Page and Brulley were colonial political agents — commissioners of the colonial assembly in France — who waged the metropolitan battle against the civil commissioners Sonthonax and Polverel in 1792–1793.
Posing as exalted Jacobins after the king's death, they obtained suspension of the March 1793 decrees that had given the commissioners expanded powers, and Page notoriously proposed a plan to 'corrupt, slaughter, or poison' insurgent leaders — a position Garran de Coulon's parliamentary report condemned as morally revealing. Ardouin treats them as the most visible face of planter counter-revolution in the Paris political arena: men who dressed colonial reaction in revolutionary language while fighting to preserve slavery and reverse every metropolitan measure that threatened planter authority.
In the ScholarshipHow historians have read this figure.
How historians and scholars have interpreted this figure across different analytical traditions.
The Débats de la Commission des Colonies record Page and Brulley's metropolitan maneuvering against the civil commissioners' powers in the committee sessions of 1792-1793 — the procedural arena where they obtained suspension of the March 1793 decrees. These debates provide the primary source text for how colonial planter interests operated within the French revolutionary assembly: the agents' committee testimony, the language they used, and the specific procedural moves through which they reversed metropolitan measures. The Débats complement Garran's retrospective report with the contemporaneous record of how the maneuvering actually unfolded.
The committee debates show how Page and Brulley used procedural maneuvering within the French revolutionary assembly to reverse metropolitan measures that threatened colonial planter authority — colonial counter-revolution conducted as parliamentary politics.
Garran de Coulon's Rapport sur les troubles de Saint-Domingue condemned Page and Brulley in the parliamentary record as agents of planter counter-revolution who dressed colonial reaction in revolutionary language — posing as exalted Jacobins after the king's death while working to restore colonial planter authority and reverse metropolitan measures that threatened slavery. Garran singled out Page's proposal to 'corrupt, slaughter, or poison' insurgent leaders as morally revelatory: the willingness to contemplate mass assassination of Black rebel leaders showed what the colonial agents actually sought beneath their Jacobin rhetoric. This parliamentary condemnation is the primary documentary frame through which history has viewed Page and Brulley.
Garran's report condemned Page's proposal to 'corrupt, slaughter, or poison' insurgent leaders as morally revealing — a formulation that exposed the colonial agents' actual agenda beneath their Jacobin rhetoric.
TimelineAcross the historical record.
- 1792
Colonial Agents (Commissioners of the Colonial Assembly in France)
Represented colonial planter interests in Paris; maneuvered against the civil commissioners' powers in metropolitan legislative committees.
RelationshipsPeople connected to this life.
- OpposedJacques-Pierre Brissot
Sonthonax and Polverel had been appointed through Brissot's influence — making Page and Brulley's campaign against the commissioners also a strike at the Girondin political network.
- OpposedÉtienne Polverel
Opposed Polverel alongside Sonthonax; Ardouin notes that both commissioners had been denounced before appointment through Brissot's influence.
- OpposedLéger-Félicité Sonthonax
Repeatedly denounced Sonthonax to metropolitan authorities; their campaign against the commissioners was the primary political mechanism of planter counter-revolution in Paris.