"Lesec, from Brave Mulato Into Blackness?: Defection to France and Spanish Racial Regression" by Charlton W

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H-Haiti "Lesec, from Brave Mulato into Blackness?: Defection to France and Spanish Racial Regression" by Charlton W. Yingling

Discussion published by Marlene Daut on Monday, April 2, 2018 Lesec, from Brave Mulato into Blackness?: Defection to France and Spanish Racial Regression By Charlton W. Yingling

In May 1794, Governor Joaquín García of Spanish Santo Domingo (present-day Dominican Republic) praised the “brave spirit” of “Carlos Gabriel Lesec,mulato, ” a term denoting European and African heritage. As an officer in Spain’s Black Auxiliaries, Lesec had just repulsed troops of the French Republic in a resounding victory at Santa Susana on the border with Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti). As the third anniversary of the Haitian Revolution approached, thousands of ex-slaves had expanded their liberatory war under Spanish flags and occupied nearly half of Saint-Domingue.[1] These “Black Auxiliaries” of Spain enjoyed limited manumissions and material support in their war against the French, their former exploiters. Their leaders, Jean-François and Georges Biassou, represented some of the earliest participants in the initial slave revolts of 1791. Those who ascended later, such as Toussaint Louverture and his officer Charles Lesec, seized a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity at upward mobility by punishing their former French oppressors. Despite these victories, García was dismayed by the “disunion that reigns between the black chiefs Biassou and Toussaint,” who along with Jean- François were Lesec’s superiors.[2] Six months earlier French commissioner Léger-Félicité Sonthonax had begun tactical, practical emancipations, in part to attract black supporters due to desperation over his opponents’ successes.

The Black Auxiliaries performed Catholic piety, which appealed to the supernatural idiom of their Spanish allies in Santo Domingo. Spanish officials accepted their faith professions with cautious optimism, as their allies’ battlefield victories seemed to be blessings of divine providence. The Black Auxiliaries’ social practice of belief melded sincerity and partisanship. It gained them material benefits of weapons and cash, and a mask for their spiritual flexibility, including blends of African cosmologies. However, they inflated Spanish expectations of Eurocentric civility and virtue by people of color on the island, and also reinforced Spanish conflations of pro-French black troops with republicanism and African culture. While Spain universally discriminated against blackness, their constructions of socio-racial status relied on other cultural qualities. Such racial formation was evident in their vitriolic rhetoric of regression used to describe those who later defected to the French Republic, juxtaposed by their affirming language toward the Black Auxiliaries (who reinforced these projections).[3]

Unfortunately for Spain, the rivalry and idiosyncrasies of Jean-François and Biassou fostered factionalism among their ranks. This aggravation, coupled with French offers of promotions, attracted the ambition of the pivotal figure Toussaint Louverture, who had defected to the French Republic by the summer of 1794 and became the most important leader of the entire Haitian Revolution . Not only did Toussaint’s and thousands of his troops’ switch to the Republic represent strategic and personnel catastrophes for Spain, it called into question the trustworthiness of remaining Black Auxiliaries.[4] Amid these dissensions, defections, and

Citation: Marlene Daut. "Lesec, from Brave Mulato into Blackness?: Defection to France and Spanish Racial Regression" by Charlton W. Yingling. H-Haiti. 04-02-2018. https://networks.h-net.org/node/116721/discussions/1648260/lesec-brave-mulato-blackness-defection-france-and-spanish-racial Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-Haiti

disorders, the “valiant commander” Charles Lesec earned commendations for the disarray he inflicted against the French.[5] Lesec, identified widely as a mulatto officer,[6] earned this Spanish praise for his valor in April 1794, only weeks before Toussaint’s defection.

Before daybreak his force had been attacked by four columns of “our enemies, the citizens,” republican soldiers who tried to overrun and burn their encampment. Within minutes Lesec’s troops drove out the French, who threw aside their weapons and hats to flee, allowing the Black Auxiliaries to capture sixty guns and marching drums. French dead totaled fifty whites, mulattoes, and blacks, compared to only five dead from Lesec’s forces. During the battle Lesec himself received numerous lacerations to his face from splintered wood launched by a bullet ricochet.[7] To brace his troops’ resolve, Lesec punished a Captain Mamba for not more hastily entering the fight. His leadership garnered him greater Spanish praise and “complete satisfaction.”[8] Underscoring their achievement an informant, identified as a local black woman, told Lesec that General Villatte, one of the top French commanders on the island, had been wounded in the battle.[9] In the wake of Toussaint’s defection and French advances, Spain exalted Lesec as an exemplar of loyalty and accomplishment who might reverse their military setbacks.[10] Lesec’s heroics even attracted praise from King Carlos IV.[11]

Read more here: https://ageofrevolutions.com/2018/04/02/lesec-from-brave-mulato-into-blackness-defection- to-france-and-spanish-racial-regression/amp/?__twitter_impression=true