Toussaint Louverture by Madison Smartt Bell Page B

exist, like the one organized by Macandal, a notorious maroon leader, in 1757. This conspiracy, which had the destruction of the whole white population as its goal, was foiled just before it was launched, and Macandal was captured and burned at the stake. Its specter, however, remained vividly present to the minds of men like Delribal.
    Bayon thought his rival's suspicions absurd, writing to the owner on August 18, “There is no one but the Sieur Delribal, alone, who pretends that it's poison … He has said he is Convinced of it by the testimony of the herdsmen, whom he has put to torture; finally Louis, a creole, the only one of your negroes who understands the bandaging of animals, was put in a dungeon of the prison in Le Cap; Despair moved him to Cut His Throat with a broken bottle; this unfortunate did not die on the spot, though we doubt that he will survive; another of your negroes was brought to the same extremity on your plantation; finally whatever reasonable negroes are there have been reduced to the greatest despair.” 12
    The Toussaint who would become Louverture is suggested in these lines—by his absence. By all accounts, he had acquired a famous skill in veterinary medicine by 1773. But apparently he was not one ofMonsieur de Breda's Negroes; more likely he had left Breda Plantation with his master, Bayon, with whom he would later return.
    The “reasonable” Negroes at Breda carried a complaint about Delribal's conduct to Monsieur de Breda's nephews, the brothers Noe, who owned other plantations in the area of Plaine du Nord, but got no immediate relief. Delribal (as Bayon went on reporting to the absent owner throughout the fall of 1773) continued to pursue the poison plot. Bayon notes acidly that the one material improvement Delribal had accomplished at Breda was the construction of a large torture chamber. At the sight of that, most of the adult male slaves on the plantation fled into the mountains, where they lived in
marronage
for nearly two months.
    Delribal's own lengthy report to the owner fits neatly with Bayon's accusations: “I promised him * that if he was Guilty of having made the Animals die I would pardon him if he wanted to tell me the truth, But that I wanted to Know also, In Case he was not Guilty, who were the Negroes who made them Die? With what? And from Whom did they buy the Drugs? That if he declared to me everything that I asked for, I promised him further that I would ask you to give him Liberty, but if on the Contrary he did not want to confess I would make him Suffer, and that I would leave him for the Rest of his Days in the Dungeon.” 13
    Under torture, Delribal's several victims did indeed declare to him everything that he asked for—and as he had done a good job of suggesting to them what he wanted to hear, the poison plot which he “discovered” came straight from his own morbid fantasies. “I will not Hide from you,” he wrote to the owner, “that from the Acquaintance I have had during twenty-three years I have been in Saint Domingue Of the Malice of which the Negroes are Capable, to cause to perish from poison, Whites, negroes and Animals, as they have done in the past … I Am of the persuasion that In this Malady there is something supernatural.” 14 Bayon, whose account agrees closely with Delribal's on the events (though not at all on their interpretation), confirmed in his own letters that Delribal believed that he himself was the ultimate intended victim of the poison plot—and that Delribal himself used witchcraft inhis “investigation.” “He had the simplicity to make a Magic Wand turn, which he said would let him know who were the poisoners on your plantation,” Bayon wrote, soon after Monsieur de Breda had decided to fire Delribal and restore Bayon. “It is a sad character of whom you have rid yourself.” 15
    Sad indeed, but also typical. More masters resembled Delribal than Bayon—fearful and suspicious to the point of paranoia and at least as