"make but a short stay with him, therefore asked him to settle as soon as possible the matters upon which we were to confer in order to allow me to return home. I communicated to him General Leclerc's letter. After reading this letter he (General Brunet) told me that he had not yet received any instructions concerning the object mentioned in it; he afterward apologized for being compelled to leave me alone for a while, and calling an officer, whom he instructed to remain in my presence, he went out. He had scarcely left the room when an aide-de-camp of General Leclerc, accompanied by a number of soldiers, entered; they surrounded me, took hold of me, bound me like a criminal, and carried me on board the frigate La Créole. I invoked General Brunet's word and his promises to me, but all in vain; I never saw him again. He was probably ashamed to face me and the well-deserved reproaches which he knew I would address him."
A French general had disgraced himself with the guilt of such an abominably felonious attack. A European officer had not hesitated to degrade his rank by treacherously seizing the unarmed opponent to whom he was holding out his hand as a "sincere friend." Yet the whites contended that they possessed all the moral virtues and that the blacks had but vices which made them unworthy of enjoying the rights granted to mankind!
Toussaint Louverture had rendered France the inappreciable service of maintaining her authority at Saint-Domingue by expelling the Spaniards and the English from the colony. The reward he received from France was to be "bound like a criminal." His very family was not spared. European officers at the head of 400 soldiers invaded his wife's house and violently drove her away. The property was plundered. Madame Toussaint, her son Isaac, and her niece were arrested and sent on board the frigate La Guerrière. Even his little son, eleven years old,[1] who was being educated
- ↑ Saint Jean, who died at Agen, France, on January 8, 1804.
