Toussaint_louverture

A free slave :

Born on 20 May 1743, Toussaint Louverture was the son of a king of Benin, whose tribe was deported to the island of Santo Domingo to work on the coffee and sugar plantations. He worked as a livestock herder for his master, Baillon de Libertat, who freed him in 1776. Thus it was that he became a free man and a master of goods and slaves himself. Toussaint acquired a small fortune, thanks to trade in coffee, a product of which Haiti was the world's leading supplier at the time.

A very fast rise through the hierarchy :

In 1789, when the French Revolution broke out, with the new ideologies that went hand in hand with it, the black slaves lost no time in starting their revolt. At the time, there were 480,000 slaves on the island, for 30,000 white colonisers. At a voodoo meeting held on the night of 22 to 23 August 1791, the signal is given to rise up against French rule. Toussaint Louverture finds himself at the head of 2,000 men in arms. The leaders of the black armies formed an alliance with Spain, which occupied the eastern part of the island. The insurrection quickly gathered pace, spreading across the whole of the French colony.
After the proclamation of the abolition of slavery in France and all its colonies, and as a result of a number of problems with the Spanish government, Toussaint Louverture turned back to form an alliance with France. He now had 4,000 men under his command and controlled a vast territory. He was appointed General in Chief of the Army of Santo Domingo in 1797, a title he used to begin gradually to establish a "Black Power".

The arrest of Toussaint Louverture :

In 1801, he took the title of Governor General for life. This was not well received by Bonaparte who organised a military expedition to the island in February 1802. After having pushed back the black troops, the French General Leclerc had Toussaint arrested, on 7 June 1802, as ordered to do by Bonaparte. 
 

The deportation of the black prisoner :

The First Consul then ordered that Toussaint Louverture be deported to France and imprisoned in a place as far from the coast as possible, to reduce the risk of escape. Thus it was that the Fort Joux, in Franche-Comté, was chosen for the Black General, who arrived there on 22 August 1802. Following the escape of two Chouan prisoners the previous year, the level of security had been stepped up. This explains why Toussaint was kept in a cell where the window was bricked up by three quarters, with iron bars across, and closed with a sheet metal shutter at night. To reach the cell, there were 4 locked doors to go through. Toussaint Louverture was not allowed to leave his cell, nor to communicate with the outside world. 
 

The death of a hero :

He swiftly fell ill, unused as he was to the extremes of the Jura mountain climate. He dies on 7 April 1803. Despite the death of the Black General, the fighting continued in Santo Domingo. The insurrection finally led to the island being granted independence on 1 January 1804. Santo Domingo was then renamed using its original name, Haiti, which in Creole means "mountainous land".