r of the blacks. Alarmed
at his seizure, and having no one to control them, the negroes flew to
arms, and soon the revolt spread over the whole island. Yellow fever came
to the aid of the blacks, raging in Leclerc's army until thousands of
soldiers and fifteen hundred officers found graves in the land they had
invaded. In the end Leclerc himself died, and Pauline was taken back to
France. When Napoleon heard the story of the fate of his expedition, he
exclaimed in dismay,--
"Here, then, is all that remains of my fine army; the body of a
brother-in-law, of a general, my right arm, a handful of dust! All has
perished, all will perish! Fatal conquest! Cursed land! Perfidious
colonists! A wretched slave in revolt. These are the causes of so many
evils." He might more truly have said, "My own perfidy is the cause of all
those evils."
A few words must conclude this tale. General Rochambeau was sent large
reinforcements, and with an army of twenty thousand men attempted the
reconquest of the island. After a campaign of ferocity on both sides, he
found himself blockaded at Cape Haytien, and was saved from surrender to
the revengeful blacks only by the British, to whom he yielded the eight
thousand men he had left. As he sailed from the island he saw the
mountain-tops blazing with the beacon-fires of joy kindled by the blacks.
From that day to this the island of Hayti has remained in the hands of the
negro race.
BOLIVAR THE LIBERATOR, AND THE CONQUEST OF NEW GRANADA.
One dark night in the year 1813 a negro murderer crept stealthily into a
house in Jamaica, where slept a man in a swinging hammock. Stealing
silently to the side of the sleeper, the assassin plunged his knife into
his breast, then turned and fled. Fortunately for American independence he
had slain the wrong man. The one whom he had been hired to kill was Simon
Bolivar, the great leader of the patriots of Spanish America. But on that
night Bolivar's secretary occupied his hammock, and the "Liberator"
escaped.
Bolivar was then a refugee in the English island, after the failure of his
early attempt to win freedom for his native land of Venezuela. He was soon
back there again, however, with recruited forces, and for years afterwards
the war went on, with variations of failure and success, the Spanish
general Morillo treating the people who fell into his hands with revolting
cruelty.
It was not until 1819 that Bolivar perceived the true road to suc
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