Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/294

 by Napoleon. Agreeably to his orders, the person of Toussaint was treacherously arrested, while residing peacefully in his house near Gonáives. Two negro chiefs who endeavored to rescue him were killed on the spot, and a large number of his friends were at the same time made prisoners. The fate of many of these was never known; but Toussaint himself, his wife, and all his family, were carried at midnight on board the Hero man-of-war, then in the harbor, which immediately set sail for France. After a short passage of twenty-five days, the vessel arrived at Brest (June 1802); and here Toussaint took his last leave of his wife and family. They were sent to Bayonne; but by the orders of the first consul, he was carried to the chateau of Joux, in the east of France, among the Jura mountains. Placed in this bleak and dismal region, so different from the tropical climate to which he had been accustomed, his sufferings may easily be imagined. Not satisfied, however, with confining his unhappy prisoner to the fortress generally, Bonaparte enjoined that he should be secluded in a dungeon, and denied anything beyond the plainest necessaries of existence. For the first few months of his captivity, Toussaint was allowed to be attended by a faithful negro servant; but at length this single attendant was removed, and he was left alone in his misery and despair. It appears a rumor had gone abroad that Toussaint, during the war in St. Domingo, had buried a large amount of treasure in the earth; and during his captivity at Joux, an officer was sent by the first consul to interrogate him respecting the place where he had concealed it. "The treasures I have lost," said Toussaint, "are not those which you seek." After an imprisonment of ten months he was found dead in his dungeon on the 27th of April, 1803. He was sitting at the side of the fire-place, with his bauds resting on his legs, and his head drooping. The account given at the time was, that he had died of apoplexy; but some authors have not hesitated to ascribe it to less natural circumstances. "The governor of the fort," observes one French writer, "made two excursions to Neufchâtel, in Switzerland. The first time, he left the keys of the dungeons with a captain whom he chose to act for him during his absence. The captain accordingly had occasion to visit Toussaint, who conversed with him about his past life, and expressed his indignation at the design imputed to him by the first consul, of having wished to betray St. Domingo to the English. As Toussaint, reduced to a scanty farinaceous diet, suffered greatly from the want of coffee, to which he had been accustomed, the captain generously procured it for him. The first absence of the governor of the fort, however, was only an experiment. It was not long before he left the fort again, and this time said, with a mysterious, unquiet air to the captain, 'I leave you in charge of the fort, but I do not give you the keys of the dungeons; the prisoners do not require anything.' Four days after he returned, and Toussaint was dead — starved." According to another account, this miserable victim of despotism, and against whom there was no formal or reasonable charge, was poisoned; but this rests on no credible testimony, and there is reason to believe that Toussaint died a victim only to the severities of confinement in this