Charles-Humbert-Marie de Vincent

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Charles-Humbert-Marie de Vincent also Colonel Vincent (March 21, 1759 Bourg en Bresse, France - 1831) was a French engineer posted to Saint-Domingue almost without interruption from 1786 to 1800. He married a settler’s daughter but became the friend of Toussaint Louverture. Vincent opposed slavery, but favoured the colony trading exclusively with France. Here he differed with Toussaint who traded with the United States and who in 1801 had prepared a constitution for Saint-Domingue. Charged with taking the text to the First Consul, he attempted in vain to deter him from giving marching orders to General Leclerc. Hostile on the one hand to independence and on the other to the return of slavery, he opted for restraint, a course which was not put to the test, but whose validity Napoléon was to recognize at Saint-Helena. (Schneider)

Wendell Phillips in a lecture given in 1861 attributes the following quote to Colonel Vincent: “Sire, leave it alone; it is the happiest spot in your dominions; God raised this man [Toussaint Louverture] to govern; races melt under his hand. He has saved you this island [Saint-Domingue]; for I know of my own knowledge that, when the Republic could not have lifted a finger to prevent it, George III offered him any title and any revenue if he would hold the island under the British crown. He refused, and saved it for France.” (From the letter to Napoléon, which accompanied Toussaint's 1801 constitution.)

"Vincent, a colonel who had earlier been sent to Haiti as a peace commissioner, tried in vain to stop Napoléon Bonaparte. "At the head of so many resources is a man the most active and indefatigable that can possibly be imagined" he wrote to the First Consul. "No man of the present day has acquired over an ignorant mass the boundless power obtained by General Toussaint over his brethren in Saint Domingo; he is the absolute master of the island." (Kim)

For his trouble, Vincent was banished to the island of Elba, where years later he was on hand to greet Napoleon. (Kim)

Colonel Vincent on Toussaint Louverture

"At the head of all is the most active and indefatigable man one can imagine. One can definitely say that he is everwhere and above all in the place where sound judgement and danger lead him to believe that his presence is the most essential. His great sobriety and the ability given only to him of never resting, the advantage he has of going back to office work after a tiresome journey, of replying to a hundred letters a day and of habitually exhausting five secretaries." - Colonel Vincent, in a note to Napoléon Bonaparte. (Parkinson, p. 84)

See also

Reference

  • Phillips, Wendell. (1861). 'Toussaint L'Ouverture'. Lecture given in New York and Boston.
  • Schneider, Christian. Le colonel Vincent, officier du génie à Saint-Domingue. Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française, 329, Numéro 329.AHRF, Sommaires et résumés 1998-2004. [1]
  • Kim, Caroline. The Soul of a Free Man, Toussaint-Louverture. (2003) Humanities, November/December 2003, Volume 24/Number 6. [2].
  • Parkinson, Wenda (1978). This Gilded African. London: Quartet Books. ISBN 0-7043-2187-4
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