Toussaint gave up his apartment to his sons, and went forth once more to survey the town, and see that his troops were in their quarters. This done, he repaired to his friend Henri, willing for one more night to forego his greatness; and there, in his friend’s small barrack-room, the supreme in the colony—the idol of his colour—slept, as he had hoped for his boys, as tranquilly as if he had been at Breda.
Chapter Ten.
A Morning of Office.
If the devastation attending the revolutionary wars of Saint Domingo was great, it was repaired with singular rapidity. Thanks to the vigorous agencies of nature in a tropical region, the desolated plains were presently covered with fresh harvests, and the burnt woods were buried deep under the shadow of young forests, more beautiful than the old. Thanks also to the government of the wisest mind in the island, the moral evils of the struggle were made subordinate to its good results. It was not in the power of man to bury past injuries in oblivion, while there were continually present minds which had been debased by tyranny, and hearts which had been outraged by cruelty; but all that could be done was done. Vigorous employment was made the great law of society—the one condition of the favour of its chief; and, amidst the labours of the hoe and the mill, the workshop and the wharf—amidst the toils of the march and the bustle of the court, the bereaved and insulted forgot their woes and their revenge. A now growth of veneration and of hope overspread the ruins of old delights and attachments, as the verdure of the plain spread its mantle over the wrecks of mansion and of hut. In seven years from the kindling of the first incendiary torch on the Plaine du Nord, it would have been hard for a stranger, landing in Saint Domingo, to believe what had been the horrors of the war.
Of these seven years, however, the first three or four had been entirely spent in war, and the rest disturbed by it. Double that number of years must pass before there could be any security that the crop planted would ever be reaped, or that the peasants who laid out their family burying-grounds would be carried there in full age, instead of perishing in the field or in the woods. The cultivators went out to their daily work with the gun slung across their shoulders and the cutlass in their belt: the hills were crested with forts, and the mountain-passes were watched by scouts. The troops were frequently reviewed in the squares of the towns, and news was perpetually arriving of a skirmish here or there. The mulatto general, Rigaud, had never acknowledged the authority of Toussaint L’Ouverture; and he was still in the field, with a mulatto force sufficient to interrupt the prosperity of the colony, and endanger the authority of its Lieutenant-Governor. It was some time, however, since Rigaud had approached any of the large towns. The sufferers by his incursions were the planters and field-labourers. The inhabitants of the towns carried on their daily affairs as if peace had been fully established in the island, and feeling the effects of such warfare as there was only in their occasional contributions of time and money.
The Commander-in-chief, as Toussaint L’Ouverture was called, by the appointment of the French commissaries, though his dignity had not yet been confirmed from Paris—the Commander-in-chief of Saint Domingo held his head-quarters at Port-au-Prince. Among other considerations which rendered this convenient, the chief was that he thus avoided much collision with the French officials, which must otherwise have taken place. All the commissaries, who rapidly succeeded one another from Paris, resided at Government-House, in Cap Français. Thence, they issued orders and regulations in the name of the government at home; orders and regulations which were sometimes practicable, sometimes unwise, and often absurd. If Toussaint had resided at Cap, a constant witness of their ignorance of the minds, manners, and interests of the blacks—if he had been there to listen to the complaints and appeals which would have been daily made, he could scarcely have kept terms for a single week with the French authorities. By establishing himself in the south, while they remained in the north, he was able quietly to neutralise or repair much of the mischief which they did, and to execute many of his own plans without consulting them; while many a grievance was silently borne, many an order simply neglected, which would have been a cause of quarrel, if any power of redress had been at hand. Jealous as he was for the infant freedom of his race, Toussaint knew that it would be best preserved by weaning their minds from thoughts of anger, and their eyes from the sight of blood. Trust in the better part of negro nature guided him in his choice between two evils. He preferred that they should be misgoverned in some affairs of secondary importance, and keep the peace, rather than that they should be governed to their hearts’ content by himself, at the risk of quarrel with the mother-country. He trusted to the singular power of forbearance and forgiveness which is found in the negro race for the preservation of friendship with the whites and of the blessings of peace; and he therefore reserved his own powerful influence over both parties for great occasions—interfering only when he perceived that, through carelessness or ignorance, the French authorities were endangering some essential liberty of those to whom they were the medium of the pleasure of the government at home. The blacks were aware that the vigilance of their Commander-in-chief over their civil rights never slept, and that his interference always availed; and these convictions ensured their submission, or at least their not going beyond passive resistance on ordinary occasions, and thus strengthened their habits of peace.
The Commander-in-chief held his levées at Port-au-Prince on certain days of the month, all the year round. No matter how far-off he might be, or how engaged, the night before, he rarely failed to be at home on the appointed day, at the fixed hour. On one particular occasion, he was known to have been out against Rigaud, day and night, for a fortnight, and to be closely engaged as far south as Aux Cayes, the very evening preceding the review and levée which had been announced for the 20th of January. Not the less for this did he appear in front of the troops in the Place Républicaine, when the daylight gushed in from the east, putting out the stars, whose reflection trembled in the still waters of the bay. The last evolutions were finished, and the smoke from the last volley had incited away in the serene sky of January, before the coolness of the northern breeze had yielded to the blaze of the mounting sun. The troops then lined the long streets of the town, and the avenue to the palace, while the Commander-in-chief and his staff passed on, and entered the palace-gates.
The palace, like every other building in Port-au-Prince, consisted of one storey only. The town had been destroyed by an earthquake in 1770; and, though earthquakes are extremely rare in Saint Domingo, the place had been rebuilt in view of the danger of another. The palace therefore covered a large piece of ground, and its principal rooms were each nearly surrounded by garden and grass-plat. The largest apartment, in which the levées were always held, was the best room in the island—if not for the richness of its furniture, for its space and proportions, and the views which it commanded. Not even the abode of the Commander-in-chief could exhibit such silken sofas, marble tables, gilded balustrades, and japanned or ivory screens, as had been common in the mansions of the planters; and Toussaint had found other uses for such money as he had than those of pure luxury. The essential and natural advantages of his palace were enough for him and his. The door of this, his favourite apartment, was covered with a fine India matting; the windows were hung with white muslin curtains; and the sofas, which stood round three sides of the room, between the numerous windows, were covered with green damask, of no very rich quality. In these many windows lay the charm, commanding, as they did, extensive prospects to the east, north, and west. The broad verandah cast a shadow which rendered it unnecessary to keep the jalousies closed, except during the hottest hours of the year. This morning every blind was swung wide open, and the room was cool and shady, while, without, all was bathed in the mild, golden sunshine of January—bright enough for the strongest eye, but without glare.