Page:The rising son, or, The antecedents and advancement of the colored race (IA risingsonthe00browrich).pdf/191

 knowledge, and to be reviewed by the great officers of the empire.

Dessalines now put forth a proclamation filled with accusations against the white French still on the Island.

This ferocious manifesto was intended as a preliminary measure in the train of horrible events to follow. In the month of February, 1805, orders were issued for the pursuit and arrest of all those Frenchmen who had been accused of being accomplices in the executions ordered by Rochambeau.

Dessalines pretended that more than sixty thousand of his compatriots had been drowned, suffocated, hung, or shot in these massacres. "We adopt this measure," said he, "to teach the nations of the world that, notwithstanding the protection which we grant to those who are loyal towards us, nothing shall prevent us from punishing the murderers who have taken pleasure in bathing their hands in the blood of the sons of Hayti."

These instigations were not long in producing their appropriate consequences among a population for so many years trained to cruelty, and that hated the French in their absence in the same degree that they feared them when present. On the 28th of April it was ordered by proclamation that all the French residents in the Island should be put to death; and this inhuman command of Dessalines was eagerly obeyed by his followers, particularly by the mulattoes, who had to manifest a flaming zeal for their new sovereign, in order to save themselves from falling victims to his sanguinary vengeance. Acting under the dread surveillance of Dessalines, all the black chiefs were forced to show themselves equally cruel; and if any French