beau as a successor to Le Clerc; and when the bloodhounds which he had sent to Cuba for arrived, cannon were fired, and demonstrations of joy were shown in various ways.

Even the women, wives of the planters, went to the sea-side, met the animals, and put garlands about their necks, and some kissed and caressed the dogs.*

Such was the degradation of human nature. While the white women were cheering on the French, who had imported bloodhounds as their auxiliaries, the black women were using all their powers of persuasion to rouse the blacks to the combat. Many of these women walked from camp to camp, and from battalion to battalion, exhibiting their naked bodies, showing their lacerated and scourged persons;-these were the marks of slavery, made many years before, but now used for the cause of human freedom.

Christophe, who had taken command of the insurgents, now gave unmistakable proofs that he was a great general, and scarcely second to Touissant. Twenty thousand fresh troops arrived from France to the aid of Rochambeau; yet the blacks were victorious wherever they fought. The French blindly thought that cruelty to the blacks would induce their submission, and to this end they bent all their energies. An amphitheatre was erected, and two hundred dogs, sharpened by extreme hunger, put there, and black prisoners thrown in. The raging animals disputed with each other for the limbs of their victims, until the ground was dyed with human blood.

Three hundred brave blacks were put to death in this horri manner. The blacks, having spread their

rd's Life of Touissant L' Ouverture.

forces in every quarter of the island, were fast retaking the forts and towns. Christophe commanded in the north, Dessalines in the west, and Clervaux in the south.

Despotism and sensuality have often been companions. In Rochambeau, the one sharpened the appetite for the other, as though greediness of bodily pleasuro welcomed the zest arising from the sight of bodily pain.

No small part of his time Rochambeau passed at table, or on sofas, with the Creole females, worshippers of pleasure, as well as most cruel towards their slaves. To satisfy these fascinating courtesans, scaffolds were raised in the cities, which were bathed in the blood of the blacks. They even executed women and children, whose only crime was, that they had brothers, fathers, or husbands among the revolters. These brutal murders by the French filled the blacks with terror. Dessalines started for the Cape, for the purpose of meeting Rochambeau, and avenging the death of the blacks. In his impetuous and terrible march, he surrounded and made prisoners a body of Frenchmen; and with branches of trees, that ferocious chief raised, under the eyes of Rochambeau, five hundred gibbets, on which he hanged as many prisoners.

The numerous executions which began at the Cape soon extended to other places. Port au Prince had its salt waters made bloody, and scaffolds were erected and loaded, within and without the walls. The hand of tyranny spread terror and death over the shores of the north and the west. As the insurrection became more daring, it was thought that the punishments had not been either numerous enough, violent enough, or

various enough. The colonists counselled and encouraged more vengeance. Children, women, and old men were confined in sacks, and thrown into the sea; this was the punishment of parricides among the Romans, ten centuries before; and now resorted to by these haters of liberty.

Rochambeau put five hundred blacks, prisoners whom he had taken in battle, to death in one day. Twenty of Touissant's old officers were chained to the rocks and starved to death.

But the blacks were gradually getting possession of the strongholds in the islands.

To arms! to arms!" was the cry all over the Island, until every one who could use even the lightest instrument of death, was under arms.

Dessalines, Belair, and Lamartiniere, defeated the French general at Verettes; in no place was the slaughter so terrible as there. At a mere nod of Dessalines, men who had been slaves, and who dreaded the new servitude with which they were threatened, massacred seven hundred of the whites that Dessalines had amongst his prisoners.

The child died in the arms of its sick and terrified mother; the father was unable to save the daughter, the daughter unable to save the father. Mulattoes took the lives of their white fathers, to whom they had been slaves, or whom, allowing them to go free, had disowned them; thus revenging themselves for the mixture of their blood. So frightful was this slaughter that the banks of the Artibonite were strewn wind bodies, and the waters dyed x the

he slain. Not a grave was dug,

ohibited interment, in order that

the eyes of the French might see his vengeance even in the repulsive remains of carnage.

The united enthusiasm and bravery of the blacks and mulattoes was too much for the French. Surrounded on all sides, Rochambeau saw his troops dying for the want of food. For many weeks they lived on horse flesh, and were even driven to subsist on the dogs that they had imported from Cuba.

Reduced to the last extremity by starvation, the French general sued for peace, and promised that he would immediately leave the Island; it was accepted by the blacks, and Rochambeau prepared to return to France.

The French embarked in

their vessels of war, and the standard of the blacks once more waved over Cape City, the capital of St. Domingo. As the French sailed from the Island, they saw the tops of the mountains lighted up;-it was not a blaze kindled for war, but for freedom. Every heart beat for liberty, and every voice shouted for joy. From the ocean to the mountains, and from town to town, the cry was "Freedom! Freedom!" Thus ended. Napoleon's expedition to St. Domingo. In less than two years the French lost more than fifty thousand persons. After the retirement of the whites, the ment of color put forth a Declaration of Independence, in which they said: "We have sworn to show no mercy to those who may dare to speak to us of slavery."

CHAPTER XV.

TOUISSANT A PRISONER IN FRANCE.

WHILE the cause of independence, forced at length on the aspirations of the natives of Hayti, was advancing with rapid strides, amid all the tumult of armies, and all the confusion of despotic cruelties, Touissant L'Ouverture pined away in the dark, damp, cold prison of Joux.

This castle stands on the brink of the river Daubs; on the land side, the road of Besancon, leading into Switzerland, gives the stronghold the command of the communications between that country and France. This dungeon built by the Romans, has in it a room fifteen feet square, with a stone floor, the same of which the entire castle is constructed. One small window, high up on the side, looking out on the snows of Switzerland, is the only aperture that gives light to the dismal spot. In winter, ice covers the floor; in summer, it is deep with water. In this living tomb, Touissant was placed, and left to die.

All communication was forbidden him with the outer world. He received no news of his wife and family. He wrote to Bonaparte, demanding a trial,