Jean-François argued self-won liberty under Spain was truer than French-granted emancipation.

Evidence

“The liberty the Republicans tell you about is false,” Jean-François declared in a letter to his “brothers” serving on the French side. Saint-Domingue was France’s most valuable colony, and without it the “arts” and “industries” of the mother country would be destroyed. Once the French secured a peace with their European enemies, he asserted, they would turn on their black allies. “They will arm convoys that will be full of white soldiers, who will reduce you to a state of servitude.” The liberty that Jean-François and his followers enjoyed in the Spanish camp, meanwhile, was “very different.” It had not been granted to them by a benevolent authority; they had won it for themselves. “Having already become independent men, we were adopted as subjects by the kingdom of Spain.” — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 629

Categorization

• XREF: Foreshadows Louverture’s own later argument that freedom granted from above is fragile—a theme that recurs across the revolution’s phases.
• QUESTION: Jean-François proves prophetic: the French did turn on their black allies once peace came. Worth tracing how this warning echoes through later chapters.