FOOTNOTE:
[38] Malo.
CHAPTER XVII. WAR BETWEEN THE BLACKS AND MULATTOES OF HAYTI.
The ambitious and haughty mulattoes had long been dissatisfied with the obscure condition into which they had been thrown by the reign of Dessalines; and at the death of that ruler, they determined to put forward their claim. Therefore, while Christophe was absent from the capital, the mulattoes called a convention, framed a constitution, organized a republic, and elected for their president, Alexandre Pétion.
This man was a quadroon, the successor of Rigaud and Clervaux to the confidence of the mulattoes. He had been educated at the military school at Paris; was of refined manners, and had ever been characterized for his mildness of temper and the insinuating grace of his address. He was a skilful engineer, and at the time of his elevation to power he passed for the most scientific officer and the most erudite individual among the people of Hayti. Attached to the fortunes of Rigaud, Pétion had acted as his lieutenant in the war against Toussaint, and had accompanied that chief to France. Here he remained until the departure of the expedition under Le Clerc, when he embarked in that disastrous enterprise, to employ his talents in restoring his country to the dominion of France. Pétion joined Dessalines, Christophe, and Clervaux when they revolted and turned against the French, and aided in gaining the final independence of the Island. He was commanding a battalion of mulattoes, under the government of Dessalines, at the close of the empire.
Christophe, therefore, as soon as he heard that he had a rival in Pétion, rallied his forces, and started for Port au Prince, to meet his enemy, and obtain by conquest what had been refused him by right of succession; and, as he thought, of merit. Pétion was already in the field; the two armies met, and a battle was fought.
In this contest, the impetuosity of Christophe’s attack was more than a match for the skill and science of Pétion; and the new president was defeated in his first enterprise against the enemy of his government. The ranks of Pétion were soon thrown into irretrievable confusion, and in a few minutes they were driven from the field—Pétion himself being hotly pursued in his flight, finding it necessary, in order for the preservation of his life, to exchange his decorations for the garb of a farmer, whom he encountered on his way, and to bury himself up to the neck in a marsh until his fierce pursuers had disappeared.
After this signal success, Christophe pressed forward to Port au Prince, and laid siege to that town, in the hope of an easy triumph over his rival. But Pétion was now in his appropriate sphere of action, and Christophe discovered that in contending against an experienced engineer in a fortified town, success was of more difficult attainment than while encountering the same enemy in the open field, where his science could not be brought into action. Christophe could make no impression on the town; and feeling ill assured of the steadfastness of his own proper government at Cape François, he withdrew his forces from the investment of Port au Prince, resolved to establish in the North a separate government of his own, and to defer to some more favorable opportunity the attempt to subdue his rival at Port au Prince.