Page:Haiti- Her History and Her Detractors.djvu/139

Rh at Cap-Français, was taken from his teacher and embarked. Mars Plaisir, the faithful servant, and Placide Louverture were also taken on board La Guerrière. Immediately after his arrest, on the night of June 7, Toussaint was taken on board La Créole, which was then in the harbor of Gonaives. In sight of Cap-Français he was transhipped to the Héros. It was after boarding this ship that Toussaint uttered the following prophetic words: "By my overthrow the trunk of the tree of negro liberty at Saint-Domingue is laid low—but only the trunk; it will shoot out again from the roots, for they are many and deep." Although he arrived at Brest on July 12, 1802, he only left the ship on August 13. He was straightway conducted to Fort de Joux and imprisoned in a damp cell. His servant, Mars Plaisir, was the only one allowed to accompany him. In this way he found himself deprived of the company of his wife, his children, of all those whose presence might have contributed to temper the bitterness of his captivity. His family was relegated to Bayonne. Many and varied sufferings were inflicted on the great martyr. He was kept exposed to the cold of the Jura, to the severity of a climate to which he was not accustomed. Toussaint arrived at Brest in a state of the greatest destitution. At Fort de Joux they did all in their power to humiliate the vanquished General, of whom they were still in great fear, by sending him shoes already worn out, and tatters and rags for clothes. Shivering and starving, Toussaint was moreover compelled to cook for himself the scanty rations allowed to him; for they had deprived him of the one companion with whom he could talk freely, his servant, Mars Plaisir, who had been placed in chains and transferred to the prison at Nantes. This inhuman treatment was being inflicted on a man who had not been sentenced by any court of justice and to whom no one had even made known the crime for which he was suffering such cruel penalty. The despotism of the first Consul took pleasure in thus tormenting