coffee, cotton and indigo had been laid waste, and their mills and houses consumed to ashes. The negroes, in the wantonness of their fury, left nothing undestroyed that was not in itself indestructible. The thick walls of edifices, which remained standing after the fire had consumed all enclosed within them, were by painful manual effort razed to the ground. The iron kettles of the boiling houses, and the bells which called them to their labors, were crushed into atoms, as if to destroy from the very face of the earth all memorials of former servitude. Twelve hundred families, once opulent and happy, were reduced to utter poverty, and driven in their destitution to subsist on public charity or private hospitality in their own or foreign countries. More than ten thousand of the rebels also had perished by the sword or by famine, and many hundreds of them had met their fate from the hands of the public executioner.

Meanwhile strange proceedings relative to the colonies were occurring in the mother country. The news of the insurrection of the blacks had not had time to reach Paris; but the intelligence of the manner in which the decree of the 15th of May had been received by the whites in St. Domingo, had created great alarm. "We are afraid we have been too hasty with that decree of ours about the rights of the mulattoes; it is likely, by all accounts, to occasion a civil war between them and the whites; and if so, we run the risk of losing the colony altogether." This was the common talk of the politicians of Paris. Accordingly, they hastened to undo what they had done four months before, and on the 24th of September the national assembly actually repealed the decree of the 15th of May by a large majority. Thus the mother country and the colony were at cross purposes; for at the very moment that the colony was admitting the decree, the mother country was repealing it.

The flames of war were immediately rekindled in the colony. "The decree is repealed," said the whites; "we need not have been in such a hurry in making concessions to the mulattoes." "The decree is repealed," said the mulattoes; "the people in Paris are playing false with us; we must depend on ourselves in future. There is no possibility of coming to terms with the whites; either they must exterminate us, or we must exterminate them."

Hostilities were renewed in the streets of Port-au-Prince. A battery of twenty cannons opened its fire upon the ranks of the armed mulattoes, who retreated from the city and gained the road to the mountains. Scarcely had they departed, when both the north and south portions of the city were discovered to be on fire, and in an incredibly short space of time the whole city was wrapt in conflagration. The fire made such progress that no exertions could arrest it, and it continued to rage for forty-eight hours, when it began to abate for want of further materials to minister to its fury, and twenty-seven out of thirty squares of the town were utterly destroyed.

Affright, disorder and pillage augmented the horrors of the calamity. The fire was of course attributed to the mulattoes; and their wives and children, two thousand in number, found themselves obliged to fly, not only from their burning habitations, but from the sword with which, in the blindness of vengeance, the whites were pursuing them. Driven by this two-fold terror, they

fled to the country or rushed toward the sea shore, where, not finding boats enough to contain them, and in their anxiety to escape the death that was following on their footsteps, pressing in crowds upon each other, great numbers of them were forced into the sea, there to find a death as dreadful as that they were escaping. The accusation was afterwards transferred to the merchants, who were charged with having recourse to this means of destroying all documents and securities, as an easy method of ridding themselves from such liabilities. Suspicion was immediately taken for evidence, and executions followed; the mercantile establishments which had escaped the fire, were given up to be pillaged by the mob. A simpler explanation, says Lacroix, is easy. In a town built entirely of wood, and upon a soil where a burning sun dries up every thing not endowed with life, the wadding of a single cartridge would be sufficient to kindle a fire upon the roofs of houses as inflammable as tinder; and that a battle could be fought in such a place without causing a conflagration would be a matter of astonishment. The loss has been estimated at fifty

million francs.

The year 1791 was concluded amid scenes of war, pestilence and bloodshed. The whites, collected in forts and cities, bade defiance to the insurgents. The mulattoes and blacks fought on the same side, sometimes under one standard, sometimes in separate bands. A large colony of blacks, consisting of slaves broken loose from the plantations, settled in the mountains under the two leaders, Jean François and Biassou. They planted provisions for their subsistence, and watched for opportunities to make irruptions into the plains.

The national assembly had sent three commissioners to the island to restore peace and subordination to the distracted colony. At the time of their departure they had not been informed of the slave insurrection, nor the vast extent of the calamity that was then desolating the country. On their arrival, the commissioners were struck with horror and astonishment at what they saw. At Cape François they found two wheels and five gibbets in constant employ, to execute the numerous victims that were daily adjudged to death. Horror and loathing made them insensible to the civilities which were proffered them, and despairing of effecting any beneficial measure, they returned to France. Meanwhile the revolution in the mother country was proceeding; the republican party and the Amis des Noirs were rising into power; and on the 4th of April, 1792, a new decree was passed, declaring more emphatically than before the rights of the people of color, and appointing three new commissioners, who were to proceed to St. Domingo and exercise sovereign power in the colony. These commissioners arrived on the 13th of September, dissolved the colonial assembly and sent the governor, M. Blanchelande, home to be guillotined. With great appearance of activity, the commissioners commenced their duties; and as the mother country was too busy about its own affairs to attend to their proceedings, they acted as they pleased, and contrived, out of the general wreck, to amass large sums of money for their own use; till at length, in the beginning of 1793, the revolutionary government at home, having a little more leisure to attend to colonial affairs, revoked the powers of the commissioners,

and appointed a new governor, M. Galbaud. When M. Galbaud arrived in the island, there ensued a struggle between him and the commissioners, he being empowered to supersede them, and they refusing to submit. At length ⚫ the commissioners calling in the assistance of the revolted negroes, M. Galbaud was expelled from the island, and forced to take refuge in the United States. While this strange struggle for the governorship of the colony lasted, the condition of the colony itself was growing worse and worse. The plantations remained uncultivated, the whites and the mulattoes were still at war, masses of savage negroes were quartered in the hills, in fastnesses from which they could not be dislodged, and from which they could rush down unexpectedly to commit outrages in the plains.

In daily jeopardy of their lives, and seeing no prospect of a return of prosperity, immense numbers of the white colonists were quitting the island. Many families had emigrated to the neighboring island of Jamaica, many to the United States, and some even had sought refuge, like the royalists of the mother country, in Great Britain. Through these persons, as well as through the refugees from the mother country, overtures had been made to the British government for the purpose of inducing it to take possession of the island of St. Domingo and convert it into a British colony; and in 1793, the British government, against which the French republic had now declared war, began to listen favorably to the proposals. General Williamson, the lieutenant-governor of Jamaica, was instructed to send troops from that island to St. Domingo, and attempt to wrest it out of the hands of the French. Accordingly, on the 20th of September, 1793, about 870 British soldiers, under Colonel Whitelocke, landed in St. Domingo-a force miserably defective for such an enterprise. The number of troops was afteward increased, and the British were able to effect the capture of Port-au-Prince, and also some ships which were in the harbor. Alarmed by this success, the French commissioners, Santhonax and Polverel, issued a decree abolishing negro slavery, at the same time inviting the blacks to join them against the British invaders. Several thousand did so; but the great majority fled to the hills, swelling the army of the negro chiefs, François and Biassou, and luxuriating in the liberty which they had so suddenly acquired. It was at this moment of utter confusion and disorganization, when British, French, mulattoes, and blacks, were all acting their respective parts in the turmoil, and all inextricably intermingled in a bewildering war, which was neither a foreign war nor a civil war, nor a war of races, but a composition of all three-it was at this moment that Toussaint L'Ouverture appeared the spirit and the ruler of the storm.

He was one of the most extraordinary men of a period when extraordinary men were numerous, and beyond all question, the highest specimen of negro genius the world has yet seen. He was born in St. Domingo, on the plantation of the count de Noé, a few miles distant from Cape François, in the year 1743. His father and mother were African slaves on the count's estate. On the plantation there was a black of the name of Pierre-Baptiste, a shrewd, intelligent man, who had acquired much information, besides having been taught the ele

ments of what would be termed a plain education by some benevolent missionaries. Between Pierre and young Toussaint an intimacy sprung up, and all that Pierre had learned from the missionaries, Toussaint learned from him. His acquisitions, says our French authority, amounted to reading, writing, arithmetic, a little Latin, and an idea of geometry. It was a fortunate circumstance that the greatest natural genius among the negroes of St. Domingo was thus singled out to receive the unusual gift of a little instruction. Toussaint's qualifications gained him promotion; he was made the coachman of M. Bayou, the overseer of the count de Noé-a situation as high as a negro could hope to fill. In this, and in other still higher situations to which he was subsequently advanced, his conduct was irreproachable, so that while he gained the confidence of his master, every negro in the plantation held him in respect. Three particulars are authentically known respecting his character at this period of his life, and it is somewhat remarkable that all are points more peculiarly of moral than of intellectual superiority. He was noted, it is said, for an exceedingly patient temper, for great affection for brute animals, and for a strong, unswerving attachment to one female whom he had chosen for his wife. It is also said that he manifested singular strength of religious sentiment. person, he was above the middle size, with a striking countenance, and a robust constitution, capable of enduring any amount of fatigue, and requiring little sleep.

Toussaint was about forty-eight years of age when the insurrection of the blacks took place in August, 1791. Great exertions were made by the insurgents to induce a negro of his respectability and reputation to join them in their first outbreak, but he steadily refused. It is also known that it was owing to Toussaint's care and ingenuity that his master, M. Bayou, and his family escaped being massacred. He hid them in the woods for several days, visited them at the risk of his own life, secured the means of their escape from the island, and, after they were settled in the United States, sent them such remittances as he could manage to snatch from the wreck of their property. Such conduct, in the midst of such barbarities as were then enacting, indicates great originality and moral independence of character. After his master's escape, Toussaint, who had no tie to retain him longer in servitude, and who, besides, saw reason and justice in the struggle which his race was making for liberty, attached himself to the bands of negroes then occupying the hills, commanded by François and Biassou. In the negro army Toussaint at once assumed a leading rank; and a certain amount of medical knowledge, which he had picked up in the course of his reading, enabled him to unite the functions of army physician with those of military officer. Such was Toussaint's position in the end of the year 1793, when the British landed in the island.

It is necessary here to describe, as exactly as the confusion will permit, the true state of parties in the island. The British, as we already know, were attempting to take the colony out of the hands of the French republic, and annex it to the crown of Great Britain; and in this design they were favored by the few French royalists still resident in the island. The French commis

sioners, Santhonax and Polverel, on the other hand, men of the republican school, were attempting, with a motley army of French, mulattoes and blacks, to beat back the British. The greater part of the mulattoes of the island, grateful for the exertions which the republicans and the Amis des Noirs had made on their behalf, attached themselves to the side of the commissioners and the republic which they represented. It may naturally be supposed that the blacks would attach themselves to the same party-to the party of those whose watchwords were liberty and equality, and who consequently were the sworn enemies of slavery; but such was not the case. Considerable numbers of the negroes, it is true, were gained over to the cause of the French republic by the manifesto the commissioners had published abolishing slavery; but the bulk of them kept aloof, and constituted a separate negro army. Strangely enough, this army declared itself anti-republican. Before the death of Louis XVI., the blacks had come to entertain a strong sympathy with the king, and a violent dislike to the republicans. This may have been owing either to the policy of their leaders, François and Biassou, or to the simple fact that the blacks had suffered much at the hands of republican whites. At all events, the negro armies called themselves the armies of the king while he was alive; and after he was dead, they refused to consider themselves subjects of the republic. In these circumstances, one would at first be apt to fancy they would side with the British when they landed on the island. But it must be remembered that, along with the blind and unintelligent royalism of the negroes, they were animated by a far stronger and far more real feeling, namely, the desire of freedom and the horror of again being subjected to slavery; and this would very effectually prevent their assisting the British. If they did so, they would be only changing their masters; St. Domingo would become a British colony, and they, like the negroes of Jamaica, would become slaves of British planters. No, it was liberty they wanted, and the British would not give them that. They hung aloof, therefore, not acting consistently with the French, much less with the British, but watching the course of events, and ready, at any given moment, to precipitate themselves into the contest and strike a blow for negro independence.

The negroes, however, in the meantime had the fancy to call themselves royalists, François having assumed the title of grand admiral of France, and Biassou that of generalissimo of the conquered districts. Toussaint held a military command under them, and acted also as army physician. Every day his influence over the negroes was extending; and François became so envious of Toussaint's growing reputation as to cast him into prison, apparently with the further purpose of destroying him. Toussaint, however, was released by Biassou, who, although described as a monster of cruelty, appears to have had some sparks of generous feeling. Shortly after this, Biassou's drunken ferocity rendered it necessary to deprive him of all command, and François and Toussaint became joint leaders, Toussaint acting in the capacity of lieutenant-general, and François in that of general-in-chief. The negro army at this time judged it expedient to enter the service of Spain, acting in coöperation with