British black-corps soldiers deserted to join Louverture as his victory looked certain

Evidence

Although there were some who remained committed to capturing Saint- Domingue, skepticism about the wisdom of continuing the occupation largely permeated the British military command. Among the skeptics was the young General Thomas Maitland, who took over the British army in Saint-Domingue early in March 1798.17 When General Maitland arrived, Louverture and Rigaud were in the midst of a “concerted attack” against British positions, and as he watched, the Republicans took a series of important mountain forts built by the British. Slaves in the region under British control escaped to join the armies of Louverture, and, more ominously, some soldiers in the black corps deserted, for the first time, to the Republican side. The prospect of immediate rather than deferred freedom, as well as of serving under black rather than white officers, perhaps drew the deserters. Victor Schoelcher wrote that “at the sight of the tricolor flag,” black soldiers serving the British went to the other side, “happy” to be serving under a “general of their race.” But these soldiers probably also could see the writing on the wall, and wisely chose to end the war on the winning side. Smelling defeat, 216 av e n g e r s o f t h e n e w w o r l d Maitland soon concluded that a withdrawal from most of Saint-Domingue was the only reasonable course of action. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 753

Categorization

• XREF: Desertions of enslaved black soldiers to the Republican side echo the slave escapes to British lines in earlier chapters of this book — the same escape route now running in reverse.
• QUESTION: Schoelcher’s ‘general of their race’ claim vs. the pragmatic reading of desertion — worth weighing which motive dominated.