Haitian Revolution, Leader
Storyboard Text
- Toussaint Louverture, also spelled L'Ouverture, was the leader of the Haitian independence movement during the French Revolution (1787–99), born François Dominique Toussaint. He freed the slaves and bargained for the French colony on Hispaniola, Saint-Domingue (later Haiti), to be ruled briefly as a French protectorate by Black former slaves.
- Toussaint Louverture led a successful slave revolt that resulted in the abolition of slavery in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti). He was a formidable military leader who transformed the colony into a country governed by former black slaves as a nominal French protectorate and established himself as the sole ruler of Hispaniola.
- When France and Spain went to war in 1793, the Black commanders sided with the Spaniards of Santo Domingo, which controlled the eastern two-thirds of Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic). Toussaint was knighted and recognized as a general for his extraordinary military prowess, attracting renowned warriors such as his nephew Mose and two future Haitian monarchs, Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henry Christophe. The French were on the verge of disaster as a result of Toussaint's victories in the north, mulatto victories in the south, and British occupation of the coasts.
- Toussaint tries to secure his position by claiming to support France, but Napoleon Bonaparte, France's first consul, wants to reestablish control of the island. In January 1802, General Charles Leclerc leads a French invasion. Several months of ferocious fighting ensue. Toussaint formally agrees to lay down his arms in May in exchange for Leclerc's promise not to reintroduce slavery on the island. Toussaint then goes to live on a plantation.
- Under false pretenses, Toussaint is invited to a meeting by a French general. Toussaint is apprehended and sent to Fort-de-Joux in the French Jura Mountains, where he is confined and interrogated repeatedly, with the cooperation of Leclerc and under orders from Napoleon, who suspects Toussaint of plotting an uprising.
- Toussaint dies in his jail cell on April 7.
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