The greater portion of the labour bestowed upon the soil was confined to the cultivation of coffee. The sugar plantations having been destroyed and the works demolished, but little sugar was now made in proportion to the quantity produced in the time of the French, as will be shewn hereafter in my general remarks upon the agricultural state of the country, and the specifications of the returns at the respective periods.
Dessalines, it is said, paid some attention to the clergy, although he was but little better than an infidel. He gave strict injunctions that all persons should be attentive to the celebration of public worship, and particularly observe the sabbath. This was a measure dictated by policy, for the better preserving order, and keeping the people in a tranquil state. He went through the exterior forms of religious worship as a matter of necessity, and as an example to his subjects, but not from any inward feelings of devotion or regard for religion. He encouraged marriage as much as possible among his people, and rigidly exacted attention to it, and endeavoured to impress his people with the impropriety of sensuality and voluptuousness; but in his own person he appears to have been the most depraved and most licentious man in the country.
The army of the emperor did not form a very powerful body. His standing force after the conclusion of the war did not exceed twenty thousand men, of infantry and cavalry. The militia, or, as they were formerly termed, the national guards, were numerous, because every man from the age of sixteen to fifty was obliged to assemble four times a year, and undergo a regular service of training for several days at each period, when they returned to their usual avocations. His troops were active, well disciplined and armed, but their clothing was of the coarsest kind, and at all times in the very worst condition. All the fortifications in the different parts of the island he endeavoured to put in a proper state of defence, lest the French should make another descent, of which they were at times very apprehensive, and he took care to keep all the provision grounds in the vicinity of the several fastnesses in the mountains in a good state, that the different garrisons might be well supplied with provisions in case it should, at any subsequent period, become necessary to resort to them for security. The good old maxim, that the best security for the preservation of peace is always to be prepared for war, seems not to have been forgotten by Dessalines, or by those on whom the executive part of his government devolved.
Although Dessalines, impressed at last by a sense of his own enormities, endeavoured to make some atonement for them, yet the people, who had so often experienced the severity of his mandates, and dreaded a recurrence of similar measures, secretly detested him as a savage and a tyrant, under whom it was not possible to expect happiness or repose; and any indication of mildness and humanity was only considered the forerunner of some atrocious crime which he meditated. Wearied out by his suspicions and jealousies, deprived of friends and connexions who were often snatched from them, and hurried to an immediate execution, without even the semblance of judicial proceedings having been instituted against them, the people at last determined to dethrone him, and aided by his troops, who could no longer submit to his caprices and his tyranny, they conspired against him, and in the vicinity of Port au Prince, and at no great distance from the north gate of the city, he was killed by one of his own soldiers, on the 17th of October, 1806.
The individual who shot him was a mulatto youth, whom I have seen, and who at the time of the tyrant’s death did not exceed fifteen years of age. He was attached to the militia, and was in ambush at the time of Dessalines’ advance at the head of his staff, accompanied by some soldiers. The moment they saw their master fall, some of them attempted to revenge his death, but they met a similar fate: others rejoiced at an event which appeared to them merely in the light of just retribution for crimes of unparalleled inhumanity and atrocity.
Dessalines had been a slave; his master was a carpenter, or shingler, somewhat like a tiler in England. He was short, but very stoutly formed, and capable of undergoing more than the ordinary fatigue of men. His capacity was not extensive, rising but little, if at all, above mediocrity; he could neither read nor write, with the exception of being capable of signing his name. His military talents had more the appearance of daring movements, than of judicious and well planned operations; and he more often succeeded by his own courage and example, than by the superiority of his arrangements. His activity was surprising, and the celerity with which he moved from one point of his command to another, astonished even his enemies. He was vain, capricious, and fond of flattery; and those who were most forward to compliment him for his exterior embellishments, to which he was exceedingly attentive, were certain of being admitted into his favour. His last wife, for he had been twice married, is now living in Port au Prince in retirement, and with a very small income. She is quite neglected by the present government, to its disgrace, as she had often been the means of staying the bloody hand of her husband, when he was about to sign an order for the indiscriminate execution of the whites and mulattoes. She bears the marks of a negress who at one time was extremely handsome, and her exterior must have been commanding: she is rather above the middle size of females, but not too tall, nor yet too large in proportion. The white inhabitants of Port au Prince, and particularly strangers who occasionally visit it, never fail to attempt to obtain a sight of her, as her name and her character excite a great deal of interest, and surely entitle her to the best support of the existing government, which boasts—and it is only an empty boast—of being generous to those who have rendered the country a service.
CHAPTER VIII.
Christophe takes the command.—His officers of government.—Promotes agriculture and commerce.—Petion opposes him.—Cessation of arms mutually agreed upon.—Christophe crowned king.—Code Henry.—Baron de Vastey’s opinions.—Commissioners from France.—Conduct to them.—Christophe pursues his system of government.—Petion relaxes in his.—His offers to the British government.—State of his dominions.—Has recourse to a debased currency.—Consequences.—His death.—Christophe negotiates for the possession of the Spanish part.—Revolution in his dominions.—His death.