CAPTURE OF TOUSSAINT.
Le Clerc, the brother-in-law of Bonaparte, the man who had married the
voluptuous Pauline, was commander-in-chief of the army. Le Clerc was
not himself a man of much distinction in military affairs; his close
relationship with the ruler of France was all that he had to recommend
him to the army of invasion. But he had with him Rochambeau, and other
generals, who had few superiors in arms. Before arriving at Hayti the
fleet separated, so as to attack the island on different sides.
News of the intended invasion reached St. Domingo some days before the
squadron had sailed from Brest; and therefore the blacks had time to
prepare to meet their enemies. Toussaint had concentrated his forces
at such points as he expected would be first attacked. Christophe was
sent to defend Cape City, and Port au Prince was left in the hands of
Dessalines.
Le Clerc, with the largest part of the squadron, came to anchor off
Cape City, and summoned the place to surrender. The reply which he
received from Christophe was such as to teach the captain-general
what he had to expect in the subjugation of St. Domingo. “Go tell your
general that the French shall march here only over ashes; and that the
ground shall burn beneath their feet,” was the answer that Le Clerc
obtained in return to his command. The French general sent another
messenger to Christophe, urging him to surrender, and promising the
black chief a commission of high rank in the French army. But he found
he had a man, and not a slave, to deal with. The exasperated Christophe
sent back the heroic reply, “The decision of arms can admit you only
into a city in ashes; and even on these ashes will I fight still.” The
black chief then distributed torches to his principal officers, and
awaited the approach of the French.
With no navy, and but little means of defence, the Haytians determined
to destroy their towns rather than they should fall into the hands of
the enemy. Late in the evening the French ships were seen to change
their position, and Christophe, satisfied that they were about to
effect a landing, set fire to his own house, which was the signal for
the burning of the town. The French general wept as he beheld the ocean
of flames rising from the tops of the houses in the finest city in St.
Domingo.
Another part of the fleet landed in Samana, where Toussaint, with an
experienced wing of the army, was ready to meet them. On seeing the
ships enter the harbor, the heroic chief said: “Here come the enslavers
of our race. All France is coming to St. Domingo, to try again to put
the fetters upon our limbs; but not France with all her troops of the
Rhine, the Alps, the Nile, the Tiber, nor all Europe to help her, can
extinguish the soul of Africa. That soul, when once the soul of a
man, and no longer that of a slave, can overthrow the pyramids, and
the Alps themselves, sooner than again be crushed down into slavery.”
The French, however, effected a landing, but they found nothing but
smouldering ruins where once stood splendid cities. Toussaint and his
generals at once abandoned the towns, and betook themselves to the
mountains, those citadels of freedom in St. Domingo, where the blacks
have always proved too much for the whites.
Toussaint put forth a proclamation to the colored people, in which he
said: “You are now to meet and fight enemies who have neither faith,
law, nor religion. Let us resolve that these French troops shall
never leave our shores alive.” The war commenced, and the blacks
were victorious in nearly all the battles. Where the French gained a
victory, they put their prisoners to the most excruciating tortures;
in many instances burning them in pits, and throwing them into boiling
chaldrons. This example of cruelty set by the whites, was followed by
the blacks. Then it was that Dessalines, the ferocious chief, satisfied
his long pent-up revenge against the white planters and French soldiers
that he made prisoners. The French general saw that he could gain
nothing from the blacks on the field of battle, and he determined upon
a stratagem, in which he succeeded too well.
A correspondence was opened with Toussaint in which the captain-general
promised to acknowledge the liberty of the blacks, and the equality of
all, if he would yield. Overcome by the persuasions of his generals,
and the blacks who surrounded him, and who were sick and tired of
the shedding of blood, Toussaint gave in his adhesion to the French
authorities. This was the great error of his life.
The loss that the French army had sustained during the war, was great.
Fifteen thousand of their best troops, and some of their bravest
generals, had fallen before the arms of these Negroes, whom they
despised.
Soon after Toussaint gave in his adhesion, the yellow fever broke out
in the French army, and carried off nearly all of the remaining great
men,--more than seven hundred medical men, besides twenty-two thousand
sailors and soldiers. Among these were fifteen hundred officers. It
was at this time that Toussaint might have renewed the war with great
success. But he was a man of his word, and would not take the advantage
of the sad condition of the French army.
Although peace reigned, Le Clerc was still afraid of Toussaint; and by
the advice of Napoleon, the black general was arrested, together with
his family, and sent to France.
The great chief of St. Domingo had scarcely been conveyed on board the
ship Creole, and she out of the harbor, ere Rigaud, the mulatto general
who had accompanied Le Clerc to St. Domingo, was arrested, put in
chains, and sent to France.
The seizure of Toussaint and Rigaud caused suspicion and alarm among
both blacks and mulattoes, and that induced them to raise again the
flag of insurrection, in which the two proscribed classes were united.
Twenty thousand fresh troops arrived from France, but they were not
destined to see Le Clerc, for the yellow fever had taken him off. In
the mountains were many barbarous and wild blacks, who had escaped
from slavery soon after being brought from the coast of Africa. One of
these bands of savages were commanded by Lamour de Rance, an adroit,
stern, savage man, half naked, with epaulettes tied to his bare
shoulders for his only token of authority. This man had been brought
from the coast of Africa, and sold as a slave in Port au Prince. On
being ordered one day to saddle his master’s horse, he did so; then
mounted the animal, fled to the mountains, and ever after made these
fearful regions his home. Lamour passed from mountain to mountain with
something of the ease of the birds of his own native land. Toussaint,
Christophe, and Dessalines, had each in their turn pursued him, but in
vain. His mode of fighting was in keeping with his dress. This savage,
united with others like himself, became complete master of the wilds
of St. Domingo. They came forth from their mountain homes, and made
war on the whites wherever they found them. Le Clerc was now dead, and
Rochambeau, who succeeded him in the government of St. Domingo, sent
to Cuba to get bloodhounds, with which to hunt down the blacks in the
mountains.
In personal appearance, Rochambeau was short and stout, with a deformed
body, but of robust constitution; his manner was hard and severe,
though he had a propensity to voluptuousness. He lacked neither ability
nor experience in war. In his youth, he had, under the eyes of his
illustrious father, served the cause of freedom in the United States;
and while on duty in the slave portion of our government, formed a low
idea of the blacks, which followed him even to St. Domingo.
The planters therefore hailed with joy Rochambeau as a successor to Le
Clerc; and when the bloodhounds which he had sent to Cuba for arrived,
cannon were fired, and demonstrations of joy were shown in various ways.
Even the women, wives of the planters, went to the sea-side, met the
animals, and put garlands about their necks, and some kissed and
caressed the dogs.[37]
Such was the degradation of human nature. While the white women
were cheering on the French, who had imported bloodhounds as their
auxiliaries, the black women were using all their powers of persuasion
to rouse the blacks to the combat. Many of these women walked from
camp to camp, and from battalion to battalion, exhibiting their naked
bodies, showing their lacerated and scourged persons;--these were the
marks of slavery, made many years before, but now used for the cause of
human freedom.
Christophe, who had taken command of the insurgents, now gave
unmistakable proofs that he was a great general, and scarcely second
to Toussaint. Twenty thousand fresh troops arrived from France to the
aid of Rochambeau; yet the blacks were victorious wherever they fought.
The French blindly thought that cruelty to the blacks would induce
their submission, and to this end they bent all their energies. An
amphitheatre was erected, and two hundred dogs, sharpened by extreme
hunger, put there, and black prisoners thrown in. The raging animals
disputed with each other for the limbs of their victims, until the
ground was dyed with human blood.
Three hundred brave blacks were put to death in this horrible manner.
The blacks, having spread their forces in every quarter of the island,
were fast retaking the forts and towns. Christophe commanded in the
north, Dessalines in the west, and Clervaux in the south.
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 the Creole females, worshippers of pleasure, as well as most
cruel towards their slaves. To satisfy these fascinating courtesans,
scaffolds were raised in the cities, 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.
These brutal murders by the French filled the blacks with terror.
Dessalines started for the Cape, for the purpose of meeting Rochambeau,
and avenging the death of the blacks. In his impetuous and terrible
march, he surrounded and made prisoners a body of Frenchmen; and with
branches of trees, that ferocious chief raised, under the eyes of
Rochambeau, five hundred gibbets, on which he hanged as many prisoners.
The numerous executions which began at the Cape soon extended to other
places. Port au Prince had its salt waters made bloody, and scaffolds
were erected and loaded, within and without the 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 more vengeance.
Children, women, and old men were confined in sacks, and thrown into
the sea; this was the punishment of parricides among the Romans, ten
centuries before; and now resorted to by these haters of liberty.
Rochambeau put five hundred blacks, prisoners whom he had taken in
battle, to death in one day. Twenty of Toussaint’s old officers were
chained to the rocks and starved to death.
But the blacks were gradually getting possession of the strongholds in
the islands.
“To arms! to arms!” was the cry all over the island, until every one
who could use even the lightest instrument of death, was under arms.
Dessalines, Belair, and Lamartiniere, defeated the French general at
Verettes; in no place was the slaughter so terrible as there. At a mere
nod of Dessalines, men who had been slaves, and who dreaded the new
servitude with which they were threatened, massacred seven hundred of
the whites that Dessalines had amongst his prisoners.
The child died in the arms of its sick and terrified mother; the father
was unable to save the daughter, the daughter unable to save the
father. Mulattoes took the lives of their white fathers, to whom they
had been slaves, or whom, allowing them to go free, had disowned them;
thus revenging themselves for the mixture of their blood. So frightful
was this slaughter, that the banks of the Artibonite were strewn with
dead bodies, and the waters dyed with the blood of the slain. Not a
grave was dug, for Dessalines had prohibited interment, in order that
the eyes of the French might see his vengeance even in the repulsive
remains of carnage.
The united enthusiasm and bravery of the blacks and mulattoes was too
much for the French. Surrounded on all sides, Rochambeau saw his troops
dying for the want of food. For many weeks they lived on horse flesh,
and were even driven to subsist on the dogs that they had imported from
Cuba.
Reduced to the last extremity by starvation, the French general sued
for peace, and promised that he would immediately leave the Island;
it was accepted by the blacks, and Rochambeau prepared to return to
France. The French embarked in their vessels of war, and the standard
of the blacks once more waved over Cape City, the capital of St.
Domingo. As the French sailed from the Island, they saw the tops of
the mountains lighted up;--it was not a blaze kindled for war, but for
freedom. Every heart beat for liberty, and every voice shouted for joy.
From the ocean to the mountains, and from town to town, the cry was
“Freedom! Freedom!” Thus ended Napoleon’s expedition to St. Domingo. In
less than two years the French lost more than fifty thousand persons.
After the retirement of the whites, the men of color put forth a
Declaration of Independence, in which they said: “We have sworn to show
no mercy to those who may dare to speak to us of slavery.”
FOOTNOTE:
[37] Beard’s Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture.