lacks--admits that "if Santo Domingo still carried the colors of
France, it was solely owing to an old negro who seemed to bear
a commission from Heaven." The French continued to send
commissioners--Santhonax among them--but Toussaint was the moving mind;
and when Laveaux, having been elected Delegate to the Assembly, sailed
for France, Santhonax finally appointed him commander-in-chief.

Toussaint, now "Louverture"; a strong hand and a clear head, though
black, now directs the affairs of the island. Daily he gains strength
and the confidence of the negroes. They flock to his army; they listen
and obey his words. Christophe, in the north, had encouraged
cultivation. Toussaint throws his powerful influence into the work. His
maxim, "that the liberty of the blacks can never endure without
agriculture," passes from mouth to mouth among the negroes, and rouses
in them the desire for lands and wealth--for the first time now
possible. He wishes that Cape and the towns along the north should be
rebuilt. It is done; they rise from their ashes. All hopes are centred
in the General-in-Chief: _he_ can restore peace and prosperity; he
alone.

The English now were sore bestead. The French pressed them in the west;
Desfourneaux in the north; Rigaud in the south; Christophe had carried
the heights of Valliere--the Vendee of Santo Domingo. Toussaint
Louverture again attempts to take St. Marc; thrice he storms it, thrice
he deserves success, but again he fails to clutch this strong fortress.
He turns now to Mirebelois, an interior Thermopylae, strongly fortified
by the English. His lieutenant, Mornay, intercepted Montalembert, who
was advancing with seven hundred men and two pieces of artillery. The
next day he drives in all the English troops, invests the village of St.
Louis, carries the forts by assault, and in fourteen days totally
defeats the English, taking two hundred prisoners, eleven pieces of
cannon, and military stores. The efforts of the English are nearly at an
end; weak and weary, their strength is spent. Whitlocke, Williamson,
Whyte, Horneck, Brisbane, and Markham, have tried to subdue these rebels
and to wrest the colony from France: they have bitten a file. Millions
of pounds have been wasted; Brisbane and Markham are killed; thousands
of soldiers slain; the yellow fever, too, has done its work.

General Maitland at last decided to leave the island, and between him
and Toussaint there went on a struggle of diplomacy;