Everything about Sonthonax totally explained
Léger-Félicité Sonthonax (1763 – 1813) was a
French Jacobin and
abolitionist during the
French Revolution who controlled the 7,000 French troops sent to
Saint-Domingue during the
Haitian Revolution. He believed that Saint-Domingue's whites were
royalists or
separatists and therefore he established a Jacobian
Jacobin reign of terror in
Haiti which destroyed white military power and alienated the
colonial settlers. Although he didn't originally intend to free the slaves, by October of 1793 he was forced into ending slavery in order to maintain his power.
Early life
Born in
Oyonnax,
France as the son of a prosperous merchant, Sonthonax was a
lawyer in the
Parlement in
Paris who rose in the ranks during the
French Revolution. A member of the
Society of the Friends of the Blacks, he became connected with
Jacques Pierre Brissot and subsequently aligned himself with the
Girondists.
Mission
In 1792, Sonthonax was sent to the
colony of
Saint-Domingue (now
Haïti) as part of the Revolutionary Commission. His main goal was to maintain French control of Saint-Domingue and enforce the
social equality recently granted to free
people of color by the
National Convention.
In August of the year before, a
slave rebellion (the
Haïtian Revolution) had broken out in the
northern part of Saint-Domingue, the heart of the island's sugar
plantation economy. Saint-Domingue was also wracked by conflict between the
White colonists and free people of colour (many of whom were of mixed race), and also between those supportive of the French Revolution and those for a reestablishment of the
Ancien Régime — or failing that for Saint-Domingue's independence.
On April 4, 1792, the France's
Legislative Assembly had voted to give full citizenship to all free people of color. The legislators charged Sonthonax and his fellow commissioners with enforcing this controversial law, reestablishing French control of Saint-Domingue, and inducing the slaves to return to the plantations.
Sonthonax found on his arrival that some whites and free people of color were already cooperating against the slave rebels. He did exile many radical whites who wouldn't accept free coloreds as equals and managed to contain the slave insurgency outside of the North.
Conflict with Britain and abolition
In February 1793 France on the
Kingdom of Great Britain, which presented a new problem for Sonthonax. All those he'd alienated in trying to uphold the French Revolution in Saint-Domingue could now flock to the banner of Britain, which held the nearby island of
Jamaica and was giving shelter to French counter-revolutionary
émigrés. On August 29, 1793, Sonthonax took the radical step of proclaiming the freedom of the slaves in the north province (with severe limits on their freedom). In September and October, emancipation was extended throughout the colony. On February 4, 1794 the French National Convention, to the eternal honour of the French Republic, ratified this act, applying it to all French colonies, most notably
Guadeloupe. Emancipation was one of the most momentous events in the history of the Americas.
The slaves didn't immediately join to Sonthonax's side, however. White colonists continued to fight Sonthonax, with assistance from the British. They were joined by many of the free men of color who opposed the abolition of slavery. It wasn't until word of France's ratification of emancipation arrived back in the colony that
Toussaint Louverture and his corps of well-disciplined, battle-hardened former slaves came over to the French Republican side in early May 1794.
A change in the political winds back home caused Sonthonax to be recalled to France to defend his actions. When he returned in spring, 1796, he argued that the free people of colour, whom he'd been originally sent to defend, were no longer loyal to France, and that the Republic should place its faith in the freed slaves. Vindicated, Sonthonax returned to Saint-Domingue a second time.
Comte d'Hédouville was sent by France to be governor of the island but was eventually forced to flee.
Death and legacy
Toussaint, in the meantime, was consolidating his own position. The black general arranged for Sonthonax to leave Saint-Domingue as one of its elected representatives in 1797, and when on Sonthonax showed himself to be hesitant, Toussaint placed him under armed escort onto a ship bound for France on August 24. He died in his home town 16 years later.
Léger-Félicité Sonthonax is a controversial figure of the
Haïtian Revolution. His critics (including historians sympathetic to Toussaint,
Jean-Jacques Dessalines or
André Rigaud) have denounced him as being vain, power-hungry and duplicitous.
Thomas Madiou, one of Haïti's most famous historians, writing in the middle of the 19th century, reported that old people in his day spoke very well of Sonthonax.
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