192] 
they endeavoured to criminate that 
of the British ministry in the late 
negociation. They enumerated the 
conquests and victories of the 
French, the glory they had obtained, 
the connections they bad formed, 
and the treaties they had concluded. 
‘They represented that ministry, as 
insisting upon the dissolution of 
every honourable and beneficial tie 
they had contracted. Every ad- 
vantage was to be given up, and the 
enemies of the republic replaced on 
the same footing as before the war, 
and completely enabled to. renew it 
with the likelest prospect of suc- 
cess. France, in a word, was to 
renounce its honour and its reputa- 
tion, as well as its dearest interests, 
and tamely forego all those claims 
to which the triumphs obtained by 
its arms had given it s0 reasonable 
and incontestible a right. The 
apology concluded with menaces 
to England, and exhortations to the 
people of France ,to persevere un- 
yemittingly in the prosecution of the 
war, which could not fail to termi- 
nate gloriously for the republic, and 
to the merited humiliation of a foe, 
that presumed to dictate conditions 
to a state that had imposed its own 
terms on every other member of the 
goalition. 
This address, by the directory, so 
wel] calculated to operate on the 
national vanity of Frenchmen, and 
a vulgar passion for false glory, 
proved satisfactory to the majority 
of people: but many remained un- 
convinced of the propriety of their 
conduct, and appealed to the multi- 
plicity of untoward events that had 
befallen the arms, and the enter~ 
prizes of the republic, during the 
course of the present year. 
These had certainly met with se- 
vere checks. Exclusively of their 
expulsion from Germany, theFrench 
ANNUAL. REGISTER, 1796. 
had been very unsuccessful in the 
West Indies, and throughout the 
whole of their transmarine settle- 
ments. The colony of St. Domingo, 
the most valuable of any to France, 
and the former source of its coms 
mercial prosperity, was in a state of 
contusion, that baffled all the efforts 
continually made to restore it to 
any order. The blacks and the 
mulattoes were now become its 
rulers, and the ancient proprietors 
in most parts of it, entirely ruined. 
Their estates were in the hands of 
their former slaves, who lorded it 
every where with that barbarity, 
which is the usual concomitant of 
uncivilization. As they were arm- 
ed, theirnumbers made them irre- 
sistible. They chose their own 
commanders, and in a short time 
threw off all subjection to govern- 
ment, and took forcible possession 
of a large portion of the southern 
distriéts, where they declared them- 
selves a free and independent peo- 
ple. The French commissioners 
were unable to reduce them, and 
with no small difficulty preserved 
the sovereignty of the republic in 
the northern parts. In addition to 
those disorders, several of the prin- 
cipal places in the island. were in 
possession of the English, who had 
been called in by the planters, to 
proteét them from the tyranny of 
the French commissioners: in con- 
sideration of which they had trans- 
ferred their allegiance from France 
to Great Britain. 
But neither the French nor the 
English seemed, at this period, ina 
situation long to retainthe dominion 
of that island. The emancipation 
of the slaves, by the government in 
France, had excited a spirit of dis- 
obedience in them, which, gradually 
matured into mutiny and rebellion, 
had produced a revolution, by which 
they 
