Étienne Maynaud de Bizefranc de Laveaux
He ensured that the law that freed the slaves was enforced, and supported the black leader Toussaint Louverture, who later established the independent republic of Haiti.
[3] He arrived in Saint-Domingue on 19 September 1792 with the civil commissioners Léger-Félicité Sonthonax and Étienne Polverel as lieutenant-colonel in command of a detachment of 200 men of the 16th regiment of dragoons.
[5] The commissioners found that many of the white planters were hostile to the increasingly radical revolutionary movement and were joining the royalist opposition.
[8] His commander, General Rochambeau, praised his conduct in taking the fort of Ouanaminthe on the Spanish border in the northeast, which was being held by black slaves in revolt.
Some of the troops helped the white settlers restore the slave order in the city, while others, particularly those under Laveaux, supported the civil commissioners and wanted to protect the mulattoes, a prime target of the planters.
[9] In January 1793 Laveux led a force that included free-colored troops against slave insurgents in the town of Milot and drove them back into the mountains.
[12] François-Thomas Galbaud du Fort was appointed Governor General of Saint-Domingue on 6 February 1793 in place of Jean-Jacques d'Esparbes.
[22] Laveaux was appointed governor general in an acting role until the French government confirmed Sonthonax's choice.
[21] Laveaux made contact with the French chargé d'affaires in Charleston, South Carolina, who supplied some food and powder at the end of 1793.
[25] The French government's decree of 16 Pluviôse an II (4 February 1794) freed the slaves, and news of this historic event reached Saint-Domingue in May 1794.
[27] On 24 May 1794 Laveaux wrote to Polverel that "Toussaint Louverture, one of the three chiefs of the African royalists, in coalition with the Spanish Government, has at last discovered his true interests and that of his brothers; he has realized that kings can never be the friends of liberty; he fights today for the Republic at the head of an armed force.
Laveaux was able to move from his confined position at Port-de-Paix to the northern capital of Cap Français (Cap-Haïtien), now a mulatto stronghold under Jean Villatte.
Laveaux told them they would be better off under Republican rule, and also warned the free-colored in Saint-Marc that if they did not surrender he would tell Louverture to sack the town, only sparing the "former slaves".
[31] Alexandre Lebas and Victor Hugues, the commissioners of Guadeloupe, heard of the Thermidor upheavals (July 1794) in which the Jacobins lost power.
[34] As governor Laveaux ensured that the abolition of slavery proclaimed on 4 February 1794 was put into effect, and organized the integration of former slaves into the republican society of Saint-Domingue.
[4] Jean Villatte, the mulatto general in command of the northern military department, attempted a coup against Laveaux, and imprisoned him and his aides-de-camp on 20 March 1796.
[8] Later in 1796 Louverture suggested that as Saint-Domingue's deputy in the French National Convention, Laveaux should return to France to fight the growing pro-slavery lobby in Paris.
[36] In February 1799 on the fifth anniversary of the act that liberated the slaves, Laveaux proclaimed: On 16 Pluviôse, the Republic achieved a conquest of a kind that until then was unknown.
She conquered, or rather created, for the human race, through a single strong and precise idea, a million new beings, and in doing so expanded the family of man.
"[37]On 24 Germinal year VII (13 April 1799) Laveaux was unanimously reelected to the Council of Ancients for the department of Saône-et-Loire with 248 votes.
