Toussaint Louverture : a revolutionary life Toussaint Louvertures life was one of hardship triumph and contradiction. It began on Saint Domingue the richest colony in the Western Hemisphere where he witnessed first hand the torture of the enslaved population. Yet he managed to earn his freedom and establish himself as a small scale planter. He even purchased slaves of his own. In Toussaint Louverture Philippe Girard tells the incredible tale of how Louverture transformed himself from lowly freedman to revolutionary hero. Working as a coachman for his wealthy white owners Louverture traveled across Saint Domingue building a network among slaves and free blacks that would form the basis of the slave revolt he engineered in 1791. What followed was a decade of unprecedented bloodletting: about 200 000 people in the colony of Saint Domingue were killed in battle or murdered. By 1801 Louverture was general and governor of the colony now called Haiti. But his lifelong quest to be accepted as a member of the French colonial elite ended in despair: in 1802 on Napoleons orders he was exiled to France where he spent the last year of his life in a prison cell. Ten years in the making Toussaint Louverture is based on extensive archival research in France Britain Spain the United States and the Caribbean. The book contains many revelations about Louvertures life from a previously unknown first marriage to the circumstances of his manumission his exact role in the outbreak of the 1791 Haitian slave revolt his actions as governor of Frances richest colony and the tragic nature of his death. Provided by publisher Aristocrat (c. 1740) Child (c. 1743 1754) Slave Revolutionary apprentice (1757 1773) Family man (1761 1782) Freedman (c. 1772 1779) Slave driver (1779 1781) Muleteer (1781 1789) Witness (1788 1791) Rebel Monarchist Spanish officer (1793 1794) French patriot (1794 1796) Politician (1796 1798) Diplomat (1798 1800) Planter (1800 1801) Governor general (early 1801) God (late 1801) Renegade (early 1802) Prisoner (1802 1803) Icon (1803 present)