The Sufferings of Madame Toussaint

The widow of the unfortunate Toussaint has just landed upon our continent. Her account of her own and her husband’s sufferings, from Bonaparte’s tyranny, would be incredible, were they not already equaled by the Corsican’s former atrocities, and those of his accomplices. Her mutilated limbs and numerous wounds, are, besides, visible proofs of the racks and other instruments of torture from which she has suffered in the dungeons of free, enlightened, and civilized France, and under which, little doubt remains that General Toussaint expired.

From the moment Le Clerc, by perfidy and breach of treaties, got her husband and herself into his possession, they were loaded with chains, and during their whole passage to France, they continued in irons, with hardly food enough to support life. At their landing in Bourdeaux, they were separated, though shut in the same prison. What happened since to her husband she does not know, nor is she yet certain whether he has perished, as the French papers have published, in a dungeon at Besançon; or whether, with a mutilated body, he continues to breath the pestilential air of French gaols, exposed to the cruelties of, and enduring that refinement in torment which French ingenuity so ably invents, and of which Corsican barbarity so willingly makes use…

“An Account of the Wife of Toussaint L’Ouverture,” The Christian Observer(1804)

Image taken from Jean Ledan fils, “La saga de Mme Louverture,” Le Nouvelliste (May 25, 2012)