the negroes grew vehement and ungovernable. "Perish the colonies," said Robespierre, "rather than depart, in the case of our colored brethren, from those universal principles of liberty and equality which it is our glory to have laid down." Hurried on by a tide of enthusiasm, the national assembly, on the 15th of May, passed a decree declaring all the people of color in the French colonies born of free parents entitled to vote for members of the colonial judicatures, as well as to be elected to seats themselves. This decree of admission to citizenship concerned, it will be observed, the mulattoes and free blacks only; it did not affect the condition of the slave population.

In little more than a month this decree, along with the intelligence of all that had been said and done when it was passed, reached St. Domingo. The colony was thrown into convulsions. The white colonists stormed and raged, and there was no extremity to which, in the first outburst of their anger, they were not ready to go. The national cockade was trampled under foot. It was proposed to forswear allegiance to the mother country, seize the French ships in the harbors, and the goods of French merchants, and hoist the British flag instead of the French. The governor-general, M. Blanchelande, trembled for the results. But at length the fury of the colonists somewhat subsided; a new colonial assembly was convened; hopes began to be entertained that something might be effected by its labors, when lo! the news ran through the island like the tremor of an earthquake-"The blacks have risen!" The appalling news was too true. The conspiracy, the existence of which had been divulged by Ogé before his execution, had burst into explosion. The outbreak had been fixed for the 25th of August, 1791; but the negroes, impatient as the time drew near, had commenced it on the night of the 22d.

The insurrection now burst forth in all its terror and calamity. The slaves of the plantation Turpin, headed by an English negro, set out at 10 o'clock at night, in their way drawing into their ranks the slaves of four or five other plantations, and commenced the horrors of a wide-spread insurrection. They proved to be the veriest tigers in rage and cruelty. The plain of Cape François, that might have rivaled the fabled garden of the Hesperides, both in richness and beauty, was soon in one universal conflagration, the gleams of which painted the sky in lurid horror, while the smoke enveloped the whole country in uncertain gloom. The ranks of the rebels were increased at every step of their progress, and along their march of devastation they murdered every white who fell into their power, without distinction of age or sex, viewing with fiendish delight the agonies and groans of those whom so lately they had not dared to look in the face.

These scenes of destruction were continued through the night, and on the following day the inhabitants of Cape François knew nothing of the disasters around them, but of the smoke that obscured the horizon and the fugitives that were pouring into their gates. Petrified with horror and panic, they quickly fastened themselves in their houses, and locked up their slaves. The troops of the garrison were the only living objects seen in the streets, as they were hurrying to their different posts. An alarm gun soon called the whole

population to arms. The people came out of their houses, accosted and questioned each other, and catching courage from the effect of numbers, their former fear was soon changed to an inspiriting cry for vengeance, which, in their determined infatuation, was principally directed against the mulattoes. These were accused of having instigated the blacks to revolt, and on them it was thought immediate and summary vengeance should fall. In the delirium of the moment, a few of that unfortunate race expiated with their lives the suspicion of their being accomplices with the rebels in the plain. To stop this wicked injustice of murdering the innocent for the crimes of the guilty, the provincial assembly hastened to assign places of refuge for this proscribed caste, who ran thither to put themselves under the protection of the military. They demanded arms, especially the mulatto planters, and expressed an eagerness to march against the common enemy; and such was the blindness of creole prejudice that even the assembly hesitated at first to accept their offer.*

The insurrection spread like a stream of electricity, and within four days one-third part of the plain of Cape François was but a heap of ashes. Many members of the new colonial assembly, in their journey from Leogane to the Cape, were surprised and killed by the rebels, and a detachment of troops was found necessary to guard the route of the president, secretaries and archives of this body. M. Tousard was dispatched against the rebels with a detachment of troops of the line and national guards, together with some grenadiers and chasseurs of the regiment of the Cape; but nothing, without the courage and veteran skill of this able officer, could have kept the troops in an imposing attitude in such fearful circumstances. On every side, and in every direction, they were beset by swarms of the rebels, who seemed to despise danger and defy the utmost that could be done against them. An order from the governor general, however, recalled the forces of M. Tousard in haste to Cape François, where, from the advance of the negroes on that town, the consternation was heart-rending. The place was now entirely surrounded with blazing plantations, and even the hideous outcries could be heard of those fiends, who were every where triumphant in their march of desolation and massacre. The advance guard established on the plantation Bongars, had been affrighted from its defense of that post, and thus the two most beautiful quarters of the colony, those of Morin and Limonade, were given to the torches of the rebels. They even advanced to the Haut de Cap, and the cannon brought to play upon their huddled masses was scarcely sufficient to check them in their headlong march.. The return of Tousard upon their rear dispersed them, but by his retreat they were left in undisputed possession of the country. They immediately extended their ravages from the sea-shore to the mountains, and when nothing more was left for them to destroy, their headlong tumultuousness began to give place in their leisure to a regular organization and a more systematic warfare. continuance in the field, notwithstanding the vast amount of plunder to tempt them from their course, and the celerity and skilfulness of their movements,

* Lacroix.

had already given rise to the suspicion that they were guided in their enterprise by some being superior to themselves. They no longer exposed themselves in masses to the destructive sweep of cannon and small arms, but by scattering their detachments, by suddenly dispersing to the shelter of hedges. and thickets, when occasion required, they often succeeded in surprising or surrounding their enemy, and when neither could be done, in crushing them by a vast superiority in numbers. While the preparations for the attack were in progress, their obies performed the Ouangah, or mysterious rite to their demons, by which the imaginations of the multitude were heated and strained to the utmost degree of tension, and the women and children danced an accompaniment to the ceremony with howlings and outcries that savored of Pandemonium. Amid the excitement of this wild uproar, the attack began with yells and terrific gesticulations. If they met with a firm and effective resistance, the energy of their attack soon slackened; but if the defense was weak and faltering, their boldness and audacity became extreme. They rushed forward. to the cannon's mouth, and thrusting in their arms and bodies, purchased the retreat of the enemy by this self-immolation. Contortions and howlings were not the only means they used to intimidate their adversaries-the flames which they applied to the highly inflammable fields of cane, to the houses and mills of the plantations, and to their own cabins, covered the heavens with clouds of smoke by day, and illuminated the horizon by night with gleams that gave to every object the color of blood. After a silence the most profound, there would arise an outcry from their camp the most appalling; this would again be followed by the plaintive cries of their prisoners, whom the savages made it their sport to sacrifice at their advance posts.

The insurgents, in full possession of the plain of Cape François, were reveling amidst the spoils of the vanquished. The colonists, to intimidate them, changed the sluggish and inefficient war they were carrying on to one of extermination. This was ill-timed and impolitic, for the insurrection had grown too strong to yield to fear, and the negroes repaid the cruelty by augmenting the tortures of their own captives. The negro chiefs would have no neutrals among those of their race, and the more faithful slaves, who were found concealing themselves from the rebels, were immediately put to death by their own countrymen. On the other hand, parties of enraged whites were traversing the country, and, with an undiscriminating vengeance, killing every living thing that was black. The faithful slave, who, in this reciprocal destruction, came to claim the protection of his master against those who on either side sought his life, was in many instances put to death by that very master himself. This blind severity served no purpose but to swell the ranks of the rebels, for the peaceable negro could find no security for his life but by assuming arms i the ranks of his countrymen.

In the first moments of the rebellion, the negroes had murdered all their prisoners, but as success increased, the complacency of triumph taught them more clemency, or perhaps they had become glutted with cruelty and crime. They no longer massacred the women and children, and only showed themselves

cruel to their prisoners taken in battle, whom they put to death with such studied tortures as cannot be named without a thrill of horror. They tore them with red-hot pincers-sawed them asunder between planks-roasted them by a slow fire-or tore out their eyes with red-hot cork-screws. Their principal leader, Jean François, assumed the title of grand admiral of France, and his lieutenant, Biassou, called himself generalissimo of the conquered country. They were evidently under the guidance and instruction of demons higher in intelligence than they. The rebels stated that they were in arms for their king, whom their enemies and his had cast into prison; but at other times they asserted that their sole object was to save themselves from their tyrants, the planters.

Te Deum was daily sung by both belligerents, in impious thanksgiving to God for what was nothing but a continued massacre. The heads of murdered whites, stuck on poles, surrounded the camp of the rebels, and the hedges that bordered the way conducting to the posts of the whites were filled with the dead bodies of negroes swinging in the wind.

After a long succession of skirmishes which had resulted in nothing but to drive the rebels from the plain to the mountains, whence after the withdrawal of the troops they rushed back again to the plain, the negroes were nearly subdued by a combined movement, which had been ordered by M. Blanchelande, and executed by M. Tousard. Camp Lecoque and Acul were taken by the whites, and a large body of negroes were surrounded upon the plantation. Alquier, who were surprised by night, and all who were unable to effect an escape were cut in pieces. M. Tousard was fortunate enough in this expedition to save from the hands of the negroes a great number of white children, and eighty white females, who were found shut up in the church at Limbé.

The rebels ascribed their late disasters to treason in their camp. A negro named Jeannot was of all their chieftains the most ferocious. Suspecting the fidelity of a negro under his orders, who was also accused of having saved his master from the knives of the insurgents, this monster ordered that he should be cut in pieces and thrown into the fire, on the charge that he had drawn the balls from the cartridges of the blacks in their late unsuccessful conflicts with M. Tousard. Other acts of cruelty still more revolting are related of this rebel chief. The plantation of M. Paradole, situated on Grande Riviere, suffered an attack from the insurgents, in which the proprietor himself was made a prisoner. Four of his children, who in the first moments of their panic had fled to places of concealment, came to implore the negro chief to liberate their father. This filial devotion, which was interpreted as defiance by the unfeeling black, irritated him to fury. He ordered that the four young men should be slain separately before the eyes of their parent, who was then himself put to death, the last victim in this domestic tragedy. The atrocity of this action was even too much for Jean François, who had already become jealous of Jeannot's growing ascendency. The latter affected the state and bearing of a monarch, never proceeding to mass but in a chariot drawn by six horses. envy of Jean François was soon imbodied in action. He attacked his associ

The

ate chief and overcame him, and the monster was shot at the foot of a tree that had been fitted up with iron hooks upon which to hang his living victims by the middle of the body. Buckman, also, the original leader in the insurrection, fell a sacrifice to the vengeance of the whites during this expedition of M. Tousard, and his head was brought into Cape François and exposed on the gates of the town.

While ruin was thus universal in the north, the mulattoes of the south were seizing the present conjuncture to establish their rights by force. Their leaders showed themselves more skillful than Ogé. Instead of remaining in Port-auPrince, they made their rendezvous at Croix des Bouquets, and made no demonstration of their design till their organization had heen made complete. Port-au-Prince considered itself strong enough to punish this schism, and the military force of the place took up their march immediately for the encampment of the mulattoes. Some detachments of cavalry from both sides had already met in the plain of Cul de Sac, and the advantage was clearly on the side of the mulattoes. On the night of the 1st of September, a body of adventurers and sailors, joined to a force of two hundred troops of the line and a detachment of the national guard, and furnished with a small train of artillery, set off from Port-au-Prince to attack the post of Croix des Bouquets. They continued their march until the break of day, when they found themselves in the grounds of the plantation Pernier, and the fields of cane in flames on every side of their column. A brisk fire of musketry from an ambuscade of mulattoes immediately followed, and the field was strewed with killed and wounded. The whites were thrown into disorder, and their rout soon became complete. The mulattoes, with admirable tact, followed up their advantage by making immediate offers to negotiate, which their defeated opponents accepted without a moment's hesitation. A treaty was made, called a concordat, in which the whites promised to make no farther opposition to the late decree of the national assembly, as well as to recognize the political equality of mulattoes with themselves, and to secure the complete indemnification of all those who had suffered for political offenses, either in property, person or life. The mulattoes demanded that the garrison of Port-au-Prince should be composed of whites and mulattoes in equal numbers-that the judges who had condemned Ogé should be consigned to infamy-that the future legislature of the colony should be composed of members chosen conformably to the late decree, and that whenever the principles of this decree were not recognized in the elections, both contracting parties should unite to enforce their execution. The discussions being all finished on the several articles of this treaty, which secured to the mulattoes all that they had ever demanded, it was signed on the 23d of October, 1791.

Meantime the war continued in the plain of Cape François with unmitigated fierceness, and human blood still flowed in torrents amid the cruelty practiced on both sides. It was estimated that within the space of two months, more than two thousand whites had fallen victims to the insurrection-that one hundred and eighty sugar plantations, and nearly nine hundred plantations of