Toussaint Louverture

Rise To PowerToussaint was the son of an educated slave; he acquired

through Jesuit contacts some knowledge of French, though he wrote and spoke it poorly, usually employing Haitian Creole and African tribal language. Winning the favour of the plantation manager, he became a livestock handler, healer, coachman, and finally steward. Legally freed in 1776, he married and had two sons. Toussaint was homely, short, and small framed. He was a fervent Roman Catholic, opposed to Vodou (Voodoo). He dressed simply and was abstemious and a vegetarian. Although he slept little, his energy and capacity for work were astonishing.

When a sudden slave revolt began in the northern province (August 1791) and soon spread to encompass thousands of slaves across the colony, Toussaint was at first uncommitted. After hesitating a few weeks, he helped his former master escape and then joined the black forces who were burning plantations and killing many Europeans and mulattoes (people of mixed African and European ancestry). He soon discerned the ineptitude of the rebel leaders and scorned their willingness to compromise with European radicals. Collecting an army of his own, Toussaint trained his followers in the tactics of guerrilla warfare. In 1793 he added to his original name the name of Louverture; the name’s exact significance is unknown, but its meaning in French, “opening,” may have referred to his tactical ability as a military commander.

When France and Spain went to war in 1793, the black commanders joined the Spaniards of Santo Domingo, the eastern two-thirds of Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic). Knighted and recognized as a general, Toussaint demonstrated extraordinary military ability and attracted such renowned warriors as his nephew Moïse and two future monarchs of Haiti, Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henry Christophe. Toussaint’s victories in the north, together with mulatto successes in the south and British occupation of the coasts, brought the French close to disaster.

Yet, in May 1794, Toussaint went over to the French, giving as his reasons that the French National Convention had recently freed all slaves, while Spain and Britain refused, and that he had become a republican. He has been criticized for the duplicity of his dealings with his onetime allies and for a slaughter of Spaniards at a mass. His switch was decisive: the governor of Saint-Domingue, Étienne Laveaux, made Toussaint lieutenant governor; the British suffered severe reverses; and the Spaniards were expelled.

By 1795 Toussaint Louverture was widely renowned. He was adored by blacks and appreciated by most Europeans and mulattoes, for he did much to restore the economy. Defying French Revolutionary laws, he allowed many émigré planters to return, and he used military discipline to force the former slaves to work. Convinced that people were naturally corrupt, he felt that compulsion was needed to prevent idleness. Yet the labourers were no longer whipped: they were legally free and equal, and they shared the profits of the restored plantations. Racial tensions were eased because Toussaint preached reconciliation and believed that blacks, a majority of whom were African born, had to learn from Europeans and Europeanized mulattoes.

Command Of HispaniolaControlling all Saint-Domingue, Toussaint turned to Spanish Santo

Domingo, where slavery persisted. Ignoring commands to the contrary by Roume and by Napoleon Bonaparte, who had become first consul of France, Toussaint overran it in January 1801, freed the slaves, and amazed the Europeans and mulattoes with his magnanimity.

In command of the entire island, Toussaint dictated a constitution that made him governor-general for life with near absolute powers. Catholicism

was the state religion, and many revolutionary principles received ostensible sanction. There was no provision for a French official, however, because Toussaint professed himself a Frenchman and strove to convince Bonaparte of his loyalty. He also described his success in restoring order and prosperity in epistles that, like all his writings, were ungrammatical yet testify to the grasp, incisiveness, and depth of a formidable intellect.Bonaparte had confirmed Toussaint Louverture’s position but saw him as an obstacle to the restoration of Saint-Domingue as a profitable colony. Toussaint knew Bonaparte despised blacks and planned to reinstitute slavery. He was also aware that Bonaparte would seek to intimidate the island upon making peace with England; therefore, he drilled a huge army and stored supplies.

Yet Toussaint behaved ambiguously: venerating France, fearing Bonaparte, aging and growing weary, he trusted no one and failed to clarify his purposes. He desired above all to prevent a restoration of slavery while preserving the society he had built. Europeans and mulattoes looked hopefully to France to repress the huge black majority; on the other hand, many black leaders, such as Moïse, wanted to expel all Europeans and divide the plantations. Some blacks were alienated by Toussaint’s perfidiesand equivocations, his mysteriousness, and the occasional atrocities he thought necessary amid such dangers.

A French invasion under Gen. Charles Leclerc began in January 1802 in far greater force than expected. Most Europeans and mulattoes defected to him; after a few weeks of furious fighting, the chief black leaders, even Christophe and Dessalines, sided with Leclerc as well. In May Toussaint formally agreed to lay down his arms in exchange for Leclerc’s promise not to restore slavery.

Toussaint retired in honour to a plantation. A few weeks later, in June, he was invited to a parley by a French general, Jean-Baptiste Brunet, under false pretenses. With the cooperation of Leclerc and under orders from Napoleon, who suspected him of plotting an uprising, Toussaint was seized at Brunet’s home and sent to Fort-de-Joux in the French Jura Mountains, where he was confined and interrogated repeatedly and where he died in April 1803.

Simón Bolívar

Early LifeThe son of a Venezuelan aristocrat of Spanish descent, Bolívar was

born to wealth and position. His father died when the boy was three years old, and his mother died six years later, after which his uncle administered his inheritance and provided him with tutors. One of those tutors, Simón Rodríguez, was to have a deep and lasting effect on him. Rodríguez, a disciple of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, introduced Bolívar to the world of 18th-century liberal thought.

At the age of 16, Bolívar was sent to Europe to complete his education. For three years he lived in Spain, and in 1801 he married the daughter of a Spanish nobleman, with whom he returned to Caracas. The young bride died of yellow fever less than a year after their marriage. Bolívar believed that her tragic death was the reason that he took up a political career while still a young man.

In 1804, when Napoleon I was approaching the pinnacle of his career, Bolívar returned to Europe. In Paris, under the renewed guidance of his friend and tutor Rodríguez, he steeped himself in the writings of European rationalist

thinkers such as John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Georges-Louis Leclerc, count de Buffon, Jean le Rond d’Alembert, and Claude-Adrien Helvétius, as well as Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. The latter two had the deepest influence on his political life, but Voltaire coloured his philosophy of life. In Paris he met the German scientist Alexander von Humboldt, who had just returned from his voyage through Hispanic America and told Bolívar that he believed the Spanish colonies were ripe for independence. That idea took root in Bolívar’s imagination, and, on a trip to Rome with Rodríguez, as they stood on the heights of Monte Sacro, he made a vow to liberate his country.

One other experience enriched his intellect at that time: he watched the extraordinary performance that culminated in Napoleon’s coronation in 1804 as emperor of the French. Bolívar’s reaction to the coronation wavered between admiration of the accomplishments of a single man and revulsion at Napoleon’s betrayal of the ideals of the French Revolution. The desire for glory was one of the permanent traits in Bolívar’s character, and there can be little doubt that it was stimulated by Napoleon. The example of Napoleon was, nevertheless, a warning that Bolívar heeded. In his later days he always insisted that the title of “liberator” was higher than any other and that he would not exchange it for that of king or emperor. In 1807 he returned to Venezuela by way of the United States, visiting the eastern cities.

Independence MovementThe Latin American independence movement was launched a year after

Bolívar’s return, as Napoleon’s invasion of Spain unsettled Spanish authority. Napoleon also failed completely in his attempt to gain the support of the Spanish colonies, which claimed the right to nominate their own officials. Following the example of the mother country, they wished to establish juntas to rule in the name of the deposed Spanish king. Many of the Spanish settlers, however, saw in those events an opportunity to sever their ties with Spain.

Bolívar himself participated in various conspiratorial meetings, and on April 19, 1810, the Spanish governor was officially deprived of his powers and expelled from Venezuela. A junta took over. To obtain help, Bolívar was sent on a mission to London, where he arrived in July. His assignment was to explain to England the plight of the revolutionary colony, to gain recognition

for it, and to obtain arms and support. Although he failed in his official negotiations, his English sojourn was in other respects a fruitful one. It gave him an opportunity to study the institutions of the United Kingdom, which remained for him models of political wisdom and stability. More important, he fostered the cause of the revolution by persuading the exiled Venezuelan Francisco de Miranda, who in 1806 had attempted to liberate his country single-handedly, to return to Caracas and assume command of the independence movement.

Venezuela was in ferment. In March 1811 a national congress met in Caracas to draft a constitution. Bolívar, though not a delegate, threw himself into the debate that aroused the country. In the first public speech of his career, he declared, “Let us lay the cornerstone of American freedom without fear. To hesitate is to perish.” After long deliberation, the national assembly declared Venezuela’s independence on July 5, 1811. Bolívar now entered the army of the young republic, whose commander in chief was Miranda, and was placed in charge of Puerto Cabello, a port on the Caribbean Sea west of Caracas that was vital to Venezuela. In the short time since their London meeting, he and Miranda had drifted apart. Miranda called Bolívar a “dangerous youth,” and Bolívar had misgivings about the aging general’s abilities. Treasonable action by one of Bolívar’s officers opened the fortress to the Spanish forces, and Miranda, the commander in chief, entered into

negotiations with the Spanish commander in chief. An armistice was signed (July 1812) that left the entire country at the mercy of Spain. Miranda was turned over to the Spaniards—after Bolívar and others prevented his escape from Venezuela—and spent the rest of his life in Spanish dungeons.

Determined to continue the struggle, Bolívar obtained a passport to leave the country and went to Cartagena in New Granada. There he published the first of his great political statements, El manifiesto de Cartagena (“The Cartagena Manifesto”), in which he attributed the fall of Venezuela’s First Republic to the lack of strong government and called for a united revolutionary effort to destroy the power of Spain in the Americas.

With backing from the patriots of New Granada, Bolívar led an expeditionary force to retake Venezuela. In a sweeping hard-fought campaign, he vanquished the royalists in six pitched battles and on August 6, 1813, entered Caracas. He was given the title of Liberator and assumed political dictatorship. The war of independence was just beginning, however. The majority of the people of Venezuela were hostile to the forces of independence and weary of the sacrifices imposed. A cruel civil war broke out, and Bolívar himself resorted to extreme measures, such as the shooting of prisoners. His severity failed in its object.

Liberation Of New GranadaYears of indecisive defeats and victories followed. In 1817 Bolívar

decided to set up headquarters in the Orinoco River region, which had not been devastated by war and from which the Spaniards could not easily oust him. He engaged the services of several thousand foreign soldiers and officers, mostly British and Irish, established his capital at Angostura (now Ciudad Bolívar), began to publish a newspaper, and established a liaisonwith the revolutionary forces of the plains, including one group led by José Antonio Páez and another group led by Francisco de Paula Santander. In spring 1819 he conceived his master plan of attacking the Viceroyalty of New Granada.

Bolívar’s attack on New Granada is considered one of the most daring in military history. The route of the small army (about 2,500 men, including the British legion) led through the plains, but it was the rainy season, and the rivers had become lakes. For seven days, according to one of Bolívar’s aides, they marched in water up to their waists. Ten navigable rivers were crossed, most of them in cowhide boats. The journey through the plains seemed child’s

play, however, in comparison with their ascent of the Andes Mountains that stood between Bolívar and the city of Bogotá. Bolívar had chosen to cross the cordillera at the pass of Pisba, which the Spanish considered an inconceivable approach.

An icy wind blew across the heights of the pass, and many of the scantily clad troops died of cold and exposure. The fatigue and loss, however, were more than outweighed by the advantage gained in descending unopposed into New Granada. The Spaniards were taken by surprise, and in the crucial Battle of Boyacá on August 7, 1819, the bulk of the royalist army surrendered to Bolívar. Three days later he entered Bogotá. That action was the turning point in the history of northern South America.Indefatigably, Bolívar set out to complete his task. He appointed Santander vice president in charge of the administration and in December 1819 made his appearance before the congress that had assembled in Angostura. Bolívar was made president and military dictator. He urged the legislators to proclaim the creation of a new state; three days later the Republic of Colombia, usually called Gran Colombia, was established, comprising the three departments of New Granada (now the countries of Colombia and Panama), Venezuela, and Quito (Ecuador). Since most of that territory was still under royalist control, it was largely a paper achievement. Bolívar knew, however, that victory was finally within his grasp.

Early in 1820 a revolution in Spain forced the Spanish king, Ferdinand VII, to recognize the ideals of liberalism on the home front, an action that discouraged the Spanish forces in South America. Bolívar persuaded Morillo to open armistice negotiations, and the two warriors met in a memorable encounter at Santa Ana, Venezuela, signing in November 1820 a treaty that ended hostilities for a six-month period.

When fighting was resumed, Bolívar found it easy, with his superior manpower, to defeat the Spanish forces in Venezuela. The Battle of Carabobo (June 1821) opened the gates of Caracas, and Bolívar’s Venezuelan homeland was at last free. In the autumn of the same year, a congress convened in Cúcuta to draft a constitution for Gran Colombia. Its provisions disappointed Bolívar. Although he had been elected president, he thought the constitution was too liberal in character to guarantee the survival of his creation. As long as more-urgent assignments claimed his attention, however, he was willing to put up with its weak structure. Putting the administration in Santander’s hands, he left to continue his military campaign.

The effort to liberate Ecuador lasted about a year. Bolívar was assisted by the most brilliant of his officers, Antonio José de Sucre. While Bolívar engaged the Spaniards in the mountains that defended the northern access to Quito, capital of Ecuador, Sucre marched from the Pacific Ocean coast to the interior. At Pichincha on May 24, 1822, he won a victory that freed Ecuador from the Spanish yoke. On the following day the capital fell, and Bolívar joined forces with Sucre on June 16.

Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, (born May 8, 1753, Corralejo, near Guanajuato, Mexico—died July 30, 1811, Chihuahua), Roman Catholic priest and revolutionary leader who is called the father of Mexican independence.

Hidalgo was the second child born to Cristóbal Hidalgo and his wife. He studied at a Jesuit secondary school, received a bachelor’s degree in theology and philosophy in 1773 from San Nicolás College (now Michoacán University of San Nicolás de Hidalgo) in Valladolid (now Morelia), and was ordained a

priest in 1778. He had an uneventful early career, but in 1803 Hidalgo assumed his recently deceased elder brother’s duties as parish priest in Dolores (now Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato state). His interest in the economic advancement of his parishioners—for example, through the introduction of newer methods of agriculture—and his political convictions regarding the oppression of the people by the Spanish authorities caused the latter to regard him with suspicion.

In 1808 Spain was invaded by French troops, and Napoleon I forced the abdication of King Ferdinand VII in favour of the French emperor’s brother Joseph Bonaparte. Though Spanish officials in Mexico were loath to oppose the new king, many Mexicans formed secret societies—some supporting Ferdinand, others advocating independence from Spain. Hidalgo belonged to a pro-independence group in San Miguel (now San Miguel de Allende), near Dolores. When the plot was betrayed to the Spanish, several members were arrested. Warned to flee, Hidalgo decided instead to act promptly. On September 16, 1810, he rang the church bell in Dolores to call his parishioners to an announcement of revolution against the Spanish. His speech was not only an encouragement to revolt but a cry for racial equality and the redistribution of land. It became known as the Grito de Dolores (“Cry of Dolores”).

What he began in San Miguel as a movement for independence became a social and economic war of the masses against the upper classes. Joined by thousands of Indians and mestizos, Hidalgo marched forth from Dolores under the banner of Our Lady of Guadalupe. With his followers he captured the city of Guanajuato and other major cities west of Mexico City. Soon Hidalgo was at the gates of the capital, but he hesitated, and the opportunity was lost. His followers melted away. Royalists as well as other elements in Mexico were frightened by the prospect of social upheaval and supported the suppression of the rebellion. After his defeat at Calderón Bridge, outside Guadalajara, on January 17, 1811, Hidalgo fled north, hoping to escape into the United States. He was caught, expelled from the priesthood, and executed by firing squad as a rebel.

Though his accomplishments were not lasting ones, Hidalgo’s name became the symbol of the independence movement for most Mexicans. September 16, the anniversary of the Grito de Dolores, is now celebrated as Mexico’s Independence Day.