Toussaint’s personal qualities appear to have been equal to his public: his word was sacred, he was humane on most occasions, yet with a firmness and decision which astonished his enemies. In his family relations he showed the most tender affection for wife and children; his fine nature was apparent on all occasions in his solicitude for his wounded officers and soldiers, and the thoughtful care of the prisoners that fell into his hands. His affectionate treatment of animals was also greatly noticed, and whenever he came upon fugitive women and children of any colour, his first thought was for their comfort.
Our Consul-General Mackenzie (1827) often talked to the black officers of Toussaint; they described him as stern and unbending, but just, and intimately acquainted with the habits of the people and the best interests of his country.
The one mistake of his life appears to have been his refusal, when urged to do so by England, to declare the independence of Hayti. Had he accepted the English proposals and entered into a treaty with us and with the Americans, it is not likely that Buonaparte would have ever attempted an expedition against him, and the history of Hayti might have been happier.
There is one fact which strikes the reader of the histories of these times, and that is, the soldiers are described as veritable sans-culottes, without pay and without proper uniforms, and yet all the chiefs, as Toussaint, Dessalines, and Christophe, were living in splendid houses in the greatest luxury. Toussaint is recorded to have lent the French Treasury 600,000 livres, an enormous sum for a slave to possess after a few years of freedom. Gragnon-Lacoste, who published a Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture in 1877, founded on family papers, says that this general had a marble house in Cap Haïtien, elegantly furnished, and that he kept up the same style in all his plantations. His descendants in late years claimed about the fourth of Hayti as the estates of the black general.[6]
Toussaint was also a fervent Roman Catholic, and was greatly attached to the priesthood; he did all he could to repress the Vaudoux, and he published a strong proclamation forbidding all fetish rites.[7]
The treachery of Leclerc towards Toussaint had its reward; it could not but excite suspicion among the black leaders, as the previous deportation of Rigaud had done among the mulattoes. And now the most fearful epidemic of yellow fever fell upon the French army, and almost annihilated it. Forty thousand are reported to have been lost during the years 1802 and 1803: among the victims were Leclerc and twenty other French generals. The Haytians saw their opportunity, and Dessalines, Christophe, and Pétion abandoned the invaders, and roused their countrymen to expel the weak remnants of the French army. War had now been declared between France and England, and our fleets were soon off the coasts. The French were driven from every point, and forced to concentrate in Cap Haïtien. Rochambeau, who had succeeded Leclerc, did all that man could do to save his army; but besieged by the blacks to the number of 30,000, and blockaded by our fleet, pinched by hunger, and seeing no hopes of reinforcements, he surrendered to the English and embarked for Europe.
Thus ended one of the most disastrous expeditions ever undertaken by France, and ended as it deserved to end. Its history was sullied by every species of treachery, cruelty, and crime; but we cannot but admire the splendid bravery of the troops under every discouragement, in a tropical climate, where the heat is so great that the European is unfitted for continued exertion, but where yellow fever and death follow constant exposure.
CHAPTER III.
HISTORY SINCE INDEPENDENCE.
“Que deviendra notre pays quand il sera livré à la vanité et à l’ignorance,” exclaimed Bauvais, one of the leaders of the mulatto party. I am afraid this sketch of the history of Hayti since the war of independence will show what are the results to a country when governed by vanity and ignorance.