About this picture: Fort de Joux was the furthest-flung French military outpost in France.
Toussaint Louverture: Fort de Joux noted prisoners.
Being solidly constructed in a precipitous location, it was a place from which Napoléon could feel assured that the slippery Toussaint Louverture would not escape.
The fort was also cold, damp and a very long way from Toussaint's home.
Having been captured in Saint Domingue by deceit on June 7, 1802 on orders from Napoleon Bonaparte, Toussaint was transported by ship to France.
On July 23 he was sentenced to solitary confinement in the fort. He arrived there on 23 August and was housed in a first-floor cell measuring 6, 50 x 3, 90 meters (21 by 12.8 feet) .
His manservant, Mars Plaisir, stayed accessible to him in an adjoining cell until prison commanders, on the orders of Napoléon, had him removed and brought to Nantes in chains.
Death certificate of Toussaint Louverture.
Toussaint had never been to anyplace so cold or so far from home. After his birth into slavery in Saint Domingue he never left that island.
Now, his days of constantly warm sea-level Caribbean life were over. He didn't last long in the inhospitable milieu, dying on April 7 1803. Certainly he suffered from exposure and cold, and was said to have suffered from loneliness.
An autopsy attributed his death to 'malady of the lung.'
Today, Fort de Joux is a tourist site and a source of historical information.
It maintains a visitors' schedule except during the winter off-season, and for renovations and other special closings.
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