CHAPTER III.

Leclerc tries to rule by creating jealousy and division--Ill-treats the men of colour--Disarms the blacks--An insurrection ensues, and gains head, until it wrests from the violent hands of the general nearly all his possessions-- Leclerc dies--Bonaparte resolves to send a new army to Saint Domingo.

        As the news of the deportation of Toussaint L'Ouverture spread abroad, secret and deep discontent began to prevail, which threatened disturbance, if not disaster. In vain Leclerc tried to prevent these consequences of his own misdeeds, by a slow concealed tyranny. He created division among the black chiefs by insinuating into their violent natures rivalry, jealousy, and hatred; he set the ambition of one in opposition to the moderation of another; now he brought into contrast this man's fidelity with that man's want of fidelity; mingling adroitly together praises and enticements, favours and disgrace, encouraging and rewarding mutual accusations. Special pains did he take to revive the old animosities between the blacks and the men of colour; animosities which in reality were only a consequence of the difference in the servitude to which they were in common subject. As a result of this Machiavellian policy, many officers of black and of mixed blood were persecuted, imprisoned, or banished to a distance. Of this number was Rigaud, next to Toussaint the most renowned of all. He was arrested in the port of Saint Marc, whither he had been sent as if to take a command. In his indignation, he threw his sword into the sea, to prevent its being sullied by traitors. He was sent to France, and curiously enough, was, as we have seen, cast into the prison which held Toussaint L'Ouverture. Lamartinière, who had displayed the virtues of a champion of liberty behind the walls of Crête-a-Pierrot, was massacred in an ambuscade. Thus was manifested the hatred of the colonists against men whom they could not endure to see in the enjoyment of freedom. That hatred was fostered by the Consul, and by his representative Leclerc. Of special consequence did the Captain-general consider the disarming of the blacks; but the

step was one of extreme difficulty. Men, whose passions are excited, and whose future is uncertain, do not easily surrender their arms. Cajolery and mutual distrust were put into action; the result was, that thirty thousand muskets were collected and laid up in the common armoury. But in the midst of the operation, discontent was displayed, menaces were uttered, sedition was fostered, risings took place; the Government was compelled to employ vigour as well as adroitness. Troops were set in movement, blacks who were in subjection were employed against others who were ripe for revolt; some sullenly gave up their arms, others hid them, waiting their opportunity. Ferocious bands were formed, who practised all kinds of atrocities. The disarming succeeded best in the south; in the west it was very partial; the coloured population, distrustful and disquieted, especially since the deportation of Rigaud, betook themselves to the mountains; then most unjust and injudicious severities were exercised; suspicions sufficed for the infliction of death; the scaffolds were loaded with victims of both sexes, and of all ages. Several of the wives of the officers of the seventh colonial brigade were publicly executed. After capturing Belair, Dessalines slaughtered three hundred blacks and men of colour in the vale of the Artibonite, to avenge the death of some European soldiers, massacred within the country under his command. Meanwhile, an impression had been obtaining prevalence that the disarming and other offensive measures were parts of a system intended to issue in the restoration of slavery. Some imprudent colonists, whom experience of evil had not taught anything but revenge, uttered in one of their assemblies the old maxim--"No slavery, no colony." The alarm caused thereby was augmented by news that slavery had been restored in other French dependencies, and that even the slave-trade was resumed. Under the growing fears and distrust, some applied to purchase their freedom. The request was refused by their former owners. "We are then," said mothers of families, with tears in their eyes, "we are then about to fall back into slavery." To prevent the calamity, the blacks made such preparation as they could. Circumstances were in their favour; a malady which had gone far to destroy

the army and the fleet; the rainy season, which was at hand, not less baneful to the whites than favourable to the blacks; the asylum of the mountains, where their foes would pursue them almost in vain. Full of fear yet full of courage, they spoke to each other words of exhortation: "Do they expect to find slaves in us? why did they not leave us at large in our forests? Was Africa, our native land, weary of us? Have our rivers been dried up? Did not our flocks, our fields, did not hunting and fishing suffice for our wants? We learnt no other wants but at the price of our liberty; they have deceived us in our simplicity by poisoned gifts. Were not our feet accustomed, unshod, to walk over burning sands; and did not our uncovered heads brave the fires of the torrid zone? Our skin, given by nature to enable us to live near the sun, performed the office of garments fabricated by luxury. Was not the limpid wave of our fountains preferable to the liquors which cause brutal fury? To enjoy the sweet manifestations of friendship, the guileless smile of our children, the caresses of a mother who, during three years, nurtured us with her milk; to trouble neither our own lot nor the lot of others; to pass our life without fear and without desires, as a river of a tranquil and uniform flow--such were the precious advantages of which we have been robbed by our enemies." While thus they inflamed each other by fancy pictures of their ancestral mode of life, they drew a too true and a very painful contrast in adverting to their actual condition. Here a man held forth his arm, mutilated by a barbarous monster; there another pointed to his leg, eaten into by the links of an iron chain; others drew attention to the scars left by the driver's thong; women uncovered their breasts, which showed traces of the branding-iron,--the breasts which had suckled their masters' children. And then, with what pride did they turn to the blessings of freedom! "Heaven, in its pity, has given us a new country in this land of exile, of grief, and of shame shall it be torn from us?"

        Soon the standard of revolt was raised. At first the banner was unfurled by obscure men who occasioned little solicitude. But civil wars are pregnant with great leaders. In the

mountains of Saint Domingo there were always tribes of untamed Africans, who had thrown off the yoke of slavery. At the head of one of these tribes was Lamour de Rance, an adroit, stern, savage man, half-naked, with epaulettes tied by a cord, for his only token of authority. At home in the mountains, he passed from one to the other with something of the ease of one of their own birds. Toussaint himself had in vain pursued him in those retreats, whose proper inhabitants are wild beasts; that chief acknowledged no other authority than that which nature gave, in no way thinking or caring about monarchy or republicanism. His tender of obedience to the Government had been a matter of mere form. His dress, his manners, his character, his mode of fighting, at the Cape, where he just showed himself, were objects of curiosity and amusement with the French army. A greater insult could not be given than to ask this savage warrior for his arms. Were they not the protectors of his life? He avenged the insult by carrying fire and sword over the Highlands in the vicinity of Port-au-Prince. In the plain of Léogane he reduced to ashes more than a hundred plantations; he carried off the labourers, and inflicted barbarous cruelties on the whites.

        The revolt extended. In the north, as well as in the south and the west, it broke out and spread devastation. As reports of these insurrections got abroad at the Cape and Port-au-Prince, consternation increased. News was eagerly sought after, though almost always the source of fresh anxiety. Some reported that they had seen on fire the mountains which overhang Port-au-Prince; others that Lamour de Rance had reduced to ashes the plantations of Léogane. This day brought intelligence that Sans-Souci was in arms at Vallière; the next that Noël had seized Dondon and Sylla Plaisance. "You have heard that Macaya raises the country around Port-de-Paix?" "No; but a band of insurgents is spreading terror in the island of Tortue." More lamentable still were the narratives which some had to give how their brothers, their wives, their children, had been massacred with an incredible refinement of cruelty.

        The general alarm was exaggerated by the colonists, who, forgetful of the share they had had in causing it, and that but

for them there would have been no conquest of the island, no violation of oaths, no intention of restoring slavery, accused (as is the custom of such men) their destiny, the Government, Heaven, every object but themselves, the real sources of all these evils. "Heaven, then," they said, "has not ceased to persecute us; have we not suffered enough during ten years of exile and misery? Shall we always be driven into flight, or be massacred by our ferocious slaves? Was there ever a similar succession of reverses and misfortunes? Are we not the most unfortunate of men? Our slaves are before our eyes kindling incendiary torches, and twice have we seen our plantations and our towns burned to the ground. Why does not the Government act with decision? Why leave us to certain and speedy destruction?" Then they invoked the aid of the black chiefs who remained attached to their party, and who replied to them only by a fierce silence or by dissimulation. But always allowing themselves to be borne away by vengeance, they surrounded the Captain-general with their pernicious counsels, and he, instead of employing clemency and mildness, made use only of arms and punishments. In the cities scaffolds were raised, which were bathed in the blood of the blacks. They even executed women and children, whose only crime was that they had brothers, fathers, or husbands, among the revolters; they were accused of corresponding with them--the penalty of such intercourse was death. Port-au-Prince, in consternation at the ravages of Lamour de Rance, became the special theatre of executions. All suffered death with intrepidity, calmness, and resignation. The more numerous the executions, the more extensive were the desertions. Instead of terrifying they exasperated; they fed the insurrection, though they intended to suppress it.

        While the scaffolds were crowded with victims, Leclerc applied to Dessalines for assistance. He went to the Cape, and renewed his protestations of fidelity and devotedness. Cruel as false, the monster declared that he thirsted for the blood of the revolters. In a moment when his indignation had gained the mastery, and the agitation of his members manifested more rage than even his words, the General-in-chief said to him in transport, "The

troops which I expect from France will give me the power of striking a terrible blow." "There shall be," shouted Dessalines, in fury, "a general earthquake!" A Government that stimulates and employs such wretches condemns itself and forfeits its authority. Instead of carrying on the war honourably, Dessalines pretended to entertain feelings in favour of the revolt. By this means it was that he entrapped General Belair.

        While Dessalines was subduing mounts Cahos, Leclerc ordered Rochambeau to punish Lamour de Rance; but the troops who went in pursuit of him, saw only vast fields of fire which covered his flight. When circumstances suggested, the barbarians sheltered themselves in the heart of precipitous mountains, which were to them fortifications stronger than any which the art of man ever constructed. All that could be done was to oppose some limit to the ravages of the foe in the west and the south, the frontiers of which two provinces he had laid waste.

        At the same time the captain of the expedition, seconded by Christophe and Maurepas, employed all his efforts both to put down the sedition in the Isle of Tortue, and to arrest the progress of the revolt in the north. But Sans-Souci was an African not less agile than Lamour do Rance. He also covered his flight with deserts and flames; he did not, however, fear to try actual combat. Twice he defeated the troops sent against him.

        Meanwhile the black generals still attached to the French preserved only a suspected fidelity, and barely concealed their disquietude. Christophe, afraid of being arrested like Toussaint, did not accept Leclerc's invitation to a banquet, until he had directed his troops to be in readiness for a sudden blow. An officer who sat next him at table, took pleasure in filling his glass. Christophe, suspecting an evil design, turned to him in rage, and said, "Dost thou know, thou little white thing, that if I had drunk the wine which thou pouredst out for me, I should have desired to drink thy blood and that of thy general?" These words caused great agitation among the guests. Leclerc reproached Christophe with what he called Toussaint's treason, and commanded the officers of his guard to run to arms. "Vain is it to call your soldiers," the chief replied; "mine are under

arms, and with a single word I can make you a prisoner; but, as to my betraying you, learn to know me, I remain subject to you as I was to Toussaint; had he said to me, 'Hurl this island into the sea,' I would have done my best. This is the way I obey or command. The faith of oaths and treaties-- security of person--sacred rights of hospitality--has not all been violated by your cruel policy? Prison, banishment, death, are the rewards of those whose blood flows for our liberty. No longer are you around me, friends, soldiers, heroes of our mountains! And thou, Toussaint, the pride of our race, the terror of our enemies--thou whose genius led us from slavery to liberty--thou whose hand adorned peace with lovely virtues-- thou whose glory fills the world, they have put thee in irons like the vilest criminal! But what is there in common between you, Captain-general, and Toussaint? Your name came amongst us only as his who turned parricidal arms against the representatives of your country. It is this crime, doubtless, that the Consul wished to reward in giving you the government of Saint Domingo." These were bold words to be spoken at the Governor's table. The guests looked astounded. Leclerc, alarmed in his inmost soul, affected composure.

        In truth, the condition of the colony was lamentable. The fever continued its wasting career. The Government every day lost power, while its enemies increased. Suspicion and alarm opened on every hand. This state of things finds a good description in the words of an eyewitness. Thus does General Pamphile de Lacroix speak: "I was invited to the heights of the Cape by General Boudet, whom the General-in-chief was sending to France to acquaint the Government with the true condition of the island. At the house of General Boudet I found Generals Clervaux and Christophe. I asked them the cause of the progress of the insurrection. The latter replied, 'You are a European, and you are young; you have fought merely in the armies of the mother country; you, consequently, cannot have any prejudices regarding slavery. I will therefore speak to you with frankness. The revolt grows because distrust is at its height. If you had our skin, you would not, perhaps, be so confiding as

myself, who am intrusting my only son, Ferdinand, to General Boudet that he may be educated in France. I make no account of the brigands who have given the signal for the insurrection. The danger lies not there; the danger is in the general opinion of the blacks; those of Saint Domingo are frightened because they know the decree of the 30th Floréal, which maintains slavery and the slave-trade in the colonies restored to France by the treaty of Amiens. They are alarmed at seeing the First Consul re-establish the old system in those colonies. They are afraid lest the indiscreet talk that is heard here on all sides should find its way to France, and suggest to the Government the idea of depriving the blacks of Saint Domingo of their liberty.' In order to pique his self-love, I asked him how it was that he, who had so much influence in the south, should not have found troops sufficiently devoted to put Sans-Souci into his hands? His reply struck me: 'If Sans-Souci was a soldier, I might get hold of him; but he is a mean and cruel brigand, who has no scruple to kill whomsoever he suspects; he knows when to fly, and he knows how to cover his flight with the deserts which he leaves behind him. He goes about the affair better than we did at the time of your disembarcation. If, then, instead of fighting, our system of resistance had consisted in flight, and in well alarming the blacks, you would never have been able to overtake us. So said old Toussaint: no one believed him. We possessed arms; the pride of making use of them was our ruin. These new insurgents follow the system of Toussaint; if they persist in it, we shall have difficulty to reduce them.'

        "General Christophe urged me not to return that evening to Fort Dauphin; saying, that the revolters having attacked his posts in the plain, were probably informed of my journey. I thanked him; but urging that the danger would be greater to-morrow, I said that I should return as soon as I had seen the General- in-chief. General Leclerc acquainted me with his melancholy situation, congratulating himself in seeing none but bandits among the new chiefs of the insurrection, and added, that in the feeble state of the forces of the mother country, he was

glad to find the generals of colour still faithful to France. On my way to Saint Michel, I stopped at General Christophe's, who hearing discharges of fire-arms in the mountains, repeated his request that I would not that evening press on to Fort Dauphin. I persisted in my intention. He then ordered six of his guides to accompany me. 'Bear in mind,' he said to them repeatedly, 'that you are escorting a general whom I esteem and love.'

        "We set out. Of a sudden the guides, who led the way with torches, stopped before a detachment of thirty blacks, who had concealed themselves in a ditch. Forthwith one heard the words, 'Halt! stop! halt!' Shots succeeded. The commanding officer meanwhile recognised in Don Diego Polanco, who was with me, an old friend. We were saved. But I had seen reason to believe that the chiefs of the colonial troops and the coloured generals had communications with the insurgents.

        "Too frequently did the Europeans speak of the reinforcements captured from France for the blacks not to perceive the need in which we stood of them."

        The news of the events which had taken place at Guadaloupe, the maintenance of slavery at Martinique, indiscreet talk, and insinuations from foreigners, fomented distrust in the minds of the black chiefs. The words which the First Consul had addressed to the Abbé Grégoire, at an officeal presentation at the Institute, were repeated in the colony: "From what is taking place in Saint Domingo, I wish the friends of the blacks throughout Europe had their heads covered with mourning crape." The words struck men's imaginations. The minds of the blacks and of the men of colour were at the height of disquietude when the frigate, Cocarde, entered the roads, having on board blacks sent from Guadaloupe; many of them in the night jumped into the sea, swam to shore, and by their reports made the alarm still greater. At the same time, some men of colour, also from Guadaloupe, brought to Saint Domingo information that the slave-trade in that island comprehended their caste. Here were dark presages of what might be expected in Saint Domingo, The fidelity of the chiefs of the Colonial troops was from that hour irrevocably shaken.

        General Clervaux, who had recently condemned Charles Belair to death, first threw off the mask by deserting. The evening before, being at Madame Leclerc's, he had said in a fit of passion, "I was free formerly; only to new circumstances do I owe it that I have raised up my reviled colour; but if I fancied that here the restoration of slavery would ever be thought of, that instant I would become a brigand."

        Judge, if you can, of the position of Captain-general Leclerc; he knew the danger, he could not prevent it. The crews were not sufficient for the service of the ships. The garrison of the Cape did not comprise more than two hundred Europeans; there were in it fifteen hundred colonial soldiers. On the night of the 13th-14th of September (1802), Pétion, that coolly audacious chief, threw all into confusion at the Cape, spiked the guns, and disarmed the European cannoniers."^*

*Mémoires, vol. ii. 224, seq.

        Two days after, Clervaux and Pétion made an attack on the Cape, but failed to capture it. So well were they received by Brigadier Anhouil that, thinking they were opposed by the fresh troops expected from France, they drew off their forces which, if pressed forward, must have been overwhelming, so superior were they in number to the defenders of the colonial metropolis. At the moment of the attack, Leclerc, as a measure of precaution, sent on board vessels in the harbour, whose crews had been greatly reduced by the fever, detachments of the colonial soldiers who had remained at the Cape. The sailors, panic-struck, cried out, "Let us kill those who may kill us." They fell on the black soldiers, and ruthlessly drowned of them more than a thousand.

        Then Christophe, already prepared for defection, and lately standing, to use his phrase, as a benevolent spectator, in other words, watching the right moment, joined Clervaux. A few days after Dessalines threw himself into opposition.

        The insurrection became general. The entire population was the enemy of France. The mother, the daughter, the child, as well as the father, and the brother, all were soldiers. The woods were their camps, dens their dwellings; the mountains

their ramparts; they found their food in the spontaneous products of the earth; they transmuted into arms the instruments of agriculture. Stones hurled from the rocks served them instead of artillery. They threw their whole life into assaults, combats, and ambuscades. A new future was before them. "Death or liberty!" again became their rallying cry. Everywhere the insurgents repulsed, and laid waste the enemies of their freedom, They captured Poit-de-Paix, Gonaïves, Fort Dauphin. In the evacuation of the last place, General de Lacroix was obliged in his extremity to destroy powder and provisions to the value of two millions of francs. Escaping by sea to the Cape, he lost in the short voyage sixty-six sick persons, who were thrown into the sea. The first words which Leclerc addressed to him on landing them were, "General, what have you done? You bring a coloured population four times more numerous than your Europeans; you do not know then that they are tigers, serpents, that you bear in your bosom."

        Leclerc felt that the colony was escaping out of his hands. Of all his conquests there remained only, in the North, the Cape, and Môle Saint-Nicholas, and in the West, Port-au-Prince, and Saint Marc. But for the colonists, who then appeared with arms in their hands, all was over.

        At the prospect the Captain-general was greatly alarmed. He looked everywhere for succour. In his perplexity he sent to an enemy's camp to beg the aid of Christophe, offering him honours and riches. Christophe contented himself with replying, that he was rich and honoured enough in possessing liberty himself, and in securing the liberty of his colour.

        Shortly, Christophe put himself at the head of the insurgents, and proceeded to attack the Cape. Then was Leclerc on the land side shut up within the walls of the capital. Scarcely did he possess vessels sufficient for flight.

        Such was the condition of Hayti, when, in the first of November, 1802, the Captain-general, worn down by fatigue and pains, and overwhelmed with vexation, disappointment, and despair, breathed his last, as the final result of a sickness which had long threatened to prove fatal. A little before his death he expressed

his regret for the errors committed by himself in the government. Regret now utterly vain; errors which had proved disastrous to all the great interests of the colony. Nor less disastrous to France was this iniquitous expedition. Of four-and-thirty thousand warriors, twenty-four thousand had perished, and eight thousand were in the hospitals; scarcely more than two thousand were fit for service.

        Amid this thick darkness, and surrounded by these vengeful penalties, the Captain-general passed to a tribunal before which diversities of skin are unknown. Leclerc wanted neither sense nor manners. He possessed an easy eloquence which threw light on the discussions of his council-chamber. But he was little acquainted with the human heart; and was unable to interpret the peculiar character of Africans. In war he was active, uncertain, and presumptuous. Blindly obedient to the wishes of the First Consul, he made peace consist of a complication of troubles, divisions, treachery, and violence. By these deplorable crimes, he was reduced to the state of impotence which has been described. As he had none of the qualities of a great commander, a funeral oration pronounced in his honour before a few soldiers, who had escaped from the fever and the sword, was a mere harmonious assemblage of idle words.

        Pauline, Leclerc's wife, affected the marks of extraordinary mourning, but she betrayed appearances by choosing for her companion one of the most handsome men of the army, and returned to her ordinary habits of luxury, pleasure, and voluptuousness. After having had her husband's body embalmed, she crossed the sea to France. When her vessel appeared at Marseilles, the inhabitants at the sight of the Consul's sister, a widow, so young, in tears, manifested their sorrow by decorating the port and the streets with crape and funereal garlands. The tokens of sadness had been commanded, but they had some reality, for many of them had seen her grow up to adolescence within their walls.

        In mournful procession she entered Paris. Brothers, sisters, and wives, then shed true tears at the remembrance of sons, brothers, and husbands, whom they had lost in the expedition.

Pauline herself let some tears fall when she saw her brother, who embraced her with joy and tenderness. Then she spoke to him eloquently of Saint Domingo as a land of fire, blood, and desolation. The Consul heard her in silence, and said, "Here is all that remains of that fine army--the body of a brother-in-law, of a general, my right arm, a handful of dust; all has perished, all will perish. Fatal conquest! cursed land! perfidious colonists! a wretched slave in revolt! These are the causes of so many evils." He concealed from himself for a moment that he had sent away so many brave warriors that they might not throw their bayonets across the road to the imperial throne, whither he was urged by his impetuous desires.

        Soon his mind arose from that dejection, and in the immensity of the future which his genius embraced, he regarded the calamities of Saint Domingo only as an unlucky but useful incident. Had he not thrown into prison Toussaint, the chief and the soul of the revolt? The fever had nearly consumed its fuel; Rochambeau, whose character he knew, would terrify the island into obedience. Those wandering bands of insurgents, without a head, without union, divided among themselves, would desert the mountains to enjoy the pleasures of the cities. Besides, did he not possess the two heads of Saint Domingo, the South and the Spanish territory? Had he no more soldiers, no more ships? Let twenty thousand men fly over the ocean. Thus Bonaparte prepared for the loss of a second army. Blind ambition, reckless of its means, reckless of the misery it occasions! Meanwhile the First Consul deposited Leclerc's corpse amid much pomp in the Panthéon, and erected statues to his memory. The greater the calamities of Hayti, the more he endeavoured to efface the recollection of them by show and pomp, and by the aid of those arts which ought to transmit to posterity the memory only of truly great men.

CHAPTER IV.

Rochambeau assumes the command--His character--Voluptuousness, tyranny, and cruelty--Receives large reinforcements--Institutes a system of terror-- The insurrection becomes general and irresistible--The French are driven out of the island.

        AFTER the death of Leclerc, the command of Hayti passed into the hands of Rochambeau. That General was deformed in body, but of a robust constitution; his manner was hard and severe, though he had a propensity to voluptuousness. In his youth he had, under the eyes of an illustrious father, served the cause of independence in North America. He lacked neither ability nor experience in war. He possessed tender, domestic, and friendly affections. His good qualities would have accompanied him to the tomb, if he had not been called to the government of Saint Domingo. Regarding virtue as both lovely and requisite in private life, he judged it useless and even dangerous in public affairs, as if the laws of eternal justice depended on position and circumstances. Misled by this gross delusion, he feared not to give himself up to acts of violation, spoliation, and cruelty of all kinds. Blaming the tardy and hesitating administration of his predecessor, he resolved to employ all the resources of terror in order to establish his authority.

        Masters who had been impoverished by the freedom of the slaves, saw with joy Rochambeau succeed a chief who, according to circumstances, espoused or betrayed their personal interests. But the blacks were disquieted when they knew that he had taken the helm. Independently of the massacre he had committed in the bay of Mancenille, they remembered that when merely a general, he had not scrupled to degrade them with the punishment of the lash; but what caused them greater alarm were some words addressed in a tone of pleasantry, to their wives at a festivity which he had given at Port-au-Prince. "You," he said, "are invited to dance at your interment." A

hall hung with black, and lighted up by funeral torches, seemed to them the image of their approaching sanguinary end.

        Despotism and sensuality have often been companions. In Rochambeau the one sharpened the appetite for the other, as though greediness of bodily pleasure welcomed the zest arising from the sight of bodily pain. No small part of his time Rochambeau passed at table, or on sofas, with Creole females, worshippers of pleasure, as well as most cruel towards their slaves. They spoke to him constantly of chains, prisons, the scourge and other punishments, in the midst of games, laughter, caresses, and senseless gratifications with which they intoxicated his soul. As his policy inclined him to violence, he willingly allowed himself to be overcome by the fascinations of these women, as well as by irritated proprietors, who continually pointed him to their houses in flames, and their slaves in revolt in the mountains. Thus did he listen only to counsels of hatred enforced by contempt and vice.

        The fever had changed the character of the army. The heart of the soldier was worn by regret, fatigued by misfortune, and filled with trouble; no longer had the noise and glitter of arms, encampments, war, and victory, any attractions for him. A bitter and savage melancholy had succeeded to the hilarity and joy of courage and hope. Even officers of rank were seen to disown authority and to favour a revolt, which they judged legitimate. But Rochambeau, who required a blind submission, dismissed those the firmness of whose soul he doubted; thus giving free course to tyranny in order to oppose an effectual remedy to the evils he wished to put down.

        Up to this time punishment and violence had been covered with a veil. Toussaint had not been arrested except as a result of a pretended conspiracy; a military tribunal had condemned Charles Belair. Those who had suffered death, had been taken with arms in their hands, or had kept up communications with the insurgents. In truth many women and children were in the number of the victims, but they were at least implicated by some accusation, and it was through fear rather than cruelty that disarmed soldiers had been drowned at

the Cape. But from this time there was no longer any study of appearances; law, judges, and tribunals were ceremonies too circuitous and too tardy.

        Meanwhile Rochambeau, who received in different detachments fresh troops, to the number of 20,000 men, sent them under different circumstances against the revolters, whom he drove away from the country around Port-au-Prince, Mole Saint-Nicholas, and the heights which overhung the Cape. As he was most eager to signalize his command by some victory, he retook Fort Dauphin and Port-de-Paix without any memorable action. This was the term of his success. The blacks without regret, abandoned fortresses which to them seemed contemptible in comparison with their rocks. But in the degree in which they were repulsed at one point, they extended towards another, so that they only acquired accessions of strength. But what was more for their encouragement and advantage, was that they were furnished with arms by English vessels. Rochambeau thought that there was no surer means to repress their ardour than to affright them by some extraordinary punishment.

        The sea off the Cape was chosen to be the theatre of an execution, unparalleled in what is called civilized life. For fear that Maurepas, who had gained distinction under Toussaint L'Ouverture, after having embraced the side of France, should join the insurgents, Leclerc had written to him to come by sea, with his family and his troop, to take the command of the Cape, which he destined for him as a reward for his services. No sooner had he arrived than he and his soldiers were seized and disarmed. Rochambeau ordered preparations to be made for a barbarous punishment, in order to put the negro general to death, with his troop, consisting of 400 blacks. It was also put in deliberation whether death should be inflicted on his children, in order to prevent them from rising up to avenge their father.

        After having been bound to the mast of a vessel, Maurepas was frightfully insulted. His wife, his children, and his soldiers were brought to be drowned under his eyes. The executioners were astounded when they beheld a father fix his dying eyes by turns on his children, his wife, and his companions in arms,

undergoing a violent death; while they, on their part, turned their eyes away from a father, a husband, a general, whose countenance was disfigured by the tortures he was enduring. After being made to contemplate each other's sufferings, they were all tossed into the ocean. They died without complaining, in a manner worthy the champions of liberty. With a reversal of the order of nature, the father died last; he also suffered most.

        Thus died Maurepas, whose character was a compound of frankness and severity. Thrice had he repulsed the French at the gorge of Trois-Rivières; he had at once the glory and the misfortune to go over to the French with victorious arms. The elevation of his soul equalled his valour. He preserved a tender feeling for the master whose slave he had been; he caused funeral honours to be paid to that master, and when his grave had been negligently prepared, he throw off his upper garment in order to perform the pious office properly. Among men of his own blood he was a powerful chief. A spirit of order and justice prevailed in his life. His riches, which were considerable, were given up to pillage. It would almost seem as if so much excellence were subjected to so much ignominy, expressly to show that while black men are capable of any virtue, white men are capable of any crime. Certainly, my narrative is replete with instances which, beyond a question, prove that moral as well as mental excellence is independent of the varieties of colour.

        This brutal punishment, preceded by vile perfidy, filled the camps of the insurgents with horror. That horror was augmented when Rochambeau, at the Cape, put to death five hundred prisoners. On the place of execution, and under the eyes of the victims, they dug a large hole for their grave, so that the poor wretches may be said to have been present at their own funeral.

        Dessalines burning to avenge Maurepas and his fellow-soldiers, rushed like a lion on the Cape, and, in his impetuous and terrible march, he surrounded and made prisoners a body of Frenchmen, who, at the post called Belair, defended the approach to the city. Then, with branches of trees, that ferocious African raised, under the eyes of Rochambeau, five hundred gibbets, on which he

hanged the same number of prisoners. Of these victims of vengeance, the greater number had been the Consul's companions in arms; they had assisted that bad great man to acquire his pretensions to a throne, and for their reward they had been sent out of his way to suffer an ignominious and painful death at the hands of a savage.

        Rochambeau, who occupied himself less and less with war, continued to plunge into the delights of the table, and of voluptuousness with courtezans and wives of colonists who never ceased to stimulate his tyranny, and exact from him the restoration of their slaves. Then, while the insurrection, in the name of liberty, made head in the mountains, on the plains suspicion converted everything into crime. If you went abroad, you joined the revolters; if you stayed at home, you were waiting for them; if you manifested joy, you took pleasure in the public calamities; if you appeared sad, you grieved over the reverses of the revolt; if you wrote letters, you corresponded with the enemy; if you talked, you spread sedition; if you were observed to listen, you were a spy; if you failed to salute a white, you insulted a master: bravery was dangerous, weakness was complicity, innocence was stratagem. Interpretations were put on a gesture, a smile, a sigh; silence was accused of sedition, and even thoughts had no asylum in their last refuge, the human heart.

        Such is the character of the tyranny which under the slightest pretext and often by mere hazard, threw its toils round a multitude of victims without distinction of age or sex, to effect their ruin. The number of sufferers was greatly augmented, because colonists by a species of rivalry denounced the peaceful slaves of other colonists, so that it became almost the sole business of Rochambeau to order or even to devise punishments; the sea and the land were covered with them. The unfortunate blacks were bound together and then thrown into the sea to perish: if they came up to the surface and made their way to the shore, they were in sport pursued and massacred. The executions were varied: now the blacks were beheaded, now they were dragged down into the depths by the weight of a shot tied to their feet; and now they were stifled by sulphur on ship-board.

        Among the number of these victims were female priests, who worshipped African fetish idols. That veneration for the gods of their fathers was punished with death; so little does unbelief guarantee toleration. A French general, touched with compassion at the approaching death of one of these superstitious but well-meaning women, implored that her life might be spared. Rochambeau, taking into his hands the pigmy idols of her worship, said, "How can I save the life of one who worships these!" Yet during the fever these very women had bestowed every attention on sick French soldiers. Unhappy women, their charity had no other recompense than the punishment which is reserved for the vilest crimes. Base ingratitude of the commander! Here, again, on which side is the moral superiority? Oh, civilization, what crimes have been committed in thy name! Ye weak ones, whose "feeble knees" a Christian authority commands Christian men to strengthen (Heb. xii. 12), how have indignities and woes been heaped on your heads, simply because ye were weak, not only by sceptics and scoffers, but even by professed believers in a divine religion!

        The numerous executions which began at Cape City soon extended to other places; Port-au-Prince had its salt waters made bloody, and scaffolds were erected and loaded within and without its walls. The hand of tyranny spread terror and death over the shores of the north and the west. As the insurrection became more daring, it was thought that the punishments had not been either numerous enough, violent enough, or various enough. The colonists counselled and encouraged vengeance as if it was their wealth.

        All human passions were let loose. Never was such a spectacle of ferocity beheld. The calm, concentrated, impassible revolt which followed the death of Leclerc, had committed only particular acts of revenge; but at the sight of punishments so numerous and so horrible, insurrection roared and raged on all sides. Men, scarcely anything else than barbarians, made the mountains resound with this death song:--

                         "Open, ye sepulchres of our ancestors; ye dusty bones, shudder;
                         Vengeance! vengeance t reply the tombs and all nature."

With shouts of joy they ran to battle, and impatient to avenge their colour, they seized the enemies of their liberty, and cast them to the earth to perish. The South was once more on fire.

        At the same time, at the Cape, at Fort Dauphin, at Port-de-Paix, at Saint Marc, at Port-au-Prince, and all along the shores, everywhere were whips, crosses, gibbets, funeral piles; and soldiers, colonists, sailors engaged in slaying, strangling, drowning human beings, whose only crime was their refusal to go back into slavery. Some had their bodies lacerated by the scourge; then they were fastened to posts in the vicinity of a marsh, that they might be devoured, half alive, by blood-sucking insects. Others were literally burnt alive, as if they had been martyrs for religion. Death thus appeared before the negro in its two most terrible aspects, extreme slowness and extreme rapidity. Others in greater number perished in the sea or on the scaffold. In the country, trees loaded with flowers and breathing perfumes, served as gallows, as if to put in broad contrast the goodness of God and the vileness of man. Countries created for peace, happiness, and joy, were thus desolated by human passions scarcely less baneful to those who fostered and indulged them than to those against whom they raged.

        On the countenance of those who were led to death shone an anticipation of the liberty which they felt was about to grow on a land watered with the blood of their caste. They had the same firmness, the same resignation, the same enthusiasm as distinguished the martyr of the Christian religion. On the gibbets, in the flames, in the midst of tortures scarcely was a sigh to be heard; even the child hardly shed tears. The words "our country," "freedom," breathed quietly from their dying lips. They often encouraged each other to bear death manfully. A black chief named Chevalier, hesitated when he saw the instruments of his punishment. "What!" said his wife, "thou knowest not how sweet it is to die for liberty!" and without allowing herself to be touched by the executioner, she took the rope and ended her days. A mother said to her daughters who were going to execution, "Be glad, you will not be mothers of slaves."

        The strength of soul which the blacks showed in their tortures

was so surprising, that the whites ascribed the cause to some peculiarity of organization. It was pretended that the fibres of the blacks contracted with so much force that the sufferers became insensible to pain. Thus, by vain suppositions, an effort was made to rob the victims of the glory of their death. If the question was to make them slaves, then they were not men; if the cruellest punishments were to be inflicted on them, then they did not suffer. If they were not men, why make them do the work of men? If they did not suffer, why impose the punishments? Beasts may do the work which was laid on beings who were not men; and sufferings not felt, were inefficacious both as punishments and examples. But when did tyranny lack a pretext, or cruelty lack a palliation? In this case, the pretext and the palliation did but throw the enormity of the injustice into relief.

        Ordinary expedients were too tame, or too slow, or not sufficiently efficacious. History was ransacked for others. Children, women, and old men were confined in sacks, and thrown into the sea: it was the punishment of parricides among the Romans. It was ascertained that three centuries before, in that same country, Spaniards had employed dogs to run down the innocent savages. Frenchmen of the nineteenth century rejoiced that they had at their command a resource so effectual, and I must add, so diabolical. Rochambeau, however, sent a vessel to the isle of Cuba to purchase dogs whose nature, under man's training, made them fit for the work of hunting human beings. When this ship appeared at the fort of the Cape, wives of the colonists went to receive them on the shore, and made the air resound with cries of joy; they put garlands on their necks, and strewed their path with flowers. Some degraded themselves so far as to cover those instruments of their vengeance with kisses. To what extravagances does slavery lead! An experiment must be made. In the courtyard of a convent a sort of amphitheatre was erected, which was filled with a multitude panting for negro blood. The victim was bound to a post. The dogs, sharpened by extreme hunger, were no sooner let loose, than they tore the poor wretch pieces. The raging animals disputed with each other the

palpitating members, and the ground was dyed with human blood and canine foam. A report spread among the blacks, that at the last groan of that pitiable creature, the heavens opened, and received his soul.

        This kind of death, with circumstances more or less frightful, became common, until cruelty, dispensing with all forms, disdainfully cast human beings to the dogs, who were kept in packs near the city; and when the appetite of the animals, satisfied with human flesh and gore, refused any longer to destroy, the sword finished the bloody work: showing that man's passions surpass in atrocity those of wild beasts. Indeed, language failed of terms to describe the crimes which the lust of unjust power perpetrated. New expressions were invented. The drowning of two or three hundred human beings was called "a good haul;" death on a gallows was "a step upwards;" to be torn in pieces by dogs was "to enter the arena." Some executioners gained celebrity; the name of Tombarel long continued to make men shudder. The sea and the rivers were stained with blood. The numbers of victims was so considerable that the inhabitants refused to eat fish, lest they should feed on blood of their own colour.

        Many blacks, of whom some had witnessed these atrocities, and others, who, in the confusion, had, by swimming or flight, escaped from the hands of the executioners, went to join the ranks of the insurgents in different places. Often, under the shade of a tree, or under the point of a rock, these fugitives might be seen recounting to their companions the punishment they had witnessed, or suffered. How great soever the cruelty, it was exaggerated in their hyperbolical phraseology. The crowd listened with intense curiosity, silence, and horror; often the narrators were interrupted by questions respecting the fate of a child, or a sister, who had died on the gibbet, or had been tossed into the sea. It these frightful accounts, the auditors shed tears, but they were tears of vengeance. Some shouted, "Shall we go down into our tombs without having avenged them? No! their bones would repulse ours." Others, by gestures and cries, not satisfied with having carried fire and sword

over the low lands, stirred each other up to deeds of carnage and devastation. Vengeance of a certain barbaric grandeur burst forth. In listening to one of these narratives, Paul L'Ouverture, the brother of Toussaint, learned, that, without any reason, his wife, who lived at the Cape, in the peace of her own home, had been drowned. He fell into a madness of revenge which grief nourished, and which nothing appeased. He captured, near Fort Dauphin, a shipwrecked vessel, on board of which were thirty French passengers. He took them, and having led them to one of the principal entrances to Cape City, he pitilessly immolated them all to the manes of his innocent wife, taking pains to put on a post an inscription, which stated that the death of a beloved partner had extorted from his grief a vengeance worthy of a proud, loving, and deeply afflicted soul. Truly, indeed, is revenge blind as well as ruthless. Who can describe, who can dare to contemplate the evils of slavery? Sixteen of the bravest generals of Toussaint L'Ouverture, chained by the neck to the rocks of an uninhabited island, breathed their last miserable sigh after wasting away during seventeen days. These abominable cruelties are not wholly without relief. Captains of ships, instead of casting the innocent victims put into their hands for the purpose into the sea, supported them at their own expense, and landed them on some of the neighbouring islands, or on some remote shore of Saint Domingo. None showed more humanity than Mazard, who employed as much zeal in saving victims as others did in destroying them. "I have," he said, "deceived your tyrants; my heart is lacerated to see the land and the sea covered with victims; go into the mountains, rejoin your people, that posterity may learn that savages dragged to servitude have founded a new state; but pity men's passions, and leave your revenge to time, to remorse, to heaven."

        All the sea-captains did not act with the same elevation of soul. They did, indeed, save the blacks from death, but their conduct was dictated by a base avarice; they took them and sold them as slaves in some neighbouring island. On one of these occasions, the governor of Porto-Rico made this fine

reply: "If they are slaves, I will not purchase them; if they are free men, you have not the right to sell them."

        Nor was the army without examples of virtue. There were generals who, indignant at so many cruelties, uttered remonstrances, or disobeyed inhuman commands. Allix, who commanded at Port-au-Prince, refused ten thousand shot intended to be fastened to the feet of victims to freedom. This act of disobedience, which was really a virtue, Rochambeau punished by banishment. Other officers were punished for similar offences. Truly did the forcible eloquence of the Africans characterize the war as "a War of Cannibals."

        Suddenly the south, which had been tranquil, awoke at the noise of the punishments which sent from the north and the west corpses to float on its shores. That province was peopled chiefly by men of colour, who possessed great wealth, and who showed themselves less than in other parts, enemies of the whites, with whom, notwithstanding the force of prejudice, they were united by marriage. When they saw that they themselves were not spared any more than the blacks, they ran to arms. The revolt began in the district of Petit-Troux, where, under the pretext of a conspiracy, of which nothing has ever become known, they had drowned Boudet, who had delivered up the fort Bizoton at the attack of Port-au-Prince. That punishment revolted public opinion the more because it involved ingratitiude. The revolt became general as soon as it had been resolved to put to death in the city of Cayes inhabitants of colour, who were in the police service, and who were charged with betraying signs of discontent. But how could punishment be inflicted on so many in silence? Recourse was had to the sea. The men were seized, disarmed, put into a ship, murdered, and thrown by night into the waves. But womanly love could not be blinded. Women, who had heard the voice of the carnage, demanded with tears in their eyes, that the massacre of their brothers and their husbands should not go unpunished. Then there appeared on the stage a new man, named Ferrou. Highly esteemed in peace, he was terrible in war. He was not a barbarian, his vengeance had some dignity. After having raised the country, he ordered all

the colonists to be arrested, and to be conducted safe and sound to the village Coteaux, situate not far from the sea where his people had been destroyed. Not expecting clemency, the captives disdained supplication, and prepared for death. Ferrou addressed to them these words full of pride and bitterness: "Cruel whites, you hesitate not to sacrifice to your hate those who in this land are your defenders. Of what use is it that we are allied to you by the sweet and sacred bonds of nature, for our wives are your mothers and daughters? Not fearing the crime of parricide, you imbrue your hands in our blood. From this spot behold that sea in which, during a frightful night, under the pale light of the stars, you drowned a band of our people. What was their crime? To love you and to serve you. The winds and the waves bear back to us their livid bodies. They are brothers, husbands, companions, faithful friends in servitude, in war, in freedom. A just resentment commands us to sacrifice you; but go across that blood-stained sea, and join your own colour; behold in us enemies but not executioners." Ferrou then sent them in a vessel to Cayes, and forthwith made his arrangements for marching against the city.

        Informed of this revolt, provoked by imprudent attacks, Laplume precipitately returned from the frontiers of the South, where he was engaged in checking the ravages of the terrible Lamour de Rance. Scarcely had he got back when he discovered the smoke of Ferrou's camp, in the vicinity of Port-au-Prince. He fell on him, and compelled him to retreat into the rugged mountains called La Hotte, whose decomposing rocks, breaking and bursting under men's feet, throw them into their abysses. But Ferrou knew the safe ways. Those he chose, and from them he rushed down to make an irruption into the plains near the town, Petit Goave. The body of troops employed in the defence of that city was in part composed of people of colour, and partly of Frenchmen--the former joined the devastator, the latter took to flight.

        In order the more effectually to keep his eye on the insurrection which now covered three provinces, Rochambeau had fixed his residence at Port-au-Prince, still drawing after him a great

number of women, with all the equipage of effeminate luxury. As soon as he had learned the disastrous news, he sent Nétervood by sea to recapture the city of Petit Goave. As he did not doubt of success, he gave his lieutenant a pack of hounds partly to pursue the insurgents with, and partly to devour the prisoners. Nétervood hastened on his errand, and made an attack. But the enemy, setting the city on fire, entrenched themselves in a fort, whence they dealt death on their assailants. Nétervood received a mortal wound in the midst of his soldiers, who were fast perishing, being placed between a burning town and a powerful stronghold. Flight by sea was the only resource; and the dogs, in the confusion dispersing abroad, added to the dangers and disgrace of the defeat. Thus Nétervood, eager for peril and combat, lost his life in the flower of his youth, in the dishonourable cause of slavery.

        Bands of insurgents, inflamed by victory, occupied the long chains of mountains which run through the southern province. They formed communications one with another, and at their convenience and their pleasure rushed down into the plains in torrents which carried away whatever was before them. Dessalines put himself at the head of that great movement. Two powerful chiefs, Geffrard and Cangé, passed from the north to the south. They joined Ferrou, and in unison hastened across the mountains to ravage the fertile lands of Cavaillon, of Saint Louis, and of Cayes. Then they carried devastation over those of Jérémie.

        These events threw consternation into the soul of Rochambeau. The insurrection threatened to pluck out of his hands the southern provinces. He had at first sent six hundred men to Laplume for the defence of Cayes; but that weak supply proving insufficient, he immediately directed toward Jérémie, vessels which were bringing from France a reinforcement of two thousand men. One moiety of these men reached Jérémie, and without delay prepared to set out for their destination. But from the peaks of his rocks Ferrou saw them, watched them, and prepared to cut them to pieces. Scarcely were the French ten miles from Jérémie, when they fell into an ambuscade. After

a sanguinary conflict they were routed. A frightful slaughter ensued. The few that escaped, hurried back to Jérémie, where they spread the utmost alarm.

        The other moiety who landed at Tiburon, were also taken in an ambuscade, and cut to pieces, near Coteaux. The few who escaped took refuge in Cayes, into which six hundred other soldiers had thrown themselves, who were to have formed a junction with the two defeated divisions.

        Wherever the insurrection reigned scaffolds were erected. The cities of Cayes and Jérémie were afflicted with numerous executions, which drew more closely the bonds between the blacks and the coloured population, and more and more secured success to the cause of freedom.

        Laplume, seeing that all was lost, embarked for France, where he died, without leaving means for the interment of his remains.

        Rochambeau, on the brink of despair, made new efforts to put a stop to the insurrection. He took special pains to withstand the ravages of Dessalines, whom in a proclamation he threatened to flog to death, as the meanest of slaves. Men only laughed at the folly. Nevertheless, he succeeded in protecting from the continual incursions of that brute, the plain Cul-de-Sac, and Mirebalais, which furnished provisions to Port-au-Prince. At the same time he guaranteed the environs of the Cape from the frequent attacks of Christophe.

        Meanwhile, Rochambeau experienced increasing difficulties in the low state of his exchequer. He sought remedies in stock-jobbing, and in exactions of all kinds. He drew on the United States bills to a very large amount, which his government refused to honour. He levied large contributions on cities that were half ruined. He imprisoned opulent persons, who obtained their liberation only by paying large sums of money; some had even to give up their property altogether. He attempted to justify these exactions by pleading the necessities of the public service. But he alienated the hearts of those who through interest remained attached to his party, to such a degree, that after having lost a second army, destroyed thousands of poor victims, and wasted much money, he fell into the same state of distress,

misery, and abandonment, as that in which Leclerc was a short time before his death; with this difference, that under the latter the south had not been polluted or devastated by insensate passions and internecine war.

        Rochambeau's efforts to stay the insurrection were utterly futile. Like a vast conflagration, it extended from the south to the north. If it went out at one point, it blazed up in another. Soon the war changed its seat. Masters on land, the Africans commenced hostilities on the seas, which they carried on the more advantageously because they were protected by the English. In light boats, with the aid of the tide and of oars, they went up and down the rivers, passed from the mountains into the ocean, and from the ocean into the mountains, spreading terror wherever they appeared. They attacked ships, massacred the passengers, and loaded themselves with plunder, which they carried back into their rocky fastnesses. Woe to the French who sailed toward those deadly shores. Two vessels, from Havre and from Nantes, fell into their hands; all on board were slaughtered. As on land so on water, the insurgents could not be reached; they hid their boats in forests; dispersed, re-assembled, defying alike the soldiers and the ships of war; and, almost with impunity, pursued at will their destructive career.

        At the sight of an insurrection, which was master both on land and on the sea, Rochambeau was seized with an alarm that he in vain endeavoured to conceal. The Consul, who rewarded success only, was to be feared by a man who was overwhelmed in failure. Of what use so many victims, so many tortures, so many gallows, so many drownings, so many raging hounds? All this serves only to illustrate the strength of the insurrection, and the hopelessness of his cause. The moment that the General-in-chief was no longer in a state to make head against the rebellion, it began to insult and brave him, even in the cities which were his last places of refuge. His temper became more and more disquiet and fierce. The shades of his victims appeared to him in his dreams. Now he cried out that he would make Saint Domingo a vast cemetery, where at least slavery should bear sway. Now he declared he would re-establish

liberty, which his cruelties had made only more precious to the inhabitants. Then, but too late, he grew angry at the artifices of the women who had him in their toils, and at the colonists who had misled him by their selfish counsels. Yet did he think it necessary for the security of his troops to continue the system of terror.

        A situation so deplorable could no longer be kept concealed from Bonaparte. Rochambeau sent deputies to Paris, who reported that the revolt, somewhat calm after the death of Leclerc, having become active again, had spread from the. north to the south; that Rochambeau, in order to stop its progress, had employed the force of arms and the utmost terror; that these remedies had proved powerless; that the insurrection, animated by a fanatical spirit of liberty, had broken down every embankment; that at the head of the insurrection appeared in the west Dessalines, Christophe in the north, and in the south Ferrou; that after having laid waste the interior, the insurgents ravaged the coasts like pirates; that the colonists were in a state of extreme affliction, at seeing so great an armament overwhelmed with reverses; and that the only means of safety was another expedition.

        Another expedition was impossible. Already had a bad feeling arisen between France and England. Soon the latter power declared war against the former. This rupture gave the finishing blow to the French cause in Hayti. On land, Rochambeau's troops were invested by the insurgents. At sea the English were supreme. Nevertheless, the French general maintained himself in his post with an intrepidity which would have done honour to a good cause. The sufferings of the besieged became extreme; rarely have woes equal to theirs been experienced. Rochambeau has related how pitiable was the existence of himself and comrades during this period, when placed between death and life; they appeased their hunger as well as they could by eating their horses, mules, asses, and even their dogs: yes, the very hounds they had obtained, in order to run down their foes.

        Things remained in this condition until the middle of November (1803); then the besiegers forced some of the exterior 266 works, and prepared for a new attack. The inflexibility of the French commander was at length obliged to give way. Well did he know that an assault, if made, must succeed, and he feared to fall into the hands of his furious assailants. He offered to capitulate. The offer was accepted. On the 19th of November the articles were signed. The treaty stipulated that the French should evacuate Cap Français at the end of ten days, with all their artillery, ammunition, and magazines; that they should withdraw to their vessels with the honours of war and the guarantee of their private property; that they should leave their sick and wounded in the hospitals, whom the blacks should take care of until they were well, and that then they should be sent to France in neutral vessels. These conditions were more favourable than the invading army had a right to expect. The day on which this convention was signed, the French general sent two officers to treat with the commander of the English squadron for the evacuation of the Cape. The offered conditions were rejected. Others were proposed, which Rochambeau found inadmissible. His refusal had for its ground the hope that the season would soon compel the English to retire from the vicinity of the Cape, and so render his escape possible. Vain expectation. On the 30th of November the standard of the blacks waved over the Cape. Rochambeau felt compelled to throw himself on the mercy of the English. At the moment when the ships in which he had taken refuge were about to be sunk by red-hot balls prepared by the negroes, the ægis of Britain was thrown before them, and a frightful massacre was prevented. A short agreement having been hastily drawn up, Dessalines was informed that the vessels had surrendered to the arms of his Britannic Majesty. Not without difficulty did the vengeful and ferocious Dessalines consent to allow his prey to be thus plucked out of his hands. Shortly, a favourable breeze having sprang up, the three frigates and seventeen small craft that formed the French fleet at the Cape, set sail, according to the convention, under the French flag; then having tacked, they struck their colours and surrendered. The prisoners of war amounted to eight thousand.

        Saint Marc, Cayes, Jérémie, Saint Nicholas, the Spanish territory, were successively abandoned by the French. The departure of the troops in the different cities was a painful scene. Families of the colonists and many other persons lacked vessels to fly from the fury of the irritated blacks. Wives and children were separated from their husbands and their fathers. The shores resounded with cries and lamentations. On land these were about to fall into the hands of persons who had been their slaves; on sea those were about to become prisoners to the English. A number entrusted their lives and their fortunes to fragile barks.

        As they sailed from the island, Rochambeau, the soldiers, and the colonists saw the tops of the mountains glow with fire. Aforetime the blaze had been kindled for war and devastation; now the blacks lighted up their high lands in token of their joy. Freedom had been wrested out of the hands of their foes. Every heart beat with the thought. The dark past was wholly gone: the future was radiant with hope. "Freedom! freedom!" ran in joyous echoes from mountain-top to mountain-top, till the whole island shouted "Freedom!"

        Thus ended this deplorable expedition. In less than two years sixty thousand persons fell: fifteen hundred were officers of superior rank; eight hundred were medical men; three and thirty thousand were soldiers, of whom not a sixth perished in battle. The attempt at subjugation cost the blacks more than twelve thousand men, of whom about four thousand found death at the hands of executioners of various kinds.