They landed at the quays in Commodore Loring’s barge, a rather more impressive conveyance than any of their captains’ gigs, with her oarsmen tricked out in snowy white slop-trousers, shirts and stockings, flat tarred hats with fluttering long ribbons painted with the name of Loring’s flagship, in fresh-blacked shoes with silver-plated buckles, and dark-blue short jackets with polished brass buttons.
And, just in case, with cutlasses, muskets, and pistols stowed out of sight under water-proof tarred tarpaulins in the boat’s sole!
They, and their white flag of truce, were met by a guard of honour, and a fellow who introduced himself as a Colonel who spoke fluent, almost Parisian, French, and heavily accented English. The soldiers of the guard, warm though it was, were accoutred as well as any soldiers that Lewrie had seen in Paris during the Peace of Amiens, from their brass-trimmed shakoes to their trousers, with dark blue tail-coats and white waist-coats, white-leather crossbelts with brass plates shining. None wore stockings or shoes, though.
The Colonel, by name of Mirabois, wore a fore-and-aft bicorne hat with an egret plume and lots of gold lace, a snug double-breasted uniform coat with lavish gilt acanthus leaves embroidered on pocket flaps, his sleeve cuffs, and the stiff standing collars of the coat.
Sweat himself t’death, in all that wool, Lewrie thought.
“Bonjour, messieurs! Vous ’ave come to surrender to us, oui?
“Er, ehm… what?” Captain Bligh gawped, taken by surprise.
“Ze tout petite plaisanterie, ha ha? Ze wee jest?”
“Oh. Ha ha. I see, ehm,” Bligh flummoxed. “Commodore Loring, ehm… our Commodore in command of His Britannic Majesty’s squadron now lying off Cap Francois, has directed us to deliver a proposal to your General Dessalines, and a request to speak with him, should that be possible,” Bligh explained in halting schoolboy French.
As nigh-illiterate as me, Lewrie thought, noting how Captain Barre, their resident critic, pursed his lips and almost grimaced to hear it. Bligh was surely senior to him, else Barre would have been the one to conduct the negotiations. And was certain that he would’ve been more effective at it. He was frowning like an irate tutor at his student’s lack of fluency!
Bligh introduced them all, then waited, his document held out in expectation that it would be accepted, and whisked off to Dessalines, instanter. In the short period of their landing and introductions, a substantial crowd of the curious had gathered; poor field slaves still in the cheap nankeen short trousers and loose smocks of slavery, their women in shapeless longer smocks, and the children in barely any garments at all. Many of them had cane-cutter knives or machetes shoved into rough rope belts… or in their hands. Ominously, some of the better-garbed looters in incongruous finery, and better-armed with captured muskets or pistols, joined them, muttering and scowling.
French, English… bloody Russians, Lewrie thought with a bit of rising dread; We’re White… their blood enemies. This could get very ugly!
“Messieurs, I leave ze guard pour votre boat, oui? Et, I will escort vous au Le Tigre, ’is own face,” Colonel Mirabois offered, then turned and barked orders to his men. A round dozen of his soldiers formed a protective line to protect the barge, its wide-eyed Midshipman, Coxswain, and oarsmen, at the head of the quay, and another dozen formed to either side of their party.
Like prisoners, off t’the guillotine or firin’ squad, Lewrie imagined, with (it must be admitted) a bit of a chill shudder.
A Black sergeant gleefully called a fast “heep-heep” pace as they were marched off to see “Le Tigre,” Dessalines, face-to-face.
“Think they’d’ve laid on some horses,” Captain Bligh whispered from the side of his mouth, panting a bit at the pace.
“Already ate ’em, most-like,” Lewrie whispered back, unable to quell his sense of humour, no matter the risk they faced. “And, how come there’s still so many Whites ashore, I wonder?” he pointed out.
It was uncanny; it was downright eerie, that long march through the littered streets. Now they were under official escort, the Blacks and lighter Mulattoes stood and scowled at the strange officers, with no sound; no jeering or hooting as they’d heard at the quays. Around the edges of the crowds stood White French colonists, men, women, and children; Lewrie could pick out the ones he imagined had been wealthy planters and slave owners, rich traders and exporters, by the finery of their clothing. The grands blancs, Lewrie recalled their being called. The others, though… the ones in humbler suits or working-men’s garb, with their women in simpler, drabber gowns, and the children in the same sort of hand-me-down “shabby” one could see in poorer neighbourhoods in England, were the artificers, the shopkeepers, the greengrocers, fruiterers, and skilled labourers, the petits blancs who might never have been able to aspire to owning slaves.
What had Jemmy Peel told him, when in the West Indies on Foreign Office Secret Branch doings in the ’90s and sniffing about how to undermine the French, the slave rebellion, or both?
Saint Domingue, or Hayti, was a bubbling cauldron of rebellion; poor Whites versus their betters; Mulattoes versus darker, illiterate field hands; house servants siding with masters in some cases, murdering them in others. Petits blancs then siding with Mulattoes like General Rigaud down south round Jacmel to fight L’Ouverture, Dessalines, and the others… and all wrenched from time to time by siding with the French if they’d seemed to have the upper hand, with the British when their own army had landed, even looking for shelter and security by allying themselves with the Spanish in the other half of Hispaniola, if that looked better!
“Uhm… Colonel Mirabois,” Lewrie asked, at last, his curiosity aroused, “I note a fair number of… blancs still in the city. Were they not able to find space aboard the ships?”
“Mais oui, M’sieur Capitaine… Le… pardon, seulement, votre name I cannot say, ees tres difficile, n’est-ce pas?” Mirabois laughed rather drolly as he explained. “Zey refuse place in ze ships, m’sieur! ’Ave been born here…’ave property et business interests, comprend? Hayti ees open to ze trade, so zey make… accommodation. Wis ze ozzer blancs ’oo go away, Hayti ’ave need of zem, so…,” he said, shrugging in very Gallic fashion.
“Incredible,” was all that Lewrie could think to say.
“Ze blancs ’oo stay, zey know z’ings we pauvre Noirs do not,” Mirabois said further. “ ’Ave ze education, ze dealing wis ze outside world,” he admitted, with another of those pearly-white smiles, then sobered quickly to look almost feral. “Until we learn zese z’ings, z’en…’oo knows. Moi, I desire blanc servants. Ha ha ha! I make ze pauvre plaisanterie, again, n’est-ce pas? Aw ha ha ha!”
Their escorts led them from the looted, charred shabbiness of the harbour front to wide streets leading inland to a mansion district of substantial houses, what Lewrie took for banks, and perhaps government buildings, all smoothly stuccoed and painted, once, in white and gay tropical pastels; all with even more substantial double doors and impressive sets of iron bars on the tall windows.
Most were shut tight against the victorious slave armies, their window shutters double-barred. Some had been nailed shut perhaps years before as their prosperous owners fled the colony. Some of those were now in the process of being torn open with crow-levers, or smashed open with heavy mauls, though it seemed an orderly process, not a looting by a jeering mob; the deeds were done by work-gangs or companies of Black troops, supervised by their officers.
Their escort halted in front of a pale yellow-painted government office building with blue doors and shutters, and Spanish-looking roof tiles. Soldiers in neat, clean uniforms stood guard over the entrance, though they made no moves to stop the stream of officers, runners, and idling gawkers, both military and civilian, who wandered in with pipes or cigaros fuming, chatting and pointing at their former masters’ splendours as gay as mag-pies.
Colonel Mirabois left them for a long time, standing in direct sunlight and steamy heat, before returning and gesturing them inside; across the high and spacious lobby, and up a long, curving flight of stairs to the upper floor, then into a receiving room large enough to accommodate a good-sized hunt ball of two hundred or more very energetic couples at a contre-dance.
“Messieurs, mon Generals…,” Colonel Mirabois loftily began as he introduced the British delegation, then made introductions for the splendidly uniformed men who stood behind a massive oak-and-marble desk.
“General Dessalines…!” Mirabois said as that worthy glared at them, a big, tough, brutal-looking man.
“Illiterate, I heard,” Lewrie whispered to Bligh and Barre.
“General Christophe…!”
“Once a British slave, brought here. Hotel waiter here in Cap Francois,” Lewrie further whispered. “Speaks English.” Christophe was not as big as the rest, and didn’t look quite as threatening.
“General Clairveaux…!” Mirabois said of a solid Mulatto man.
“Betrayal’s his meat an’ drink,” Lewrie related. “Play any side ’gainst the other.”
Captain Barre turned his head slightly to look at Lewrie, with an eyebrow up; the sort of look one gave to a talking dog.
Damme! Lewrie thought; I must’ve picked up more than I thought I had, from the last time I was here. Useful insights… gossip!
After that, Lewrie stood aside, having no role to play as Bligh presented his formal written proposal from Commodore Loring. Colonel Mirabois took it and handed it to General Dessalines, which was fruitless, since he was illiterate, a former field slave. Grudgingly, that worthy had to pass it to either Christophe or the better-educated General Clairveaux, glowering even darker and fiercer, first at the British delegation which had put him in that embarrassment, then at his two “compatriots,” who, most-likely, were scheming to become the supreme leader of their new nation.
“Clairveaux’s a schemer?” Barre muttered from the corner of his mouth, barely moving his lips.
“Supposedly loyal to France and Sonthonax when he was here, then Rigaud and his Mulattoes down south, then L’Ouverture, and the Spanish? Slippery as an eel,” Lewrie whispered back. “Might’ve backed LeClerc, ’fore he died of Yellow Jack.”
“You puny, lying White bastards!” General Christophe barked angrily after he’d read the letter and heard Bligh out. “Go back to Europe, the rest of the Indies, and slaughter each other! But do not dare to dabble in Hayti’s affairs any longer. Damn all you British, but if not for your presence, the French would already be gone!”
That was shouted in English; Christophe turned to his compatriots, Dessalines and Clairveaux, and repeated himself in rapid, slurred French, wind-milling his arms and going so far as to spit on the floor, and pound a fist on the marble table top so hard that he made it jump, massive and heavy as it was; about the size of a jolly-boat, to Lewrie’s lights.
General Dessalines rumbled out an equal flood of bile in a deep basso, glaring at the trio of British officers and gripping the hilt of his elegant sword so hard that his dark fingers changed colour. Clairveaux, not to be outdone, barked out his own flood of threats.
Not exactly Nelson’s “band o’ brothers,” are they? Lewrie told himself. He found it amusing… until the roars for “slaughter” and “blood bath” reached the ears of the many revolutionaries beyond those double doors, and Lewrie heard a blood-chilling chant he hadn’t heard in years.
Eh! Eh! Bomba! Heu! Heu!
Canga bafio te! Canga moune de le!
Canga do ki la! Canga li!
“Sound in good spirits,” Captain Barre commented, turning about to cock an ear, with a confident smile (false, most-like given their hosts’ attitude).
“It means ‘We swear to destroy all the Whites and all that they possess; let us die rather than fail to keep this vow,’ ” Lewrie nervously translated in a low mutter. “This is gettin’ serious, sir.”
“Mon General, Dessalines, ’e say, messieurs, z’at you British are ze so despicable, ze grasping beasts, as bad as ze French!” Mirabois translated, looking a tad nervous himself. “You kill-ed z’ousands of notre pauvre soldiers, came to Saint Domingue to conquer and enslave! E’ say ’e despise all of you, and v’ish every White devil to die… seulement…’e also say if Rochambeau surrender to you and leave ze harbour tomorrow, ’e will not fire on z’eir ships. Z’ey stay une hour longer, ’e will fire upon z’em, and burn z’em all to Hades. ’E agree wiz votre Commodore Loring in z’iz. You ’ave ’ees word of honnour. ’E say votre Commodore mus’ be satisfy-ed vis z’at, not ze correspondent letter. Maintenant, you go! I see you to ze port in safety, or pay v’is my life. Vite, vite! Go!”
Captain Bligh opened his mouth as if to say something further, but clapped it shut as Colonel Mirabois began urgent shoving-herding motions, backing them ignominously towards the doors, and looking back over his shoulder to see if any of the bile the British had engendered from the victorious generals would stick to him for bringing them.
In a trice, they were down the stairs, across the grand lobby, and out into the sunshine, with their escorting soldiers guarding them even closer with bayonet-mounted muskets held out to fence off and deter the chanting, fist-shaking, weapon-shaking mob. Picking up on their officers’ nervousness, and the hostile mood in the building they left behind, those soldiers set a wicked pace back to the quays and their waiting barge, forcing Bligh, Barre, and Lewrie to trot double-time.
Once the barge was shoved off and under oars, with a wee Union Jack in the bows, and a large white flag of truce stood up by the Midshipman in the stern-sheets, they finally got their breaths back, and broke out a small barrico of stale water from beneath the seat for the barge’s Coxswain. They took turns gulping from a battered pewter mug and swabbing their reddened faces; ruddy from being un-used to so much exertion after the restrictions of shipboard life, and the embarrassing manner of their departure. They had almost been shoved aboard the boat!
“Bit iffy there, for a moment,” Bligh commented.
“Be back in ten years,” Captain Barre breezily opined, now that he was in calmer takings. “Can you gentlemen imagine that those three jackanapes, or their other generals, Petion and Moise, can really run a country?” he scoffed. “More-like, it will be a decade of civil war between them, before the country is so devastated, and de-populated, that it will be ripe for the plucking.”
“We had hopes that the Americans’d beg t’be back in the fold, too, when we left in 1783,” Lewrie pointed out.
“Barbaric as are our American cousins, sir,” Captain Barre rejoined, “they don’t hold a candle to those savages back yonder. And, the Yankee Doodles are White, and civilised, after all.”
“Different kettle of fish,” Captain Bligh stuck in with a mirthless laugh. “I say… let us take a slant to starboard, and look over our future prizes… assuming General Rochambeau has a lick of sense.”
“Aye, sir,” their Midshipman in charge of the barge agreed, and the tiller was put over to angle their boat closer to the French ships.
“Indiamen, there, a brace of ’em. Don’t see any guns in their ports,” Lewrie pointed out. “That’un, though, she’s a two-decker, a Third Rate seventy-four. And, still armed.”
All the gun-ports on each beam of the 74 were hinged open for desperately needed ventilation, any wisp of a breeze that could sweep through both her over-crowded gun-decks to relieve the panting of the hundreds of pale faces pressed close to the openings. Those people had no other place to go, for the weather decks, gangways, poops and forecastles, and quarterdecks of all the French vessels were already teeming with refugees, almost arseholes-to-elbows.
“Lovely pair of frigates, there,” Captain Bligh said with an avid note in his voice as they passed the two-decker. “Chlorinde… and Surv… Surveillante,” he read off their name-boards on the transoms. “As big as our frigates of the Fifth Rate… thirty-eights or better.”
The frigate closest to them had her single row of gun-ports open, too, with children and teenagers sitting on the barrels of her guns to be close to the fresher air, and haloes of faces round every edge.
“Might be nigh a thousand people aboard this’un, alone, sirs,” Lewrie said with a grim shake of his head. Were I a Frog, I’d be on-board one of ’em, too, Lewrie thought; Beats bein’ murdered all hollow!
“Be a shame, does Dessalines set them ablaze,” Captain Bligh told them, sounding sad. “Yon brace of frigates would fetch us fifteen or twenty thousand pounds each, perhaps thirty thousand for that Third Rate, and about the same for the Indiamen, each.”
“Head and Gun Money for all the sailors and soldiers captured, to boot,” Captain Barre pointed out.
“Well, perhaps but half that much, sir,” Lewrie told Bligh. “I think our Prize Courts would most-like steal half for themselves.”
“Oh, tosh!” Barre said with a chuckle. “They ain’t cut up from a drubbin’, and won’t need serious refits, like most French warships we’ve made prize. Even so… aye, it would be a pity, do those apes ashore burn them up.”
“Dessalines might just do it for spite,” Bligh suggested. “To show us how little he cares for us, or the French, or any Whites.”
“Beg pardon, sirs, but there’s a breeze coming up,” their Midshipman hesitantly interjected, pointing an arm to the wind-rippled patch of water off their barge’s larboard bows. “Are your observations done, sirs, I’d care to steer for it, and hoist the lugs’l.”
“Might be enough wind to carry us beyond the harbour mole, and out to a decent sea-breeze, aye,” Captain Bligh, senior-most of their party, agreed. “Spare your oarsmen three or four miles of rowing, hey?”
“You left your gig at the flagship, Captain Lewrie?” Captain Barre casually enquired.
“Sent her back to Reliant, not knowing how long we’d be away, sir,” Lewrie told him.
“She’s closer inshore than the flag? Well, now our duty has been done, there’s no reason to detain you any longer,” Barre said as the barge crossed the mill-pond flat water for that disturbed patch, now as big as a lake and growing larger as the breeze picked up. Two of their oarsmen stowed away their oars and began to fetch up the lug-sail which, with its simple running, rigging, was wrapped about its upper gaff boom.
“Make for the Reliant frigate, once under sail,” Captain Barre directed the Midshipman. “We’ll spare Captain Lewrie, here, the long time it’d take him to send for his gig, twiddle his thumbs aboard the flag, and another hour or two to return to his ship.”
“That’s most kind of ye, sir, thankee,” Lewrie told Barre as he pulled out his pocket-watch to note the time. It was already almost a quarter to one P.M.; aboard Reliant they’d soon be sounding Two Bells of the Day Watch, and her Commission Officers, Sailing Master, Lieutenant of Marines, and Surgeon would be sitting down to take their mid-day dinner, now that the ship’s people had had their own mess. If Barre had not made the offer, even with a decent wind, it would have been at least 2 P.M. before they would have fetched the flagship, and perhaps two more hours before he could expect to sit down to a meal of his own; there might have been some leftovers from Commodore Loring’s table, if he begged properly, but… even this quick return to his ship would result in whatever cold collation that his personal cook, Yeovill, had at-hand. The ship’s cook would be just beginning to boil up victuals for the crew’s supper, with nothing to offer him.
It’ll be wormy cheese and ship’s bisquit, Lewrie bemoaned; some jam, or a slice’r two off last night’s roast. The cats’ sausages?
And, Lewrie was feeling most peckish, by then!