Page:The black man - his antecedents, his genius, and his achievements (IA blackmanantecede00browrich).pdf/163

 the men of his color can scarcely be described. At the breaking out of the revolution, he headed the mulattoes in his native town, and soon drew around him a formidable body of men.

After driving the English and Spaniards from the island, and subduing the French planters, Toussaint and Rigaud made war upon each other. As the mulattoes were less than fifty thousand in number, and the blacks more than five hundred thousand, Rigaud was always outnumbered on the field of battle; but his forces, fighting under the eyes of the general whom they adored, defended their territory with vigor, if not with success. Reduced in his means of defence by the loss of so many brave men in his recent battles, Rigaud had the misfortune to see his towns fall, one after another, into the power of Toussaint, until he was driven to the last citadel of his strength—the town of Aux Cayes. As he thus yielded foot by foot, every thing was given to desolation before it was abandoned, and the land, which under his active government had just before been so adorned with cultivation, was made such a waste of desolation, that, according almost to the very letter of his orders, "the trees were turned with their roots in the air." The genius and activity of Toussaint were completely at fault in his attempt to force the mulatto general from his intrenchments.

The government of France was too much engaged at home with her own revolution to pay any attention to St. Domingo. The republicans in Paris, after getting rid of their enemies, turned upon each other. The revolution, like Saturn, devoured its own children; priest and people were murdered upon the