Page:Haiti- Her History and Her Detractors.djvu/150

 134 . Within a comparatively short time he got up a regular army. And what were these soldiers? Men who had just been freed from slavery—peasants, most of whom had never handled a gun! But he succeeded in transforming these ignorant and ineffective forces into invincible legions.

His army was scantily clothed and fed—he had neither the means nor the time to organize a commissariat. Arms and ammunition had often to be taken from the enemy. The tatterdemalions who made up his army soon commanded the respect of the haughty Frenchmen whom they were defeating at every turn. In facing death the blacks were decidedly not inferior in courage to the whites.

Leclerc was greatly surprised to see those whom he still affected to despise, to see those whom he still considered like "serpents and tigers to be destroyed," fast becoming lions bent on devouring his army. He was soon compelled to center his forces at Cap-Français. His disappointment was inconceivable. Instead of the splendid success he expected to achieve, he found himself facing a humiliating defeat. This embarrassing situation had a bad effect on his health. On October 22 he became ill, and on the 2d of November, 1802, he had ceased to exist. His funeral-knell was also the death-knell of the French domination.

Toussaint Louverture had been deported only five months since, and yet his prediction was becoming verified: the powerful branches of the tree of liberty were strangling those who had tried to uproot it.

After Leclerc's death, Rochambeau assumed the post of Captain-General. The colonists were overjoyed; at last they had as their leader a man of so unscrupulous a conscience that the shedding of the blood of the natives would be unlimited—the man who had inaugurated the system of execution by asphyxiation in the hold of the men-of-war. The struggle was already a fierce one; henceforth it was to be of the most savage, barbarous kind.

The new Captain-General arrived at Cap-Français