CHAP. XI.

Revolt of the Blacks.---Death of Leclerc.---Dreadful Ravages of the Yellow Fever.---British Men of War blockade the Ports of St. Domingo.--Success of the Negroes.---Expulsion of the French. ---Massacre of the White Inhabitants.---Proclamations of Dessalines.

THE arrest of the black chief, Toussaint, was one of those clandestine and treacherous proceedings, which certainly exhibits the character of Leclerc in no very honorable light; and to this circumstance the loss of the island to the French may be attributed. Leclerc vauntingly boasted of having subdued the blacks in a campaign of fifteen days; and there is every reason to believe they would have remained quiet, had not the arrest of Toussaint roused them again to action. The Freuch chief commander describes the arrest of Toussaint in the following manner:-"I ordered him to be arrested. This was not easy to be accomplished: it was, nevertheless, effected by the skilful measures of general Brunet, and of citizen Ferrari, my aide de camp, whom I had entrusted with the business." It appears, therefore, abundantly evident, that the mock pardon offered to the brave commander of the blacks, was only a pretence

to entrap him, and the unfortunate man accordingly fell into the snare.

No sooner, however, was their beloved leader sent from the island, than the blacks, indignant at the deceit and cruelty of the French, manifested hostile intentions; but they were not in a condition, at this moment, to oppose any effectual resistance; and this defection Leclerc punished with the most exemplary severity. Nevertheless, it was the strong arm of power alone that kept them in subjection; and, if we are to credit accounts, the cruelty of the French was scarcely equalled by that sanguinary tiger, Suwarrow, in his butchery at Ismail and Warsaw. I will here take the liberty of giving an extract from a letter, which purposes to have been written by an eye-witness :

"I have now been several weeks here, and witnessed scenes of the most deplorable calamity. I have seen three or four hundred blacks, whom the fortune of war had thrown into the hands of the French, put on board an old crazy vessel, ordered out to sea, and, after having been scuttled, sunk, when all the miserable wretches were consigned to the bottom. The blacks inflict on their prisoners the same summary punishment as that adopted by the French troops. Many are, therefore, killed in cold blood; some have been drowned, and some starved to death."

The fact of the blacks being thus destroyed, is not denied by the French; on the contrary, they

spoke of it with their accustomed levity; and to the mode thus adopted for the destruction of the negroes, they gave the appellation of deporter en mer. Many other acts of barbarity were daily practised; and Dessalines, and other black chiefs, who afterwards broke out into open insurrection, declared, that the French generals had absolutely proposed to them the extermination of the actual population of St. Domingo, for the purpose of colonizing it anew with the natives of France!

Shortly after the arrest of Toussaint, the West India fever broke out in the island, and raged with the most destructive fury in the French army. The blacks suffered nothing from this pestilence; but they beheld with secret satisfaction the havock it made among their cruel their cruel oppressors; and impatiently expected the moment that would afford them an opportunity of throwing off the yoke of subjection. The hospitals were soon crowded with sick, numbers died daily; and the blacks, no longer able to restrain their resentment, again flew to arms.

A man of the name of Sans Souci, who was before unknown as a chief, assembled a number of Congo negroes, and set fire to some plantations; and made his escape into the distant mornes. This event took place about the latter end of June; at which time, the heat became so excessive, that it was impossible for the French army to act. The number of the brigands (as the French styled the blacks) every day increased, while the fever continued to rage with unabated fury.

The blacks attacked and carried the French posts at Marmalade, Douder, and Moustique; but were afterwards compelled to evacuate them; and retire to their fastnesses in the interior.

In the month of August, Charles Belair appeared in arms, with a few followers, on the heights of Artibonite; and some of the black troops, who were in the French pay, deserted to him. But he was at length defeated, and taken prisoner, with his wife, who had accompanied him, and both of them put to death. Several risings of the blacks took place in the south, particularly in the neighborhood of Joc. mel and Leogane; but the French contrived to suppress them, and to put to death the ring-leaders; while the southern districts remained in tolerable tranquillity. The insurgents attempted to penetrate into the Spanish part of the island: the old colonists, however, rose en masse, and repulsed them.

In the northern portion of the colony, the insurrection assumed a very different form: it had there been completely and regularly organized. Dessalines, Christophe, and Clerveaux, three skilful black generals, appeared at the head of a strong body of insurgents, and made a serious attempt on the Mole, where the French general Brunet commanded. That officer permitted the blacks to advance close to the works without molestation, for the purpose of drawing them into an ambuscade; in which he succeeded, and thus placing them between two fires, forced them to retreat with considerable loss. However,

they shortly afterwards actually invested Cape Town, the head-quarters of the French; where their general in chief lay sick of the fever, and his dissolution hourly expected. The very man who, but a few months before, had written a pompous statement of the success of his fifteen days campaign, and of the total subjugation of the blacks, now saw himself, at the hour of death, besieged in his head-quarters, by those whom his vanity had considered as incapable of ever again making head against the power of the French. Leclerc, after an illness of a fortnight, died on the 2nd of November (1802) much about the time that the brave, but unfortunate Toussaint perished in a French prison.

The command of the French army now devolved upon general Rochambeau, who was, when Leclerc died, at a distant part of the coast; and the latter sent him sealed orders immediately before his death, to take the command of the French army. But before Rochambeau arrived at the Cape, the French had made a vigorous sally upon the blacks, and succeeded in driving them into the mountains. This victory afforded the former considerable temporary advantage; yet their army was in no state to undertake active operations against the blacks in the interior; and Rochambeau was under the necessity of confining himself merely to defending the towns and posts on the coast, which were swarming with sick; these fortified places were of the utmost importance, as the French were thus enabled to transport detach