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Secondary sourcePainting1821

The Meeting at Ennery

François Grenier de Saint-Martin and Jean-François Villain · 1821

An 1821 lithograph imagining a scene where Toussaint Louverture's wife and children urge him to abandon the fight against Napoleon's forces.

Shows the pressure placed on Toussaint Louverture through his family during the Leclerc expedition, a turning point before his capture.

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Monochrome lithographic print of an interior scene: a uniformed man with epaulettes stands center, looking up anxiously, as two young boys clasp his arm and a kneeling child reaches toward him. A woman in a white headwrap and dress on the right gestures toward him. A man in a long dark coat at the left points toward an open door, with bright light and a landscape visible outside.
François Grenier de Saint-Martin (drawing) and Jean-François Villain (lithography), L'entrevue d'Ennery, 1821.

About this source

What it is

This 1821 lithograph by François Grenier de Saint-Martin and Jean-François Villain depicts the "Entrevue d'Ennery," an imagined scene during the 1802 Leclerc expedition. Abbé Jean-Baptiste Coisnon, tutor in France to Toussaint's sons Placide and Isaac, was sent by Napoleon Bonaparte to bring the boys to their father, Toussaint Louverture, to convince him to lay down arms against French troops.

Why it matters

This image shows how Napoleon used Toussaint's own family as a political tool against him, and how later artists dramatized this personal and political pressure. It reveals the human cost of the conflict between Saint-Domingue and France, and how Toussaint's choices affected his loved ones.

Look closer

  • Why would Napoleon send Toussaint's children to persuade him, rather than using force alone?
  • What emotions does the artist try to show on the faces of the family members?
  • Since this image was made almost 20 years after the event, how reliable might its details be?

This painting is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Toussaint Louverture on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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