The Haitian Revolution — Part 2

Your house is Monsieur le Marque, are nothing but ashes. Your belongings have disappeared. Your administration is no more. The insurrection has spread its devastation and carnage onto your properties. Letter to Marquis de Galifay from neighboring plantation owner by the name of Milo. Rumour, whisper, innuendo, tall tales of discontent and planned insurrection swept through the plantations of the French colony of Sanderman in the summer of 1791. Tensions rose as whites looked for any sign of suspicion from those they claimed ownership of.

Were they plotting? Was it all rumours? Words of planned insurrection was as common as seasonal rain on Sanderman. An occupational hazard if one is going to insist on making one's fortune from forced labour. Or were the slaves playing for time? As night descended, slaves slipped from their plantations, gathering together deep in the forest. They talked, danced and practiced their voodoo faith. But there was nothing normal about these nocturnal gatherings. There was to this a political edge. Slowly, step by step and piece by piece, a plan began to form. A plan for a general slave rising. This would be no spontaneous outburst of anger, an eruption of rage by the oppressed against their tormentors. This would be cool, calm and calculated. This would be driven forward by outrage, but also be directed by defined ends.

The plantation owners had taken the opportunity offered by the 1789 revolution in Paris to seize control of the royal state on Saint Damang. They had worked for decades to deprive the free blacks of Sandomang of their rights and property. Now, with all power bested in their hands, they found themselves isolated and imperilled. Every snapped twig and rustle of the bushes cause hearts to race. Would it be tonight? Was it coming? Shall the storm pass?

Nobody knew, but everybody waited for the coming of revolution. Welcome to Ancient to Recent. My name is Joseph Parkinson and on today's episode we continue our story of the Haitian Revolution of 1791. Episodes of Ancient to Recent are out every Saturday and are available on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Months of preparation had gone to the rising targets. Pick for destruction. Lists of names drawn, those to be spared and those to be shown. No mercy, but as with any conspiracy, keeping so many mouths shut until the moment to strike would be the greatest challenge.

A careless word, an over exuberant youth could let slip the plans by thoughtless deed, and the colonists would call in the militia, throw fortifications, and all that would await the slave leaders would be the RAC and the gallows. Such calamity almost struck on the night of the 16th of August, 1791, just days short of the planned up. Rising over, eager slaves set fire to a cane field. They were interrogated by magistrates, but they kept their mouths shut.

The plot not betrayed. Tensions rose, but the French colonists, thinking in an isolated instant, believed the moment had passed. The conspirators breathed a sigh of relief. Some wavered. In that crucial moment, maybe it wasn't too late to go back. Maybe we could pretend that none of this had ever happened. But others knew that the only choice now is rebellion or death. On the night of the 21st of August, insurrection erupts across the northern plains of Sandoman. Slaves take up knives, sides, cobs, Pikes and attack their masters.

The sounds of scuffles French colonists suddenly set upon in the fields echoed through the night's pleads for mercy. Shrieks of terror as steel pierce's flesh. Rebel mobs smash the doors of mansions built with the blood of generation of their exploited brothers and sisters, dragging half wake masters from their beds and hacking them to pieces. Mansions set to flame lit up the night sky, terrified onlookers noting the advance of the rebellion by the pillars of smoke that marked its deadly progress.

More plantations rose, each rising time to disorientate the French response. What was believed to be a safe haven suddenly transformed into the eye of a vengeful storm. On the morning of the 23rd of August, the revolt spread. 2000 armed slaves marched from plantation to plantation, freeing their brothers and sisters, killing their oppressors. They cut a swathe through plantation society, determined to uproot slavery once and for all. Warehouses filled with sugar and coffee were set to the blaze, tools smashed to pieces, the ornaments and implements of the oppressor forever condemned to the flames. Isolated pockets of French troops barricaded themselves in houses, firing through the windows at anything that moved. Fear gripped them.

Death stalked them, their only companions being the Grim Reaper. These French troops were joined by beleaguered colonists and loyalist blacks who'd rather perish than side with their fellow Africans. French refugees poured into the towns, each carrying horror stories. Their lives were gone up in smoke, torn from them by those they had so brutally ensnared. The French assembly banned ships from leaving the harbour, partly because the sailors would be needed to put down the rebellion, partly because if things came to the very worst scenario, a scenario this seemed increasingly likely, then the ships would be needed for a desperate evacuation.

Frantically, townsfolk turned any structure into a fortification, Doors barred, boxes and cars drawn across streets, loopholes hacked through buildings, anything to impede the coming storm. In the town of Le Cap, fear and confusion turn to rage, as French soldiers and colonists said upon those blacks caught in the streets when the revolt had broken out, stabbing, beating their brains out with the butts of their rifle, lynching in acts of desperate, impudent rage.

As revenge was extracted and the pace of work quickened, the sound of battle could be heard growing ever closer. The crack of muskins gurgle cries and shrieks for mercy of those too slow or too unlucky. Eventually it was the turn for the Cap. Slaves flung themselves against the ramparts, only for disciplined musket fire to turn them back, exacting a heavy toll. The slaves came again and again. They turned back a moment.

Relief for the French. Perhaps they were not to have their throats cut, Not tonight anyway. But good news was in short supply for the French. As plantations burned, the slaves freed their brothers. The ranks of the slave army swelled. On the 23rd of August, the slave army numbered some 2000. By the 27th, the slave commanders could call upon 10,000, divided into 3 separate armies with roughly 700 on horseback. In the midst of The Tempest, some French colonists found time to ask themselves, how could this be? How can this happen?

What have we but mere humble, innocent slave owners done to bring this suffering upon us? Their race hatred blinded them even at this moment when clarity of thought might have saved their lives. The French were convinced that the blacks, some inferior, so much less than they in spirit, in mind, so limited, little more than dumb animals, could never have arranged such a coordinated assault. There must be a hidden hand, an unseen culprit yet to reveal themselves. Captured slaves were questioned, but when asked who armed them, who organized them, on whose behalf did they act, they stayed silent.

A few weeks before, on the night of Sunday, August the 14th, 1791, in a remote wooded area known as Boaz Kamen, near the Bosling port city of Cup Francaise or Le Cup in the northern plains of Santa Man, around 200 enslaved peoples gathered in secret. They came from dozens of different plantations, slipping away under the cover of darkness, their footsteps muffled by the thick underbrush. Many were drivers, enslaved overseers who had a bit more mobility than field hands, allowing them to coordinate across vast sugar and coffee estates.

This was no ordinary meeting. It was the final planning sessions for a mass uprising that had been whispered about for weeks, even months. A statement was read aloud amid the flickering torchlight. The French King Louis the 16th and the National Assembly in Paris have supposedly decreed the abolition of the whip and granted enslaved people three days off per week to tend to their own allotments. The masters, so the proclamation claimed, were defying this royal order, but troops were on their way from France to enforce the King's will. Paris would stand as their ally against the tyrannical, disloyal local planters.

Of course, this was a powerful rumour. Nothing of the sort had actually been decreed from across the Atlantic. The French Revolution's ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity had inspired hope. But no concrete aid had come for the half million enslaved Africans toiling in Sandomang, the wealthiest colony in the world, producing nearly half of Europe's sugar and coffee through brutal force labour. The delegates argued passionately. Some urged patience, waiting for those phantom French troops to arrive and bring justice.

Others demanded immediate action, knowing that hesitation would mean discovery and certain death. In the end, a date was set Wednesday, August 24th, coinciding with a meeting of the colonial assembly where the French colonial elite would be distracted, allowing the rebels to strike swiftly and eliminate key figures. But how had they organized such a bold conspiracy? In a society where enslaved people were forbidden from gathering, reading, or even owning weapons?

Leadership was crucial, and at the heart of it stood Dutti Bookman, a towering figure born in Jamaica, hence his nickname, possibly derived from Bookman for his rare literacy and sold into slavery in Saint-Domingue. Bookman was a voodoo Hoygan, a priest and a Maroon leader who had escaped his plantation and lived in hidden communities in the hills, raiding for supplies and inspiring others with his defiance. That night, he had led the conspirators in a sacred religious ceremony at Bois Kamen alongside the mambo, or priestess Cecile Fatimaan, a woman of mixed African and Corsican descent known for her prophetic visions.

As a tropical storm raged overhead, Thunder cracking like the whip they so sought to banish, they sacrificed a black pig in a holy ritual. It's blood smeared on participants or drunk as a binding pack to seal their commitment. Bookman evoked Iwa, the voodoo spirits calling upon Ogun, the God of War, and Ezel Danton, protector of the oppressed. His words, passed down through oral history, rang out. The God of the whites pushes them to crimes. But our God, who is so good, orders us to vengeance. He will direct our hand.

He will aid us throw away the image of the God of the whites who thirsts for our tears, and listen to the voice of liberty that speaks in all our hearts. Religion was vital here, not mere superstition, as the French colonists dismissed it, but a unifying force that inspired courage, solidified alliances amongst diverse African ethnic groups and provided A cultural framework for resistance. The French colonists have long worried such gatherings could lead to uprisings, but they thought it best to let slaves have their traditions.

Some plantation owners even granted their slave permission to attend such events. But these events took on a new dimension as word of the French Revolution spread. French colonists grew concerned that unrest could be stirred up by radical publications promoting dangerous ideas about liberty and equality, ideas that would mix with voodoo religious practices to challenge French rule. Enslaved people had indeed been captured with pamphlets, prompting the colonial assembly to ban such literature in early September 1791. The planters convinced themselves that radicals in Paris was stirring trouble, some even advancing outlandish theories that revolutionary whites blackened their faces to join the slaves, or that the revolt was a counter revolution in defence of the king and the onsen regime. Some bizarrely claimed that white planters were themselves behind slave uprisings.

Anything to deny black agency, to refuse the idea that those they deemed inferior could have a mind, and with it a will all of their own. In reality, the enslaved were architects of their own liberation. Many slaves believed that they were acting in the name of Louis the 16th, the king of France, seeing him as a benevolent figure contrasted with the cruelty of the local French colonists. When the rebellion broke out, some slaves spared white sailors, thinking them in the King's service and therefore allies of the enslaved.

This royalist stands was also strategic. It drew quiet support from the Spanish neighbors on the other side of the island, San Domingo, who feared the spread of French radicalism and saw the revolution as an opportunity to weaken their French rivals. The French were surprised by the discipline and organization of the slaves and their obvious not just bravery but skill in combat, displaying a clear tactical understanding and employing traps and ambushes to neutralize the French advantage in technology and firepower.

Many of the enslaved had military experience from their homelands, particularly the Kingdom of Congo, where they had fought in wars using small bands for hit and run tactics. The slaves carefully observed French weaknesses, overextended troops, reliance on harsh discipline and some free people of colour who would later join the insurgents army, brought experience from serving in the French militia. By September, groups of free blacks who had supported the white colonists switched sides, showing incredible discipline.

They even learned to operate cannons, exchanging fire with French ships in coastal skirmishes. In the 1st 8 days of the rebellion, 184 plantations were destroyed. By late September, over 200 sugar estates and some 1200 coffee plantations lay in ruins. By the end of the month, the rebels numbered between 20 and perhaps as many as 80,000, cutting a sway through plantation society, freeing their brothers and sisters and uprooting slavery root and branch.

Rumours of atrocities spread back to France, rebels soaring, people in half impaling white children on Pikes, nailing victims to gates. While some were exaggerated for propaganda, the violence was real and reciprocal, born of centuries of whipping, branding and families torn apart in auction blocks. Many planters were shocked that the enslaved had turned on them, having deluded themselves that slavery was a benign system that delivered from barbarism poor Africans and offered them the benefits of French civilization.

Their closeness to individual domestic slaves fostered a full sense of security. But the rebellion cut across every layer of slave society, not just feel hands on sugar plantations, but domestics, artisans and those on coffee and indigo farms. After initial shock, French troops rallied, showing no quarter, killing indiscriminately and driving ever more enslaved people into the rebels arms. The fighting ground to a standstill with atrocities on both sides, the French hanging blacks from trees, the rebels beheading whites in retaliation.

The town of Litkap was preserved, it's walls fortified, but much of the countryside around was set ablaze. Many planters distrusted Paris, seeing no hope made for the safer and decidedly more pro slavery shores of the United States, and support for the planters trickled in from Jamaica. But planters that placed their faith in British intervention were to be disappointed. The British saw the chaos and Sandomang as a chance to weaken France, not to aid fellow slave owners, and were only too happy to let the fires of rebellion burn.

French forces grew exhausted, constant combat, scorching heat, a lack of food and desperate for reinforcement. Some officers suggested recruiting free blacks, experienced soldiers who had fought in the American Revolution, but the colonial assembly refused, having long opposed and indeed rolled back black rides. Some free blacks had already joined the French side, but the assembly wouldn't yield, not even now. White colonists were divided. Some urged compromise, others would not give a single inch. Free black people, known as Charles de Cola Libra, numbered about 28,000 and were often prosperous. Organized a political assembly, 40 delegates were elected to press demands for equality to Paris and the local assembly. The governor, however, sided with the hardline colonists and ordered the assembly dissolved.

One detoured. The three blacks took up arms, led by figures such as Andre Regard, a Goldsmith born around 1761 in Les Cayes to a French father and an African mother. Educated in Bordeaux, France, Regard had forces a volunteer in the American Revolution at Savannah in 1779, where he honed his military skills. Charismatic and ambitious, he embodied the free black elite's push for citizenship without necessarily abolishing slavery. Calling themselves the Confederates, they allied with slave bans, including one known as the Swiss, a group of armed enslaved fighters named after Swiss mercenaries for their discipline.

Together, they grew powerful. When the French attacked, the Confederates pushed them back, forcing fleeing planters into the cane fields, which the three blacks then set ablaze, creating a roaring inferno that lit the night. In the face of this, some whites from Port-au-Prince signed agreements with the Confederates promising the rights granted by the Paris Assembly's May 15th, 1791 decree, which extended citizenship to free people of colour.

Born of free parents, the free blacks positioned themselves as a loyalist to France, branding the whites as rebels resisting these new rights. Under pressure, Port au Prince's whites accepted all free men, regardless of race, were to be citizens. But the agreement omitted the Swiss. It was one thing to grant rights to free blacks, quite another to reward rebellious slaves. There would be no reward for rebels, lest a dangerous precedent be set. The free black leadership agreed. The fate that awaited the Swiss was cruel even by the standards of Saint Demagh.

Abandoned by the Confederates, they were set up on by the French colonists, who ordered their deportation to Central America. The Swiss ended up diverted to Jamaica, then returned to Saint de Man, where sixty were executed and the rest perished from hunger and sickness in prison. This betrayal shattered any potential alliance between free blacks and the enslaved. But tensions between free blacks and the French persisted.

Soldiers fought in the streets. Police arrested a French soldier. Outraged a French mob that lynched a black man 3 blacks retaliated furiously. St. battles in Port-au-Prince lead to murders of three black civilians and a massive fire that burned down 800 houses. No lasting alliance between 3 blacks and the French emerged. Suspicion devolved into a full blown race war. By late November 1791, all of Sandaman was ablaze.

In late October, white prisoners were paraded before jeering crowds of formerly enslaved rebels and brought to a camp under the command of Giano Boulet, a fierce black leader known for his cruelty. Chained and humiliated, they received meager rations, 3 bananas and one glass of water a day. Two were executed every 24 hours, Whipped gunpowder rubbed into their wounds, some hacked to pieces in a frenzy of rage. One was killed by his own former slave. A personal reckoning amid the chaos, Xiano's excesses led to his arrest and execution by his own side on November the 1st, 1791 by fellow leaders who deemed him to be too brutal even for a slave rebellion.

His place was taken by Jean Francois Popolot. By late November, the most prominent insurgent leaders were Georges Besso and Jean Francois Papillot himself. Jean Francois, born around 1758 in the Kingdom of Congo, had been enslaved as a child, fled his plantation and lived as a maroon in the mountains, honing survival skills in building networks of resistance. A strategic thinker with a commanding presence, he framed the revolt as a fight for royal justice. George Biassou, born a Creo in Saint-Domingue around 1741, was a former slave driver turned tactician known for his voodoo infused leadership and ability to rally diverse groups. Other leaders had fallen.

On November the 7th, Dutty Bookman was killed in a cavalry ambush, his head severed and displayed on a stake in Le Cap as a grisly warning. Months of war exacted a heavy toll. Hunger Nord at rebel camps, sickness spread through the ranks, and French cavalry charges scattered forces. What if more French troops were to arrive? Jean Francois and Biso decided to seek peace. On November 29th. 17913 Commissioners from Paris, Iman Dusan Laguerre, Jean Francois Miri, Mira Beck and Philippe Roume arrived bearing the decree of September the 24th 1791. This law granted the colonies greatest self government, delighting white planters who saw it as a rollback of earlier reforms favouring free blacks.

The free blacks were furious. They felt betrayed once more. The Commissioner brought news of a new French constitution and France becoming constitutional monarchy. Maybe a middle Rd. was possible. Maybe after so much blood it was time for peace. The colonial assembly offered amnesty, but Jean Francois and Biso demanded inclusion for free blacks and amnesty for slaves. However, the hard line colonists refused. Amnesty applied to political revolutionaries, not criminal rebels.

Granting amnesty to blacks who had risen up and shed the blood of their own masters, the most grievous sin imaginable in the eyes of the French colonists would imply equality and undermine slavery itself. Get the commissioners seeing the colonies fragility, offered amnesty anyway. Freedom for a few 100 leaders, no punishment for returning slaves, and we could put this whole episode behind us. Jean Francois and Biso positioned themselves as moderates in contrast to the firebrands within their own ranks they and only they, could control.

They warned that without amnesty they couldn't guarantee the safety of white prisoners. The French colonists bulked, demanding complete surrender even as fighting raged, skirmishes in the hills, ambushes on the roads. The Paris commissioners mediated. But the colonists, trapped in their racial worldview, could give no ground without undermining the entire way of life. Jean Francois and Bisa urged haste. 100,000 men were in arms. The rebel army is ready to strike, they insisted. They could only constrain their own men so long. Make a deal while you still can, they urged the colonists. They presented themselves as the only restraining force of a vengeful mass.

Negotiations began, but they did not get off to a good start. In one tense meeting, a hot headed planter, offended by the sight of a black man daring to speak as an equal to Wise, could not contain himself and struck Jean Francois. But the commissioner cooled tempers. Jean Francois's wife was released. Some prisoners were exchanged. The three black leaders asked for steps to improve slave conditions. Slaves would return to work under minor reforms similar to those proposed by the royal government in successive decrees throughout the 18th century, even though those had been ferociously resisted by hardline colonists.

There would be reforms to slavery, but not it's abolition. Divisions cracked amongst the rebels. Some would accept reform, others demanded complete abolition. The leaders might accept such terms, but they spoke only for themselves. When white prisoners were to be returned to Le Cap, crowds of armed enslaved peoples opposed it ferociously. Negotiations between the free blacks and the colonists broke down. The French colonial assembly remained unwilling to compromise. By mid January 1792, patients was exhausted and the rebels attacked again, whole districts falling under their control. No pity was shown on either side. News of the uprising reached France in November 1791. Planters in Paris demanded troops attacking abolitionists like those in the Society des Amis des Noir for causing the revolution.

Abolitionists counted the slave revolts were inevitable in every slave society, blaming the planters intransigence. Only granting vice to the enslaved could save the colony. Shock waves rippled through Paris, even amongst radicals. On April the 4th, 1792, the National Assembly declared full equality between whites and free people of colour. From now on, free blacks were to be granted voting rights and to be eligible for all positions regardless of race.

But slavery persisted. Racial equality was granted precisely to preserve slavery, not to either abolish or undermine it. It was a practical, some may say cynical, move to enlist free blacks against slaves. New commissioners were sent to dissolve the old assemblies and create mixed race bodies, and French troops accompanied them. At the beginning of 1792, much of the North was in open rebellion, but the West and the South remained relatively calm.

This would change as the year progressed, with revolt spreading colony wide, fuelled by the actions of whites and free blacks who armed enslaved peoples to fight on their side. The initial revolt had been plotted by enslaved leaders who approached free blacks for support but were rebuffed. Now, amid escalating chaos, free blacks decided they needed slave allies, though tensions simmered over past betrayals, with people remembering the treatment of the Swiss Port-au-Prince came under siege from free black troops demanding the dissolution of colonial assemblies. In May 1792, news of the April 4 decree arrived, granting political rights to free blacks.

In July 1792, a free black army fought its way into the city. Free blacks had leveraged pressure in Paris and the tensions in San demand to secure victory, gaining the French government as a powerful ally. But what of the enslaved? Most free blacks and whites wanted the slaves returned to the plantations. Yet free blacks acknowledged that the world had shifted and putting the old order back together was not possible. Some compromise, however token, had to be offered. Therefore, some leaders should be granted freedom to form a police force overseeing the other slaves. In the South, enslaved groups resisted fiercely. The immidualized slave leaders were invited to a meeting with masters, presuming that there would be some negotiations. However, the demands of the French colonists were as intransigent as ever.

Total surrender, nothing less. The slave leaders refused and sent back their own demands. 3 days off per week. Abolition of whipping plus freedom for their leaders. The French colonists rejected these terms out of hand and continued with the military campaign, hoping to crush slave resistance. But the slaves retreated ever deeper into the forests and mountains. Columns of white and free black troops marched into the mountains to crush the slaves, but were repeatedly ambushed, suffering hundreds of casualties.

Emboldened, the rebels sent new demands. Freedom for all in their group. 3 days off for all enslaved in the region, plus land grants. Whites bolt. But some in the assemblies agreed out of fear the freedom was only to be granted to those vetted by free blacks. Some slaves accepted, but most refused. More recruits were swelling the ranks of the rebel armies and they defended mountain strongholds against all French incursions. They formed what became known as the Kingdom of Platons, a semi autonomous community in the rugged Platons region near Les Calles, raiding plantation for supplies and causing anarchy. By late 1792, one third of the southern plantations had been burned to the ground.

The government deployed French troops, but guerrilla warfare persisted with attacks from the bushes, hitenbrun strikes, and nighttime raids. The French responded with brutal revenge. At the end of 1792, a hundred rebels were slaughtered in a cane field, their bodies mutilated as a warning. The campaign took a heavy toll on French troops, with many succumbing to diseases like yellow fever. Food was scarce and poor morale cratering. In the north, Jean Francois and Bisseau allied with emerging figures like Charles Belliere and issued a letter to the colonial assemblies.

France had promised to uphold the Declaration of the Rights of Man, all men, free and equal. The slaves would lay down their arms for general amnesty and liberty. Once liberty was granted, then the former slaves would return to work as free labourers. Jean Francois and Bisseau requested these terms be presented to the King and the assembly in Paris. By now, over a year had passed since the uprising began, with much of the colony still out of French control and many rebel leaders, once content with improved conditions and equality for free blacks, are calling for full emancipation. What were the French colonies to do? Huge damage had been done.

Many lives had been lost. Troops have been deployed from France, soldiers enlisted from both free black and enslaved communities. And yet, despite the bloodshed, they could not crush the rebellion. If force had not worked, then perhaps negotiation was the key. But this too presented not just a problem, but worse, a contradiction. The full application of force would smash the economy of the plantation, thus ruining the planters. But negotiation would undermine the very logic of slavery itself.

There were also divisions amongst the whites. Not all were hardcore pro slavery racists. Some whites sympathize with the slaves and the free blacks, but were clever enough to do so quietly. Some whites had enough of Sandomang in fled, others vowed to fight to the very end. For the most hardcore of the French colonists, compromise was out of the question. One went so far as to declare we did not bring half a million slaves from Africa to give them liberty and citizenship.

On September the 18th, 1792, the ship Amerique arrived in Le Camp carrying three new radical commissioners, Leger Felicite, Sonthonax Etienne, Paul Verrell and Jean Antoine Ahilad. These men had written for revolutionary papers in Paris, embodying Jacobin ideas. Zonthenax, born in 1763 in Oyanax, France, was a lawyer and abolitionist firebrand driven by Enlightenment principles to end racial injustice. Paul Verrell, A Freemason and radical deputy from Leon, shared his zeal for reform. A hard less prominent rounded out the trio. They held power to suspend colonial assemblies and were accompanied by 6000 fresh French troops. Planters in Paris had tried to sabotage their mission, spreading rumours that the commissioners plan to free and arm all slaves for a general rising on arrival. The commissioners clarified they aim to grant rights only to free blacks to save slavery, not attack planters property rights. But there would be 0 tolerance for racial prejudice. Society would have only two classes, slave and free. The commissioners would not tolerate any resistance. But French colonists were not interested in the lecturing of bleeding hearts from the coffee shops of Paris who knew nothing of life in Saint Demagne.

The colonists looked to Martinique in Guadalupe, where planters had expelled officials sent from Paris who got ideas above their station and delivered one too many lectures on the so-called rights of man. Tensions continue to simmer as whites and free blacks clashed in Le Cap. The commissioner's task was predictably made harder by the fact that they found little support amongst whites. Meanwhile, in August 1792, an uprising in Paris had led to the King's suspension by the National Assembly.

A new assembly based on universal male suffrage declared France a Republic. Events spiralled out of control in France. Power concentrated in radical hands, war lubed with European rivals in San Damang, the commissioners appointed a new governor, dissolved existing assemblies and ordered new multiracial assemblies to be created. An intermediary Commission was formed, six whites and six free blacks, to administer the affairs of the colony until elections could be held by late October. The three commissioners split up to address different provinces with one allowed eventually escaping from Sandomang. Amid dangers, the commissioners decided to integrate the French and Free Black troops by placing one Free black officer in each regiment.

This caused outrage amongst French colonists and French troops alike. Fighting raged in the countryside. Atrocities and anger spilled over into the town of Le Cap, where in October 1792 a group of whites broke into a prison, killing black and pro abolition white prisoners. The integration of troops was strongly resisted, with some units refusing to accept black officers. When the troops were called together to take the oath of allegiance, many refused.

Fighting broke out between free Black and French troops, with Le Cap eventually having to be retaken by free Black and loyal French units. Outside Le Cap, bands of enslaved rebels watched warily. French operations continue pushing the rebels into the mountains. In mid January 1793, a new French commander arrived, Etienne Menard de bis Franc de Louvre, A seasoned officer born in 1751 in France but with colonial experience.

Louvre brought fresh energy, driving the rebels deeper into the mountains. Events seem to turn French forces captured several strongholds, using slash and burn tactics to deprive the insurgents of food and shelter. By day, French troops would attack. By night, free blacks assaulted rebel positions. Jean Francois and Biso struggled to coordinate their forces. Fragmented French atrocities mounted. They recruited some enslaved peoples as soldiers, while others they massacred. But victories were partial.

The rebels withdrew ever deeper into the mountains, evading total defeat. The French declared victory after victory, but peace remained elusive. In reality, enslaved forces operated freely in large swathes of the colony. The problem for the French was they simply weren't enough. Free black troops and many whites refused to join the fight, annoying French officers who died defending slavery. Arts planters demanded others bear the burden in the camp. Many planters tried to resume normal life, attending balls and markets.

But then, like a bolt from the blue news that shocked the inhabitants of the colony, free and enslaved, white and black, word reached sand demand. King Louis the 16th, the man who many slaves believed themselves to be fighting for, had been executed. This prompted Spain and Britain to declare war on France, which was already at war with Habsburg Austria. What had once been a slave rebellion in a distant French colony was about to become a theatre in a World War where the actions of black slaves struggling for their freedoms would clash with the ambitions of global superpowers. Thank you for listening to Ancient and Recent. My name is Joseph Parkinson, and next week we'll continue the story of the Haitian Revolution.

Episodes of Ancient and Recent are out every Saturday and are available on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. The.