Dessalines openly told his troops he would feign surrender and betray

Evidence

Imprisoned inside the fort, Descourtilz overheard Dessalines speaking to his troops. His recollection of the speech, published years later, was probably shaped by later events, but it remains one of the few surviving records of the general’s words. “Take courage, I tell you, take courage,” Dessalines commanded. “The whites from France cannot hold out against us here in Saint-Domingue. They will fight well at first, but soon they will fall sick and die like flies.” He warned them not to misunderstand some of the actions he might take along the way to the ultimate defeat of the French. “Listen well! If Dessalines surrenders to them a hundred times, he will betray them a hundred times.” They would see that “when the French are reduced to small, small numbers, we will harass them and beat them; we will burn the harvests and then take to the hills. They will be forced to leave.” “Then,” announced Dessalines, “I will make you independent. There will be no more whites among us.” — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 968

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The strategic double-consciousness here — publicly promising ‘I will make you independent’ while privately planning surrender-then-betrayal — captures a defining feature of the Haitian struggle: leadership had to operate in several registers at once, and our only record is a recollection admittedly shaped by later events.
• XREF: Connects to the earlier theme in this book of Louverture’s own double game with the French colonial administration.