Louverture, François-Dominique-Toussaint

(ca. 1743-1803) (Toussaint Bréda)

   Haitian revolutionary leader, military genius

   Born in Haut-du-Cap on the Bréda Plantation in Saint-Domingue, the French colony on the island of Hispaniola that became independent Haiti, François-Dominique-Toussaint Louverture was a freed black slave who formed an insurgent band against French rule on the island (1791) and then entered the service of Spain. He came over to the service of France in 1794, after the proclamation abolishing slavery issued during the revolution of 1789 and succeeded in driving British invaders from Saint-Domingue (1798). He proclaimed the island's autonomy within the French Republic (1801). But Napoléon Bonaparte, as First Consul, sent against Saint Domingue a corps of 20,000 troops under General charles leclerc to restore French authority as well as slavery. Taken by surprise, Louverture was arrested, sent to France, and interned in the Fort de Joux, in the Jura Mountains, where he died from the rigors of the climate. Some scholars attribute his surname Louverture, or "L'Ouverture" ("the opening"), to the breaches that he opened in the ranks of the enemy; some to a gap in his teeth. Very aware of his valor and merit, Louverture did not hesitate to send a letter to Bonaparte with the opening words: "From the First of the Blacks to the First of the Whites."