat's failed coup was so incredibly beneficial to Tucson Louvichure that it's practically

like Volat was in on some convoluted plan to bring Tucson to power. Because Tucson's army, being the reason the coup failed, meant that Tucson was now the savior of both Governor General LeVos and the Republic. If there was any doubt that the one man in San Doming LeVos could really count on was Tucson, those doubts were all gone. As a reward for his service, LeVos promoted Tucson to deputy governor, second in command of all the French military and subordinate only to Levo. Technically, this elevated Tucson even above Andre Rigo. So in less than a year, Tucson had gone from the third ranking general of a Spanish-backed slave army to second in command of the French colony of Sandomang. And that Spanish-backed slave army he had abandoned no longer existed.

Tucson has very good timing. So Tucson was now in a prime position to do what it's pretty clear he was now aiming to do, become the master of Sandomang. He enjoyed the loyalty and support of men across the board. The whites in the north certainly found him to be a man they could do business with, and though Vlotte had attempted to paint Tucson as anti-colored, it's clear from his actions over the past year that Tucson wasn't anti-colored at all. He just wasn't exclusively pro-colored any more than he was pro-white or pro-black. So there were a lot of colors who also found Tucson to be a man they could do business with. And then you've got LeVos writing letters back to Paris now saying,

this is the guy that you can count on more than any other. So the government, government back in France supports him. And then, of course, was Jean-Françoisin Basu now out of the picture, there was no one who could challenge Toussaint's claim to be the natural leader of the black majority of the population. So in April 1796, there wasn't anybody in Sandelmeng with more authority nor commanding more loyalty than Tucson Louvichure. Except, at that very moment, a man was stepping onto a ship back in France who could very much challenge all of that authority and loyalty, especially within the all-important black community, because Legeré Felicité Santanax is coming back to Sandal Meng.

So as we discussed last week, when it came to colonial matters, the directory had come to power with two key principles. First, liberty and equality would be upheld. No more slavery, no more racism. Second, was the theory that the colonies were now simply a part of the French nation, one and indivisible. The colonies did not recall. require, nor did they deserve, special laws, special treatment, or special restrictions. And to ensure that this new theory of liberty, equality, and unity were upheld, in January 1796, the directory created a five-man commission to transmit this all to Sandelmeng and make sure it was obeyed. This is the third commission. And yes, I know the Haitian revolution loves a good commission,

almost as much as the French Revolution loved a good coup. So just to remind you, the first commission was sent by the National Assembly in 1791 to confirm the right of colonial self-rule on internal matters. The second commission had then been sent by the Legislative Assembly in 1792 to enforce racial equality, but also defeat the slave uprising without freeing all the slaves. The third commission is now being sent by the directory in 1796 to guarantee both racial equality and emancipation, and then also officially fold the colony into the French nation, one and indivisible. The most prominent of the new commissioners was, of course, Sontanax. After being fully vindicated for his work on the second commission, he was now being put on the third commission to continue his job.

Next was the man that Brousseau had so badly wanted to put onto the second commission, Julian Raymond. Raymond, too, had been fully cleared of any lingering political charges in the wake of Terminator, and was now returning to Sandomang for the first time in 12 years. Raymond had started his career in France lobbying the royal ministry to undo its apartheid system. Then he had lobbied the National Assembly for colored equality, then the Legislative Assembly, and then the National Convention, and then he had gotten thrown in jail, and now he was lobbying the directory. And through it all, he maintained a laser focus on racial equality, and never really paid more than

lip service to the idea of maybe general emancipation of the slaves at some point down the road. But with emancipation now settled, Raymond accepted it and was ready to move forward. Now, the third guy I'll mention is Philippe Romm, who had been one of the first commissioners, and who will be returning to the colony for the first time in four years, no doubt hoping and praying that when he stepped off the boat in La Cap this time, there wasn't some new revolt to deal with. The commission was rounded out by two other guys who do nothing of any, importance, so I won't trouble you trying to remember their names. The third commission got on a ship in

April 1796, and when their convoy sailed, they brought along with them some military reinforcements led by General Rochambe, who we last saw taking up a post in Martinique. And when we last saw Rochambeau, I mentioned that he would return to Sandomang with the Leclair expedition, which he does, but I totally forgot that he also makes this little interim return to Sandalang with the Third Commission. So Rochambeau brought with him 1,200 men, which doesn't seem like much if the French are really serious about pushing the British out of the colony. But they also brought with them 20,000 muskets. It had become clear to everyone that sending more European reinforcements was a waste of resources, and also, I suppose, lives, and that one of the biggest practical benefits to emancipation was that all those new black citizens,

would become patriotic soldiers of the Republic. So the Third Commission escorted the armaments necessary to create a black army. A black army full of soldiers who knew the terrain and who would not just drop dead and who would then go beat the crap out of the British. This is what Don Tonne meant when he shouted, This is the death of the English, after the National Convention approved General Emancipation. The Third Commission arrived in Le Cap on May the 11th, 1796.

and discovered that since they had departed, there had indeed been a revolt, but not a mass black uprising, rather Velot's aborted coup. So the aftermath of that coup defined the new political environment they stepped into. And that new environment is a weird, through-the-looking-glass version of the political environment we've seen thus far. Because as I just mentioned, ever since the French Revolution had hit, the whites had been the ones agitating for self-government, while the colored had been the staunches supporters of the metropole and then the republic. Well, now that's been flipped. The whites who remained in San Doming were way off of home rule and welcomed full integration with France. It is now the colors who are agitating for self-government and possibly even independence.

So why the switch? Well, that's easy. The whites are now way less powerful than the colored. And where the colored had once looked to France as their protector, they now did not need a protector. And the metropole represented merely a check on the power they believed they had fairly won for themselves. Now, nowhere was this through the looking glass version more apparent than in the attitude of Sontanax himself. Remember, he had concluded as soon as he arrived in Sandomang back in 1792 that the only people he could really trust were the colored. Well, since he had concluded, emancipation, he had changed his mind completely. The slew of color defections to the British had really ticked him off, and then stepping off the boat to find that General Volat had just staged

a coup against LeVoe, Sontanax now identified the coloreds, not as the Republic's best friends in Sandomang, but their worst enemy, well, aside from the British. The third commission had been sent to keep Sendomang free and keep Sendomang French, and the colored now clearly stood in the way of that mission. So if not the colors, now who does Sontanax now see as his potential best friend in San Domain? Well, the blacks. And there was no doubt that the black community was 100% ready to be Sontanax's best friend. They all knew Sontanax. They all loved Sontanax. He was the emancipator. The undisputed claim to leadership of the blacks that Tucson had been cultivating was suddenly challenged by a very credible rival, a rival who had freed all the slaves and then fought for the

republic that had guaranteed that freedom at a time when Tucson wanted nothing to do with it and was in fact fighting against it. So Tucson met with Sontanax and said all the right things, but I have to imagine that from their very first meeting, Tucson was trying to figure out a way to get Sontanax the hell off the island. Now luckily for Tucson, with the colored's identified as problem A1, there was no need to rush to a confrontation just yet. And the third commission did indeed begin with the problem of what to do with the colored.

So right away, they ordered General Volat, tracked down and arrested, which they appear to have done in very short order, because Volat was then put on a boat and deported back to France for trial. Now, I can for the life of me figured out exactly what happened to him after that, but obviously something about the constantly changing state of revolutionary politics back in Paris led Vallotte to not be convicted of anything. because he's going to return to San Domain as one of the rehabilitated colored exiles, accompanying the Leclair expedition sent by Napoleon to take back control of the colony from Tucson Louvichor,

but now I'm getting ahead of myself. After dealing with the lot, the third commission then turned to the problem of Andre Rago in the south. Aside from Tucson, Rago had been the most important ally the French Republic had in the colony, and Paul Varell certainly trusted him enough to hand him. over a kind of emergency absolute authority in the south to Rugo. But now that the third commission had arrived, it was time to cancel that emergency authority and restore normalcy. And what the commission meant by normalcy was military officers not having independent authority to just do whatever they wanted. They would have to answer to the commissioners. So Sonsonax put together a small delegation to

go down to Lekai and investigate the situation as a first step towards winding down Rigo's emergency dictatorship and restoring normal government. But curiously enough, for this mission, not one of the five commissioners went along. Instead, Sontanax picked some locals to go, and specifically some white locals, who turned out to be really bad men for the job as they are about to make a giant mess of things. Now, I suppose it's credible that Sontanax wanted to stay in Le Cap, where he had spent the majority of his life in the colony, and you obviously don't want to send Raymond down there if your intention is to rain in the colors. Philippe Rome, meanwhile, was already heading over to Santo Domingo to begin the process of transferring authority of the whole island from the Spanish to the French,

because remember, that's also supposed to be happening. And then the other two guys had no ties or connections or special knowledge whatsoever. So instead of any of the commissioners going, Sontanax picked these white locals to go down. Now, I don't want to get too deep into these guys because they're going to come and go very quickly. But one of them was a guy named Andre Ray. And in 1791, Ray had been one of the most vocal pro-white anti-colored agitators in the whole colony. Rigo actually suspected that when the white-colored Civil War broke out in 1792, that Ray had tried to assassinate him. Meanwhile, one of the other guys was known to be nothing more than an opportunistic con man,

So if the third commission thought these guys were going to do anything but bungle the job and provoke a major crisis, well, they thought wrong. But accompanying this little delegation was also a senior French military officer named General Desfourneau, who was ordered to bring Rago's Legion of the South into the regular Army command structure. This delegation arrived in the South a few weeks later and started stirring up trouble immediately. Before they even entered Le Chai, they first went round on an inspecting. tour of the plantations of the South, and everywhere they went, they intentionally stoked black resentment of the colored. They told the black cultivators that they were all being exploited by the colored and that these rules and accompanying punishments were not what France

wanted for them, that Rago and the boys are planning on restoring slavery the first chance they get. And I'm sure you've noticed by now that from here on out, everyone is going to be telling the blacks that the other side wants to put you back in chains. When this delegation then got into Lechai, they made an inspection of the city's jail and discovered their 900 prisoners, 898 of whom were either white or black. It would appear that in Rago's regime, colored, did not go to jail for anything. So with very little tact or diplomacy, the delegation began to assert a new governmental structure, and then Desfornow told Rago that the days of running a truly independent command without oversight,

we're done, and you now have higher-ups you need to be taking orders from. Rigo and his colored allies were not going to take this lying down, but to prevent them from organizing any real resistance, Nesforno announced that Rigo and the Legion of the South were to undertake an immediate offensive into the mountains of the Grandauntz surrounding British-held Jeremy. Now, I am totally willing to believe that given the nature and attitude of the delegation, that this offensive was not just meant to,

distract Rigo, but discredit him and his men. The offensive had very little chance of success. If you look back to episode 3.40 on the French Revolution, we are now at the point in the war back in Europe, where the British have elected to abandon land action on the continent and focus entirely on the naval war. Well, part of that new focus was booting the French out of the Caribbean for good. And by July 1796, 12,000 British reinforcements were now arriving in Sandomang. So when Rigo attacked, he was attacking fortifications as well-manned and well-armed as they had ever been. When the assault failed, Des Forno put the blame squarely on Rigo's incompetence and the lack of patriotic resolve in the Legion of the South.

Desfrono then ordered the arrest of a few of the principal-colored leaders in L'Kai to complete the hostile takeover by these agents of the Third Commission. and this was all finally too much for the Colourdes. With Rigo still on his way back from the failed campaign, Coloreds in and around Lecai, led by Rigo's brother, by the by, rose up in armed rebellion. And to build up their ranks, they marched around the plantation surrounding Lechai and told all the black cultivators, you guessed it, the delegates have lied.

France means to reimpose slavery, and these delegates are here to put you back in chains. Soon they had raised an army nearly 4,000 strong, and marched into Le Chai. On August the 11th, 1796, they entered the city and let loose their fury on any white they saw, unleashing a full-blown massacre. Andre Ray and General Desphorno managed to get on a boat, and they sailed over to Santa Domingo, but the other delegates were not so lucky, though they were able to seek refuge with General Beauvais,

who put them under his quote-unquote protection. Then Rigo came marching back into L'Kai with three or four thousand men of his own. He met with the delegates, and they begged him to stop the killing and restore order by any means necessary. Rigo promptly stopped the killing. And when it was done, about 300 whites lay dead in the street. But Rigo then expelled the delegates from the South and sent them back to La Capp with a message that because things are still so unsettled, I'm just going to go ahead and maintain my emergency authority and tell further instructions come from France.

When these guys made it back to Le Cap, Sontanax in particular, was furious and denounced Rago's actions, but there was very little he could do beyond stomp his feet. The principal enemy in Sandalmang really was the British, and without Rigo, there would be no expelling the British, and it certainly would be insane to try to break Rigo by force at this point. That would be a disaster for everyone. For the moment, Rigo holds his little de facto dictatorship. While these events unfolded in the South, the Third Commission busied itself restoring normalcy in the north. The Third Commission, broadly speaking, adopted Tucson's vision for the future of Sandomang. The three races must all have a place, but the plantation economy must also be maintained, and the blacks must be the principal laborers.

But they did adopt one of Rigo's, innovations, that truly abandoned plantations that had reverted to the state should be leased out to private individuals. It seemed to provide the best incentive to get them back up and running, and provide the government with a revenue stream. But unlike in the South, where connections to Rigo were key, in the north, public auctions would be held. Now, obviously, this still means that men with money are going to dominate the auctions. But Sontanaks had hopes that in the end, Sandomang might become a mixed blend of Tucson's vision for the future, and then that fifth option we talked about last time, blacks living and working for themselves.

Sontanaks hoped that black cultivators and foremen might be able to pool their resources and put in collective leases on property. But when the bidding started, none of those collectives had the resources to compete with the real men of means. And who were the real men of means now in the north? Well, a new elite cast is forming that is about to become majorly, hugely important, Black Army officers. As I'm sure you've noticed by now, the difference between being a slave and being a cultivator isn't that huge, and the money you made was never going to be enough to really allow you any kind of upward mobility. If you were a cultivator, there was a 99% chance you were going to remain a cultivator until the day you died, and then your kids were going

to become cultivators after you. The only institution in Sandelmeng that offered a black man any chance of bettering his lot in life was the army. If he showed some talent, you could rise to be an officer, bigger share of the plunder, better opportunities for economic and social advancement. And it's right here, in mid-1796, that we really see the fruits of this begin to be harvested. Tusson himself acquired the of many plantations he would come to own in his life, then his chief lieutenant Jean-Jacques Desaline, who, I swear I'll introduce more fully when the time is really right, started buying and leasing property all over the colony. Their fellow officers then joined them in property acquisition, and by the end of the year you had your first batch of ex-slaves vaulting into the ranks of the

planter class. Julian Raymond, ever the pragmatist, couldn't resist a deal when he saw it, and acquired extensive new holdings at this same time. and if you remember from way back when, the Raymond family fortune had been built by acquiring abandoned plantations. So this was all right in his wheelhouse. Adding to the slow entrenchment of a new elite in Sandelmang were the rules of who would have a political voice in the new system. The Third Commission had orders to hold elections to select Sandelmang's delegates to the Council of 500, and there were now property requirements to be a voter. Remember, when the directory came to power, they brought with,

them the old active passive citizen distinction. In 1796, maybe 5% of the population of Sandomain could actually meet those requirements. So acquiring property was not just about economic advantage, it was about political advantage. When the elections got going in the fall of 1796 to elect delegates back to the Council of 500, Tucson Louvichure canvassed hard for his two favorite candidates, Governor General LeVos and Commissioner Sontanax, you know, the two guys who stood in the way of his own upward trajectory. Now, LeVos, for his part, was perfectly amenable to being elected. He was coming up on his fourth anniversary in command of San Domang, and not one single day of it had been easy. He had fought in street riots against angry whites and pitched mountain battles against black insurgents,

and he had fought the British and the Spanish. he had been the target of a coup. LeVos was probably pretty tired, and I would not blame him. But Toussaint also pitched his candidacy in terms of making sure that there was a voice back in Paris who could defend Tucson's tri-color future for San Domain, a vision of the future shared by LeVos. So LeVos said, all right, let's do it, and he was elected. Also elected on this slate were Louis Dufet and Jean-Baptiste Belly, who were already, of course, still in Paris, ready to just roll into their new offices, and then, yes, Sontanax was elected.

Unlike Lavo, Sontanax was really resistant to this idea. He had just gotten back to San Doming and believed that he was essentially coming back to complete his life's work. Going back to Paris was the last thing he wanted to do. But Tucson was able to convince enough voters that Tucson was the best man to have back in Paris, speaking French to the French government on their behalf, leave Creole business to the Creoles back here in Sandomang. So against his will, Sontanax was elected a delegate to the Council of 500. But though elected, he refused to leave.

He said, I am going to stay and complete my term as commissioner. So in October 1796, Governor-General LeVoe boarded a ship to go back to France and took with him to Sons, two sons, who were to be educated in France. But Sontenex did not join. them. But though the rivalry between Tucson and Sontanax was now growing, on the surface, they remained allies. And so when Lavo left, Sontanax named Tucson commander-in-chief of all the French forces in

Sandomang. And I mean, who else could he choose? Any other candidate likely would have provoked a whole new rebellion. So we're going to leave everyone there for now. Tucson is now commander-in-chief of all the military forces in San Domain. But he still has to contend with Sontanax. Andre Rago is still running the South as a personal dictatorship, and the reinforced British continued to occupy territory across the west and south provinces. And I sure hope nothing happens back in France to upset this new balance of power.