INHABITANTS OF SAN DOMINGO. 407 



The revolution, which, at this distance of time, seems like a sudden event, 

 really took place very gradually, and but for foreign intervention might have 

 pursued a peaceful course. After 1789, and the shout of freedom echoed beyond 

 the seas, fifteen years passed before the Haitians proclaimed their independence. At 

 first they thought only of seizing the land which they tilled, and making them- 

 selves the political equals of the French planters. Political and social equalitv 

 were claimed only by the " petits blancs," that is, the despised European bour- 

 geoisie, and by the still more despised mulatto element. But these two classes were 

 themselves hostile to each other, and conflicts had even broken out between them. 



On the other hand the JN^ational Assembly, afraid to offend the great planters, 

 hesitated to act, and in response to the philanthropists clamouring for the aboli- 

 tion of slavery, limited its action to the electoral law of 1790, in which the right 

 of the people of colour to vote was not even explicitly recognised. But the 

 mulattos claimed the right, though their champion, Vincent Oge, had to take 

 refuge in Spanish territory, whence he was " extradited " and broken on the 

 wheel. The fury of the planters rose to a white heat when, in 1791, the Constituant 

 Assembly conferred on the half-breeds born of free parents the right of election 

 to the Colonial assemblies. It was then that the dominant party proclaimed in 

 most of the parishes their independence of the mother- country. The planters 

 appealed to England, and their envoys, dressed in British uniforms, were de- 

 spatched to Jamaica for assistance against France. 



But the negroes had already been drawn into the revolutionary movement, and 

 the war of races was precipitated by the action of the clergy, under whose influence 

 the slaves, like the peasantry of La Yendée, at first took arms as Royalists (" Gens 

 du E-oi"), Then the fate of the distant monarchy was soon effaced by the smell of 

 blood, and on both sides the war rapidly assumed a character of extreme ferocity. 

 Unassailable in their upland fastnesses, the blacks slaughtered the whites of the 

 plains, but only to be slaughtered in their turn whenever, intoxicated by success, 

 they ventured to approach the fortified towns. Scarcely any prisoners were made, 

 and the captives were often tortured to death. The hostile camps were surrounded 

 by bodies dangling from the branches of the trees, or by human heads stuck on 

 every post. 



But, in the language of Toussaint-Louverture, the whites were as two or three 

 light grains lost in a vessel full of black maize, and the massacres told in favour of 

 the African element. Moreover, the emigration of the whites to Jamaica, Cuba, 

 Puerto Rico, Spanish Florida, and the United States became a veritable exodus. 



On the invitation of the whites and a section of the people of colour, the 

 English, accompanied by French émigrés, came to take possession of the magnifi- 

 cent colony offered to them. St. Nicholas, the chief arsenal,. and Port-au-Prince, 

 the capital, fell into their hands. On the other side the Sj^aniards, representing 

 the Bourbon monarchy, had taken into their service the " Gens du Roi," and 

 had advanced into French territory. Of the old colony only two or three points 

 were still held on the north and south coasts, that is, i^recisely where the bucca- 

 neers had begun their work of conquest. 



