CHAPTER XIV. 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.”