- beau as a successor to Le Clerc; and when the bloodhounds
which he had sent to Cuba for arrived, cannon were fired, and demonstrations of joy were shown in various ways.
Even the women, wives of the planters, went to the sea-side, met the animals, and put garlands about their necks, and some kissed and caressed the dogs.[1]
Such was the degradation of human nature. While the white women were cheering on the French, who had imported bloodhounds as their auxiliaries, the black women were using all their powers of persuasion to rouse the blacks to the combat. Many of these women walked from camp to camp, and from battalion to battalion, exhibiting their naked bodies, showing their lacerated and scourged persons;—these were the marks of slavery, made many years before, but now used for the cause of human freedom.
Christophe, who had taken command of the insurgents, now gave unmistakable proofs that he was a great general, and scarcely second to Touissant. Twenty thousand fresh troops arrived from France to the aid of Rochambeau; yet the blacks were victorious wherever they fought. The French blindly thought that cruelty to the blacks would induce their submission, and to this end they bent all their energies. An amphitheatre was erected, and two hundred dogs, sharpened by extreme hunger, put there, and black prisoners thrown in. The raging animals disputed with each other for the limbs of their victims, until the ground was dyed with human blood.
Three hundred brave blacks were put to death in this horrible manner. The blacks, having spread their
- ↑ Beard's Life of Toussaint L'Ouverture.
