If an impartial review be taken of the whole of the conduct of the French planters during the contest in which they were embroiled, it will become evident that no blame can be attached to the British commanders who were successively employed. They had to contend against a variety of conflicting opinions and unexampled sickness, and had local difficulties to surmount of great magnitude. They evinced on all occasions superior military judgment, undaunted courage, and unwearied zeal, and exhibited the greatest prudence and discretion in moments of no ordinary anxiety.
The calamitous disease which prevailed amongst the troops, was itself almost enough to dispirit the most sanguine; and it is not to be wondered at, that men who met death bravely in the field, should have shrunk from its approaches when it thus appeared in all its hideous forms amongst their comrades.
Such was the state of things in the colony at the close of the year 1798, and with which I shall conclude this chapter.
CHAPTER V.
The period between the evacuation by the British forces and the arrival of the French army under Le Clerc.—Cultivation.—Law to enforce it.—Character of Toussaint.—Reverses.—His arrangement with the French general.—His seizure and removal to France.
The evacuation of the colony by the British troops having taken place, most of the planters who had been faithful to their engagements departed at the same time, taking with them such moveable property as they were enabled to carry away: many proceeded to Jamaica, and others to Cuba and the United States. Toussaint L’Ouverture was thus left in full possession of the island, and in the undisturbed enjoyment of the chief command, with which he had been invested some time before by the French republic. The adherents to the British, except such as had previously left the island under the protection of the English squadron, having joined the national standard, every thing seemed to have the appearance of tranquillity. Peace succeeded the din of arms and the asperities of civil war.
Having, therefore, completely subjugated the party who had been opposed to him, Toussaint commenced his work of improvement in the whole department of his government. Free from the toils of the complicated warfare in which he had been engaged, his first care and attention were turned to the culture of the soil, in which in a short period he made the most rapid and astonishing progress: strongly impressed with the conviction that “agriculture is the main spring, the master sinew of every great state, the perennial fountain of wealth”, he began to enforce a rigid attention to all its branches, and by every possible means to place it in that highly productive condition in which it stood previously to the revolution. Many of the planters who had joined his standard were reinvested with their estates, but without any property in the slaves, and they were encouraged by him to persevere in the cultivation of their lands, assured of his protection and of the early adoption of such regulations as should enable them to procure cultivators. He seems to have possessed a very correct idea of the true source from whence national wealth was obtained, and he left no measures untried that would in the least promote its increase. He had heard, and appeared firmly to believe “that rural or agricultural labours are equally conducive to health and strength of body and mind. The culture of the earth constitutes the most natural and innocent employment of man; it fills our houses with plenty and our hearts with gladness.” He never allowed an opportunity to escape him of shewing how indelibly this maxim was imprinted on his mind. It may, however, be well imagined, that after five or six years’ relaxation from the labours of the field, those who had been accustomed to it in a state of slavery, were not at all disposed to return of their own accord to their original occupations; and as he well knew that his negro brethren could not be easily induced to labour, and that some degree of coercion would be requisite to enforce it, he began to issue strict injunctions, that every one not employed in any military capacity should labour in the cultivation of the lands held not only by the government, but by such of the planters as had been restored to their estates.