Haitian Revolutionary Fictions: An Anthology

By Marlene L. Daut and Grégory Pierrot

The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) was the first antislavery and anticolonial uprising led by New World Africans to result in the creation of an independent and slavery-free nation state. The momentousness of this thirteen-year-long war generated thousands of pages of writing. This anthology brings together for the first time a transnational and multilingual selection of literature about the revolution, from the beginnings of the conflicts that resulted in it to the end of the nineteenth century.

With over two hundred excerpts from novels, poetry, and plays published between 1787 and 1900, and depicting a wide array of characters including, Anacaona, Makandal, Boukman, Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and Henry Christophe, this anthology provides the perfect classroom text for exploring this fascinating revolution, its principal actors, and the literature it inspired, while also providing a vital resource for specialists in the field. This landmark volume includes many celebrated authors—such as Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Heinrich von Kleist, Alphonse de Lamartine, William Wordsworth, Harriet Martineau, and William Edgar Easton—but the editors also present here for the first time many less-well-known fictions by writers from across western Europe and both North and South America, as well as by nineteenth-century Haitian authors, refuting a widely accepted perception that Haitian representations of their revolution primarily emerged in the twentieth century. Each excerpt is introduced by contextualizing commentary designed to spark discussion about the ongoing legacy of slavery and colonialism in the Americas. Ultimately, the publication of this capacious body of literature that spans three continents offers students, scholars, and the curious reader alike a unique glimpse into the tremendous global impact the Haitian Revolution had on the print culture of the Atlantic world.

New World Studies

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Release date: Jan 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9780813945712

Book preview

Anonymous

There is little information about the origins or the identity of the author of this one-page satirical dialogue (reproduced here in full). The catalog record for this short text at the National Library of Scotland, which houses the only known copy, describes the publication as a spoof conversation between a Scotsman and Napoleon Bonaparte in which Bonaparte threatens to invade Scotland and bring ‘liberty’ with him. It is a patriotic dialogue, the notice continues, in which the ‘Sawney’ tells Napoleon that he is not wanted and will be resisted by the Highland Watch. The exchange ends with Sawney saying ‘There’s no a man in a’ Scotland but would fight to the last drap o’ his blood for the Land o’ Cakes’ and daring Napoleon to come. Sawney, we learn, is not the name of the actual character in dialogue here with Bonaparte but an English nickname for a Scotsman, now no longer used. The reference to Toussaint Louverture’s captivity and death gains new importance in the literary history of the Haitian Revolution when juxtaposed with the mention below of the Napoleonic-era French newspaper Le Moniteur. True to Bonaparte’s admonishment, as represented in the dialogue, that the Moniteur is the only paper you may believe, the actual Moniteur universel of France carried this very authoritarian tone. Above every issue appeared the words, It is the only official newspaper. Rewriting history was one of the Moniteur’s apparent aims. While the rest of the world was reporting that Toussaint Louverture had been arrested by the French government, for example, the June 13, 1802, issue of the Moniteur claimed that Louverture had voluntarily surrendered (Ministère de la Marine). The Moniteur would later remain completely silent about the April 7, 1803, death of Louverture. However, The Times of London reported Louverture’s death on the May 2, 1803, with the following headline, TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE is dead. He died, according to letters from Besançon, in prison, a few days ago (TOUSSAINT). In an earlier issue, the Moniteur belatedly revealed that Louverture had been arrested, and the article spoke of the dis-arming of the negroes and the reestablishment of so-called order. Bonaparte’s statement in the dialogue below that Frenchmen are all free amounts to a sardonic critique on the part of the author of The Comical Dialogue, since reestablishing order meant the reinstatement of the very slavery that had been abolished by the National Convention in 1794 and by Louverture’s Constitution of 1801. Louverture’s commissioning and ratification of this constitution is the reason most commonly asserted for his arrest and deportation by both French and Haitian historians alike. As alluded to below, Bonaparte interpreted this move as Louverture’s having wanted to take the Government of St. Domingo. In 1807 a slightly longer version of the text, called Sawney and Bonaparte: A Dialogue and a Letter from Hanover, with an account of the Barbarities and horrid Cruelties committed by the French Soldiers in that Country, was published in Stirling, Scotland, in pamphlet form by the Scottish printer C. Randall.

A Comical Dialogue between Sawney and Bonaparte (ca. 1803–1805)

SAWNEY.—So, Bonaparte, you say you’re coming to Scotland.

BONAPARTE.—Yes; I mean to come and give you Liberty.

SAWNEY.—Liberty! De’il an ounce o’liberty is in a’ France, an’, if you are to gi’e it to us, you maun steal it frae some ither body. The poorest man in Scotland has mair liberty than the best gentleman in France, if there be ony gentlemen there now.

BON.—Frenchmen are all free.

SAWNEY.—If ye had nae talkd me that I wad na ha’e kent it. I thought ye could send them awa’ in ship loads when ye pleas’d.

BON.—Poh, poh! that was a parcel of rascals.

SAWNEY.—O but folk shou’d na be ca’d rascals, till they’re proved rascals. If ye come here, you may ca’ us rascals next, and then ship us aff, and say Fare-ye-weel Sawney.

BON.—No, no, there’s no treachery with Frenchmen, and I never break my word.

SAWNEY.—Sae I thought, but I read in the News about a man they ca’d Toussaint, that cam frae the Indies: the News said the French were to be very gude to him, and after a’ he died in a prison.

BON.—O Sawney you should not believe your newspapers: I’ll send you the Moniteur—that’s the paper you may believe. The man you speak of was a rascal, and wanted to take the Government of St. Domingo.

SAWNEY.—An’ do you ca’ him a rascal for that.—Faith I think if you took ae Government, he was right to tak anither; and if he was a rascal for that, faith I think there’s a pair o’ ye. You’ll excuse me.—(Here Sawney put his hand to his bonnet.)

BON.—Come, come, Sawney no more on that subject; My wish is to make all mankind happy and free.

SAWNEY.—De’il speed me if I believe ye. What hae ye done to the Hollanders? They say he hae sent your soliders to live on the folk for naething. Wha wad put up wi’ that?

BON.—No, no Sawney, I have given them liberty, and my soldiers are taking care of them.

SAWNEY.—De’il tak sic liberty. Do you ca’ it liberty to hae soldiers in folks houses to live o’ them for naething.

BON.—O but they wad differ among themselves.

SAWNEY.—An’ what’s that to you. I hae differ’d wi’ my wife at times, but we ’greed again, and if ony body had midd’led between us, they wad hae gotten skith and scorn frae us baith; and if I was the Hollanders, I wad do the same to you.

BON.—O Sawney, Sawney, you have wrong opinions.

SAWNEY.—De’il be on me but I think its common sense. I ne’ever like to fead my mouth amang ither folks kail.

BON.—That may be your opinion, Sawney, but still I am determined to be in Britain, and shall pay a visit to Scotland.

SAWNEY.—Since you’re sae plain I’se be plain too. If ever ye send a soldier to Scotland, De’il a ane o’ them will be Alive eight days after.—D’ye think we’re like a parcel of Italian fidlers, to be frighten’d wi; you an’ your pack?

BON.—I’ll send over my Invincibles, they’ll make you tremble.

SAWNEY.—Invincibles! What cam ’o them ye sent to Egypt? By my faith lad, ye was right to set aff before the Highland Watch ga’ed there,—Did you ever see a Highlander.

BON.—I have heard of them; but what will they do? I will send thousands against them.

SAWNEY.—Aye, ye may send tens ’o thousands; but they’ll mak their heads flee aff as fast as they’d behead sybies.

BON.—Sawney, ye speak very bold, but you know I have conquered many countries, and will do the same with you.

SAWNEY.—You conquer us! It’s mair than a’ the slaves in France cou’d do. There’s no a man in a’ Scotland but would fight to the last drap o’ his blood for the Land o’ Cakes; and I’m sure I’m right whan I say the same for England.—We hae a King we love, and a country we love; an’ you’ll speak o’ hurting our King, and taking our Country! I wonder what hads me frae kicking you. Gang hame and do your warst: I hae nae mair patience to speak to you.

BON.—Well, Sawney, I’ll come.

SAWNEY.—Come if you dare!

Exit Bonaparte.—Sawney solus—continues muttering!

Source text: A Comical Dialogue between Sawney and Bonaparte. Newcastle: D. Bass, 1803–5.

References

Ministère de la Marine, Armée de Saint-Domingue. Gazette nationale ou le Moniteur universel. June 13, 1802. https://www.retronews.fr/journal/gazette-nationale-ou-le-moniteur-universel/13-juin-1802/149/2235379/3.

National Library of Scotland. Catalog. https://www.nls.uk/rare-books-acquisitions/?id=648.

TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE is dead. He died, according to letters from Besançon, in prison, a few days ago. The Times (London), May 2, 1803.

Anonymous

This poem in five cantos was published in London in 1817 at the pinnacle of the reign of the former Haitian revolutionary King Henry I of Haiti. The poem’s anonymous author announces in his preface:

This is my first offence. I never

Presum’d to write before,—nor ever

Can dare to scribble more, unless

The candid and the kind caress.

A rare review in the Gentleman’s Magazine gleefully panned the poem’s approximate rhyme. The poem is a testament to the benevolence with which Henry’s efforts at wooing English public opinion were met by some. The opening canto is Advice to Hayti, sent from London, in which the author lists principles of government and justice for Henry to follow for the national good (13). The author extols his country: In almost all your doings, you’ll certainly do well, / In my humble opinion if England’s the model (14). The second canto is a conversation in verse about liberty between philanthropist A(ffability), and negro-dealers, / Human flesh purchasers and stealers B(loodshed) and C(ruelty) (21). The three voices defend the traditional pro- and antislavery arguments, B and C notably arguing against the humanity of Black people, or referring to the age-old practice of enslaving prisoners made in just war. The canto concludes that such debates revealed the motive of supporters of slavery to be greed, and that the argument, in effect, from Britain removed a mountain of guilt (29). The third canto celebrates English education in all subjects and praises the Lancasterian method (exported to Haiti by way of teachers recruited from England by Christophe) as well as the work performed by missionaries to spread Christianity in faraway countries. The fourth canto, an anecdote of Bonaparte, briefly evokes the expedition to Saint-Domingue and proceeds to list in exhaustive (and exhausting) detail how Haiti should prepare for the possibility of another French invasion, notably by mobilizing men and women for combat, by forfeiting alcohol, and taking good care of their weapons. The author addresses a similar topic in the fifth canto by observing what the free negroes, ought to do, and subsequently offers an apocalyptic vision of all-out war on the banks of the Amazon against the slaving nations of Portugal, France, and Spain. The scene turns Miltonian when pro-slavery troops see themselves reinforced by the Prince of Darkness himself and the legions of Hell, while myriad angels join the Haitians and their allies until The friends of liberty have won!

A Poetical Epistle to the King of Hayti (1817)

First Canto

I write this epistle, O King, for the sake,

Of those who have had, or may have the heart-ache:

For all who now moan, for the loss of their gore;

And for those who refuse to be bled any more.

Defender of Blacks!—deign to hear my advice?

As sure as in Hayti, you never see ice,

So, truly, I do not intend any harm,

(My head, be thou cool—my heart, thou art warm!)

So, truly, sire, do I intend to do good

Deprecating all wanton effusion of blood.

Je suis un ami, this attention secures,

And, further, I think I’m a neighbour of yours;

Since in spite of contempt, and rebellious commotion,

We retain our dominion, throughout the whole ocean,

If I were to visit you, sire, in your island,

As it is but a step, from the sea to the dry land,

So it is but a step from Great Britain to you—

We are neighbours then, Haytian neighbour, how do?

[ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ]

Now altho’ pseudo-friend should with diligence labour

To kindle a war, keep at peace with your neighbour.

An attempt to assault her would be an act frantic,

You might as well try to chastise the Atlantic.

She is free, she loves freedom, and gladly beholds

The African toil, whom no tyrant controls.

She’s your very best friend—I doubt not but that we go

To war, tôt ou tard, for the rights of the negro.

Once, with shame be it said, we confess it with shame,

By avarice tempted, we put them to pain:

But the time that is past, of our conduct the worst is,

Sire, we scorn any more to do them injustice.

Should any base Briton, dare set his proud heel on

The neck of a black, he is surnam’d a felon;

Depriv’d of the freedom we grant to the other,

And condemn’d for a slave, in lieu of his brother.

[ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ]

Fair Hayti, is Old England’s equal, in size,

May she of like blessings, become a partaker,

For nations are not reckon’d great by the acre.

Proud Persia possessing immense tracks of soil,

And millions of men, found in Sparta a foil—

So, it will not be any advantage, for thee

To possess many men, if those men are not free;

And let there be many, to plough up the dry land

As well as salt ocean, that you may disdain,

For ever the tyrant, the scourge, and the chain.

Let the size of your island, induce you to gain

Like the king of Great Britain, a glorious reign

O’er fifteen free millions on one sea-girt isle,

Who can treat both their friends and their foes with a smile:

To friends, a kind smile from deception exempt;

To foes, the uncourteous smile of contempt.

Fifteen millions of men, in your Hayti might live.

Yes, twenty may surely inhabit and thrive;

And altho’ it should take many years of increase,

Your earnest endeavours ought never to cease,

Till you stock the one island as full as the other,

And make it as strong, and as like as a brother.

The resources of Africa, doubtless, are great,

Exhaustless they are, unexhausted they wait,

To pour her abundance, vast, vast beyond measure,

All, all for your use, an unsearchable treasure.

From the Fourth Canto

THE ARGUMENT

An anecdote of Bonaparte.

Wounds always make the wounded smart.

How to extend a man’s existance.

How to prolong a brave resistance.

How a fierce bully may be civil.

How good may spring out of an evil.

A truly moving lamentation.

The waves, because of urgent wants,

Are woo’d to become protestants.

When statesmen of repose are weary,

All wars are just and necessary:

As little about right care they,

As butchers about blood and slaughter,

Or peasants drinking draughts of water,

About the animalculae.

Therefore—expect to be opprest,

When France has had a little rest:

If she no other game pursue,

They’ll slip her dogs, and follow you:

Prepare—if you advice be scorning,

Ye shall not perish without warning.

Remember, Sire, how Bonaparte

When consul made the negroes smart;

Your people his ambition know,

They well remember Rochambeau,

Le Clerc, and bloodhounds by him sent,

For their annhilation meant.

When first the thought came in his head,

The self-preserving hero said,

I’ll march—the shaking of a stick,

Will make them own the republic—

All St. Domingo I’ll subdue,

And make the sombre rebels rue.

But—yellow fever scares me—my mate,

Le Clerc shall, therefore, face the climate.

Le Clerc was sent, essay’d, and died,

With thirty thousand men beside;

Tigers, bloodhounds, and Rochambeau,

Receiv’d a fatal overthrow,

When with a handful that were left,

Of every gleam of hope bereft,

Disgrac’d they from the isle retreated,

Leaving the blacks unextirpated.

Oh, dire misfortune for the cause,

That dares to trample on the laws,

Of earth and heav’n: had they then won

The triumph, freedom were undone.

Beware of a surprise—prepare—

Danger moves very quick, beware—

Division may be your undoing:

’Tis union makes a people strong,

Unite, unite, be one, be one.

[ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ]

Be brave—be obstinately brave,

If you can’t capture you may starve.

Un François, sanglant et farouche,

Sans la munition de la bouche,

Will soon forego his vile intent,

Will soon become quite innocent.

Therefore when wine and rum are guzzled,

(Being by no dilemma puzzled)

Quaff water, you will not do wrong,

Sampson drank water and was strong.

Forbade the use of knife and fork,

And veal, and lamb, and beef, and pork.

Then shew the world how easy ’tis

To imitate Diogenes;

Drink from the hollow of your hand,

Sit down, and eat upon the strand,

What you can catch; do not be nice,

If you are out of rats, eat mice;

A freeman’s stomach should not lothe.

Source text: A Poetical Epistle to the King of Hayti. London: Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, 1817.

Reference

81. A Poetical Epistle to the King of Hayti. Gentleman’s Magazine, April 1818, 348.

Anonymous

In this anonymous fictional portrait, which is framed as the German translation of Jean-Jacques Dessalines’s personal account of his life (in French), the future emperor of Haiti is first characterized as a sadistic child and then as an adolescent who enjoys torturing animals, seducing naive young girls, getting drunk, and manipulating and hurting his fellow beings at every turn. After engaging in much criminal mischief, Dessalines is threatened and decides to flee from France to Saint-Domingue. Like almost everything else in this account, this journey is entirely fictious, since there is no evidence that Dessalines was ever in France. Nevertheless, upon his arrival in the French-controlled colony, he befriends the natives, who are described as cannibals with insatiable sexual appetites who live in maroon settlements and eventually elect him to be their leader. Incessantly highlighting his own sexual prowess, this fictional version of Dessalines’s life offers detailed descriptions of torture and violence of Blacks against whites and vice versa, much of which is gratuitous and often pornographic. The novel’s tone is reminiscent of a picaresque narrative. Dessalines has no interest in a rebellion motivated to abolish slavery. Instead, he appears to be solely invested in committing acts of violence with impunity, having limitless sexual access to women, and indulging in the totalizing power he is given by the savages (die Wilden) (53). After witnessing and later planning and orchestrating multiple massacres, Dessalines participates in the roasting and devouring of white French men, women, and children on the island. He later founds his own colony after he forces the French widow of the fort’s commander to become his mistress. Once he tires of her, Dessalines sends the commander’s widow back to France, eventually enjoying life as the boundless ruler of his colony in the arms of a seventeen-year-old Black girl. We know almost nothing, historically speaking, about Dessalines’s childhood. We have, therefore, chosen to excerpt a passage that represents him in his earliest years, which is peculiar for the violence it imagines Dessalines to enjoy and highly original, in that there are few other references to his childhood in either fictional or historical accounts.

Dessalines, Tyrant of the Blacks and Murderer of the Whites in Saint-Domingue: A Canvas from the Gallery of Political Monsters (1805)

Preface

The reader of this story must, right from the beginning, not forget that the captain of the Blacks wrote down his story in Saint-Domingue after he had begun to play a key role there. He then gave it to a friend, who, having an insightful mind, had the story published in Paris. The following is an excerpt, which will clearly demonstrate the extent to which the French original deserves our attention. [. . .]

During my adolescence it gave me the utmost pleasure to be able to capture a bird or a cat in order to torture it. I came up with all kinds of torments, but felt I was not inventive enough. A few friends and I once found a nest of nightingales. It was strictly forbidden to remove the young birds from these nests. This further goaded my courage, however, and I decided to catch the hatchlings, along with the older birds, withhold food from them for a day, indulge in seeing them starve, and then hang them by their legs while they were still alive.

My playmates advised me not to do this, since the whole endeavor could end badly, and they feared I would bring them down with me as if in a trap. The more their small-mindedness showed and the more they revealed what cowardly mates they were, the more the idea blossomed in me to also prank them. One beautiful summer’s day, when the laborers joyfully went into the meadows where larks were singing, linnets were bursting into song, and where the nightingales let everyone hear their beautiful singing, I snuck into the gardens with a piece of yarn I had stolen from my mother, and hid in the blooming cornfields. I intended to arrive at the place unnoticed but once the workers had become more curious about me, I found more courage and crawled toward the place where the nest was located.

The hatchlings were lying there, still without their feathers. They were small and I could see their red mouths opening. The parent bird was fluttering around nearby, shyly whimpering around her brood. At first, I considered letting her be, but because she was acting so frantically, I decided to act. I sat there for half an hour, after I had managed to create a noose. However, I was still not able to capture the mother. Eventually, though, she moved toward the nest and I immediately caught her by the coattails.

It is impossible to describe the joy I felt. I ripped the nest from the leafy bush. I tied the mother bird’s legs, placed her flat down on a splinter of wood and snuck home. I met many people on the way and lied to some saying that these were harmful sparrows, when others claimed to recognize them as nightingales, I just stared and asked them bluntly if they had eyes in their heads and told them they should come see for themselves. Even though they were suspicious, they let me pass.

Now the torment was about to begin and I was trying to figure out what would be an appropriate location for the endeavor. Most of those I was trying to entertain were older than twelve, and they would have immediately known that I was plucking a lark with her young, and thus ignoring the strict orders not to do so. So, I thought up a ruse. I ripped out the older birds’ feathers while they were still alive until they became unrecognizable. They made pitiful sounds during this procedure; but to me it was a beautiful harmony. Just as the bellowing ox whom the butcher pulls by his horns into the ring and beats to death with a crazed look in his eyes sends me into transports of delight, I gloated over the mourning song of a lark or any rare bird held in high regard. I do not wish to detain the reader with these details, but I would like to describe the delightful manner in which I killed the nightingale.

Near the monastery, which reaches high up into the skies with its majestic tall walls, there is a turn in the road where the apostles observe the passersby in sacred pensiveness. There are graveyards and grassy spots. There I assembled a few friends, let them enter into a circle, took out the maimed nightingale who was trying to catch her breath, tied her to a stick and chased her around it with a rod. This continued until she dropped down half dead and was unable to fly. I then took the splinter of wood, bound her on it, threw her three times into the air, she squeaked and then she was gone.

Now it was the hatchlings’ turn. What happened to them was even more crazed. I had a glass of water fetched and poured it over them until they started to scream. They opened their little red mouths, and I threw sand into them and repeated this so many times until they were stuffed like sausages and lying in their own gravy.

When the spectacle was over a few of the dignified, black-cloaked men came over, stood still, lifted their fingers, and said that the good-for-nothing who heaped one atrocity on top of another would one day be roasted in purgatory. I laughed and mocked the blackcoats behind their backs.

Source text: Dessalines, Tyrann der Schwarzen und Mörder der Weissen auf Santo Domingo: Ein Gemälde aus der Galerie politischer Ungeheuer. Erfurt und Gotha: Hennings, 1805. Excerpts from page 4 of the preface and pages 3–7.

Anonymous

This novella is a German adaptation of Victor Hugo’s 1826 novel Bug-Jargal. The name of the translator is not known, but the story was collected in a volume that also features German translations and adaptations of Lettimore Clarke’s Olesia: A Polish Story, Karl Spindler’s Die Protektionen, and Lope de Vega’s Laura’s Villa. These translations are indicative of the interest of German audiences, like Polish ones (see p. 236 of the present volume), in non-German literatures. This anonymous work takes more liberties with the original than did Friedrich Sehbold’s 1839 translation of Bug-Jargal. Set in Saint-Domingue shortly before the beginning of the Haitian Revolution, this version focuses on the altruistic love of the enslaved man Pietro (Pierrot in the French original) for Marie d’Auvergney, who is married to her cousin Leopold. Even though Pietro rescues Marie from being attacked by a crocodile, her cruel father continues to treat the man he has enslaved with abject violence. Leopold, in contrast, is portrayed as much more benevolent. After Pietro, in one of several selfless acts of love for Marie, warns the couple of an impending slave rebellion, he dies while rescuing Leopold from being executed by the brutal revolutionary Biassou. Unlike in the French original, the German adaptation is told chronologically and from a third-person omniscient perspective, rather than framed by the recollections of Captain d’Auvergney.

Bug Jargal: A Historical Romance from the Times of the Negro Rebellion in Saint-Domingue . . . after Victor Hugo (1828)

They were under the command of the Negro Bug Jargal and distinguished themselves through strict and rigorous military training. Bug Jargal’s name had become famous even among his enemies; none of his followers were ever allowed to commit an act of atrocity against the prisoners; he had saved several colonists from certain death and had procured means for their escape. The only goal of his noble strivings was to attain freedom for his brothers. The other leaders, too, seemed to respect the command of this man, and even if they would have liked to disobey him at times, his reputation and his name were too revered by the entire army to resist him. [. . .]

[Bug Jargal/Pietro is speaking]

Marie’s quiet weeping was a constant accusation, because I, too, had contributed to her misfortunes, I, too, had helped to destroy the joy in her life. Despite all my efforts I had not been able to receive secure news from you, so I decided to allow myself to be captured by the French, since I knew the governor wanted me under his control. I had hoped to find your tracks this way, so I could indicate Marie’s whereabouts to you . . . I found out that you had fallen into the hands of the blacks alive; I know Biassou’s bloodthirstiness only too well, and knew I had to tremble for your safety. I offered the victors to try and save you from my brothers; they did not know me as Bug Jargal, but only as one of many leaders, otherwise they would have rejected my offer. I had to promise and swear that, if I failed to free you, I would return to captivity. My betrayal would have been paid for with the lives of all imprisoned slaves. I rushed to the camp of my comrades, I secured your release, I led you gladly into the arms of your wife, and now you want to crush my entire courageous enterprise, want to deprive me of liberty and life itself? No, you must follow me! [. . .]

Leopold was still tied to the tree when his brothers rushed to his rescue. Maria was among them; she loosened the ties of her beloved husband, and, at the same time, saw a dying Pietro bidding farewell to life, while he turned his burning eyes to the lovely figure of light. She learned the cause of his death from Leopold, and all those surrounding her admired the heroic self-sacrifice of the savage man. The couple knelt in front of their dead friend, cried tears of intense gratitude that fell onto his moribund hands, and were deeply moved and in awe over the grandeur of his sacrifice, which the lover had given to his lucky rival through noble self-denial.

Source text: Bug Jargal: Historisch-romantische Erzählung aus den Zeiten der Neger-Revolution auf St. Domingo. Frei adaptiert aus dem Französischen nach Victor Hugo. Pantheon: Eine Sammlung vorzüglicher Novellen und Erzählungen der Lieblingsdichter Europas. Herausgegeben von mehreren Literaturfreunden. Vol. 2. Stuttgart: Carl Hoffmann Verlag, 1828, 157–252. Excerpts from pages 175, 200–201, and 210.

Reference

Hugo, Victor. Bug Jargal: Ein historischer Roman, trans. Friedrich Sehbold. Victor Hugo’s Sämmtliche [sic] Werke. Vol. 3. Stuttgart: Verlag von L. F. Rieger & Comp., 1839.

Anonymous

La Mulâtre is a two-volume anonymously published epistolary romance. It tells the tale of a free woman of color named Mimi, who is the daughter of a white Creole father and a Black free woman of color, called a négresse in the parlance of the day. The title of the novel makes reference to another book included in this anthology, Joseph Lavallée’s Le Nègre comme il y a peu de blancs (1789). La Mulâtre consists of a series of pre-Revolution letters, beginning in March 1773 and ending in May 1775. The letters involve mostly a back-and-forth dialogue between the main character, Mimi, her white Creole lover, Sylvain, and Mimi’s father, along with several other minor characters, including Mimi’s friend Saintie. The novel, which chronicles Mimi’s numerous attempts to resist Sylvain’s persistent and coercive plot to seduce her, has been compared to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Julie; ou, La nouvelle Héloïse (1761) and Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s four-volume epistolary romance, Les Liasions dangereuses (1782). Though Mimi admits that she loves Sylvain, he is already married to a woman named Fany, with whom he has two children. Mimi initially refuses to merely become his mistress and thereby lose her virtue. After Mimi and Sylvain end up consummating their relationship in a scene that is ambiguously narrated as a possible rape, Mimi commits suicide and Sylvain later follows suit. Although this novel takes place before the formal beginning of the Haitian Revolution, it remains important to the literary history of these events for several reasons. Firstly, the letters chronicle in painstaking detail the color prejudices suffered by colonial Saint-Domingue’s free population of color. Mimi’s letters are not only anti-color prejudice, like the eighteenth-century writings of Julien Raimond (see introduction), but also antislavery, as the second selection here shows. In one letter, Mimi defends an enslaved man named Caïmant, who has revealed her correspondence with Sylvain, by suggesting that such disloyalty is a function of the condition of slavery and not of the enslaved man’s status as a negro. Secondly, woven in between Mimi’s simultaneous remonstrations and avowals of love for Sylvain, we find passionate deconstructions of the pseudoscientific theories of race made popular by travel writers and functionaries like M. L. E. Moreau de Saint-Méry. Mimi’s presentation of herself as capable of resisting the sexual corruption of life in the colony interrupts the dominant image of the free woman of color as a seductress put forth by multiple eighteenth-century travel writers like Justin Girod de Chantrans and the Baron de Wimpffen. These writers, much like Moreau de Saint-Méry, complained about the dangerous, deviant, and singular sexual agency of women of color (Daut 226). Mimi describes herself, much to the contrary, as a virtuous woman of color whose very existence undermines the idea that there was anything inherently white about virtue. Her letters furthermore expose pseudoscientific theories as primarily designed to affirm ideologies of white superiority that supported colonial patriarchy. Finally, her insistence that legislative reforms, rather than the use of violence, could do away with slavery and color prejudice betrays the anachronisms of the novel’s time vis-à-vis the author’s time. Today’s reader must consider what it would have meant for early nineteenth-century French readers to confront how this novel uses the voice of a woman of color from Saint-Domingue to argue for reform as a method of change at the end of a very passionate and bloody revolution that was on the verge of securing freedom for people of color.

The Mulatta, as Virtuous as Any White Woman, a Potential Sequel to The Negro Equaled by Few Whites (1803)

Letter 73

From Mimi to Sylvain, 19 February 1775.

I feel that I will be unhappy for my entire life; but I feel at the same time that I would not be able to enjoy a happiness that would degrade me in your very eyes. I am already much diminished by the prejudice that so strongly debases me among the whites, because of the blood from which I came! I would want to raise you up, and not bring you down to my level . . . I see myself as worthy of being your friend, by strictly adhering to the limits of this innocent and divine sentiment, which touches me; I do not believe myself to be unworthy of the title of your wife, which prejudice alone forbids me; but that of your mistress . . . I would then see myself become just like all the most vile of my sex and my class. In essence, who would any longer make any distinction for me? The public, that harsh judge, aware of my love, of my feelings, of their purity, would it deign to have pity and indulgence for me alone? No; it would rank me among all the other libertine women, and I would have only the shame and the remorse of opposing it as an objection . . . Let us speak to one another therefore as lovers, let us even love one another; but let us conduct ourselves as friends. This public, often too severe, may still misjudge us, but our intimate testimony will defend us from its blows. And when the whole world would condemn me, would I not at least have the esteem of my lover and of myself, to compensate me?

Letter 108

From Mimi to Sylvain, April 15, 1775

[. . .] It is time to point out your error, and perhaps mine as well, of having believed that my father was not against our free union: he did not directly reproach me, but he categorically declared to me that he would not consent to it; that his intention was for me to be married. This frankness has encouraged my own: I told him in rather certain terms that if I was never given to Mr.***, I would not be given to anyone else either. Oh, my father, I added, crying true tears, if you only knew how he suffers!—I believe it, he replied; his state and your own touch me to the final degree of sensibility: he seems to truly love you, and with constancy, unless I am very mistaken . . .—No, my father, no, you are not mistaken at all; he loves me beyond expression.—But what is there to hope from it? How unfortunate that he is not . . . or rather that you are not of his class! . . .Yes, I believe that you would be happy with him, or he is the greatest deceiver on earth, or he is himself most mistaken . . .—What? My father who loves me so, could also be susceptible to this odious and cruel prejudice! With intellect, reason, humanity, and probity, he would also be slave to an idiotic and barbaric sentiment, which indifferently sullies both the man of achievement and the stupid one, both the virtuous woman and the vicious girl, and only because they have a red or a black skin! The whites, criminals of the greatest infamy, can, in changing locales, hope to recover the esteem of society, and occupy an honorable place within it; and for us, twenty years of having lived here, having demonstrated every virtue, does not prevent us from being rejected, even in light of the consideration due to our conduct and the most pure of morals!—I rail, like you, my daughter, against this fatal prejudice; if it were up to me, it would soon enough be destroyed; but it exists, I could no more shake off its yoke than could you that of chastity; and perhaps, your lover has even less power to do it. [. . .] As for the rest, Mimi, prejudice aside, would you be able to give yourself to a man outside of marriage? . . . Oh, my father! What are you saying to me! . . . I would like to be able to renounce everything, but forgive your unfortunate daughter, and have pity for her lover . . . In time perhaps . . . If you could see his letters, how he suffers! How desperate he is! And he will not love anyone else! And he would be false! But what am I saying? Is it really me who is defending the cause of a seducer? . . . Him, a seducer! Oh! how prejudice creates such ills, and corrupts virtues at the same time!

I was crying hot tears in speaking so to this tender and good father; he was not able to hold back his own either. He left me with Saintie after having counseled her to console me, and to try to ensure that my feelings would conform more to his views and to his morals. But Saintie is my friend, she knew that to console me, she had to speak to me of my cherished lover. How I detest these beliefs that place such a huge obstacle between us! But this odious prejudice, where and when does it occur? in public only and solely against the people of color. Because in particular, there is nothing that exists, to speak to the point, which proves that the whites are in need of uniting and supporting the example of one another, for them to dare to decree it. Every white man, in particular, treats the women of color with honesty and familiarity. But when they are assembled, whether it be to take action or to give commands, they are nothing more than the most proud despots, imperial tyrants. What stupidity! are you therefore more than you are when together than you are when separated? And why does this prejudice not alienate you forever from the women of color? Why do we see so many whites marry them without scruple? It is because they are rich. Wealth erases, therefore, this prejudice? Alas, yes! We have seen them [. . .] go to the justices to have themselves recognized as whites, while the only way to prove it condemned them. This mixture has only one classic stain and nothing real stands as humiliating proof except color? But because the whites have introduced it, why are they so base then to degrade their blood like this? Why does their blood not instead have the power to purify that of the negro?

Whatever the case may be, I could not hide that this prejudice has quite triumphed in your heart over love and logic. I admire its irresistible strength over the white men in general; thousands of their children have been the unfortunate victims of it; and not a single one of them is willing to risk making a single case for their civil status, or to ameliorate their ignominious fate. Ah! these reflections will for all my life disturb my peace and my happiness. [. . .]

What you have told me about Caïmant’s treachery is against slavery; this state degrades all men, and makes of them scoundrels, traders, and villains. You are the masters of doing anything you want, and you debase them with shameful tasks; you seem to want to add insult to their injury! Oh! that is not generous!

Source text: La Mulâtre, comme il y a beaucoup de blanches, ouvrage pouvant faire suite au Nègre comme il y a peu de blancs. Paris: Chez Marchand, 1803. Excerpts from volume 2, pages 41–42 and 255–58.

Reference

Daut, Marlene L. Tropics of Haiti: Race and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, 1789–1865. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2015.

Anonymous

This satirical play (whose full title translates as The Eighteen Adventures of Citizen Cacambeau, formerly General Rochambeau, Son of the First Marshal of France, Revolutionary; or New Dialogue and Couplets, such as they were sung by the abovementioned Citizen, after having drunk four Bottles of Madeira, while returning from St. Domingue) dramatizes French general Donatien Rochambeau’s departure from colonial Saint-Domingue when he was forced to flee after surrendering to General Jean-Jacques Dessalines’s armée indigène in November 1803. Rochambeau had to capitulate not only to Dessalines but also to the British, whose aid he was compelled to seek after he disobeyed Dessalines’s mandate to leave Saint-Domingue by December 1, 1803. This play, which first appeared in Jean-Gabriel Peltier’s L’Ambigu, was reprinted in its entirety in independent Haiti’s first newspaper, Gazette politique et commerciale d’Haïti, on December 6, 1804. Les Dix-Huits Aventures opens with Rochambeau, now having adopted the name Cacambeau. This choice of name adds to the satire, since this is also the appellation of the French writer Voltaire’s character Cacambo from Candide, ou l’optimisme (1759). In Candide, Cacambo, who is actually from South America, is the faithful friend of the title character, whose foibles take them haplessly all over the world where they witness a litany of atrocities while continuing to believe that the world is the best it can possibly be. While the author of Les Dix-Huits Aventures is not listed, Peltier, the ardently anti-Napoléon editor of L’Ambigu, had a long-term interest in independent Haiti. He was, in fact, a great friend first to Emperor Dessalines and then to King Henry Christophe, even attempting to help the latter in his quest to secure international recognition (Gaffield 156–57). Evidently, Peltier’s anti-Napoléon stance hugely endeared both him and L’Ambigu to early Haitians of all political persuasions. Bruno Blanchet, secretary of state under Pétion, wrote to Peltier, An enemy of Bonaparte as fearless as you are is necessarily one of our friends. Your newspaper is the favorite among Haitians and has become required reading for them (qtd. in Gaffield 157). Nevertheless, the play from L’Ambigu opens with Cacambeau/Rochambeau discussing the history of Rochambeau’s father, the Count of Rochambeau, who was himself famous for having fought with the French when they came to the aid of the North American colonists during the US War of Independence. As referenced in the title to the play, the elder Rochambeau would later become the marshal of France. As for Saint-Domingue’s Rochambeau, he is treacherously portrayed as a partisan of the Jacobins in this fictionalized account, which does not fail to suggest that Rochambeau participated in the terror in France during the French Revolution before arriving in Saint-Domingue, where he ordered the genocidal drowning of virtually all people of color. In contrast to these confessions, Rochambeau/Cacambeau makes no mention of the infamous charge that the French general, under the orders of Leclerc, had sent specially trained Cuban bull dogs to devour the Black people of Saint-Domingue (Johnson 27), nor does he mention the infamous balls Rochambeau was known to host in order to force free women of color to watch their family members perish.

The Eighteen Adventures of Citizen Cacambeau (1804)

In vino veritas

To the tune of: La Bonne Aventure, o gué!

(The scene takes place onboard the frigate. The Captain, several officers, and Cacambeau are at the table.)

CACAMBEAU: . . . Listen a little, and hear about how during the revolution,

I stole and I quaffed on gore,

And men I drowned a few,

At my order bullets tore

Through black men and whites too:

Always a good citizen,

Under Barras I was nothing,

Seventh Adventure, o gué,

Seventh adventure!

ALL THE OFFICERS:

Pitiful adventure, o gué,

Pitiful adventure!

CAPTAIN: Citizen, you have nevertheless become something today: you are a general, Pro-Consul, and Bonaparte’s trusted right-hand man and hangman; despoiler of the whites, exterminator of the blacks, and all in the name of liberty and equality. Those are the titles that prove the great consideration in which you are held by the present government.

CACAMBEAU: That is true, Captain; also, I complain only of the past and not of the present; for, it must be confessed that since the First Consul has become the first citizen of a state where, in order to better maintain equality, he would not like to have any equals, he has treated me rather well: yes, Sir, I dare to say it in praise of him and of me, when the destruction of St. Domingue and the overturning of the colonial properties were decided in his councils,

Bonaparte, more than anyone,

Rendered me justice;

He matched my disposition

To a post in his service.

Go, he said, fly to avenge me,

Wreak pillage, slaughter, robbery;

Eighth adventure, o gué,

Eighth adventure!

ALL THE OFFICERS:

Brilliant adventure, o gué,

Brilliant adventure!

CAPTAIN: Citizen, the mission may well have been worthy of you and of your courage, but it was not very easy, it seems to me.

CACAMBEAU: Not easy, Sir! For you Englishmen, perhaps, who simply abide by the old ways of the laws of war and the rights of man in pursuing your conquests: but the great Consul who only ever utilizes great means, told me as I was leaving:

Promise to them liberty,

And for them carry fetters:

Should they resist your authority,

Roast them by the hundreds;

May death and despair from the white

Finally on the black alight,

Ninth adventure, o gué,

Ninth adventure!

ALL THE OFFICERS:

Barbaric adventure, o gué,

Barbaric adventure!

CAPTAIN: For a soul such as yours, citizen roaster, I see very well how ordering all these massacres would satisfy your soul, but not your interests, and . . .

CACAMBEAU: Oh! you are sorely mistaken, Captain: there was plenty to fully satisfy both, for the final paragraph of my secret instructions read:

Let every plantation,

Heretofore the property of another

In the name of the nation,

Became yours to savor.

For my sister, for me and for you,

Take, loot, and say, it is the law too.

Tenth adventure, o gué,

Tenth adventure!

ALL THE OFFICERS:

Rich adventure, o gué,

Rich adventure.

CAPTAIN: Your instructions, general, were precise, I see that, and were worthy of those who sent you: but how did you proceed to execute them? for, the blacks were armed, masters of the land, and stronger than you.

CACAMBEAU: That is very true, messieurs: but as I have already told you, we have means that you reject as unjust, and that we employ out of necessity and thus always find very fair.

We deceived, with a treaty,

Toussaint-Louverture,

Then we took him in custody:

We sent him away, he swore;

And in a French cell, plenty soon,

He died like a fool.

Eleventh adventure, o gué,

Eleventh adventure.

ALL THE OFFICERS:

Cruel adventure, o gué,

Cruel adventure.

CAPTAIN: Citizen, suffer me to tell you frankly that your conduct was not at all loyal; for, it is certain that compromises, negotiations, and treaties are sacred engagements among us military men.

CACAMBEAU: Yes, without a doubt; among us military men of the old regime: but the new regime has its own principles that are just as valuable as yours; and how would we succeed without them? Recall Quiberon, Lyon, Switzerland, Cairo, the Vendée, etc. Learn from our example and know very well that,

Be it after horrid fights,

Be it during sieges,

Our treaties, in every case,

Are always a trap.

We always propose a truce

But it’s never what we choose

Twelfth adventure, o gué,

Twelfth adventure.

ALL THE OFFICERS:

Treacherous adventure, o gué,

Treacherous adventure.

CAPTAIN: Each man has his own principles, citizen; and yours are not mine, luckily for you. But when you arrived in Saint-Domingue, what did you do?

CACAMBEAU: Oh! my goodness, Sir, that is so easy to guess.

With Leclerc and to begin

I fulfilled my promises:

Fire, knives, and poison

Marked my progress.

Prisoners made and betrayed,

Whites and blacks, all of them dead.

Thirteenth adventure, o gué,

Thirteenth adventure.

ALL THE OFFICERS:

Horrible adventure, o gué,

Horrible adventure.

CAPTAIN: Very well, worthy citizen, very well; I recognize you now. However, what was your leader Leclerc up to?

CACAMBEAU: What was he up to? Certainly you will have guessed, I hope: but in the midst of his triumph, and in the very moment at which he least expected it,

He perished, and his passing

Revived the turmoil

Alone, soldiers commanding

My wrath did reboil

I trampled fresh graves underfoot

And with my killers sing to boot

A great adventure, o gué,

A great adventure.

ALL THE OFFICERS:

Superb adventure, o gué,

Superb adventure.

CAPTAIN: But did not the blacks, the whites, the mulattoes, and in the end, the entire colony rebel against you, after so many atrocities?

CACAMBEAU: There you have it, that is exactly what happened, Captain, and we were not at all expecting that.

The blacks though at first dismayed,

Once again found their courage;

Their fearsome soldiers displayed

Wrath greater than my rage;

Their daily victories to boast,

Now it was our turn to roast.

Fifteenth adventure, o gué,

Fifteenth adventure.

ALL THE OFFICERS:

Righteous adventure, o gué,

Righteous adventure.

CAPTAIN: But what became of your invincible troops, citizen-general? Had they done so much damage in conquering Italy only to find themselves shamefully defeated and eaten by negroes; I had truthfully believed that in the army, one of your men was worth four, as you yourself in the club were worth four Jacobins.

CACAMBEAU: Remember though, Captain, that in these final days there were ten of them to one of us, and that our army was deprived of everything.

Indeed, within the walls of Cap,

Reduced to a cinder,

Like a corpse in its shroud wrapped,

I had to surrender.

So I implored the humanity,

Of the blacks in mutiny.

Seventeenth adventure, o gué,

Seventeenth adventure.

ALL THE OFFICERS:

Shameful adventure, o gué,

Shameful adventure.

CAPTAIN: Oh, how shameful for you, Sir citizen-general, regenerator of peoples, how shameful to have been obliged to claim the rights of humanity that you never respected! to have to say to the blacks that you had in turn taken from slavery to freedom and back again: be humane toward us, after you had treated them so inhumanely! How shameful to have to solicit the good faith of those you so often deceived; peace from those to whom you had brought carnage and war; clemency from those whom you had accused of barbarity; liberty from those whom you had come to load with chains; life, in the end, from those over whose heads you had for six months brandished the sword of death with a refinement of cruelty the likes of which were only ever found among those who sent you!

CACAMBEAU: What are you saying, Captain? Know that I would never have gone to such sad lengths if I had received reinforcements from France. It is therefore not my fault if I was not able to exterminate the remaining inhabitants of Saint-Domingue; and since you are attacking me like this, I can and I must respond to you in the same tone, and tell you with even more logic:

It may be to you that we owe

Our affliction:

Insolent Britons, our foe

Traitorous, cowardly nation.

But the Jacobins one day

With you will have their roasting way.

Final adventure, o gué,

Final adventure.

ALL THE OFFICERS: Captain, will you allow a starving citizen, whose life you have saved, and whom you are nourishing, to insult us with impunity? In irons, Captain, in irons! He is a rascal who deserves to be placed in them; and then on trial for war crimes, and then a beating, and then etc. etc.

Cacambeau falling to his knees:

Messieurs, I was not thinking at all:

Oh! show me grace:

Our spirit grovels or stands tall

Depending on the case.

Looking down now you can see

Cacambeau singing at your knees

His sad adventure, o gué,

His sad adventure.

CAPTAIN: Come, get back up. I pardon you, on account of the wine that you have drunk, and because of the confession that you have just made about your previous life. But as you are simply a traitor who wanted the negroes’ hot shot to burn us in the port of Cap; who has no faith in treaties, no respect for the most sacred of rights, no religion, no honor, I am going to scrupulously monitor you, and the British government, according to my report, will without a doubt take the greatest of precautions in order to prevent you from corresponding with your associates, the Jacobins, arsonists, drowners of men and assassins, regicides, and regenerators of people.

Source text: "Les Dix-Huit Aventures du Citoyen Cacambeau, nommé ci-devant le Général Rochambeau, fils du Premier Maréchal en France, révolutionnaire; ou dialogue et couplets nouveaux, tels qu’ils ont été chantés par le susdit Citoyen, après avoir bu quatre bouteilles de Madere [sic], en venant de St. Domingue." L’Ambigu, ou variétés littéraires et politiques 4, no. 34 (March 10, 1804). London: M. Peltier, 1804. 260–72. Excerpts from pages 265–72.

References

Gaffield, Julia. Haitian Connections in the Atlantic World: Recognition after Revolution. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2015.

Johnson, Sara E. The Fear of French Negroes: Transcolonial Collaboration in the Revolutionary Americas. Berkeley: U of California P, 2012.

Anonymous

In his 1824 Voyage dans le Nord d’Hayti, Hérard Dumesle stated that the Haitian poet, playwright, and statesman Juste Chanlatte was working on an epic poem of Haitian history to be called La Haïtiade. Despite Dumesle’s claim, Thomas Prosper Gragnon-Lacoste, who edited the 1878 reissue of L’Haïtiade and who is most known for his 1877 biography of Toussaint Louverture, would later assert that the poem was in fact written by Louverture’s son Isaac (Gragnon-Lacoste 506–7). It was only after the 1878 edition was published that Gragnon-Lacoste claimed to have come across a letter from General Vincent, the French officer who was stationed in Saint-Domingue during the time of the Revolution, attributing authorship of the poem to Isaac Louverture. Gragnon-Lacoste then wrote a letter to the Haitian poet Arsène Chevry definitively declaring the son of the famous General Louverture to be the author of the poem. Chevry had previously sent an article he had written about L’Haïtiade to Gragnon-Lacoste, who replied: You would desire, you say, that a national poet had sung the ‘Glories of Haiti.’ Well then! You will have it in this poet: Isaac Louverture, who in cultivating the muses, has written the most inspiring pages of the Haïtiade [. . .]. A letter from General Vincent, whose name is entangled with the principal events of the war of independence, has revealed his participation (qtd. in Large 183). According to Camille Large, who helped to edit the third version of the text, published in 1945 by L’Imprimerie de l’État d’Haïti (with a foreword from Jean F. Brièrre and biographical notice from Michel Desquiron), from this point on, L’Haïtiade was commonly attributed to Isaac Louverture, even though the letter from Vincent to Gragnon-Lacoste has never been recovered (Large 184, 189). The 1945 version of L’Haïtiade was in fact inspired by new and contradictory information about the poem’s authorship that had surfaced in 1907 on the heels of an inquiry posed about the poem in the Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste. In an article on the front page of the newspaper, dated March 15, 1907, Antoine Laforest stated that L’Haïtade was written by Desquiron’s white French ancestor, the poet Desquiron de Saint-Agnan (Laforest). Large agrees with Laforest, rejecting completely the notion that Chanlatte could have authored the poem (Large 187). Interestingly, the Haitian historian and medical doctor Louis Joseph Janvier published an article in the Revue universelle internationale in 1884 in which he claimed that Chanlatte’s L’Haïtiade was not to be confused with the poem published by Gragnon-Lacoste as L’Haïtiade (Janvier 254–56), suggesting there were two different poems with this title. Nevertheless, most twentieth-century critics have concluded that the text might have been a work of collaboration, most likely between Desquiron de Saint-Agnan and Isaac Louverture, with the possible involvement of Chanlatte (Kadish and Jenson xviii, 254n22). The text of L’Haïtiade is preceded by a historical essay entitled "Abridged History of the Events upon Which are Founded the Fable of L’Haïtiade. That the poem was actually a fable," rather than a history, and so simply filled with symbols referring to historical events, shines through in the original footnotes. Song 4, an excerpt of which is included below, places Toussaint Louverture’s nephew Moïse where he could not have been during the events being described in the poem. At the first mention of Moïse in the original L’Haïtiade, in the first canto, the author tells us in a footnote, In historical reality, this general fought alongside his wife; but he attracted the indignation of Louverture; he was delivered over to a war tribunal and shot (22n9). Famously, Louverture had this nephew, who was also a general, executed for betrayal in November 1801. The words in historical reality, then, are important, since they signal that the author of the poem has deliberately changed events and put people where they could not have been precisely because of what their names might signify. To that end, the author also provocatively lyricizes Moïse’s combat alongside his (fictional?) wife, Tellésile. We find her heroically leading a troop of a thousand warriors with Moïse (58). The footnote at the end of this canto tells us, in any event, I must warn my readers that the entire passage that follows is of pure invention (65n21).

L’Haïtiade, Poem in Eight Cantos, by a European Philanthropist, Homage to the Haitian People (ca. 1825–1828)

By a ruse led into the bottom of the ravines,*

The light velites saw a thousand heroines,

Into the dispersed ranks launch their bitter darts;

Their feathers floating, wave in the air,

Their flanks are armored, and their indocile souls

Only recognize one chief: that chief is Tellésile.

With a thousand warriors Moïse follows in their steps,

And supports their efforts in the midst of combat:

Tellésile has conceived of the most noble hope,

In an audacious chief she has seen such confidence,

And, eager to slaughter him, she launches her darts,

The bolt escapes, glides, flies and strikes Léotgard.

He advances just as soon; in his hands the iron gleams,

In his dying eyes a secret fire crackles.

Three times his sword escapes from his drooping arm,

Three times he picks it up, and three times he is pushed back down.

Léotgard, staggering, totters, sighs, falls,

And glory and honor follow him into the tomb.

Fargel saw from afar this deadly combat;

He shivers and his heart lets out a painful cry:*

Like the outraged lioness in the heart of the desert,

The death of a husband she burns to avenge.

She whips her mane, rolls her bloody eyes.

We see her rush forward, roar, beat her sides:

With her brass nail trample the arid sand . . .

Thus, we saw Fargel or rather Léonide

Rush upon the enemy, whose sharp swords

A thousand times tore her desperate heart.

Oh, how much blood was spilled! fed by the battle,

For a moment Léonide to barbarity cedes;

A thousand deaths will be required to avenge a single demise;

In Tellésile’s breast she plunges her sword:

She cuts opens that heart,