Revolutions - 4.14- The Constitution of 1801

Episode Date: March 14, 2016

In 1801 Toussaint Louverture annexed Santo Domingo and promulgated a new constitution without permission from France. First Consul Bonaparte was not amused. 

And welcome to revolutions. Episode 4.14, the Constitution of 1801. As the summer of 1800 drew to a close, Toussaint-Louvichure was at the pinnacle of his career. The dream he had been working towards since at least 1793 and very possibly since 1791 had finally come to pass. He had outmaneuvered all his native rivals, expelled any uppity French commissioners, and outlasted every form. an enemy. He was now the master of Sandomang, and soon enough he would be the master of all of Hispaniola. With this unrivaled power, he began to forge what has become known to history as the Lovaturian state, which was the full embrace of that third option for the future of

Sandomang that we talked about back in episode 4.9, the three races coexisting in an export-based plantation economy, and that coexistence would now be enforced by Tucson's huge standing army. But the problem for Tucson was that by any objective measure, this option was a crappy one for the black cultivators who formed the mass of the population. Yes, they now earned some money for their work and they weren't literally being worked to death. But in the main, their daily lives were no different than they had been before the revolution. The changes that had been brought about were often frustratingly superficial. Like, for example, use of the whip, that most hated symbol of slavery, was now banned. and foreman used clubs instead.

So at his moment of triumph, Tucson Louvichur began to lose the support of the black population. Cultivator dissatisfaction with Tucson quickly deepened when he promulgated a new set of labor rules in October 1800 that promised the workers little in the way of actual freedom. In fact, what he was essentially doing is drafting them all as the civilian workforce to his highly militarized Louvichurian state. Tusson denounced those who refused to work while hiding behind what he called the pretext of freedom. He said of the cultivators, quote, they change their place of labor as they please, go to and fro, and pay not the least attention to agriculture, though the only means of furnishing subsistence to the military, their protectors. And so he decreed that, whereas a soldier cannot leave his company, his battalion, or half-brigade, and enter into another without the severest punishment unless provided with a permission,

field negroes are forbidden to quit their prospective plantations without lawful permission. And you can imagine how often that permission was going to be granted. The first article of the Labor Code then said further that, quote, all overseers, drivers, and field Negroes are bound to observe with exactness, submission, and obedience, their duty in the same manner as soldiers. As we've seen, for Tucson, emancipation had never meant the freedom to just do whatever you wanted, and he was now explicitly. bringing military-style discipline to the plantations. After ticking off a few more rules, the code concluded by saying, quote, all those who shall be found in contravention here too shall be instantly arrested. Liberty cannot exist without industry. And this is all moving into pretty Orwellian territory, not that freedom is slavery, but that slavery is freedom. Now, this is just

one of many labor codes we've seen promulgated since the Emancipation Decree of August 1793. And as I've mentioned a few times, the gap between what these codes required and what the cultivators were actually willing to do could in fact be quite wide. On many plantations throughout Sandomang, the labor laws had always been nodded at, but if the bulk of your workforce said, we're actually going to go do our own thing today, there was very little you could actually do about it. But now that the British were gone, and the war of knives had been concluded, Tucson now had a mechanism of enforcement, and that was the army, which, as you were about to see is fast becoming the central focus of his regime. The army would be both the ends

and the means of the Lovaturian state. Now, making the military the central focus was not unreasonable. Political, legal, and administrative institutions in Sandelmang had never been particularly robust. Remember, before the revolution, the whole of the royal government was maybe 500 guys. And the years of war, revolt, and destruction hadn't exactly been fertile soil to grow a stable civilian administrative apparatus. But what had grown up was a stable military apparatus. And since that apparatus was under Tucson's direct control, he decided to transfer its principal duty from defeating the British, who were now gone, to helping him govern Sandomang. So while he did demobilize some of his forces after the War of Knives, Tucson maintained a

robust standing army that simultaneously served multiple purposes. First, there was always the possibility that some foreign threat might suddenly loom on the horizon. I mean, who knows? Maybe the French will make a play to retake the island. Second, cultivator revolt had flared up repeatedly over the years, and so keeping the army intact and short order would be quickly restored. And then third, it could serve as the administrative apparatus of his state, the officers acting as supervisors, the men acting as enforcers. Tucson divided the colony into administrative zones that were co-extensive with military jurisdictions and then doled out civilian job titles to his senior officers. So, for example, his adopted nephew Moise was both the commander-in-chief of the military forces of the North Province

and its agricultural inspector, which meant enforcing the labor codes. Now, as we'll see at the end of today's episode, Moise was not nearly as interested in being Tucson's strong. arm as, say, Desaline, who was given a similar set of titles in the South, but regular soldiers generally took a perverse pleasure in keeping the cultivators in line. Life as a common soldier may have been slightly better than life as a cultivator, but not by much. And Tucson clearly fostered a culture that let the soldiers take their frustrations out on the cultivators, who they despised as too weak to be anything but cultivators. Senior officers, meanwhile, were granted a cut of the profits from plantations under their jurisdiction.

to motivate enforcement of the labor codes, and so the split between the civilians and soldiers grew wider, as each came to hate the other. While he was entrenching this new military regime, Tusson also moved to make sure it covered all of Hispaniola. He had induced Commissioner Rom to sign off on the annexation of Spanish Santa Domingo back in May, but had prudently waited for the conclusion of the War of Knives to proceed. In December 1800, though, Tucson organized an expedition and put it under the command of Moise. Moise then marched east at the head of either 10,000 or 20,000 men, I've seen both numbers reported, and he took Santa Domingo after only token resistance by the small Spanish garrison still on the island. I've actually read a lot of conflicting information about the process of this annexation,

that Moise's army was greeted as liberators and that they were despised as foreign invaders, I've seen it reported both that the 25,000 or so slaves in Spanish territory were immediately freed, and also that this never actually happened. But given that the coming constitution of 1801 would apply to the whole island and would be unequivocal about emancipation, I do have a hard time believing that the Spanish slaves were not freed, though how different they found their actual condition, given the Orwellian nature of Lovaturian freedom, is a different matter entirely. Now, whichever set of facts happens to be true, I am confident about two things.

First, Tucson did in fact annex Santa Domingo in January 1801, and second, when first consul Bonaparte found out what Tucson had done, he was furious. Now, unless we checked in with Bonaparte, it was early 1800, and he had just been convinced by Tucson's white advocate, Colonel Vassan, that Tucson should keep his position as commander and chief of the French army in Sandomang. But thanks to the pressing realities of war and politics in Europe, Bonaparte had not been able to pay much more attention to colonial affairs. In early 1800, France was still at war with Britain and back at war with Austria. So when Bonaparte signed the confirmation of Toussaint's command, the First Consul himself was mostly focused on the crucial

campaign he was about to wage against the Austrians. But that was then. It is now one year, later. Bonaparte has whipped the Austrians, and in February 1801, the two sides completed the Treaty of Lunaville, which once again brought the land war in Europe to a close. And this was not at all, coincidentally, the moment that London sent peace feelers to Paris. War weariness had finally settled in everywhere, and the government of Britain started laying the groundwork for peaceful coexistence with Bonaparte's France. Freed of the war with Austria, and with the British now looking to lay down their arms too, the first consul could turn his attention once and for all to colonial matters. The development of Bonaparte's colonial policy is hard to trace in a straight

line, and he went back and forth in his head about how he wanted to proceed. And there were an array of interested parties trying to push him in their preferred direction. There were, for example, un-reconstructed big whites who took the arrival of the more conservative consulate to mean that they could poke their heads back up again. Among them were Moreau de Saint-Marie, back from his exile in Philadelphia, and with his well-known expertise, was given a position in the consulate's colonial office. These old big whites demanded a return to white supremacy and slavery, and also the return of any property that they had lost over the past decade, including human property. Obviously, they argued that the ex-slave Tucson Livature could not be kept in power. So these guys

were anti-imanscipation, pro-racist, and anti-Tusan Louvichure. But balancing this group were more liberal whites, who also had long experience in the colony, who told Bonaparte that emancipation and racial equality could not be undone, but that Tucson Louvichure was a dangerous tyrant who could not be maintained in power. This was, for example, the line taken by Sontanax, who took time out of his retirement to draft a memorandum, defending liberty and equality, while denouncing Tucson. Joining this particular line were the exiled free colors,

like Andre Rigo and General Volat and Alexander Petyon. It would be the height of folly to re-enslave the blacks, but you must get rid of Tucson. So this group was pro-imantcipation, anti-racist, but also anti-Tusan. But Tucson did have his supporters. Presumably, LeVoe continued to stump for his old friend and comrade, and then amongst those arguing in Tucson's favor,

may have been Josephine Bonaparte. Napoleon's wife was a creole born into a wealthy planter family from Martinique, who owned a plantation in San Domang. After winning the war of knives, Tucson had taken over this plantation and now ran it at the state's expense, sending the profits back to Josephine. Now traditionally, Josephine has been cast as the mouthpiece of the un-reconstructed big whites, whispering in Napoleon's ear to reimpose slavery and white supremacy. But her and Tucson apparently exchanged mutually grateful letters. And there's no actual evidence that Josephine was pushing this racist slave line. And I'm following here the excellent recent book by Philippe Girard called The Slaves Who Defeated Napoleon

and spends quite a bit of time analyzing Bonaparte's decision-making during this period. By early 1801, though, it's clear that Bonaparte had at least decided, that the de facto independence that had reigned in Sandomang since 1791 was going to end. If he really was able to get clear of the British, he was going to send an army to the Caribbean to fully reassert French control over her colonies. But where Tucson fit into this equation still appeared to be up in the air as late as March 1801. On the one hand, a talented military strongman like Tucson might be of great service, keeping Sandalman in line, strengthening French power in the Americas. Then again, Tucson might be a huge hindrance. He might go fight for independence

and weaken French power in the Americas. Bonaparte's indecision went so far as to produce a letter in early March 1801, never actually sent, confirming Tucson's rank as commander-in-chief. But by the end of the month, Bonaparte had changed his mind. The first consul decided that General Tucson was likely to be more of a hindrance than a help in implementing his master plan. A master plan will get to in a moment. And so he drafted orders to relieve Tucson of his command. These orders would be carried by the massive military expedition Bonaparte began to organize, to reassert the metropole's authority over her wayward colony. Now, oddly enough, though, it was not until about a week after he drafted this order that the absolutely enraging news came in from Tucson saying,

oh, by the way, I just annex Santa Domingo just thought you should know. This news was infuriating to Bonaparte on multiple levels. On a political level, Bonaparte did not want Tucson to control the whole island. On a military level, this closed off any chances that the coming expedition would enjoy an uncontested landing on the east end of Hispaniola. And then on a personal level, Tucson had not asked for permission to annexenta Domingo. He had just done it and only reported it after the fact. and this was a direct challenge to the first consul's authority, and it made Bonaparte's blood boil. But here, we get to talk about the delicious irony of the relationship between Bonaparte and Tucson.

We went through Bonaparte's early career in pretty good detail during the French Revolution episodes, and can you guys remember a single time that Bonaparte asked permission to do anything? I mean, he marched around conquering territory, creating new republics from thin air, writing constitutions, opening diplomatic negotiations with foreign powers, all by fiat and assertion, and always reported back to Paris after the fact. And now here he is faced with a subordinate general, because that's what Tucson still is, remember he's just a general in the French army, doing exactly, and I mean exactly what Bonaparte had once done, and Bonaparte hates him for it. Tucson is sometimes called the Black Napoleon, and as you can see then, the analogy was

not just that they were two great autocratic-minded military men who served in the French army around the same time. Tusson is running Bonaparte's playbook here. He's conducting his own foreign policy, annexing territory without orders, and he's about to draft a constitution. When confronted with a general who was the mirror image of himself, first consul Bonaparte is absolutely losing his mind. And the irony really is delicious. Unbeknownst to Bonaparte. Tucson was continuing to run the Bonaparte playbook by drafting a constitution for Sandelman. On February 4, 1801, the 7th anniversary of the National Convention sweeping confirmation of emancipation and racial equality, Tucson convened a small committee to draft a constitution.

The composition of this committee was reflective of Tucson's slow drift away from his roots. No longer did he identify with the black workers in the field, and instead he surrounded himself with the educated whites of the salons. The men he called were seven whites and two colored. One of them, probably the most important of them, was Julian Raymond. These guys worked into the summer of 1801 drawing up a constitution that would replace Duson's de facto military dictatorship with a du jour military dictatorship. And this is as good a time as any to mention that his work on the Constitution of 1801 would be

Julian Raymond's last public act. Shortly after the Constitution was published, Raymond died at the age of 57. He was, without question, one of the two or three most important figures in the history of the Haitian Revolution, serving on both sides of the Atlantic, pushing for the equal rights of all men before the Declaration of the Rights of Man had even been conceived. And though Raymond had been a slaveholder and had never fought for emancipation, when it came, he defended it. that all men were born and remained free and equal in rights. The Constitution he was now helping draft for his colony had to have been bittersweet. It would confirm absolutely the racial equality he had sought his whole life,

but it also created an authoritarian dictatorship that cannot have been 100% in line with his own political principles. But though Tucson Louvichure was now transitioning into absolute military dictator, He was not the kind of a guy to just kick back in a fortress and live fat while his country went to hell. Tucson had a restless, almost manic energy, and with so few actual political institutions able to govern the colony, it fell to him to manage and even micromanage everything. He and his secretaries had gotten their dictation system down to a refined art, and every day Tucson composed a hundred or more letters and decrees and memos. He practically never slept in the same bed on consecutive nights, and he and his small cadre of secretaries kept constantly on the move, riding a hundred miles a day, no problem. Now, part of this was to stymie assassination attempts, and he made a regular habit of saying he was going to one place and then suddenly turning around and riding in the opposite direction. He also, for the record, avoided open windows and only ate food prepared by his personal cooks.

but this was also about the need to be everywhere at once. So Tucson was a dictator, and his vision for Sandomang was increasingly resented by the population. But I don't think that his embrace of harsh authoritarian plantation economics was just a cynical power play. I mean, it was, but I think he really did believe that it was the best thing for the colony, and he worked tirelessly to make it work for the colony. He was a man of action and energy, and he never stopped moving until the day that he was finally thrown into a dismal prison and left to die. And even then, I can't imagine that Tucson Louvichure ever stopped thinking and planning and dreaming. So the Constitution that emerged in the summer of 1801, known to history as the Constitution of 1801, was a blueprint, as I've said, for a military dictatorship.

But not an independent military dictatorship. and the very first article said that Sandomeng was a part of the French Empire, and that this document merely fulfilled Article 91 of the Constitution of Year 8, which required special laws for the colonies. Clearly, though, the Constitution of 1801 was meant to preempt any attempt by France to use special laws to reverse all that had been achieved since 1791. So Tucson's Constitution stated, There can exist no slaves in this territory, where servitude is forever abolished, and all men are born, live and die, free and French. And then it went on to say, every man, whatever his color, has access to all types of employment. But after enshrining these most radical of revolutionary doctrines, liberty, and equality, the rest of the Constitution of 1801 was authoritarian. and conservative. It said, for example, that as the colony is based on agriculture,

it cannot permit the slightest interruption in agricultural work, and then proceeded to explicitly enshrine the labor code Tucson had promulgated in October. As for the nature of the government itself, it said, quote, the Constitution designates as Governor-Citizen-Tusan Louvichure, general and chief of the Army of Sandalmang. In consideration of the important services, this general has rendered to the colony in critical circumstances of the revolution, and in accordance with the wishes of the grateful inhabitants, the reins are bestowed upon him for the rest of his glorious life. The powers that the governor would now enjoy for the rest of his glorious life were both wide and deep. He could hire and fire every military or government officer. He proposed and

enforced all laws. A small assembly, called the Central Assembly, was a created, but all it could do was approve or reject laws proposed by the governor. And since the assembly was elected by local administrators appointed by the governor, well, you can imagine how often they could be expected to resist his will. And in case there was any mistaking that the military was the source of political power, if the governor died in office, his power would, quote, pass provisionally into the hands of the highest ranking general. I mean, you can't really be more clear than that. And if you didn't like any of this, well, that was tough luck. The governor had the right to censor the press at his discretion. Political clubs were forbidden, and the courts, like everything

else, were under the governor's direct authority. And if he suspected you of sedition, you wouldn't even go to the regular courts. You would face a special military tribunal also directly controlled by, you guessed it, the governor. When the Constitution emerged in June of 1801, Tucson showed it to his friend and supporter, Colonel Vassan, who said, yeah, okay, this is fine, but for God's sakes, don't publish it without approval from France. Whatever that first article says about being a part of the French Empire, if you unilaterally adopt this constitution, it will be taken as a declaration of independence, and France will have to respond.

But Tucson decided to push on anyway. As long as France and Britain were at war, and the British Navy controlled the Atlantic, He had nothing substantial to worry about from France. First Consul Bonaparte could stomp his feet all he wanted, but it would not create a ripple in the ocean that stood between them. So on July 8, 1801, Tucson convened a massive public ceremony in Le Cap and announced that the new constitution was in effect, and he was officially governor for life.

With the Constitution then published, he gave Colonel Vassan the unenviable task of carrying it back to Paris to present it to First Consul Bonaparte. So back to Europe went Colonel Vassan, who appears to have spent most of his time between 1799 and 1801 on a boat somewhere in the Atlantic. But Colonel Vassan need not have worried about Tucson Louvichure provoking the First Consul, because by the time the Constitution was published, Bonaparte was already way ahead of them. Having settled on a course of confrontation with Sandomang, First Consul Bonaparte had been steadily building up his invasion force. It had begun in May as a contingent of a few thousand

troops, but had been ballooning by the week as the First Consul kept adding more brigades to the expedition, most of them coming from the veteran divisions of the Army of the Rhine. But it was all going to be for naught if he couldn't properly manage France's international relationships, and to help him manage those relationships, he turned, of course, to his foreign minister, Talleyrand. Bonaparte and Talleyrand were already well on their way to diplomatic victory by the summer of 1801, and it was really just the last few details that needed to be locked down with the three powers they needed to maneuver around, the United States, Spain, and Britain. To take the United States first, as we discussed in episode 3.44, the war feeds itself. The French war machine

was now premised on supplying and enriching itself from the territories they conquered and occupied. But this approach was not going to work in Sandalemang. Everyone knew the colony was built on cash crops. The inhabitants couldn't feed or supply themselves, so it's not like a massive French army is going to be able to just live off the land. And since supply lines across the Atlantic were long and fraught with danger and delay, ensuring that the French army could buy from American suppliers was critical to the success of the mission. So first, Bonaparte had to bring the quasi-war to an end.

The negotiations that had begun in March 1800 to end the conflict finally concluded in September, with the signing of the Convention of 1800. This convention returned the two countries to a state of peace, ending both their military and trade war, and I should add, making a dead letter of Toussaint's Clause. This was good news for the French consulate, and then a few months later they got even better news. Thomas Jefferson and his partisans had just captured both the White House and Congress. Since Jefferson was a francophile slave owner, one might expect that his position towards the slave state of San Domang would be quite a bit different than the Adams administration.

And indeed it was, which was music to the ears of Bonaparte and Talleyrand, and not so much for Tucson Louvature. Talleyrand then personally selected an agent to go feel Jefferson out. In their first meeting, Jefferson seemed to indicate that aiding the French expedition would be no problem at all. He referred to Sandomang as another Algiers, that is a pirate state that was a threat to all civilized nations. He said that the Americans would be happy to keep French bellies full while starving out Tucson Louvature. The agent reported all this back to Paris with enthusiastic delight, and Talley Rand and Bonaparte received it with enthusiastic delight. But unfortunately, Thomas Jefferson,

was a man who often said one thing and did another, as the French would soon find out. Aside from the Americans, there was also the Spanish, who held in their possession something that Bonaparte wanted very badly. So just after concluding the treaty with the Americans that ended the quasi-war, the French concluded a secret treaty with the Spanish in October 1800 that fulfilled one of Bonaparte's key ambitions, the reacquisition of the Louisiana Territory. The Louisiana Territory had, of course, originally been a French possession, part of their massive land claims in North America that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada. But when the French had gotten beaten the seven years' war, they ceded Canada to the British

and Louisiana to the Spanish, and the Spanish had been holding it ever since. The Louisiana Territory was huge, as you hopefully remember from fifth grade history. It encompassed the whole western half of the Mississippi River watershed. And as we discussed way back in episode 2.14, the critical period, relations between the Spanish and the new United States over access to the Mississippi River was a major point of contention for the early American governments. Under heavy pressure from Bonaparte, the Spanish agreed to retroceed Louisiana to the French in exchange for some territory in Italy. The reacquisition of Louisiana was as critical to Bonaparte's long-term ambitions in the Americas as securing supplies from the United States was through his short-term ambitions, and for the same reasons. Sandomang and Guadalupe and Martinique and any other Caribbean island the French may happen to one-day control, were best exploited as sugar and coffee factories. Directing them towards any other end was just silly.

But as we saw back at the beginning of our series on the Haitian Revolution, actually supplying the sugar islands from France was arduous, expensive, and not particularly efficient. It was a system that was often unable to supply everything the colonies actually needed, which was one of those lines of tension we talked about in our original web of tension. So what Bonaparte now had in mind was that the sugar islands would draw their resources from mainland French Louisiana in a traditional mercantilist closed market colonial system with all the profits shipped back to France.

But even more than that, Bonaparte envisioned that one day the entire Gulf of Mexico would be the exclusive domain of the French Empire. But when the details of the secret handover of Louisiana started leaking out to the capitals of the world, President Thomas Jefferson would start to really wonder who posed a bigger threat to America's interests in the Caribbean, Tucson Louvichure, or Napoleon Bonaparte. With the Spanish and Americans taken care of, Bonaparte and Talleyrand then turned back to the real key, the British.

If the British decided to stand in the way of Bonaparte's plan to retake Sandomang, well, I mean, the British Navy is awesome. You can't have the British standing in your way. Luckily, Westminster was sick of war, and so in October 1801, that is a year after the treaties had been signed with the Americans and Spanish, the British and French signed the preliminary articles of what would become the Treaty of Amiens. But just because peace was at hand, that didn't mean the French could expect the British to just sit back and watch a massive French armada sail across the Atlantic. So Bonaparte worked to get a firm commitment from the British that the mass. passing French fleet would not be messed with. But the British were non-committable. They agreed in principle that France had the right to access her colonies without interference, and also that an armed slave state in the Caribbean was in no one's interests. But, well, what if you're lying?

What if this is all a ruse? And that at the last minute the French armada sails right on by Sandomang and instead launches an invasion of Jamaica. This was not irrational paranoia. This was a very plausible threat. So the British dragged their feet on giving Bonaparte an answer. The foot dragging was especially frustrating for Bonaparte because one thing everyone now understood about sending European troops to the Caribbean was that these troops were going to be decimated by malaria and yellow fever their first summer in the colonies. So the expedition to Sandomang had to get to Sandomang and secure control of Sandal Mang before the summer of 1802. Otherwise, the whole thing would be a right-off.

So Bonaparte was really desperate to get the British Admiralty to say, okay, we won't mess with you. And he did two things to get them to say this. One pretty obvious. The other pretty unconventional. The obvious one was to say, look, if my guys don't leave soon, I'm going to have to cancel the whole expedition. If I do that, I'll just go ahead and confirm General Tucson,

and you guys can deal with a quasi-independent slave state, armed to the teeth, 50 miles from Jamaica. Now, the unconventional thing he did was to hand over a complete inventory of everything being made ready to sail. Every ship, every regiment, every gun, every barrel of flour. He handed over the expedition's entire manifest and said, I would not be giving you this if my plan was to attack you, now would I? So can I please go reconquer my colony now? And the British said, okay, and then they held their breath. If there was any lingering doubt in Bonaparte's mind that pushing Tucson out of power was the right thing to do,

these were banished when Colonel Vassan showed up at the end of October with a copy of the Constitution of 1801 in hand. Vassan tried to defend what Tucson had done, but Bonaparte took it exactly the way that Colonel Vassan expected that he would, as a declaration of independence. After a curt face-to-face meeting, Bonaparte dismissed Vassan, and Vassan would not return to Sandomang. A governor for life, Tusson Louvichure, was on his own. And with the international waters cleared and the army massed on the Atlantic coast, it was time for the French invasion fleet to set sail. We'll get into all the details of what will become known as the Leclair expedition next week.

But to end this week's show, we must return to San Domain, because just as the Constitution of 1801 was landing on Bonaparte's desk, Tucson had to deal with his most troubling cultivator insurrection, both in terms of its size and its personal implications. On October the 21st, 1801, ominous movements in Le Cap raised alarm bells inside the headquarters of the general in charge of the city, a guy by the name of Henri Christoph, who just so happens to be the future emperor of the kingdom of Haiti, but let's set that aside for now. Christoph was alerted to suspicious meetings of blacks in LeCap, and when he wrote out to investigate, he actually got shot at by a would-be assassin. The assassin was captured and then persuaded to spill his guts, that a widespread network of conspirators was planning an armed revolt, one that looked to rival the original slave rebellion of 1791.

But Christoph had caught on just in the nick of time. With a list of names in hand, he then spent the rest of the night. rounding up everyone believed to be connected to the plot, and by the time the sun rose, the revolt had been crushed before it had a chance to begin. But that was just the revolt set to go off in the city, because out on the northern plains, where Bookman and Jeannot and Jean-François and Basu had raised the initial revolt ten years earlier, the cultivators were rising up again. By October the 23rd, great mobs of armed blacks were marching through the plains, killing every white they could find. Hundreds of whites were massacred over the next few days. This sudden and very

well-coordinated uprising pointed to professional planning, and suspicion fell on General Mouise, the commander-in-chief of the North Province. Moise had been growing visibly disenchanted with Toussainted with Toussaint, and he was making no secret about it. Mouise had resisted harsh implementation of the labor codes, and he told his adoptive uncle, quote, I will not be the executioner of my race. He also advocated breaking off small plots of land and selling them to junior officers and even common soldiers to move the colony away from huge plantations towards smaller self-sufficiency. Mouise's involvement in the revolt was further suspected because the uprising was launched, just as Tucson was beginning a three-week inspection tour of the South, the first stop of which

would be attending Desalines' wedding in San Mark. And you had to be somebody, who knew that the governor and his most ruthless general were going to be distracted to coordinate that kind of timing. Now, whatever Moise's actual role, the insurrection turned out to be short-lived. Christoph had managed to nip the urban side of the revolt in the bud and then hold the line on the planes until reinforcements arrived. And when reinforcements did arrive, they arrived in force and led by Desaline. The cultivators were ruthlessly crushed, and the leaders either killed in battle or arrested and dragged to La Capp for summary trial. Mouise was himself arrested and held in custody

until Tusson arrived in La Capp on November 4th. Now, all the captured leaders fell under the special military tribunals that would prosecute sedition, but Tusson would not even allow these to proceed. He ordered his officers to find Mouise and the alleged conspirators guilty without even letting them speak in their own defense. Indeed, the next time Mouise did speak in public, They was standing before a firing squad, and Tucson allowed his adopted nephew the courtesy

to give the order to fire. After summarily executing two or three dozen ringleaders, Toussaint then published a scathing address, denouncing the ungrateful and dishonorable black cultivators who lacked religion and morals. Throughout the address, he really starts to sound like no one so much as Robespierre at the end of his rope. He denounced the population for their lack of virtue, and he followed this address. dress by tightening the labor laws still further, creating a system of identification cards that

everyone was required to carry at all times. It listed your name, an occupation, and place of residence, and if you weren't where you were supposed to be, doing what you were supposed to be doing, the consequences would be severe, because slavery is freedom. The aborted revolt, and Tucson's reaction to it, exposed deep cleavages in Sandomang. The cultivators hated the military. The military hated the cultivators. Tusson was no longer an object of venerated affection. His senior officers had just watched Tusson execute his own adopted nephew without trial for merely being suspected of sedition, and they had to wonder if that would one day be their fate, too.

So this was a really bad time to be getting news that France and Britain had concluded a piece. News of their treaty finally hit Sandomang in December 1801, and with it, came news that Bonaparte was massing a fleet. So next week, Tucson Louvichura would face a war, the size and scope of which was larger than anything he had faced so far. And it was a war that his people would eventually win, but that Tucson himself would ultimately lose.