Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/281

 cruel to their prisoners taken in battle, whom they put to death with such studied tortures as cannot be named without a thrill of horror. They tore them with red-hot pincers — sawed them asunder between planks — roasted them by a slow fire — or tore out their eyes with red-hot cork-screws. Their principal leader, Jean François, assumed the title of grand admiral of France, and his lieutenant, Biasson, called himself generalissimo of the conquered country. They were evidently under the guidance and instruction of demons higher in intelligence than they. The rebels stated that they were in arms for their king, whom their enemies and his had cast into prison; but at other times they asserted that their sole object was to save themselves from their tyrants, the planters.

Te Deum was daily sung by both belligerents, in impious thanksgiving to God for what was nothing but a continued massacre. The heads of murdered whites, stuck on poles, surrounded the camp of the rebels, and the hedges that bordered the way conducting to the posts of the whites were filled with the dead bodies of negroes swinging in the wind.

After a long succession of skirmishes which had resulted in nothing but to drive the rebels from the plain to the mountains, whence after the withdrawal of the troops they rushed back again to the plain, the negroes were nearly subdued by a combined movement, which had been ordered by M. Blanchelande, and executed by M. Tousard. Camp Lecocque and Acul were taken by the whites, and a large body of negroes were surrounded upon the plantation Alquier, who were surprised by night, and all who were unable to effect an escape were cut in pieces. M. Tousard was fortunate enough in this expedition to save from the hands of the negroes a great number of white children, and eighty white females, who were found shut up in the church at Limbé.

The rebels ascribed their late disasters to treason in their camp. A negro named Jeannot was of all their-chieftains the most ferocious. Suspecting the fidelity of a negro under his orders, who was also accused of having saved his master from the knives of the insurgents, this monster ordered that he should be cut in pieces and thrown into the fire, on the charge that he had drawn the balls from the cartridges of the blacks in their late unsuccessful conflicts with M. Tousard. Other acts of cruelty still more revolting are related of this rebel chief. The plantation of M. Paradole, situated on Grande Riviere, suffered an attack from the insurgents, in which the proprietor himself was made a prisoner. Four of his children, who in the first moments of their panic had fled to places of concealment, came to implore the negro chief to liberate their father. This filial devotion, which was interpreted as defiance by the unfeeling black, irritated him to fury. He ordered that the four young men should be slain separately before the eyes of their parent, who was then himself put to death, the last victim in this domestic tragedy. The atrocity of this action was even too much for Jean François, who had already become jealous of Jeaunot's growing ascendency. The latter affected the state and bearing of a monarch, never proceeding to mass but in a chariot drawn by six horses. The envy of Jean Francois was soon imbodied in action. He attacked his