Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/282

 chief and overcame him, and the monster was shot at the foot of a tree that had been fitted up with iron hooks upon which to hang his living victims by the middle of the body. Buckman, also, the original leader in the insurrection, fell a sacrifice to the vengeance of the whites during this expedition of M. Tousard, and his head was brought into Cape François and exposed on the gates of the town.

While ruin was thus universal in the north, the mulattoes of the south were seizing the present conjuncture to establish their rights by force. Their leaders showed themselves more skillful than Ogé. Instead of remaining in Port-au-Prince, they made their rendezvous at Croix des Bouquets, and made no demonstration of their design till their organization had been made complete. Port-au-Prince considered itself strong enough to punish this schism, and the military force of the place took up their march immediately for the encampment of the mulattoes. Some detachments of cavalry from both sides had already met in the plain of Cul de Sac, and the advantage was clearly on the side of the mulattoes. On the night of the 1st of September, a body of adventurers and sailors, joined to a force of two hundred troops of the line and a detachment of the national guard, and furnished with a small train of artillery, set off from Port-an-Prince to attack the post of Croix des Bouquets. They continued their march until the break of day, when they found themselves in the grounds of the plantation Pernier, and the fields of cane in flames on every side of their column. A brisk fire of musketry from an ambuscade of mulattoes immediately followed, and the field was strewed with killed and wounded. The whites were thrown into disorder, and their rout soon became complete. The mulattoes, with admirable tact, followed up their advantage by making immediate offers to negotiate, which their defeated opponents accepted without a moment's hesitation. A treaty was made, called a concordat, in which the whites promised to make no farther opposition to the late decree of the national assembly, as well as to recognize the political equality of mulattoes with themselves, and to secure the complete indemnification of all those who had suffered for political offenses, either in property, person or life. The mulattoes demanded that the garrison of Port-au-Prince should be composed of whites and mulattoes in equal numbers — that the judges who had condemned Ogé should be consigned to infamy — that the future legislature of the colony should be composed of members chosen conformably to the late decree, and that whenever the principles of this decree were not recognized in the elections, both contracting parties should unite to enforce their execution. The discussions being all finished on the several articles of this treaty, which secured to the mulattoes all that they had ever demanded, it was signed oil the 23d of October, 1791.

Meantime the war continued in the plain of Cape François with unmitigated fierceness, and human blood still flowed in torrents amid the cruelty practiced on both sides. It was estimated that within the space of two months, more than two thousand whites had fallen victims to the insurrection — that one hundred and eighty sugar plantations, and nearly nine hundred plantations of