of the whites, and he filled his new place without embarrassment or arrogance. He entirely forgot what he had suffered in his first condition, and was generous even towards many of whom he had reason to complain. His activity and strength were prodigious, and he moved with extraordinary rapidity from one extremity of the colony to the other, according as circumstances required his presence. Vigilant, sober, and abstemious, he quitted the table and gave up every relaxation the moment that business demanded his attention. An upright judge, without learning or education, an able general from the very day that he ceased to be a private soldier, he was dear to his army, and the negroes obeyed with a sort of pride a man of colour, whom they considered the superior, or the equal, at least, of the most distinguished white man.

He was aware that a community, without labour or industry, soon falls into a state of barbarism, and he had revived agriculture by regulations which had been attended with the most happy results. The privileged productions, the precious aliment of a flourishing commerce, had become as abundant as formerly; but their destination was much changed. The plantations were sequestered, and the greatest part of the revenue was paid into the colonial treasury, instead of being sent to France. Touissaint and his government thereby disposed of immense riches, which gave rise to the opinion that he possessed a hidden treasure. There is no sufficient authority for this conjecture, though we are far from rejecting it. He exacted labour, not in order to accumulate treasures, but to fulfil one of the conditions of the social state. "I know how," he frequently said, " to unite liberty and labour." To this end all his proceedings were directed, but as soon as he perceived that its attainment was questionable, he became, though he was not without elevation of soul, suspicious and implacable. He saw flow, without pity, the blood of every one who was convicted of having put in danger that liberty which was so dear to him, on his own account, as well as on that of all the people of his colour, and he no longer treated of business with the candour and good faith that smooth all difficulties. According to him, it was the safety of the blacks, his own safety that obliged him to oppose cunning to perfidy; and the secret intelligence which he kept up with the emissaries of the government of Jamaica was rendered necessary by the condition of St. Domingo, at the period that he was acknowledged as its master.

His army was composed, in 1800, of about twelve thousand blacks. War between men who are distinguished from one another by the colour of the skin is always terrible, because they at last believe themselves to be of two different species; thus when a black man and a mulatto met, each saw in the other an enemy. The slightest hostilities had then an exterminating character scarcely known among savages. Treason and secret violence destroyed in this colony more human beings than battles. Rigaud, too weak against adversaries infinitely superior in number, had thought proper to abandon an unequal contest, and had fled to France. Touissaint made a constitution for the colony; he sent it to the first consul, who was very much dissatisfied with it, and declared that it should never be put in force.

Such was the state of affairs, when Bonaparte, on the faith of the preliminaries of London, and on the point of concluding the definitive peace, conceived the design of sending to the colony a fleet and army under the command of General Leclerc, his brother-in-law. Eighteen thousand troops were, at first, embarked on board of thirty ships of the line, for he was afraid to give, by freighting transport vessels, too much publicity to an expedition which he wished to keep secret. It was, however, well known at St. Domingo, as the English did not neglect to apprize the mulattoes and blacks of it.

Suspicions and jealousies are the ordinary relations of cabinets with one another, and at the very moment that they are making mutual professions of entire confidence, they fear not only probable perfidies, but even all such as are possible. Although the first consul had only been a short time at the head of affairs, foreign statesmen conceived that they were acquainted with his character, and they did not rely enough upon his political probity to have their impressions of his real intentions removed by a simple declaration.

Re-enforcements were, from time to time, sent both to the fleet and army. There was among the French officers an extraordinary emulation to be of this expedition. Accustomed to glory, the attendant on great successes, they had foreseen none of the dangers, which are incurred by all who are exposed to the sun or even the night air in tropical regions. It was considered a high favour to belong to the expedition, and the number of generals and officers, compared with that of soldiers, far surpassed the ordinary proportions. A part of these forces was composed of Spaniards and Germans; some Poles were also among them. These legions, which had been drawn from their country to contribute to the great events that changed the face of Europe, had become embarrassing to France in her new state of peace. The idea occurred of sending them to St. Domingo. Thus these soldiers, many of whom were scarcely manumitted from servitude, were destined to restore to the bonds of slavery, Africans, with whom they had no ground of quarrel. The French troops landed on the 3d of February, 1802. On the arrival of these forces, the black general, Christophe, set fire to Cape Français, and this beautiful city was partially consumed. The blacks adopted it as their law to lay waste their own country, and to burn down the houses, in order to deprive the enemy of resources. This rage, and these conflagrations but too well announced the disasters which ensued. From the beginning, the success of the Europeans, who gained several battles from the blacks, was balanced by the losses that they sustained from the climate. There was no longer any question of rebellion, but the hostilities had assumed the character of a war between two independent nations.

A great change had followed the abolition of slavery. During a century and a half, an habitual terror had kept the blacks in the most abject subjection to their masters. They had then such an idea of the superiority of the whites, that, in the thickest and most solitary forest, the sight of a white man would have been sufficient to inspire twenty blacks with dread. This almost supernatural power, which had vanished at the proclamation of liberty, had been suddenly renewed, on the arrival of a numerous army of white troops, and, for some time, it only required a mere patrol to put to flight a battalion of blacks. Some, however, resisted with success, and then almost every engagement became a battle. These whites, so long dreaded as beings of a superior species, were but ordinary enemies, when the negroes discovered that it was so easy to make them prisoners, or put them to death. They daily recovered their courage, and soon had as their rallying words, wherever the French were found in small numbers; "Let us kill our oppressors." The mulattoes and free negroes practised atrocious vengeance on the whites; they were in their turn thrown by hundreds into the ocean, and the sight of their carcasses, washed back on the shores, drove this unforunate race to horrible reprisals. Where they could not massacre, they set fire to the house.

Leclerc committed still greater faults in his political conduct than as general of the army. It is doubtful, however, whether these faults should be imputed to him alone. Government had wished to direct every