Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/284

 fled to the country or rushed toward the sea shore, where, not finding boats enough to contain them, and in their anxiety to escape the death that was following on their footsteps, pressing in crowds upon each other, great numbers of them were forced into the sea, there to find a death as dreadful as that they were escaping. The accusation was afterwards transferred to the merchants, who were charged with having recourse to this means of destroying all documents and securities, as an easy method of ridding themselves from such liabilities. Suspicion was immediately taken for evidence, and executions followed; the mercantile establishments which had escaped the fire, were given up to be pillaged by the mob. A simpler explanation, says Lacroix, is easy. In a town built entirely of wood, and upon a soil where a burning sun dries up every thing not endowed with life, the wadding of a single cartridge would be sufficient to kindle a fire upon the roofs of houses as inflammable as tinder; and that a battle could be fought in such a place without causing a conflagration would be a matter of astonishment. The loss has been estimated at fifty million francs.

The year 1791 was concluded amid scenes of war, pestilence and bloodshed. The whites, collected in forts and cities, bade defiance to the insurgents. The mulattoes and blacks fought on the same side, sometimes under one standard, sometimes in separate bands. A large colony of blacks, consisting of slaves broken loose from the plantations, settled in the mountains under the two leaders, Jean François and Biassou. They planted provisions for their subsistence, and watched for opportunities to make irruptions into the plains.

The national assembly had sent three commissioners to the island to restore peace and subordination to the distracted colony. At the time of their departure they had not been informed of the slave insurrection, nor the vast extent of the calamity that was then desolating the country. On their arrival, the commissioners were struck with horror and astonishment at what they saw. At Cape François they found two wheels and five gibbets in constant employ, to execute the numerous victims that were daily adjudged to death. Horror and loathing made them insensible to the civilities which were proffered them, and despairing of effecting any beneficial measure, they returned to France. Meanwhile the revolution in the mother country was proceeding; the republican party and the Amis des Noirs were rising into power; and on the 4th of April, 1792, a new decree was passed, declaring more emphatically than before the rights of the people of color, and appointing three new commissioners, who were to proceed to St. Domingo and exercise sovereign power in the colony. These commissioners arrived on the 13th of September, dissolved the colonial assembly and sent the governor, M. Blanchelande, home to be guillotined. With great appearance of activity, the commissioners commenced their duties; and as the mother country was too busy about its own affairs to attend to their proceedings, they acted as they pleased, and contrived, out of the general wreck, to amass large sums of money for their own use; till at length, in the beginning of 1793, the revolutionary government at home, having a little more leisure to attend to colonial affairs, revoked the powers of the commissioners,