CHAPTER XIII. 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.