formidable, that, in 1638, the Spaniards, in self-
defence, fell upon their nest in Tortugas and put
all of them to the sword. An Englishman
named Willis recruited a new band, but the
members quarrelled among themselves; so
Willis expelled the French, hoisted the national
flag of English piracy, pure and simple, and made
himself a name, a power, and a pest. The French
got reinforcements from St. Christopher and other
islands, and in their turn drove out the English;
and so the struggle went on, like some ghastly
game of seesaw played with dead men's bones.

There was a common want among the settlers:
the want of women. Nothing but booted, rough-
bearded men for all the small domesticities and
gentle amenities of life; nothing but pirates or
merchants, knights or esquires, for the whole
economy of social life. It was terrible. Even
the dreaded buccaneers, glaring over the water
from Tortugas, were not a greater infliction than
this want of wives and sisters, of friends and
mothers, among the colonists. The grievance at
last grew to be so great and unbearable, that
Ogeron, the governor of French Saint Domingo,
imported wives for his subjects, getting batches
of fifty at a time, all clean limbed, bright-eyed,
well-favoured damsels, of but meagre matrimonial
chances in the home market. As soon as they
landed, a grand kind of fair or sale was held,
where the women were put up to auction and
knocked down to the highest bidder, so that
there should be no suspicion of favouritism.
Sold for wives, be it understood, not for slaves,
or into anything less honest than the state of
marriage. It was an arrangement that suited all
parties, and certainly the last to complain of it
were the women, who found home and husband
in Haïti a more desirable possession than neglect
and destitution in France.

Thus, things went on, with the French supreme
at the west, and south, the English having a
tiny foothold on the north, the Spaniards
crushed up into the east, and the negro element
every now and then heaving and shaking like
the first throes of an earthquake, until 1791,
when the great Black Revolt took place, and
the independent existence of Haïti was
inaugurated in the massacre of two thousand
whites. The National Assembly of France might
claim to itself credit for some share in the sequel
of this revolt. Much uneasiness had long been
felt among the slaves concerning their rights
and liberties, and the news which came over
from France, of all being done there for the
establishment of freedom throughout the world,
did not tend to tranquillise them. When,
therefore, they copied their masters at times,
and took the law into their own hands, they
looked for sympathy, to say the least, if not for
aid and countenance. The National Assembly
thought differently. It sent over three
commissioners and eight thousand soldiers, with
orders to proclaim the social and political
equality of whites, mulattoes, and blacks, if free;
but with orders also to leave the question of
slavery where they found it, or rather to uphold
it as a righteous and needful institution. The
slaves, already flushed with success and drunk
with the blood of their masters, were not likely
to acquiesce very quietly in this view of human
rights; and the presence of the commissioners
and the eight thousand armed soldiers of the
Republic made matters still less pleasant for
the sable revolutionists. Frightened at all they
saw before them, Santhonax and Polverel, the
two commissioners who remained, then took it
on themselves to emancipate all the slaves in
the island; but it was too late to be of use.
Macaya, a black, entered Cape François with
three thousand revolted slaves, and took, in
blood and slaughter, that freedom which the
commissioners had so timidly and hesitatingly
allowed. Then England offered to assume the
mastership of this difficult situation, and did so;
extremity proving as usual her opportunity, and the
straits of others opening the cleft for her wedge.

A small armament of eight hundred and
seventy at once sailed from Jamaica, took Fort
Jérémie and the mole of Cap Saint Nicolas,
Fort Tiburon, Fort Saint Acul, and Port-au-
Prince, where they rested for new orders and
fresh reinforcements. But they lost ground,
owing to the heat and yellow fever; and then the
second effort of the British Lion to make himself
a lair under the robes of the Antilles' queen failed
as the first had done. It was not given to us
by fate to colonise or possess the mountainous
country of the Caribs. When the English
"gave out," Toussaint l'Ouverture, a slave and
the grandson of an African king, and Rigaud,
a mulatto, took the lead, recapturing Tiburon,
Leogane, Jean Rahel, Petite Rivière, and retaining
the whole of the north, with the exception
of the mole of Fort Dauphin. So that, when
more red-coats from the English army arrived,
expecting to carry all before them, they found
that Toussaint had made himself the dominant
power in the island, that Haïti had been
proclaimed an independent republic, with
L'Ouverture as dictator (1801), and that nothing
remained to be done but to sail back again as
speedily as might be. So General Simcoe
returned to England, and left the island to work
out its own salvation by itself. Toussaint
had started with an army of forty thousand
men, which, in 1801, was doubled to eighty
thousand; but the very magnitude of his power
proved his destruction; for France grew
alarmed at the attitude taken by her sable sister,
and sent General Leclerc with twenty thousand
men to talk with her on reason and the rights
of man over cannon-balls and crossed bayonets.

In February, 1802, Leclerc opened his
campaign, fighting with varied success, now
beating and now beaten, but always finding the
blacks stronger and more formidable enemies than
he had expected. Whereupon he tried to gain by
diplomacy and craft what war and arms could
not give him: made a truce with Toussaint and
Christopher, talked of universal charities and
fraternisation, spoke of the honour of a French-
man and the mission of a Republican, and played
his part so well that the black heroes committed
the irremediable mistake of trusting to his