case the French should again undertake the reduction of the country. It was ordered that at the first appearance of a foreign army ready to land upon the shores of the Island, all the towns upon the coast should be burnt to the ground, and the whole population be driven to the fastnesses of the interior.
He also built fortifications in the mountains as places of refuge in the event of foreign invasion. Always violent and sanguinary, when there remained no whites upon whom to employ his ferocity, his cruelty was lavished upon his own subjects. For the slightest causes, both blacks and mulattoes were put to death without mercy and without the forms of trial. The sight of blood awakened within him his desire of slaughter, and his government became at length a fearful despotism, against the devouring vengeance of which none, not even those of his own household, was safe. The generals Clervaux, Greffard, and Gabart died suddenly and mysteriously; and the aggressions of Dessalines, directed particularly against the mulattoes, soon awakened the vengeance of that jealous class, who were already displeased at their insignificance in the State, and at the exaltation of the black dynasty which seemed about to become permanent in the country. A secret conspiracy was accordingly planned against the black monarch, and when, on the 17th of October, 1806, he commenced a journey from St. Marks to Port au Prince, the occasion was improved to destroy him. A party of mulattoes lying in ambuscade at a place called Pont Rouge, made an attack upon him, and he was killed at the first fire.
Thus closed the career of Dessalines, a man who had commenced life as a slave, and ended as an em-
