Étienne Maynaud de Bizefranc de Laveaux

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Étienne Maynaud de Bizefranc de Laveaux
Governor of Saint-Domingue
In office
14 October 1793 – 11 May 1796
Preceded byFrançois Galbaud du Fort
Succeeded byLéger-Félicité Sonthonax
Deputy for Saint-Domingue
In office
14 October 1795 – 13 April 1799
Deputy for Saône-et-Loire
In office
13 April 1799 – 1799
Deputy for Saône-et-Loire
In office
4 November 1820 – 24 December 1823
Personal details
Born(1751-08-08)8 August 1751
Digoin, Saône-et-Loire, France
Died12 May 1828(1828-05-12) (aged 76)
Cormatin, Saône-et-Loire, France
OccupationSoldier, politician

Étienne Maynaud de Bizefranc de Laveaux (or Mayneaud, Lavaux; 8 August 1751 – 12 May 1828) was a French general who was Governor of Saint-Domingue from 1793 to 1796 during the French Revolution. 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. After the Bourbon Restoration he was Deputy for Saône-et-Loire from 1820 to 1823.

Early years

Etienne Mayneaud Bizefranc de Laveaux was born on 8 August 1751 in Digoin, Saône-et-Loire, France. His parents were Hugues Mayneaud, Seigneur de Bizefranc, Tavau, Pancemont (1716–1781), Receiver of the King's Farms, and Marie Jeanne de Baudoin de Lavaux. He was the third of six children born between 1749 and 1756.[1] He joined the army, and became a captain in the dragoons before 1789.[2]

Revolutionary period

Military leader

Laveaux was promoted to squadron leader in 1790, and became a general councillor for Saône-et-Loire that year.[2] He was a lieutenant-colonel in 1791. In 1792 he arrived in Saint-Domingue with the commissioners Léger-Félicité Sonthonax and Étienne Polverel, and took charge of the northwest part of the colony, based in Port-de-Paix.[3] When the commissioners arrived they found that many of the white planters were hostile to the increasingly radical revolutionary movement and were joining the royalist opposition. The commissioners announced that they did not intend to abolish slavery, but had come to ensure that free men had equal rights whatever their color.[4] In October news arrived that the king had been suspended and France was now a republic.[5]

A confused three-way struggle began between the whites, free people of color and rebel slaves.[6] 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.[7] That month Louis XVI was executed in Paris, and in February Spain and Britain declared war on France.[8] Around May 1793 a new governor, François-Thomas Galbaud du Fort, arrived in the colony.[9] In May or June 1793 Toussaint Louverture contacted Laveaux and proposed "avenues of reconciliation", but they were rejected.[10] In August 1793 Sonthonax and Polverel issued a decree abolishing slavery. A month later the first British troops landed in Saint-Domingue, to be welcomed by royalist white planters and troops.[11]

Acting governor of Saint-Domingue

Haiti, formerly Saint-Domingue. Cap-Français is now called Cap-Haïtien

Laveaux was governor general of Saint-Domingue during a crucial period of its history, from 15 September 1793 to 19 October 1796.[12] Laveaux was formally appointed acting governor of Saint-Domingue on 14 October 1793.[3] 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.[13] On 5 May 1794 Laveaux sent a letter to Louverture asking him to leave the Spanish and join the French Republicans. Louverture accepted in his reply of 18 May 1794.[14] 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."[15]

With Louverture's change of allegiance, the line of military posts from Gonaïves to the border with Spanish Santo Domingo came under French control, greatly improving their position with respect to the British to the south of that line. 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.[16] The British decided to impose British laws in their part of Saint Domingue, including racially discriminatory laws, and the free-coloreds in the area began to turn against them. 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".[17]

Alexandre Lebas and Victor Hugues, the commissioners of Guadeloupe, heard of the Thermidor upheavals (July 1794) in which the Jacobins lost power. They hastened to affirm their non-partisan loyalty to the Republic. They pointed out that in Guadeloupe they had accomplished the liberation of the slaves without trouble, whereas in Saint-Domingue most of the former slaves had abandoned the plantations and the situation was still disturbed. Laveaux had also failed to expel the British from Saint-Domingue.[18] In 1794 the commissioners Sonthonax and Polverel returned to Paris to answer charges from the exiled planters concerning their emancipation decree.[19] When Sonthonax left the colony, Laveaux technically became the most senior of the French leaders.[16]

Laveaux was promoted to divisional general on 25 May 1795.[3] As governor he ensured that the abolition of slavery proclaimed in 4 February 1794 was put into effect, and organized the integration of former slaves into the republican society of Saint-Domingue.[3] On 22 Vendemiaire, year IV (14 October 1795) he was appointed to the Council of Ancients as deputy for Saint-Domingue.[2] In 1796 Jean Villatte, a mulatto general in command of the northern military department, attempted a coup against Laveaux. Laveaux and his aides-de-camp were imprisoned on 20 March 1796. A week later Toussaint marched on Cap-Français and freed him. In return Laveaux appointed Toussaint Lieutenant-General to the Government of Saint-Domingue.[3]

Return to France

Later in 1796 Louverture suggested that as Saint-Domingue's deputy in the French National Convention, Laveaux should return to France to could fight the growing pro-slavery lobby in Paris. Laveaux agreed, and left the island in October 1796.[20] On 24 Germinal year VII (13 April 1799) Laveaux was unanimously reelected to the Council of Ancients for the department of Saone-et-Loire with 248 votes.[2] He sat there until 1799, defending the policy of Toussaint Louverture.[3] 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."[21]

Directory and Empire

Château de Cormatin

Laveaux was Commissioner of the Directory in Guadeloupe and its agent in Saint-Domingue in 1799.[2] He was quickly arrested for being too sympathetic to the blacks.[3] The First Consul Napoleon dismissed Laveaux from office in 1801, and he played no further role under the empire. During this period of forced retirement he acquired the Château de Cormatin, which he renovated.[3]

Deputy

Under the second Bourbon Restoration, in the second legislature Mayneaud Bizefranc de Laveaux was deputy for the department of Saône-et-Loire from 4 November 1820 to 24 December 1823. He represented the first district of Saône-et-Loire (Mâcon). He sat on the left, voted with the constitutional opposition, and vigorously defended the rights of the old army.[2]

Laveaux died in the Château de Cormatin on 12 May 1828, in Cormatin, Saône-et-Loire.[2][3] A commemorative plaque at the entrance to Cormatin Castle says that General Laveaux played a vital role in the insurrection of the slaves of Saint-Domingue that was followed by the first victory of a slave revolt leading to the creation of the first black republic in history with Haiti on 1 January 1804.[3] His voluminous correspondence with Toussaint-Louverture has been preserved and is a major source of information for historians of the period.[12]

Notes

  1. ^ Tina Gaquer.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Robert & Cougny 1889.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Mémoire d'Etienne Maynaud de Lavaux.
  4. ^ Dubois 2009, p. 144.
  5. ^ Dubois 2009, p. 145.
  6. ^ Dubois 2009, p. 146.
  7. ^ Dubois 2009, p. 147.
  8. ^ Dubois 2009, p. 152.
  9. ^ Dubois 2009, p. 155.
  10. ^ Dubois 2009, p. 177.
  11. ^ Forsdick & Høgsbjerg 2017, p. 54.
  12. ^ a b Gainot 1989, p. 433.
  13. ^ Forsdick & Høgsbjerg 2017, p. 58.
  14. ^ Dubois 2009, p. 179.
  15. ^ Forsdick & Høgsbjerg 2017, p. 59.
  16. ^ a b Bell 2007, p. 159.
  17. ^ Dubois 2009, p. 181.
  18. ^ Cormack 2019, p. 208.
  19. ^ Forsdick & Høgsbjerg 2017, p. 61.
  20. ^ Forsdick & Høgsbjerg 2017, p. 69.
  21. ^ Horn, Lewis & Onuf 2002, pp. 296–297.

Sources

  • Bell, Madison Smartt (18 December 2007), Master of the Crossroads, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, ISBN 978-0-307-42679-6, retrieved 31 October 2019
  • Cormack, William S. (1 January 2019), Patriots, Royalists, and Terrorists in the West Indies: The French Revolution in Martinique and Guadeloupe, 1789-1802, University of Toronto Press, ISBN 978-1-4875-0395-6, retrieved 31 October 2019
  • Dubois, Laurent (30 June 2009), Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution, Harvard University Press, ISBN 978-0-674-03436-5, retrieved 31 October 2019
  • Forsdick, Charles; Høgsbjerg, Christian (2017), Toussaint Louverture : A Black Jacobin in the Age of Revolutions, Pluto Press, retrieved 2019-10-31
  • Gainot, Bernard (October–December 1989), "Le Général Laveaux Gouverneur de Saint-Domingue Député Néo-Jacobin", Annales historiques de la Révolution française (278), Armand Colin, retrieved 2019-10-31{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date format (link)
  • Horn, James J.; Lewis, Jan Ellen; Onuf, Peter S. (29 December 2002), The Revolution of 1800: Democracy, Race, and the New Republic, University of Virginia Press, ISBN 978-0-8139-2413-7
  • "Mémoire d'Etienne Maynaud de Lavaux", Mémoires des abolitions de l'Esclavage (in French), retrieved 2019-10-31
  • Robert, Adolphe; Cougny, Gaston (1889), "Etienne Mayneaud Bizefranc de Lavaux", Dictionnaire des parlementaires français de 1789 à 1889 (in French), Paris: Bourloton, retrieved 2019-10-30
  • Tina Gaquer, "Etienne Mayneaud Bizefranc de Lavaux", Geneanet (in French), retrieved 2019-10-31
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