A magnificent general, brilliant diplomat, wise ruler and warm human being, Toussaint Louverture rose from slavery to lead his people against the forces of European colonization, amazing the world as he check-mated the power and cunning of the mighty Napoleon himself.

The island of Haiti, where Toussaint was born in 1744, was the jewel of the French Empire, whose prosperity and culture were built upon black labor, a vast slave population held in check by whip and gun. Earlier slave uprisings had been brutally repressed, but when the shock waves of the French Revolution reached the Caribbean, the time was right for rebellion.

Though disliking violence, Toussaint saw that force was now his people's only hope, and singlehandedly transformed a brave but unruly mob into a disciplined army. Invincible both on the battlefields and at the negotiating table, he successively humbled the hand-picked troops of England and France while playing one great power against another in a dazzling diplomatic Creole and mulatto opposition, first with persuasion, then reluctantly with arms, as he labored to plant the roots of true democracy in Haiti. He enlisted the aid of white planters to rebuild Haiti's shattered economy, believing that all of Haiti's people could learn to live together in harmony.

Barbaric betrayal by the French under Napoleon ended his dream of the first black republic, and sent him to tragic death in a grim fortress prison. The story of a courageous man who fought for the freedom and dignity of every man.

From the dust jacket