SUCCESS OF TOUSSAINT.
During these sad commotions, Toussaint, by his superior knowledge of
the character of his race, his humanity, generosity, and courage,
had gained the confidence of all whom he had under his command. The
rapidity with which he travelled from post to post astonished every
one. By his genius and surpassing activity, Toussaint levied fresh
forces, raised the reputation of the army, and drove the English and
Spanish from the Island.
The boiling caldron of the revolution during its progress, had thrown
upon its surface several new military men, whose names became household
words in St. Domingo. First of these, after Toussaint, was Christophe,
a man of pure African origin, though a native of New Grenada. On being
set free at the age of fifteen, he came to St. Domingo, where he
resided until the commencement of the revolution. He had an eye full of
fire, and a braver man never lived. Toussaint early discovered his good
qualities, and made him his lieutenant, from which he soon rose to be a
general of division.
As a military man, Christophe was considered far superior to Toussaint;
and his tall, slim figure, dressed in the uniform of a general, was
hailed with enthusiasm wherever he appeared.
Next to Christophe was Dessalines. No one who took part in the St.
Domingo revolution has been so severely censured as this chief. At the
commencement of the difficulties, Dessalines was the slave of a house
carpenter, with whom he had learned the trade. He was a small man, of
muscular frame, and of a dingy black. He had a haughty and ferocious
look. Hunger, thirst, fatigue, and loss of sleep he seemed made to
endure, as if by peculiarity of constitution. Dessalines was not a
native of either of the West India Islands, for the marks upon his arms
and breast, and the deep furrows and incisions on his face, pointed out
the coast of Africa as his birth-place. Inured by exposure and toil to
a hard life, his frame possessed a wonderful power of endurance. By
his activity and singular fierceness on the field of battle, he first
attracted the attention of Toussaint, who placed him amongst his guides
and attendants, and subsequently advanced him rapidly through several
grades, to the dignity of third in command. A more courageous man never
appeared upon the battle-field. What is most strange in the history of
Dessalines is, that he was a savage, a slave, a soldier, a general, and
died when an emperor.
Among the mulattoes were several valiant chiefs. The ablest of these
was Rigaud, the son of a wealthy planter. Having been educated at
Paris, his manner was polished, and his language elegant. Had he been
born in Asia, Rigaud would have governed an empire, for he had all the
elements of a great man.
In religion he was the very opposite of Toussaint. An admirer of
Voltaire and Rousseau, he had made their works his study. A long
residence in Paris had enabled him to become acquainted with many of
the followers of these two distinguished philosophers.
He had seen two hundred thousand persons following the bones of
Voltaire, when removed to the Pantheon; and, in his admiration for the
great writer, had confounded liberty with infidelity.
Rigaud was the first amongst the mulattoes, and had sided with the
planters in their warfare against the blacks. But the growing influence
of this chief early spread fear in the ranks of the whites, which was
seen and felt by the mulattoes everywhere.
In military science, horsemanship, and activity, Rigaud was the
first man on the Island, of any color, Toussaint bears the following
testimony to the great skill of the mulatto general: “I know Rigaud
well. He leaps from his horse when at full gallop, and he puts all his
force in his arm when he strikes a blow.” He was boundless in resources
as he was brave and daring. High-tempered and irritable, he at times
appeared haughty. The charmed power that he held over the men of his
color can scarcely be described. At the breaking out of the revolution,
he headed the mulattoes in his native town, and soon drew around him a
formidable body of men. Rigaud’s legion was considered to be by far the
best drilled and most reliable in battle of all the troops raised on
the Island.
The mulattoes were now urging their claims to citizenship and
political enfranchisement, by arming themselves in defence of their
rights; the activity and talent of their great leader, Rigaud, had
been the guidance and support of their enterprise. He was hated by the
whites in the same degree as they feared his influence with his race.
The unyielding nature of his character, which gave firmness and
consistency to his policy while controling the interest of his
brethren, made him dear to them.
Intrigue and craftiness could avail nothing against the designs of one
who was ever upon the watch, and who had the means of counteracting all
secret attempts against him; and open force in the field could not be
successful in destroying a chieftain whose power was often felt, but
whose person was seldom seen.
Thus to accomplish a design which had long been in contemplation,
the whites of Aux Cayes were now secretly preparing a mine for
Rigaud,--which, though it was covered with flowers, and to be sprung
by the hand of professed friendship,--it was thought would prove a
sure and efficacious method of ridding them of such an opponent, and
destroying the pretensions of the mulattoes forever.
It was proposed that the anniversary of the destruction of the Bastile
should be celebrated in the town by both whites and mulattoes, in
union and gratitude. A civic procession marched to the church, where
the Te Deum was chanted and an oration pronounced by citizen Delpech.
The Place d’Armes was crowded with tables of refreshments, at which
both whites and mulattoes seated themselves. But beneath this seeming
patriotism and friendship a dark and fatal conspiracy lurked, plotting
treachery and death.
It had been resolved that at a preconcerted signal every white at the
table should plunge his knife into the bosom of the mulatto who was
seated nearest to him. Cannon had been planted around the place of
festivity, that no fugitive from the massacre should have the means
of escaping; and that Rigaud should not fail to be secured as the
first victim to a conspiracy prepared especially against his life, the
commander-in-chief of the national guard had been placed at his side,
and his murder of the mulatto chieftain was to be the signal for a
general onset upon all his followers.
But between the conception and the accomplishment of a guilty deed,
man’s native abhorrence of crime often interposes many obstacles to
success. The officer to whom had been entrusted the assassination
of Rigaud, found it no small matter to screw his courage up to the
sticking-place, and the expected signal which he was to display in
blood to his associates, was so long delayed that secret messengers
began to come to him from all parts of the table, demanding why
execution was not done on Rigaud. Urged on by these successive appeals,
the white general at last applied himself to the fatal task which had
been allotted him. But instead of silently plunging his dagger into the
bosom of the mulatto chief, he sprang upon him with a pistol in his
hand, and with a loud execration, fired it at his intended victim. But
Rigaud remained unharmed, and in the scuffle which ensued the white
assassin was disarmed and put to flight.
The astonishment of the mulattoes soon gave way to tumult and
indignation, and this produced a drawn battle, in which both whites and
mulattoes, exasperated as they were to the utmost, fought man to man.
The struggle continued fiercely, until the whites were driven from the
town, having lost one hundred and fifty of their number, and slain
many of their opponents. Tidings of this conspiracy flew rapidly in
all directions; and such was the indignation of the mulattoes at this
attack on their chief, whose death had even been announced in several
places as certain, that they seized upon all the whites within their
reach, and their immediate massacre was only prevented by the arrival
of intelligence that Rigaud was still alive.[36]
The hostile claims of Toussaint and Rigaud, who shared between them the
whole power of the Island, soon brought on a bloody struggle between
the blacks and mulattoes.
The contest was an unequal one, for the blacks numbered five hundred
thousand, while the mulattoes were only thirty thousand. The mulattoes,
alarmed by the prospect that the future government of the Island was
likely to be engrossed altogether by the blacks, thronged from all
parts of the Island to join the ranks of Rigaud. As a people, the
mulattoes were endowed with greater intelligence; they were more
enterprising, and in all respects their physical superiority was more
decided than their rivals, the blacks.
They were equally ferocious, and confident as they were in their
superior powers, they saw without a thought of discouragement or fear
the enormous disparity of ten to one in the respective numbers of
their adversaries and themselves. Rigaud began the war by surprising
Leogane, where a multitude of persons of every rank and color were put
to death without mercy.
Toussaint, on learning this, hastened together all the troops which he
then had in the neighborhood of Port au Prince, and ordered all the
mulattoes to assemble at the church of that town, where he mounted the
pulpit, and announced to them his intended departure to war against
their brethren. He said, “I see into the recesses of your bosoms; you
are ready to rise against me; but though my troops are about to leave
this province, you cannot succeed, for I shall leave behind me both
my eyes and my arms; the one to watch, and the other to reach you.”
At the close of this admonition, threatening as it was, the mulattoes
were permitted to leave the church, and they retired, awestruck and
trembling with solicitude, to their homes.
The forces of Rigaud, fighting under the eyes of the chief whom they
adored, defended with vigor the passes leading to their territory;
and though they were but a handful, in comparison with the hordes who
marched under the banners of Toussaint, their brave exertions were
generally crowned with success.
The mulattoes under Rigaud, more skilled in the combinations of
military movements, made up for their deficiency in numbers by greater
rapidity and effectiveness in their operations. A series of masterly
manœuvres and diversions were followed up in quick succession, which
kept the black army in full employment. But Toussaint was too strong,
and he completely broke up the hopes of the mulattoes in a succession
of victories, which gave him entire control of the Island, except,
perhaps, a small portion of the South, which still held out. Rigaud,
reduced in his means of defence, had the misfortune to see his towns
fall one after another into the power of Toussaint, until he was driven
to the last citadel of his strength--the town of Aux Cayes. As he thus
yielded foot by foot, everything was given to desolation before it was
abandoned, and the genius of Toussaint was completely at fault in his
efforts to force the mulatto general from his last entrenchments.
He was foiled at every attempt, and his enemy stood immovably at bay,
notwithstanding the active assaults and overwhelming numbers of his
forces.
The government of France was too much engaged at home with her own
revolution, to pay any attention to St. Domingo. The republicans in
Paris, after getting rid of their enemies, turned upon each other. The
revolution, like Saturn, devoured its own children; priest and people
were murdered upon the thresholds of justice. Marat died at the hands
of Charlotte Corday; Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette were guillotined,
Robespierre had gone to the scaffold, and Bonaparte was master of
France.
The conqueror of Egypt now turned his attention to St. Domingo. It was
too important an island to be lost to France, or be destroyed by civil
war; and through the mediation of Bonaparte, the war between Toussaint
and Rigaud was brought to a close.
With the termination of this struggle, every vestige of slavery, and
all obstacles to freedom, disappeared. Toussaint exerted every nerve to
make Hayti what it had formerly been. He did everything in his power to
promote agriculture; and in this he succeeded beyond the most sanguine
expectations of the friends of freedom, both in England and France.
Even the planters who had remained on the Island acknowledged the
prosperity of Hayti under the governorship of the man whose best days
had been spent in slavery.
The peace of Amiens left Bonaparte without a rival on the continent,
and with a large and experienced army which he feared to keep idle; and
he determined to send a part of it to St. Domingo.
The army for the expedition to St. Domingo was fitted out, and no pains
or expense spared to make it an imposing one. Fifty-six ships of war,
with twenty-five thousand men, left France for Hayti. It was, indeed,
the most valiant fleet that had ever sailed from the French dominions.
The Alps, the Nile, the Rhine, and all Italy had resounded with the
exploits of the men who were now leaving their country for the purpose
of placing the chains again on the limbs of the heroic people of St.
Domingo. There were men in that army that had followed Bonaparte from
the siege of Toulon to the battle under the shades of the pyramids of
Egypt,--men who had grown gray in the camp. Among them were several
colored men, who had distinguished themselves on the field of battle.
There was Rigaud, the bravest of the mulatto chiefs, whose valor had
disputed the laurels with Toussaint. There, too, was Pétion, the most
accomplished scholar of whom St. Domingo could boast; and lastly,
there was Boyer, who was destined at a future day to be President of
the Republic of Hayti. These last three brave men had become dupes and
tools of Bonaparte, and were now on their way to assist in reducing the
land of their birth to slavery.
FOOTNOTE:
[36] Brown’s History of Sant. Domingo, Vol. I., p. 257.